Halfway Done Already?!

Some of us being just a tad 嘚瑟 with some flowers that
the really young kids very cutely gave us!

Whooo, I’m reporting to you from the comforts of our hostel in Beijing! It's hard to believe that we're more than halfway through ISEC! :o After three weeks of sleeping on hard floors, eating the same food day after day, and suffering from immense heat with no A/C, it’s so good to have beds, showers that are clean enough that you’d feel comfortable putting your feet on, and A/C. So we just had our closing ceremony for our second camp yesterday, and there were just so many blessings over the past week.

We had foot washing in the morning yesterday, and it actually was probably the highlight of this entire trip thus far. To give some context, my class for this camp has been pretty difficult to handle. There have been quite a few of them that have been quite problematic especially during, for example, our tutorial 1-on-1 times. In each classroom, we have three teachers, the foreign teacher, the co-teacher, and the 生活老师 (“live-in” teacher), and while I’d like to have my co-teacher there to talk to the kids with me (and translate the bits I don’t understand… haha), I usually can’t, because the 生活老师is out trying to find kids that have just randomly left the classroom, and my co-teacher then has to make sure the rest of the kids stay in the classroom. One of the kids has a fairly big stealing and lying problem, but I think he also has some sort of undiagnosed learning disability, so communicating with him is especially difficult. One of the kids has a hearing disability, which also makes her speaking harder to understand, and even worse yet, she doesn’t really understand she has a hearing disability, meaning she gets really frustrated when we have to ask her to repeat herself, but she also has a hard time understanding what we’re saying. She’s also (Dad, forgive me) a bit of a brat and doesn’t really listen to the teachers even when she does understand what we’re saying. The young teenage girls didn’t really feel comfortable opening up to me and would often give me some controlled sass. Overall, classroom management went a lot less smoothly than it did last week.

But foot washing was great. Although the kids were a little adamant against letting me wash their feet at first, they eventually all willingly allowed me to do so. I explained it to them that teacher wants to wash their feet because he loves them — that truly, I am no better than them, and that I am there to serve them. In the end, one of the teenage girls who didn’t really feel comfortable opening up to me actually washed my feet too. And lemme tell you, this girl would literally only say one of three phrases to any question or comment I had — 哦, which means “oh,” 随便, which means “whichever is fine,” or 我不知道, which means “I don’t know,” and it was SO frustrating to basically learn nothing about this girl, because nothing she said actually revealed what she believed or thought. But after the foot washing, she wrote me a note and told me to talk to her after I finished reading it. Part of the note read, “…I was actually going to tell you some of my secrets during the 1-on-1 time, but then you told me to go back to the classroom — don’t blame me that you didn’t get to hear my secret! And of course, the most moving thing teacher did for us was when he washed our feet!...” And it was really great to hear direct affirmation that what we were doing was impacting. I talked to her after reading the note, and we just chatted until lunch time — someone actually had to come and get us because we lost track of time. Even though a lot of the conversation still comprised of 哦’s, 随便’s, and 我不知道’s, it was still nice to know that the conversation was appreciated.

Also, during the past week, students from the first camp have been coming back to visit us and to help around for the second camp. One of my kids, S, came back quite often. She also came back on the day of foot washing and asked if she could wash my feet. As she began washing my feet and speaking to me, tears were slowly coming down her face, and she told me that she and the other kids keep talking about the summer camp, and they all agree that those short eight days are something that are going to stick with them for the rest of their lives. Here we are, just teaching them some simple English, preparing some skits, listening to them talk, and spending time with them, but Dad is doing something so much greater, and it touched my heart so much to hear her say that. It really shows that it’s not our own love, but Dad’s love that is really being shown here at these camps. So as the second camp progressed, I came to appreciate both camps we had in 中山 more and more — the second as Dad filled us with his love for the kids, and the first as Dad showed me the extent to which we are impacting these kids.

Some small other praise reports and pr requests to finish off this post!

Praise reports:

1) Yesterday, some more kids from the first camp came and visited us, and we actually got to eat all-you-can-eat barbeque and hot pot with them!! It was so good to see the kids again, and the time spent amongst foreign teachers, co-teachers, 生活老师, and kids from the first camp was just so, so sweet.

2) The day before yesterday (i.e. the night before M left), our team of foreign teachers went up to the sixth floor and just had a great time of fellowship. We got to sing, run away from scary bugs, and affirm each other before we had to say good-bye to M. X took a video of me getting rid of the rhinoceros beetle that flew into the room we were fellowshipping in. Even though it was an initially frightening thing, it was so funny afterwards — enjoy the video (k, I might not be able to upload it... so I might try again later...)!

Pr requests:

1) We have had to say good-bye to a lot of people again the last couple of days. Yesterday, we said good-bye to M, one of our teammates, because he has to head back to Australia for classes, and we today said bye to E, another teammate, who has to go home early for one of her best friend’s weddings, and we said bye to J, our camp director who has to go to Chicago to give a presentation on one of his papers. Our smaller team is now recombining back with the Blue Team (who also lost two members going home for that same wedding that E is going home for), and although it’s good to be reunited, it’ll also be a little difficult and sad adjusting to the fact that many people have now left, so please chat for joy in the midst of farewell pains.

Finally have a complete group photo with Team Purple!! First and last batch of photos with our whole team. :(
From left to right — Top: R, A, X, E, N; Bottom: K, M, J, me!

2) Our first Shenyang camp actually got cancelled today. We’re still traveling out to Shenyang tomorrow morning, but as of now, we don’t have any plans, so please pr for Dad to provide opportunities for us to do his work even if it may not be at this camp that we originally planned to go to! Pr for eyes and hearts that are open to these opportunities!!

3) Rest — after two consecutive camps in 中山, I think our team is feeling quite burned out. Please pr that in these next couple of days (or next week), that our team would be wise in the free time that we have in using it to rest well in Dad’s presence.

As always, hope all is going well with y’all too. Love and miss you all! J