Day 11

As I sit writing tonight, I am jamming to some live worship music by Chosen 09. And I’m kind of in awe of the opportunities that God has given me over the past four years. It’s really unbelievable. I’ve got to tour the northeast U.S. twice with a worship band, and I’ve been to Italy, Israel, Thailand, and now Korea. I’ve sang in Carnegie Hall at a Korean concert – and sang live in a Korean mega-church. I’ve had the opportunity to speak in Chapel at VFCC, and pour into a great group of kids at Trinity A/G in West Chester, PA (who I missed very much today while looking at pictures from Kids Camp).

All of that to say, God is amazing. And I sit here in humble thanks to who He is and what He has done. I’m also thinking that I’ll be moving to New Jersey about a month from today to start a brand new chapter in my life that sometimes I don’t even feel remotely qualified to do. And I think back on the last four years of my life, and realize that I probably haven’t been remotely qualified or deserving to have done what I have done. But we serve a great, loving God, and tonight I sit, totally enthralled in who He is and how He loves me so much.

Ok, hopefully you aren’t too restless about reading about my incredible love for Jesus and my sentences that keep beginning with conjunctions. Here’s how today went:

Woke up a little earlier to pack. I was the first one in the shower. Have I told you that we have to get wet, turn the water off, lather up, turn the water back on to rinse? I have gotten it down to a science. Then I had to pack. We had breakfast – omelets with lots of onions and peppers, cake, baked potatoes, rice, fruit, and orange juice. Oh, and these sushi things that are called something else. They were just filled with rice. Yet tasty.

After that, we got totally packed up and gave our host family presents before we left. I gave them handmade bags my grandmother makes – the host mom really liked the orange one – she was wearing it later tonight when we saw them for dinner. I also gave them some dishrags Grandma made too. They hugged us, even the grandma of the family, before we left.

Got to the church, and did a lot of prep work today. I mostly worked on getting illustration slides for our Bible Plays we’re doing at the end of the week – it involved taking pictures out of a Bible Picture book, loading them on my computer, and editing them for “background images” during our play. Took a lot longer than I anticipated. We as a group also worked at constructing workbooks for the camp, since we pretty much started from scratch. It’s amazing – even though we’re not all education majors, we are really good at accomplishing tasks – God has gifted each one with something incredible to bring to the team.

Lunch was some combination of rice, soup, clear noodles, and jellyfish (which I had yesterday apparently – just found out it was jellyfish). Oh by the way (I know I add random things in), did I tell you we saw the HUGE ramen factory where they make all products Ramen? Made me want to jump into a dance of Jubilee…it was like the mother ship calling me home. We passed it a few days ago – probably on one of the days I didn’t blog in much detail.

After lunch – some quick work, and then the kids showed up. They did kids worship in a huge opening ceremony – no lie – to an Asian version of Hillsong Kids DVDs. And the worship leader (who I think is the Children’s Pastor at the church) apparently resembles me in how he leads worship. I took a few mental notes, not going to lie. It made me excited to be a children’s pastor. I don’t really have to wait too long for that to become a reality, though.

After the opening ceremony, we split into rooms for level testing. Most of my kids didn’t know the alphabet, so they are all in the low level category. Some did and knew colors and numbers and animals, but they don’t really know how to construct sentences or answer any kind of English question that would require a verbal response. I don’t know if I’ll be working with that age group/ability level tomorrow or not. I kind of would like to know, haha, but I’m just rolling with whatever comes my way as it does.

After the level testing, we went to the gym, where we played a huge game of the “Shoe Game” (where everyone puts their shoes in the middle and relays one at a time to go and find them). This was with about 100 kids, so pretty crazy. After that, I got to run the station to play “River Sea Ocean.” A game I classically was trained in at Trinity, it still is one of my FAVORITE games to play ever. I might have lost my voice a little being the one calling the shots, but it made me so happy.

After game time, we went back to homeroom where we got ice cream. Funny story – I open mine, and thought it was a popcicle, so I tried putting it in my mouth. Actually, I was sucking on the bottom of a plastic bottle. How this type of ice cream works – you have a frozen plastic bottle of sweet ice cream stuff – you break off the top, and as it melts, you can drink the frozen yogurt. Guess who felt REALLY stupid when all of his seven year olds could do it and I couldn’t? ☺

Group meeting to end the day, then dinner (which wasn’t very good – rice and seaweed mixture and spicy soup). Then we got bused off to this conference center literally in the middle of nowhere. We went up a mountain, and thought we were there, but then went down the other side (all on a one lane road that was kind of dangerous). We would speculate ‘this is where the place is,’ and then pass that place. After being wrong a few times, we stopped guessing. Even though we don’t have internet here, I am really glad for the relaxing time just to be alone, have some extended devotions, and [everyone just entered and disrupted my sacred peace haha]. Irony.

Jesus, thank you so much for what you have done in my life here so far, and how you have been ever faithful throughout my life. I love you so much.