It Ain't Over Until It's Over

That famous phrase uttered by baseball legend Yogi Berra is apt in many situations. I am watching the rain blow horizontally past my window, while some of the unsecured doors in the church are opening and slamming due to the wind and air pressure. It's day three of Typhoon Gaemi which has been downgraded to a mere tropical storm, but is still doing its best to disrupt our days with intermittent bouts of hard rain and wind. I’ve seen a lot of storms, even a few typhoons in my ministry career, but I must say I’ve been surprised by the sheer amount of rain the storm produced and the relentless driving winds. Fortunately, Zhuqi borders the mountains and the church is on a hill, so we’ve been unaffected by the worst of the wind and flooding happening not too far from us.

But through it all, we continued the English Camp. And though we had half of the turnout on the last day of the camp (yesterday, and the worst day of the typhoon), there were still 15 kids who showed up ready to have a good time. Being an English Camp, we were able to build in a Christian theme through our phrase of the day. The four phrases were, “I am deeply loved by God”, “I am completely forgiven by God”, “I am totally accepted by God, and “I am and complete in Christ.” This gave us a platform to talk more about our faith and to share personal testimonies because most of the students were from unchurched families and had never heard the Gospel before this week.

Today we began the debriefing process, which entails quite a bit of reflection on how God worked, where we saw Him work, and how He worked in us. This has been an especially challenging trip due to the conditions we’ve had to live/work in and also the expectations of ministry. But through it all God has been so faithful and there is a lot to untangle and look at. I’ll talk about some of those challenges in my final update that I’ll send out on Monday.  But I will also share the many ways God used this team specifically to answer the prayers of our ministry partners!

What’s ahead? In just over an hour we have our last active outreach event, other than church on Sunday. What was once going to be an outdoor water balloon fight has morphed into a time of playing games and singing worship songs together. Who needs water balloons when all you have to do is step outside to get soaking wet? Besides, it’s cold out - my weather app says 79 degrees! Brrrr……..

For the Nehemiah Team,

Tom

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