Zhongshan -- 中山!!

An epic selfie we took during our bike ride! :3

(This was written on 7/8/14 mip mip)

Our first camp in Zhongshan is finally starting tomorrow (well, as of now, it started already, because I wrote this yesterday) and we just arrived at the school we’re going to be teaching at over the next eight days! Sorry I haven’t been updating lately. We haven’t had very good access to wifi and to be perfectly honest, my mind has been pretty muddled. We rode a total of nine hours on two separate bullet trains from Beijing to Zhongshan on Saturday (the total travel time was probably from about 6:45 am – 9:00 pm).

Even though we haven’t actually started the camps yet, we’ve had… pretty packed days. We’ve been staying at one of Dad’s houses the past few days, and on Sunday, we woke up at around 8 am to get ready to go to Dad’s house and to let people prepare for the meeting. Dad’s meeting ended at around 12:30, and it was honestly such a blessing to see how much our siblings in China were fervently seeking Dad and serving us foreigners with genuine hearts. Everyone literally just KNOCKED out after lunch until we had a book study later that afternoon. Then we ate dinner and played games and w0rshipped with our Chinese siblings and some seekers until… late… lol. Monday, we had to be ready to leave the house club at a deathly 7:00 am, but as our reward, we enjoyed this beautiful twelve-kilometer scenic bike ride around the Zhong Shan area. We also had a book study there, but by that time, I was feeling exhausted. We ate lunch at around 1:30 pm, and afterward, I really wanted to take a “holy” nap — as Sophia has dubbed it — but instead, we got to experience the joy of communal clothes washing! It was honestly really awesome and heartwarming to see brothers and sisters like… washing my dirty boxers haha. That night, we were invited to dinner at the house club’s leader’s home with his family, and that was really awesome too — the grandma was really cute keke. We got back pretty late, and then we had a meeting until pretty late too. Although I was feeling really exhausted, we had a time where we got to share our “fillers” and “drainers” from the day, and that was quite a blessing.

Because… it’s been pretty hard to be here — don’t get me wrong, I’ve been having lots of fun hanging out with people and hearing random life stories from teammates and the Chinese people we’re meeting here, but I don’t feel like I’ve been getting rest. Yeah, we get around six hours of sleep a night, and we got to take a nap on Sunday, but I don’t feel like I’ve been able to get rest. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to have the freedom to talk to people one-on-one, where I can just say whatever I want and know I won’t get judged regardless of how stupid I may sound saying whatever I’m saying. Everything’s been in a group setting, and it’s honestly been pretty draining. Not that I feel like I’ve been putting on a front, but I don’t feel like I’ve been able to fully relax and rest while I’ve been here. To some extent, I feel like there’s a level of passion I have to maintain or feign, and it’s been a little tiring. However, I was blessed to have a chill one-on-one conversation with one of my teammates Monday afternoon, when I got to share a little bit of what was on my mind, and I got to hear his honest opinion about whatever. Later that night, I also got to talk about some of my cultural background as an Asian-American and some of my experiences and thoughts over the past couple of years with my camp director and that was quite restful, so I’ve definitely seen ways in which I have been able to get rest, but I don’t really feel like I get ample opportunity to really experience rest as I feel I really need it. But at the very least, it was really nice to be able to share that thought with my teammates even if I haven’t been able to share those word-vomity thoughts with them. As of now, I’m really chatting that Dad would give me His strength to reach out and love even when I feel like I can’t love — to hold Dad’s heart for the people around me, instead of attempting to love these people with my own fallen, human love.

Besides my own internal emotional conflicts, some praise reports!

1) On Saturday, we met two seeker friends who welcomed us when we arrived in Zhongshan. They went to Dad’s meeting on Sunday, and continued to come with us to book studies, nights of fellowship, and the crazy bike ride on Monday — like it was honestly really cool that they kept coming back even though they didn’t like… understand the book studies or why we always w0rshipped or whatever. But today, when we were about to leave to move into the school grounds, one of them, L, suddenly appeared with her bags. She was supposed to go back home today, because she recently finished her exams, but she called her mom to not come and pick her up, because she wanted to volunteer as a counselor/live-in teacher at this Zhongshan camp! I was seriously so delighted to see that she was so willing to serve and spend more time with us, especially knowing the Ch—sti-n context from which we serve from. To double as a chat request, please be chatting that we would be intentionally meeting her and being bold in sharing the good news with her.

2) One of our sisters fell during the bike ride and got a few scars on her face. She’s all right now, but instead of taking the day off to rest, literally only three hours after the incident, she was back at the house club, ready to serve us and take us to the house club’s leader’s house, and she even stayed after dinner to help clean up the bathrooms. When we said bye today, she still maintained a genuine heart of humility truly believing that she had not done much still. Ahhh, such sincere hearts of service we have met here!!

3) Team bonding is going well. I mean, honestly, we all met for the first time a week and a half ago, so given the amount of time we have known each other, team unity has been strong. However, please keep chatting that we will learn to be vulnerable and open and encouraging with one another, especially as the camps begin — that we would be keen of how to accommodate to the needs of one another in the face of our own respective experiences and busyness.

I think I’ve basically hit all the chat requests either throughout the post or through the praise reports, so I think I’ll end it here; this post is getting a tad long haha. Overall, please be chatting for us to maintain sincere hearts of love for these kids as we begin our first camp tomorrow!!! GO BLURPLE! J