Hey everyone! Well yesterday was probably one of the coolest days of my life. When I explain it, it probably won't sound real, but it most definetly was.
Alright so we left base at 7 am and started walking to the bus stop. We had to take a 45 minute bus ride into the train station. We were going to work with Ti Ming who is in charge of a Christian sports program, and we were going to go work with some men at a drug rehabilitation center. So we took a bus, a train, two more buses, and a boat to get to the rehabilitation center which was on an island in the South China Sea. It took about 4 hours to get there. We pull up to this island and it was a little fishing village, and the rehabilitation center was on a beach. We got a tour through the little village and it had an incredible view. There were huge green mountains coming out of the water surrounding the island and in the distance it was a little bit foggy, it looked so cool. We walked to the rehabilitation center where they fed us lunch and then we had a chance to do a prayer walk around the area where they were going to be building their new accomadations. After we did the prayer walk we went back and had some time to minister to the guys. We did a short skit, sang a bit (granted that none of us can really sing so we sounded so bad we made ourselves laugh) and then we shared some testimonies. After we finished up with our time of sharing it was time to just hang out with the guys. Now it was quite difficult to communicate with them seeing as how about 2 of the 30 could speak any english and we didn't speak cantanese, but it was still great. We decided to Kayake to another island to play soccer. Now none of us are very avid Kayakers, but we took up the challenge. Jenn and Justin stayed behind, and Geoff, Hans, Josie and I made our way on a 40 minute Kayake journey to a distant island in the South China Sea. Geoff and I were in a double kayake and as we were paddling we looked down and we were surrounded by jelly fish. There were tons of them. And they weren't really little either, they were quite large. And the water was choppy. It was interesting. So we made our way to the island and played soccer with some of the guys on an old helicopter landing pad with a soccer net on either end. It was amazing! On the island if you looked in one direction you were facing Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, and the other way you could actually see the coast of China... that was pretty cool. While we were there you could see that there was some rain coming in, and thats when we just all looked at each other and laughed. Now the story when Jesus walks on the water is a good one, but we didnt really want to have to live it out. So the time came to leave and we started back but the water was a bit rougher so we had to take it slow. There were a few time that we thought we were going to capsize, which would have been fine had it not been jelly fish infested water, but everyone made it back safely without tipping over. While we were gone Justin and Jenn had had a chance to attempt to communicate with one of the guys and he ended up asking them to differance between Buddha and Jesus. Once a translator got back Justin had a chance to explain it to him which was really cool.
After that we headed back home, and stopped for some of the best Thai food that I've ever eaten. All of us are pretty good with chopsticks now too :) All in all the day included 8 hours of traveling and 7 hours of ministry, and it was most definetly worth it! We all learned a lot and got to have a ton of fun doing it... It was a pretty great day.
I hope that everyone at home is doing well, I love you all and I hope to update again soon!
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