Where do I start? How do I even begin to express to you how my month in China went? There's so much of my heart I want to share. So I'll just do my best to recap my journey of this past month.
A couple months before going to China God began speaking to me about college ministry and I began pressing in to that and feeling like that may have something to do with my future. Well once I got to China I found out that I would be doing college ministry and I got pretty excited. Even if God was only preparing me for this month I knew I was ready to dive head first into the ministry. And that’s just what I did.
I’ll explain a little more what that looked like exactly, I was separated from my team and lived with only one teammate and 2 girls from another team on the North side of the Harbin River. We lived in an apartment which was also the church and it was located right across the street from campus. Our goal for the month was to meet college students and basically share the gospel with them. Some accepted, some rejected, either way we befriended them and spent a lot of intentional time getting to know the students and studying the bible together. We had parties at our apartment to meet the girls and attended English clubs on campus to get to know the students. In the evenings we taught English to younger children from the community.
It was simple ministry. To me it was just living life the way it’s supposed to be. To put it plainly I fell in love with the students and with China in general. My heart aches for China in a way I never thought it would. This new found love for China came out of nowhere. This was a country I just wanted to speed past so that I could get out of Asia. Who would have guessed this would be the country to capture my heart?
I haven’t even begun to explain the turmoil this caused in my heart and my mind. “God I thought you wanted me to do college ministry in the States, what is this? Why do I love China so much? Are you going to bring me back here some day? That scares me God, I don’t know if you’re worth it. You would be asking me to give up A LOT, you know that right? I like being comfortable. I have plans to live a comfortable life. This is not exactly that. You’re disturbing my plans. I had it all under control then you came and shook things up a bit more than expected.” Although this did rock me a bit, towards the end of the month I was ready to accept the fact that God may call me back to China and that I would obey Him. He is worth it. He is the reason I live and breathe. It’s not about me or my comfort (a lesson I will continue to relearn til the day I die).
So there’s China in a nut shell. There’s so much more I want to share from that month. Perhaps it will appear in another blog. For now chew on this, does God really have the control or are there pieces of your life you’re not entirely willing to surrender? He wants it ALL. Don’t fool yourself in to thinking you’ve given Him everything when in reality you’ve already formed a plan like I did. If He’s your plan A you don’t need to form a plan B.
Praise the Lord, praise God our savior. For each day He carries us in His arms. Psalm 68:19
