It’s back. Sorry about the missing blog. You can enjoy my China pics on facebook at http://trnty.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011132&l=3fdc9&id=119300274.
So I’m sitting at the house in HK at 11pm, and for some reason I’m not even remotely tired. We took a 25-ish hour train ride and arrived just after noon today, and I barely slept on the train last night…but still, I’m not tired. We’ll be at the airport around supper time tomorrow night for a flight that leaves at 12:35am, yet I have no desire to go to bed. And so I write. Here’s the story of my last month:
We left the Philippines on Jan. 2, which was bittersweet for me. See, I loved that country (it’s still my favorite so far), but I also knew that something in me was so incredibly excited and that said spark had been there since long before China was on our itinerary. So we took a quick flight to Hong Kong – just long enough to get up in the air, eat a meal, and head back down to a different world. People from the place we stayed met us at the airport and we took a big fancy bus from the airport to the house, got settled in, had orientation, and then went out for a really nice dinner at a seafood place downtown with our main ministry contact from the Philippines. (Since I may not have mentioned it before – ICM, the organization we worked with in the Philippines, is supported and directed through people here in Hong Kong, and since they wanted to hear what we thought of our experience there and such, they treated us to a wonderful meal). Anyway, the rest of our time in Hong Kong flew by – China orientation, getting details figured out, and taking many modes of transportation to the HK/China border to begin the rest of our travels.
My team, Beloved One, was paired with team Ignite for the month, and after we crossed over into the mainland, we had a 2 hour bus ride and a 36-ish hour train ride to meet our contact, then another 4 or so hours, some people in a bus and some in the van with our contact and family, to the city we were to do ministry in. As you can imagine, these past few weeks included a great deal of train travel as well as many hours on busses and in taxis and other wonderful things. So we finally arrived at our ministry site about 2 1/2 days after leaving HK. Then we find out that we’re splitting up the two teams and going back an hour or so to a different city in two groups, all the while having the two guys go to a completely different city to do ministry there. Needless to say, we weren’t together very much as two teams.
I ended up in the group staying in our “main city” (which I was going to come up with a great code name for and haven’t gotten to yet) for the first few days, and Molly and Jeanette (both Ignite girls) and I were able to prayer-walk around that city. Our first day there, a Tibetan girl who was brave enough to try out the little English she knew, came up to us and started to try and speak with us, and after a lot of confusion, but not after very much time at all, we had set up a lunch date with her the next day at a restaurant we knew in town and had made an instant friend. The next day we met our friend for lunch (we’ll call her Josie – I think that was the name we ended up giving her), and after a late lunch, she invited us to her home for “tea,” and after some things getting lost in translation, we ended up in a taxi (the three of us, Josie, and one of her Tibetan friends) headed out of the city to her house. We met her family, who were all wonderfully kind and so generous to us, and ate a LOT of food (so much for fasting – I had been fasting for a couple days but that ended when they served me food and I had no way to explain why I wouldn’t eat it), and set up another “date” with her to go biking later in the week (for that one we ended up walking around the city because it was too cold to bike, but still had a lot of fun with her and another friend).
Our teams were re-united just in time for Heather’s birthday – yeah for a great celebration and wonderful team time and really good food and CAKE – we found a place in town that made cakes, and though they weren’t as good as homemade cakes, we all enjoyed them.
The next day we re-broke-up and I headed with five other girls and our host to a city a couple hours away, visited with a couple other “m’s” in the city and heard what God had laid on their hearts for China, ate lots of food, explored that city and surrounding areas, visited a village on the way back, and hiked along a somewhat frozen pathway in the dark to try and see a waterfall and mountain, but by the time we got there it was too dark and too overcast to be able to see anything – but it was still a fun night hike without headlamps or flashlights.
We spent the last couple days in “our city” together as two teams again – even the boys were back – and had some fun bonding with each other and with our hosts before we hopped on another 20-ish hour train to Beijing for some touristy stuff with ministry written all over it.
Insert the Great Wall – I went with a group of 11 WR’ers and 8 other people from the hostel we stayed at to a “secret wall – undiscovered, unrestored, not touristy, no vendors” or something like that. Long car ride, long and steep hike, and then…there it was – the Great Wall of China – just like I had imagined it, only a bit more rugged looking. We were able to hike along the wall for quite a while (in the snow – praise Jesus!!!), then back down to a Tibetan village for a big lunch before the long car ride back in to the city. And then when we got back I hopped in with a group going to a Chinese acrobatics show and enjoyed watching people climb ropes and flip through hoops and spin/juggle hats and do amazing lifts and holds and climb poles and jump to/from moving objects at least 10 feet off the ground – it was a pretty cool show.
Another few touristy days in BJ – saw Tain’amen square about 100 times (meaning we drove past it a lot), tried to see the Forbidden City but it was closed by the time we got there, played tourist and went to see the Olympic stadium (which wasn’t nearly finished – I’ll be interested to see what it looks like on TV this summer) and other random things around the city, spent a lot of time on the subway, and then hopped the train back to Hong Kong, which is what I started this story with.
So now it’s 11:40 pm, I’m still not tired, and I have a blog written about what we did. I think my eyes are playing tricks on me because I thought I just saw a gecko run across the tile, but those were in the Philippines and I haven’t seen any here (it’s probably too cold for them). Oh yeah, that’s another thing – we actually got winter, even a couple “snow storms” which seemed more like flurries, but were still pretty glorious for a midwestern girl who’s been missing the changing of the seasons and all that comes with it. But you’re probably reading this not only to hear what I did this month, but how God worked.
Well, we as a squad were able to cover a lot of ground for God this month and just pray over a large amount of China throughout all our travels. Molly, Jeanette, and I prayed for our friend and her family and all the struggles they’re having with money and food and it being winter, and though we didn’t see her accept Christ, we set her up with our contact there and she is working on continuing to build that relationship and working to be able to share more and more with Josie about God and what He’s doing and why he brought those silly foreigners to their city for a week in the winter. My teammates made relationships with the people we met at the hostel we stayed at for the last few days and had a lot of good God-talks there. God spoke a lot to me through my teammates and the times we were able to spend together this month after not being with some of them in the Philippines, as well as a book I received over Christmas called “Come Away my Beloved,” which is a collection of writings basically written from the perspective of God’s heart – very touching for me.
I loved the few weeks we were able to spend in China, and my prayers are definitely continuously with all the long-term workers there as I have now seen the needs and the possibilities. Though I still think I liked the Philippines best, China comes in a very close second, and I can’t wait to see the way God’s light is shining in and through that place. He is so present there, even though the government refuses to acknowledge it and even though the rest of the world can’t really see it…but He is moving and causing people to rise up there and shine His light brigtly in a dark and dreary place.
Thank you all for your prayers this month – they were felt more than ever as we were away from contact with people back home. Thank you for continuing to choose on to this journey with us and for being such an integral part of it, even though most of you are far away. God bless!
Looking ahead: we’re flying from HK to Dubai tonight and have an 8-hour layover there, then head to South Africa and arrive late tomorrow night (26 hours total travel time, or something along those lines). We’ll be in portions of southern Africa for the next few months – still don’t know exactly where, but I’ll update you as I find out.
