7/7 Reflections on the First Day of Camp

July 7

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

As we began our actual camp, there were quite a few emotions running through all our heads. Quite fitting considering the theme for the camp is "emotions". The broad range of emotions I felt included happiness, excitement, worry, exasperation, frustration, nervousness, and most of all, tiredness. The Lord brought the kids into our care and we did our best to teach them according to His will. The US team, know here as STM (Short Term Missions), acted purely as assisstants the first day as the local team was responsible for the teaching. Whats more, we were not allowed to speak Chinese, and had to pretend to not understand it. The purpose behind it was so that the kids would speak to us in English because that was the only way they could communicate with us. However, instead of the intended purpose, we were just ignored as no one wanted to speak in English to us. As a result, we are scrapping that plan and speaking Chinese tomorrow because we all desire to build relationships with the middle schoolers; I'm expecting a pretty big shock tomorrow. Of course, if anyone knew who writes these ANONYMOUS blogs, one would know that no blog of mine is complete without telling of embarrassing or stupid occurrances. I may have neglected to mention that the second reason for us speaking in Chinese tomorrow is Sheen. Lets just say, he screwed up and spoke in Chinese in front of his whole class. I know, what a surprise, Sheen, of all people, screwed up. (We actually had a bet on this and the consensus was that Sheen would be the one. We were right!) Second thing, it seems like the middle school girls here find Jason extremely handsome and Sheen nice to stare at constantly. The kids seem to think that Andrea's boyfriend is Sheen, or Jason, depending on which hour interval you ask them, despite her insistances that she's single. On a more serious note, today was the culmination of all the long days of preparation and hard work. We’re finally actively working in the mission’s field and overall, we’re all pretty excited. My prayer request is that we not forget why we're here. We are here to show the love we experience from God to the students we teach. I ask God that we not get caught up in all the activities we do and the lessons we teach, which are great and important, but not nearly as important as the knowledge of God's great sacrifice for us out of love. Satan comes to try to distract us from our purpose here. Let us all pray that we may withstand his attacks to be able to "demonstrate" God's "love for us".