Friday July 20
It turns out the other nine singers were not quite ready to commit to become Jesus' disciples yet, but are very open and have a much better understanding of Christianity. Though we are slightly disappointed that not more accepted the gift of salvation, even for one, heaven rejoices! If becoming a Christian is a process involving several exposures, then we feel privileged to have been part of their process. A couple of them had no idea who Christ is before joining us but are excited to learn more. Several are struggling with family loyalty and their filial duties, while others just need a little more time.
Last night at the night market, Tania accidentally touched the hot exhaust of a motorcycle and suffered blisters on her calf. It was not until later she realized her injury as it started hurting on the ride home. Gabbie prayed for her and the pain dropped from a 10 to a 7 to a 4 and to no pain after Gabbie prayed a third time. Jennifer applied first aid and a gauze bandage this morning after we found out what happened and Tania appears to be healing well. We arrived at Tongtex, had assembly, Elder Albert finished his message on life is a miracle, and each class rehearsed their showcase number. We then had the children showcase what they had learned to their regular teachers. The principal and the school board chairman and his wife came to pose for some group pictures and address the seventh grade class officially (since this is the start of their school year). After lunch, we returned home to spend about 2-1/2 hours debriefing the ten Taiwan students and also Jennifer who is returning to the US tomorrow. Everyone of the students was happy to have spent the week at Music camp and many specifically shared how much they learned about following Jesus. Two of us then prayed for each student after sharing. During debriefing we shared how Jennifer was such a wonderful "mom" to the team, we are really going to miss her. She showed us what being a servant is like, as she washed many loads of clothes, carrying them to the roof one floor above to hang them up to dry, cleaned the bathrooms, swept the floors, all without drawing attention to herself. We then did our last devotion together, from Romans 8 to remind each other about living a Spirit-led life and not a self-effort life. We then rehearsed for a few minutes the two skits we are going to perform later this evening.
After an early dinner, we got ready for our concert. About eleven of the 45 students said they would come and bring their parents and at least one of the teacher from the school came. Several of the parents of the children who attended the sports camp also came so we had a decent sized audience. Terry and Gabbie shared very relevant life experiences about how Jesus came to meet their needs and Elder Albert gave a short message about Jesus being the way, truth and life. Our host church provided very nice refreshments afterwards so we could interact with the guests. Tomorrow, we will be dropping off the ten students at the train station and busing south to Taichung to begin our week of ministry with the SGV team, so we need to pack up and clean up the church. Our week stay was very economical, cost for the food for breakfast and dinner (lunch was provided free by Tongtex school) was about $3.50 per person per day. The different cooks who volunteered were quite poor so even including love gifts we gave to them, the love gift we gave to the church for hosting us free, and the extra love gift to partially pay for the repair of the electric wiring, our 6 nights stay here totaled only about $2000 (60,000 NTD).
No comments:
Post a Comment