Where to even begin… these past three weeks we have gone a
lot of places and worked with a lot of people… all of which were a blessing.
God’s hand was truly in our work this month, and I appreciate all of your
prayers for myself and for our team!
Friday morning, the 5th of January, the world
racers gathered up all our stuff and prepared for a long time of traveling.
Some teams would travel as much as 38hours by train to get to their
destination, and team seven: eleven (thank the Lord) would only have a 4 hour
journey ahead of us. So as we gathered for prayer, Brandon
informed us that there was a slight change in plans, and we would actually not
be leaving until the next morning. So that ended up being a blessing, because
we were able to do some last minute internet things and have a good quality
team night of prayer, eating, and movie watching.
The next morning we began our travel to where we would be
staying for the next ten days (which I still can’t name because of *security
reasons*). After one bus and two train rides, we arrived and were greeted by
our amazing host, let’s just call him *Joe. So *Joe and his friend *Mike took
us out to lunch at a pretty amazing buffet. A couple hours later we arrived at
the most amazing housing we would ever lay eyes on throughout this race… beds
with down comforters, a washer and dryer, a kitchen stocked with goodies,
dishwasher, and a coffee pot with starbucks coffee. Man! So we stayed there for
one night before heading over to our next location, with our next contact *Phil.
*Phil hooked us up with four different places to stay, each
with teachers we would be working alongside for the week. Cameron and I stayed
with five young women who taught at a preschool, Mark and Brandon
stayed with a family of three, Sarah and Pam stayed with three young adults,
and Haley stayed with a family of three as well. Over the course of the week we
partnered in a variety of ministries, spending our mornings teaching, our
afternoons visiting a couple children’s homes, where a local American missionary
*Susan has taken in over twenty children that are runaways or abandoned, and
our evenings sharing at English corners (I will be posting a couple blogs on
specific ministries at a later time).
So we were with *Phil and his ministries for six days. It
was a really crazy time, being scattered and torn apart as a team with no
advance warning, but overall it was really amazing to see the Lord working
through it, unifying us despite these circumstances. Continue to pray for our
team and unity, the Lord is working in us and it really is incredible to see.
The remaining three days we spent with our first contact
*Joe. We were more than excited to go back and work with him. It was so
encouraging to partner with him and his wife *Amy. Now this guy and his wife
*Amy need to have a whole blog to themselves—because they were such a
blessing—so that will come later.
So then ten days later from when we arrived, we boarded
another train headed to Beijing. In
Beijing we met up with the other
teams, explored the city, and experienced the Great Wall under snowfall and
twenty-degree weather. It was amazing! Finally the cold weather I have been
missing for so long!
Well that’s just a really general overview of our time in
*Mysteryland. Depending on time available I will do my best to get more
specific over the course of the next week.
Until then, keep us in your prayers for traveling mercies to
Africa!
