Month 4 of the race was spent in China haha. I laugh because China was defiantly a ridiculous month. Filled with no one speaking english, coldness, sickness, heaviness, tears, loneliness, laughter, random food eating, and 'what the what' moments. But now I'm just gonna give you a few bullet points on some memories and stuff that happened in China.
-Spent the first part of the month exploring the city of Hong Kong.
-Also had quite a few prayer walks around Hong Kong.
-Most importantly I had my first Starbucks after not having it for 3 months!
-Team Changes happened in Hong Kong right before leaving for China. I am part of a new team named, Team Yebo! Yebo means yes in SiSwati. Our team wants to say ‘yes’ to everything God has for us. And it is always "obey" spelled backwards which I think is awesome, because I want to 'obey' God in everything. But my new team includes my team leader Kristi Bezy, Ashley Brandt, Ben Fulton, Beth Barron, Meredith Cockman, and Ben Stahl.
-Once leaving Hong Kong we actually became homeless for at least 5 days by sleeping either in a train station or on a train. Instead of being travel days it felt more like a travel daze. We walked about mile or so with our giant packs, took 2 buses, and about 4 trains to finally get to where we were going to be for the month.
-An instant heaviness came upon use once we entered China. Lots of lies came upon our team and squad mates. Satan got us good some days.
-China was SOOOO cold that even your guts were cold. yeah… it was that cold! It also snowed a couple of days, which was fun!
-I was so sick that I spent the first week and half of ministry in my bed and didn't even leave the hotel. It was pretty bad.
-We had to train our selves not to say, missionary, ministry, God, and Jesus. But don't worry we had code names for them all 🙂
– Our ministry was college ministry. We didn't make a whole lot of friends but we did make quite a few friends.
-No one spoke english where we were. And when I say no one… I mean NO ONE!
-Got to go karaokeing with a few of our new friends. Which was hilarious and so much fun! Karaoke is the cool, fun, hip thing to do in China.
-We learned how to make dumplings with a different group of friends we made. And ate dumplings till we became dumpling wasted.
-Oh yeah how could I forget that we had no internet ALLL month long. We were a little struggz.
-According to Ben Stahl I finally became a real person because I watch the Schindler's List for the first time ever. Along with Shawshanks Redemption.
– The only american thing we found in China were Snickers… we basically lived off of them!
-We seriously ate the strangest food… I don't think I could even tell you what we ate half of the time. And when it looks sketch we didnt even ask what it was.
-But the best meal we ever had was getting some ballin' potatoes from the Potato Lady across the street! Mmm I'm drooling thinking of them now.
-I think I watched more movies and episodes of Friends than I could count this month. We hardly ever left our beds… I defiantly lost a desire to read the Word. There was Satan again getting us.
-China is the one place where you can still see your breathe when you walk into a store or a restaurant.
-China is SO cheap! All our meals were like 1 USD or even like 50 cents. It was awesome!
– Our team read through Ecclesiastes and I learned that its okay that my prayers and words are short and still powerful.
-We got to celebrate Ben F's and Meredith's birthday! "I dunno about you… but i'm feeling 22!" this was pretty much our theme song!
– WE FOUND THE HUT! Haha! We got to take some of our new friends to Pizza Hut for the first time on Christmas Eve.
-Spent Christmas with 4 other teams on our squad and got to have secret santa.
-Spent 4 days in Beijing for debrief. What up starbucks and H&M!
-Spent New Year's Eve's day on The Great Wall of China!
-Spent New Year's Eve evening at an awesome place called Helen's with some awesome friends! Hello 2013!
– The New Year's day we left China to head to the Philippines.
Even though China was not my favorite place that I have been too so far here on the race. Looking back on how the month went it made me realize that China wasn't all that bad. There were defiantly some great, happy, and laughing moments. I am grateful for all these moments I have had while in China.
