Camp 1: Finished!

My first class! Top left: my co-teacher, bottom left: my live-in teacher, the other five: my lovely kids :3

­WARNING: VERY LENGTHY POST — I’M TRYING TO PUT THE EVENTS OF A WHOLE WEEK IN A SINGLE POST, AND IT’S PRETTY HARD… I’M ALREADY CUTTING A LOT OUT TOO MIP

            And once again, my plan to update you all in a timely manner has utterly failed, but we just finished our first camp at Zhongshan! Honestly, there are a lot of mixed feelings running through me, but there were so many praise reports as well. So many people saw breakthrough — so many Books were given out, so many chats were had, and I am most certainly sure that Dad blessed us with much more fruit than we had expected.

            Our class sizes were actually ridiculously small — about five to eight students each — which made the “tutorial” time when we have one-on-one conversations with the kids super effective, because it was possible to give direct focus and attention to each and every one of the kids. Honestly, even with such small classes, it was still a struggle to talk to all the kids for a sufficient amount of time, but kids really opened up, even ju­­st by the second day, and that really is the work of the HS in their hearts.

There were about… five new babies, and so many more who are interested, constantly reading their Books, asking difficult questions, and really showing that they have a hunger to seek Dad. There was one particular baby, J, that I want to share about though. One of our team members, N, said that when she chatted with Dad with J, she asked him how he felt. He was feeling particularly down that day, because he had a nightmare with ghosts the night before and he heard a sad story earlier that morning. And when they started chatting with Dad, he said that he started to see the ghosts from his nightmare again, but as N chatted, he said that there was a bright light that came and destroyed the ghosts. Praise Dad, he was truly moving in that moment! The next day, N got the chance to chat the sinner’s chat with J and he said that he saw a man with his hands in the form of a red heart, and that red heart eventually consumed the man until it rose to the sky and burst into a myriad of tiny hearts, and he said that some of those hearts went into him. It was such a moving testimony that this is all Dad’s work. We are nothing; we only have the privilege of partaking in his work.

As for my own experience, things were much mellower — at least from my perspective. My kids were all really, really good kids — like they all had extremely good hearts. I think a lot of kids come to want to know Dad and His love for them because there’s a large lack of love and ability to love others in their hearts. But my kids had it down — they knew that love of money can’t bring you happiness; they know to forgive the people around them and they have life experiences to prove they know it; they weren’t naughty or mischievous, and they showed care and loved others fairly openly. However, after talking to each of them, there were definitely still things that made it very clear that they are still broken and in need of Dad’s love — loneliness, lack of attention, the fear of not being understood. In some ways, I felt like I could see a bit of myself in each of them, and I don’t think that was a coincidence. I didn’t end up giving away any books to them, but I did get the opportunity — mainly through sharing my own life experiences — to share Dad with each of the kids, and I also downloaded QQ and have been talking to them still, so I’m chatting that I will be able to water the seeds I sowed in them.

However, my relationship with one of my students, T, left a fairly bitter taste in my mouth. When I first met T, I noticed that she had a pretty quiet personality, but she still carried a lot of joy with her, often smiling and laughing. Even though there would be times where her face would just be kinda expressionless, they would still be interspersed with moments of great laughter, so I didn’t think anything was wrong really. However, on the last day of classes, during our tutorial time, we washed the feet of our students. My class as usual took things fairly graciously and accepted the foot washing without much resistance, but when I later talked to T in our one-on-one time, she said she was fairly uncomfortable with the activity, and you could clearly tell so by her facial expression (she was also the one most resistant to having her feet washed). She also said she doesn’t like rainy days or being abruptly woken up, and she was abruptly woken up from naptime after a rainy day. She also shared that she was a little sad because she was moving schools next year for middle school. This camp was mainly composed of students from the school we were teaching at, so this was potentially the last time she would see these people for a long time.

This storm of mainly negative reactions was actually pretty surprising, because she was the student that seemed to have it most together — particularly in terms of her character. So I felt convicted to share why I believe I can love and choose joy even in the face of loneliness (i.e. the lpsog). She responded by saying she wanted to get to know Dad (!!), and so I shared how we can talk to and listen to him – by chatting and reading His Book. She said she wanted a Book, and we chatted together so she knew how to do so. I asked her how she felt after we chatted, and she said she couldn’t describe it, but it was a good feeling (!!!). However, the next day, she was clearly cold and distant. I had written her a message in the Book I was going to give her, and I asked her during breakfast that morning if she still wanted a Book, and she said she didn’t. I was pretty confused; I didn’t know what had happened or what she had thought that made her change her mind, but I had to respect what she wanted. Later, after the closing ceremony, she didn’t seem sad to leave like the other kids, and she didn’t give me a bittersweet goodbye like the other kids did, and it just left me with such an unsettling feeling. So while everyone else was crying, saying their heartfelt good-byes, I was pacing around, saying my good-byes as they came, but inside, I felt like a failure. In one way or another, I felt like I failed to love T as I had wanted to, or she didn’t receive it the way I had hoped she would, and I may never know why. However, throughout the rest of that day, Dad gave me a lot of peace, reminding me that he is sovereign. I may never know why T reacted to things the way she did, but I can trust that Dad will be with her and be continuing to reveal himself to her. In the end whether she chooses to accept him or not is still her choice after all, and all I can do now is chat.

A lot of other stuff happened within the team and whatnot, but this post has gotten quite long, and I think I’m going to end it here. In the past eight days, Dad has been really faithful in providing strength, discernment, and wisdom in the face of fatigue, uncertainties, and lack of knowledge. He is so, so good and always worthy of praise. Thank you all for your chats. Our second camp is starting today, so if you could, please be chatting for:

1) my toenail — yesterday during our day off, I bruised my second toe on my left foot, and the toenail is completely black now… and I have this giant fear of toenails falling off, so please chat for peace and strength in the face of this physical trial. Also, if you know what I should do to treat it, please let me know — I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do to help it…

2) peace and joy — this camp will be fairly different from the last camp in terms of authority, scheduling, and freedom; please chat for us to still work with a joyful heart

3) unity — I’ll probably write an entire separate post about this later, but yes, unity. Both unity within our own IS-C team and the larger body we are serving with (the co-teachers [Chinese teachers who help translate] and live-in teachers [Chinese teachers who keep the kids clean, make sure they get enough sleep, etc.])

4) increased love from Dad — we just said good-bye to our first set of kids, and although we only spent eight days with them, it feels like it was much longer. Please chat we will still be able to love these kids we will meet today with that same love.

Thank you for bearing with me through this entirely too long of a post, and thank you in advance for chatting — they really are greatly appreciated. The work we are doing and the fruit we have seen would not be possible without your chat support. And as always, hope all is well with you. J