Heyaaaa I’m back again! This is the final part in my series of catching you all up and then we get into the here and now which I’m stoked to tell you all about! But for now let’s talk about China!
We will pick right up from Hong Kong which was only a few train stops away to get to China. So in total it maybe took two hours get over to the train station and then transfer to the bullet train which took us into Shenzhen, China. We were only going to be there long enough to exchange money, get some more dough for the next couple weeks, and roll out to our hostel we were staying in. Ha! That’s funny because they told us there wasn’t enough space for us right as I was going to buy train tickets for our team. So we had some choices to make at this point. We could take a train to one of two train stops as decision number one. Then after that do we want to try to find a hostel nearby or stay in the train station and sleep and decision number two.
There’s this cool thing that I’ve learned on the race for decisions and it’s called “asking Holy Spirit.” Yeah, I know, it’s ground breaking right? But legit all kidding aside that’s how we should be making decisions! But I digress, He told us all which station to go to and I think we were half and half on the train station sleeping situation. We dropped our packs at the station and split in half and some of us went to check on hostels and nothing really panned out so sleep at the station it was. It was actually pretty sweet there were some kids like 8-10 years old probably at most that we got to play soccer and all sorts of games with for about two or three hours. Ya boy was exhausted and about to drop dead. Had to really rethink how in shape I was! So much fun and we were about to head to sleep and these kids came back with a bunch of drinks and little snacks for us. I mean, what in the world, a bunch of random people sleeping in a corner of a train station and they brought us stuff to eat. If that’s not a wild blessing, then I don’t know what is.
Next, we’ve got a 30 hour train ride to the next city which we only slept there and left early that morning on an 8 hour bus ride to finally reach our destination. We finally got there and had this one of a kind World Race experience to all stay in our own individual homes with locals there. So that was the next leg of our trip! While here we got to teach English in some elementary schools and another school in the afternoon. Beyond this we lived in the homes of people that don’t even speak English but we learned how to love them and their children beyond the language barrier. Their son that I was with asked me if he could call me “brother!” That was the sweetest thing! It was a really sweet time there, of course with its own challenges of being separated from the team, but nonetheless so cool having that opportunity. We unfortunately didn’t really get to stay there for much longer as we apparently had the wrong type of visa for helping teach English, which were then told it was best if we left as soon as possible. So had to say an early goodbye there!
We headed back to the city we were in before and spent our last week with our alumni team leader, Eric, and some of the other leadership team for a few days. It was an incredible moment of refreshing being back together as a team and being able to serve and honor each other. On top of that we got to welcome Allie as our new team leader when Eric was leaving back to the states (he was alumni so he only stays for a few months). So we were there for about a week and then it was off to the next city.
Our next destination was Zhangjiajie where we stayed for a few days and had some really cool opportunities meeting some new people. The first day we started pretty early getting off the train at 5:30 am and headed to our home for the coming days. There was this incredible place we got to visit that overlooked all of the city and honestly words cannot describe how beautiful it was. Also pictures are struggling to load so when I get decent wifi I’ll share those guys. But the coolest part was that along the way we started adding people into our group. We started with only 5 and I think we got to 8 or 9 at one point! So much fun just being a light in those places and you get to see how people are so attracted to that joy that you bring. So we added numbers and even got to share the gospel with some of them and show them Jesus through our actions. Really loved meeting new friends, sharing stories, and sharing laughs. That’s what it’s all about folks. This is just a taste of what the life on the World Race is. Thank you so much for following this journey to the Father’s heart through the mission He’s given us here!
