{FECA Vision Choir} Trip report 14

Friday July 26

Today is the last day at our respective schools, so the schedule is quite different.  We are starting out by having each meet in their respective classrooms to do last minute "cramming" because at 10 AM (3 PM in the afternoon sessions), we will have "Showcase" time.  This is where each class will individually perform a special song/dance number they have been learning in their class in front of all the other classes and school officials.  They will be judged on English usage in the song, their dancing, and the effort they showed.  The top three groups based on the total scores will be awarded prizes.  Shillane, from FEC DB and our camp's school coordinator, David our main speaker, Adam a freshman college student who was with us last week, Meiring and Marshall are the five supposedly impartial judges.  Marshall made it be known he is open to bribes, and most showed their integrity, with only one class failing the test and offered him a bribe (candy).  The Showcase went very well.  Most groups danced with precision but some groups failed to sing any words in English and so lost points.  We could see how enthusiastic the children were as they competed and cheered each other on.  Regardless of who won or lost, a good time was had by all.  At Sha-Lu, we ate lunch in the teacher's rest area rather than the bus because clean-up in the bus was difficult.  We then repeated this morning's activity.  After we returned home, most of the team then went to the night market, including all of Vision (except Mei and Marshall) and 6 of the music students, the 4 who have been teaching/translating plus Adam and Tina.  It turns out last week was Adam's first exposure to Christianity, but both he and Tina said they are processing all they learned and "well on the way".  We urged them to find Christian groups on their respective college campuses to join.  Cindy also said she would have raised her hand if someone asked her if she would accept Christ but we did not have time to continue the conversation.  Perhaps at the night market.

Many evaluation forms were received from the students.  Most of the comments were appreciation of how they enjoyed the English camp.  But here is one freely translated from Chinese:  "I can't believe I learned so much in just one week.  Terrance (we call him that to distinguish him from the local music student Terry) is so much fun.  Cindy (one of our music students) was such a good translator it motivated me to study English harder."