Home From China

So I am home now from three weeks in China. Here is a glimpse of what I did.

It was a great trip, I loved it!! We had a blast encouraging the people and building relationships. I cant wait to go back!

Summer Fun In Discovery Bay

Well we have 26 kids total in our kids camp, which is a miracle because as of last Friday we had only 7 and we needed 22 to break even. It has been a busy week, but the kids are loads of fun! We start the mornings off with team building games and then break into two different workshops. One group makes crafts/gifts and the other group works on a dance to Lean On Me (by DC Talk-we're breaking out the old school.) And then the kids swap and we end the day by playing in the pool. I forgot how much work it is to play with kids in the water, I am a little sore. So on Saturday we are taking the kids and their families on an "outreach" to either an orphanage, or an old folks home. Majority of the kids and their parents are not believers and do not go to church, but all the families are excited about the idea of having their kids give back to the community. So we need prayer that all will go well on Saturday and that we can find another outreach location since we had to cancel the third one. Later today we will go do a little sight seeing. I got a little burnt today, but don't worry mom I put on sunscreen. ;)

Random Fact #? The typical Hong Kong tea is made very strong and made with half and half. I don't really like it.

Back in Discovery Bay

The Gateway Camp ended last night and today everyone was leaving on their different outreaches. There are sports camps, bike tours, and kids camps. It was a great time working with all the cute kids. (I had a bunch of kids from England in my small group- I love their accent!) The Gateway Camp was a huge success. There were about 50 nations represented and close to 2000 people attended. So amazing. I loved talking to everyone and getting to make new friends. Since the Gateway Camp is finished we are able to focus on one kids ministry instead of two.

Now we have moved for the last time back to Discovery Bay to a different apartment, it is really cute, small but cute. We have a great view of the bay too. AND we have internet access!!! Yeah!! We have several new people added to our team here. We are all meeting together in an hour to have dinner together and then go out and invite more people to the day camp. *Quick prayer request. We need prayer that God will bring in more kids to the camp and that we will be able to finalize the day outreaches for next Saturday.

Here is a map of Hong Kong to show where we are. Discovery Bay is diagonally up from Peng Chau island in the little inlet that looks like a shark with his mouth open. We often go to Hong Kong Island which is basically the hub of the city but we also were in Kowloon which is where we lived this past week for the Gateway Camp.

Oh my brain in not functioning at full capacity, I have been working on this blog for probably about 45+ min. Remind me to tell everyone about the really cool people I met here and red bean fleecy (don't try it, it's really gross.)

From Mainland Hong Kong

So I am now on the mainland Hong Kong. We are running the kids portion of the Gateway Camp. I love seeing people from ALL over the world. I had lunch on Sunday with a Brit, an Aussie, and a South African. I got to see people I saw three years ago in Athens and people I saw two years ago in Kyrgyzstan. There are so many connections to be made!! We are staying at a Bible college here in which I happened to get my own room and just recently share the bathroom with two other girls from Tawain. So I have been having fun meeting all the people and working with the kids. Continue to pray for energy and life and creative ideas!
A few more random facts:
#9 The elevators here often do not have the #4 because it means death
#10 Pretty sure this is one of the hottest places on earth. (Thailand and Jamaica don't compare!)
#11 In Discovery Bay they don't have cars. Everyone drives golf carts.
#12 Even though Hong Kong is part of China they speak Cantonese here. Mandrin is spoken in the rest of China. The two languages use the same characters, but they are pronounced differently and there are 4 tones in Mandrin compared to the 6/7 in Cantonese.
#13 (I decided this one should remain a mystery to the late readers.)
#14 The Chinese people usually just meander.
#15 Hong Kong is called a Special Administrative Region. They approximate that it will take fifty years to have Hong Kong a part of the rest of China.

Hope you enjoyed the random facts! I go back to Discovery Bay on Friday.

Random Facts

So I thought you guys back home might enjoy some random facts about China.
#1 There is Hong Kong Disneyland here.
#2 There is a Discovery bay here as well as in WA.
#3 Hong Kong is spread over two large islands and the mainland. Each area has it's own name, hence the name Discovery Bay. (They are like the equavalent of Ballard to Seattle.)
#4 Hong Kong is an extremely international city full of rich people.
#5 There are these dumb little bugs they call noseeums (no-see-ums) becasue you can't see them, but they bite worse than mosquitos.
#6 There are approx. 8 million people in Hong Kong and 1.3 billion in all of China.
#7 It is socially acceptable to point, stare, pick your nose, or pick a wedgie in public. (I haven't tried it, but I am tempted to.)
#8 I am sitting at this cute coffee shop at 6:45 in the morning drinking tea while the rest of my team sleeps.

Yeah I think that is all I can think of. I should add that I am dripping sweat onto the keyboard because the aircon in not on. Bye Alison! Love you guys!

NiHu!

Greetings from China! So I have been here for a little more than 24 hours now. I think we ended up with just 26 hours of travel time, not too bad considering that our flight was cancelled at SeaTac and we had to hang out at the airport for 4 hours on Tuesday. China is 14 hours ahead so we have been struggling just a little bit with jet lag, but yesterday was a long day which helped.
We are living in a strangers house so we each get our own room with air con (albeit the living room/kitchen does not have air con.) I am sitting at a cute little coffee shop about a 10 minuete walk from where we live. Hong Kong is a wonderful city! It is very clean, very safe, and everyone is nice.
Yesterday we met the other people who will be running the kids day camp with us. We planned out some events and saw the club where we will be running the camp. Later we met with all the 50 or so staff and volunteers that are running the international Kings Kids conference next week. We are moving tomorrow to be closer to the conference location and then we will move back after that to be closer to the kids day camp location.
Overall it has been wonderful. Love you guys and I can't wait to see you again!
Now I have to figure out which button is to publish this post since everything is in Chinese!

Off To China!!

Tomorrow morning I will be leaving for China. This is a three week trip with the YWAM base in Discovery Bay. I am of course very excited and look forward to trying and doing new things. Here is a picture of my team. I met Amanda (on the left) for the first time a few weeks ago and Becky (in the middle) I have more or less known of.
We will be staffing an international King's Kids conference in Hong Kong and then running a kids day camp. We hope to take some of the kids on their missions trip into China*. We will be working with many YWAM and King's Kids leaders to help develop new King's Kids teams and leaders in other parts of the world. I found a promo video for this conference but we will not be doing all of that.
We will be needing lots of prayer. If you could pray for...
~my amazing team of three that we will get along well and be able to use all of our talents and giftings, that we will be able to put all of our previous knowledge of how to do things to the side and be open to new ideas, and that this missions trip will be something new and different from all our other trips.
~the people coming to the conference and the families involved in the day camp. that God will call them and make a way for them to come.
~Safety! We all need safety especially since their are so many unknowns right now.
~blessing. we want to be a blessing to the families we will be staying with and a blessing to those coming to the comference/day camps.
I will try to update while I am there but don't check every day!
Thanks to everyone for all your support and encouragement! I am excited to come back and tell you all about it!

*Just for clarification, since Hong Kong was a British colony and was only released back to China about 10 years ago there are very westernized and do not require a visa to visit. BUT if you go out of the city into the rest of China, you do need a visa. Hong Kong has their own currency and allows some religious freedom (not like the US but more than the rest of China) which allows us to have the kids day camp and conference so public.

Happy Birthday MaryBeth!!!

Yesterday was one of my greatest friends birthdays, MaryBeth Kraemer (aka Kiki.) She is a one of a kind gal! Since I have moved back home I have not seen her for a little less than a month. Me, Kim, and Kacie wanted to surprise her with some fun activities. We started out with a classic scavenger hunt. We told her to meet us at the side door of the church where there was a note that basically told her to go to the roof of the church. There we met her and had her play a little mini golf. She had to eventually get down and blow the bouncy ball into the hole to get her next clue. Which led her to where she works at Helly Hansen. She had to find the next clue in her schedule book. The clue led her to Goodwill. She had to walk around and find something to buy, so she found a cool mullet head action figure and a pair of sunglasses. The lady was really really excited to participate in our scavenger hunt. This clue took us to Riverside Park where it took MaryBeth quite some time to find her clue. I hid it earlier under the small purple slide. She had some fun playing on the playground before she finally found the clue. Not only was it hard for her to find but she had a hard time deciphering the clue so she asked some random people at the park, unfortunately they were not from the area and were no help since the clue led us to Safeway. Here, MaryBeth had to find one of her favorite beverages, Root Beer. It didn't take as long to find the clue as it did at the park, but when we did find it she decided it was telling us to go to Shafer Park. We tried to have pizza delivered to the park but they wouldn't do it, so we picked it up on the way. Don't worry the night didn't end there. After chatting for awhile we headed off to Cold Stone in Olympia. We got the workers to sing MaryBeth Happy Birthday. We had ice cream of course and then we sat on the curb and chatted some more because that is what we love to do. We had one more activity planned but it didn't work out and that one will have to remain a mystery. : )

A Major Miracle!!!

I know I just posted a few hours ago but I have to put this in, especially since I did not get a chance to proof read the last one and I am sure it is bad. I think everyone knows I am going to China (in just a few days now!)if you don't well... I guess this is news. I come back on the 30th late at night sometime. Anyways on to the good news. I have been trying to raise all the $1700 that I needed which I have been doing fairly well. But I still needed $400 by tomorrow. And I had no idea how in the world I was going to be able to get that. I was really praying they would make some mistake on my paycheck at work and that I could just figure it out when I got back BUT.... I have been checking on our neighbor across the street since she broke her ankle and her husband had to leave for a few days. I really did not do much. Well today after I hung out with my cool cousins Carlia and Tilana, I stopped by their house to make sure her husband came home alright and everything was fine. He paid me $500!!!! For just driving across the street and basically chatting with his wife! He knew I was going to China and wanted to bless me. He said he will be blessed more than I am in heaven. He was very happy to help me. I am so blessed!!! Thank you Lord for providing!!! Wahooo!!!

How To Truly Celebrate The 4th

So what is the best way to spend the Fourth of July? What I really want to know is what do people do with the first of of the day since no one goes to the relatives until mid afternoon. Who thought it would be cool to have the whole day off, seriously it should be people have the last half of the day off and then the first half of the 5th off. That way I can actually enjoy the fireworks.
The Prelude:
On our way to the family gathering at my aunt and uncle's house in Kent where it is legal to set off fireworks we pass the mecca for pyro maniacs. The Muckleshoot Indian reservation stand central. This picture does not even show a quarter of how many sstand there are. But yeah there are a lot. And my cousin's work at a firework stand and their rentor has a firework stand so pretty much we have the hook up. Which brings us to...
The Goods:
Yes, not only did we have a ton of fireworks, we had to make bigger ones. I guess it has become a tradition to make sparkler bombs. The boys don't like us girls to touch their precious sparklers. This year they had two cases of sparklers which is a ton. So I had to documents how to make your own. *Note names have been changed to protect individuals from the law since sparkler bombs are illegal. First get about 4 boxes off sparklers. Next you wrap them all up in one big clump with one longer then the rest to act as a fuse and wrap them in compression tape. And last you wrap it again with electrical tape and BAM you have a sparkler bomb. Later in the evening my cousin's friends and their friends came over and brought more fireworks. I guess at the stand they work at, the roof leaked and some of the stuff got "damaged" so thy couldn't sell it. Which meant they got to keep it all. Well it was a whole trunk full and the back seat too. This is when it was part way unloaded, we still had stuff in the house.
The Show:
What do boys do with sparkler bombs after they have made a zillion? Blow stuff up of course! So the fun began. Don't worry we didn't light this while we was wearing it, they hung it from a tree. This picture is a sparkler bomb going off at night. Yeah and then we tried one of those "damaged" fireworks. Hmm this is what happened.

Did you hear in the background "that wasn't supposed to do that?" Yeah, that one was supposed to go up in the air and do that. Here is another picture just for the fun of it and to blind your eyes. So that was my fourth of July, I had to leave early because of work. Grrrr. Earlier in the day, me and my friend Amy were drinking tea and eating scones. Amy came and experienced her first sparkler bomb with my family. It was a great night overall. Best way to spend the fourth!!

My Heroes

Today our church honored those who have served in the armed forces. I am lucky enough to have 5 family members who have/are serving my country. My grandma and her twin, my grandpa, my mom, and now my little sister Alison. Everyone was/is in the Army except for my mom who served in the Air National Guard. There is something special about having family members serve in the armed forces. There is no way to really describe how you feel or what it is like. I am so honored and proud. I love walking around with my sister when she has her uniform on. People say everyone loves a soldier in uniform, I have to agree. (Like how my grandma still fit into her uniform?!) When I see my family being honored in front of the church, there is no way I can keep the tears in (especially after seeing my grandpa get all teary eyed!) I love being able to tell people I have a sister in the army or that my mom served in the Air National Guard and that my grandparents also were in the army. I am so blessed to have such amazing heroes in my family!