{FECA Vision Choir} Trip report 8

Report 8 Saturday, July 21

We packed and cleaned up, prayed for our host pastor and his wife and their ministry, and left at 9 AM.  But just before we left, a thirteen year old boy rode up on his bicycle just to tell Tania how much he appreciated her teaching and that she was the best teacher he had ever had.  You can imagine what an encouraging word this was!  On the drive south, we took a slight detour to drop off the remaining students at Ta Chia train station and proceeded to the Huei Ming (blind) school in Taichung which will be our home for this next week.    During the two and a half hour bus ride, our team had a wonderful time bonding with the Taiwan members, so that we had a hard time holding back tears when they left the bus at the train station.  In fact, we continued to message each other throughout the afternoon and evening when we were not in session or training.  At Huei Ming, we joined over 40 other team members living here.  The rest of the teaching team are in two different sites, one north of here in a campground owned by Canaan Church of Taipei (where Vision will be ministering next Saturday and Sunday before we depart Taiwan) and at a Baptist seminary south of here.  The room arrangement here is as follows: Joshua and Terry share a room with a third roommate in a building behind the main building; Marshall and Mei are in a room with a private bath down the hall on the sixth floor; and six Vision girls are all together in one large room with seven beds but have to share a communal bathroom with the other girls living on the fifth floor.   We ate lunch all together and had a two hour orientation conducted 95% in Mandarin.  Senior Pastor Joshua Chang of FEC SGV then gave a talk on spiritual warfare before the members of the other two campsites departed on rental buses.  It was toward the end of his talk that Charmaine received a text that her ailing grandmother's (in Hong Kong) cancer had spread to her brain.  Some of us left the meeting to pray and cry with Charmaine, and later with Tania - Pastor Joshua spending close to an hour just praying and sharing and consoling.  Fortunately, their grandmother is a strong believer who has greatly encouraged both Charmaine and Tania with her joy while battling cancer these past 5 to 6 years.  Dinner was a much quieter affair since about 2/3 of the people are gone.  Food is quite good here, lots of fresh veggies (very healthy), and especially the fresh fruits - ripe juicy white peaches at lunch and sweet red cherries the size of loquat.  After the evening training, we met as Vision to debrief the day, thanking God for all His blessings.