NOTE: Sorry I haven’t written any new blogs lately. Due to various reasons I had to wait till I got home. So I’m going to post blogs that I’ve had written for awhile but wasn’t able to post until now. Enjoy!
When I think of China I think of crowded smoggy cities, short people, technology everywhere, and lots and lots of people in one place. For our ministry it sounded like we were going to be in several cities in Northwestern China. So what did I find? Just that!…at first…
That my team and I were going to live rather, in a Chinese Tibetan town. This town was about a 4 hour bus ride into the mountains. It was so beautiful. Mountains and snow surrounded us all around. I was about 9,500 feet above sea level. My team got to live in our own apartment for the month. 4 guys had one bedroom and we 3 ladies had the other. There was one bedroom in the back that seemed to become the unofficial “alone time room”. By the way, having our own place to live on the race is a rare and wonderful gift.
As for ministry we didn’t really have anything assigned to us. Our month became an unofficial ATL. Each morning we had prayer and worship. Then we would go explore the town. We made friends with some of the locals (especially the guy who owned the coffee shop) and some of the monks. The guys would play basketball with some of the monks, we helped people with their English as we met them, and Andi made friends with a lady that sold yearn. We all played to our strengths, what we were good at or thought was fun. For me, I wanted to learn about Tibetan Buddhism (which is confusing btw) so I befriended a monk or two. They showed me around the monastery. We ended up asking each other about our own religions and how they compare. By the end a few people were definitely thinking.
The people in the town were so amazing and nice. They all wanted to say hi. I found this to be amazing because this is a tourist town. They see foreigners all the time yet they still wanted to say hi to us, they still wanted to be our friend, they still wanted to hang out. Maybe part of the reason was that they saw us walking the streets everyday so they got used to seeing us or maybe because we were there for so long or maybe they saw something in us that not many have. Whatever the reason, it helped us make new friends in China.
