Gcube Phase 2: Xining, China

Today I am going to reflect about my trip to Xining, China :)

Actually going to China was rather unfavorable for me because of my inadequacy in my Chinese. As I was preparing for the trip, I tried praying in chinese and it was really a disaster. Instead of addressing God as our Heavenly Father, 天父 , i called Him 岳父, which literally means Father-in-law. It was pure disaster, hahaa!!! When I wrote my testimony in chinese, it was broken to the max because I relied on google translate and i guessed my supervisor, Adrian had a tough time vetting it. However despite all these, God challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and that He would used my weakness for His glory. I do not really know if my inadequacy in chinese was glorifying to God but when i conversed with the people there, they were laughing so hard at the things I said. E.g I mistook the chinese word for digest as purge ( i.e.消化 and 消毒). As I learnt that reciting chinese poems was entertaining, I did so almost every meal. E.g 鹅，鹅，鹅 , 脖子向天歌! 掉进黄河变黄色!! 黑毛浮绿水, 红爪摇一摇. This is not the actual poem btw, I also made silly errors reciting other poems like rocking the boat to grandma's bridge and grandma give me a hamburger, when the actual poem says grandma call me 好宝宝. I guessed God really used my weakness to make my friends there laugh heartily. Nonetheless, they appreciated my effort in trying to converse with them in Chinese.

In China, I was constantly learning and growing in the faith, because during my teenage stage, I developed a quiet and reserved nature. But entering University challenged me to grow in my EQ. As we learnt that China was rather strict in terms of religion, street evangelism was almost impossible. Hence in order for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be spread, it had to be done in a relational manner. Hence I was made to initiate conversation and build good and lasting friendship with the people there. I think we were there to be like John the Baptist and Apollos. We could not really plant the seed of the gospel but like John the Baptist, we prepared the hearts of the friends we made there so that in future, they could receive the gospel of Christ from the future team or the long term missionaries there. We were also like Apollos who watered the seeds of the gospel already planted in some of the people's heart so that they would grow to know Jesus more and more each day. Hence God really had a purpose for us there.

I was also amazed by the rich culture of china and the 56 ethnic groups. I initially thought that there were only 5 ethnic groups in China: 汉，满，藏，回，蒙 due to my exposure to chinese and hong kong dramas on how these ethnic groups were mentioned in various dynasties. But we took up advance chinese, chinese cultural and minorities cultural studies there, so my eyes were opened up and I am really convinced about the presence of the gathering of people from every tribe and tongue to worship God in heaven. Hence I believed that we should obey the great commission to be sent by God to reach out to the unreached. To my surprise, all these years, my chruch has been sending missionaries to minister to the qiang ethnic group on Sichuan, China. I thought qiang was like a place in China but it's actually 1 of the 56 ethnic groups. Hence I guessed when God chose to sent me to China, I supposed He is preparing me to join my church's mission team in ministering to these people.

I have many more things to share like learning patience to work with my team and the patience to tolerate my computer who all of a sudden slowed down in China. My friend joked that my computer is suffering from altitude sickness. I really thank God for the patience because there will be times when conflicts due to different interests and misunderstandings and miscommunication might arise among us, but nonetheless God helped to hold us together for this mission trip. Therefore I am thankful for that. I am also thankful that my team mates were understanding about my difficulty in hearing and my inability to multitask. For instance, we were searching for a friend to meet up. So I was staring and scanning the area to find her. When my friend found her, she told my another friend about it. But I didn't hear and then I exclaimed, :Oh there she is!" though she saw her like 1 minute ago. We all burst into laughter.

I learnt to be myself, displaying all my flaws there. I used to defend myself with masks. But I learnt that we do this because of pride and that we fear that people sees our weakness and mocks us. But God taught me to not be a hypocrite and I struggled to display my vulnerability so that the people I meet would know me as who I am, and not just the surface of me. I learnt to have faith that God is sovereign over all the events and that His grace is sufficient, for He is indeed a God who provides. I was initially flustered over the fact that I had to run around to pass the teeshirts to my friends, even during examination period and I had to sacrifice my grade for this. In the end, I didn't do well for a particular module which I had worked so hard for the past semester. However I guessed I learnt that grades aren't the most important and the sacrifice was worth it. I will do my best to continue to juggle between working hard for my grades and serving God. Anyway, God provided the resources for this trip so we were glad, but yet we learnt to be prudent in our expenditure.

To end this I liked to share this phrase from Narnia: "oh Aslan! oh Aslan ! You are real!" Yes. God is indeed real all the days of our lives. Whatever He had began, he will finish His mission in a good perfect and pleasing way in accordance to His will. As of today, I still think that it was never about me, myself and I, that going for this trip made me stand out among the rest. However I believed that it is indeed a privilege that God had taught me many things out there in that mission field, lessons that can never be taught in theory or even through sharing and preaching. I give thanks that I have this opportunity to share and encourage people to be missionaries in their own way. I personally believe that missions is not solely about going overseas to reach unreached people. Even people at your workplace, the place you study and even at your doorstep, like the construction workers, the prostitutes, the prisoners, the mentally and/or physically disabled, the old, the diseased/illness stricken people. All of this can be your mission field where you can be salt to the decaying world and light so that Christ can be seen through you.