Hi everybody! Thank you for your consistent support and prayer. Here are our updates from Tuesday, July 9th.
We started our morning off at 7am with breakfast and devotionals. As we serve the students of Ershui middle school, it’s important to understand why we are here and who we are serving. Our passage today included Matthew 5:16, which reads “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” This verse reminded us that—although we’re unable to share the gospel directly with the students–we can show the students God’s love through our kindness, patience, and energy.
The students rotated groups today, so we were all blessed with getting to meet a new group of students. The students are fun and full of life and eager to learn from us. As we taught the same lesson for the second time today, things flowed better and improvements were made. We additionally made meaningful connections with the kids, having light hearted discussions about their interests, hobbies, and celebrity crushes (pictured).
Also happening on the hallway is Yong’s exhibit of a whole whiteboard of New York and Boston postcards as well as Abby’s 9-panel Taiwanese fruits:city paintings. Many of the postcards have been claimed by the students during the breaks as planned (pictured).
After a quick lunch, we headed up north to Yuanlin Agriculture & Industrial Vocational High School where we were blessed with an afternoon filled with fun activities. We started off by baking pineapple cakes, which turned out delicious, and I (Esther) don’t even like pineapple. This was followed up with painting tote bags with dye made from persimmon skins. We got to take both the tote bags and pineapple cakes with us back to the middle school, hearts happy and full. Both of these activities were led by the tech school students, and it was so inspiring to witness their kindness and excitement (pictured).
On the bus ride back from the tech school, we stopped at a grocery store in Tianzhong田中. With just 30 minutes, we all grabbed Taiwanese snacks and drinks off the shelves. Some personal favorites include the Apple soda, dried fish, and variety flavored Lays. The two sons (Henry and Cheney) of ErShui Jr High English teacher James, brought Yong to shop for party flavors in a different store – youngest tour guides (pictured)! It started pouring rain as soon as we got back, so the team ran quickly through the storm to get to dinner in the kitchen.
We ended our day as always with debrief. This allows us to remember the day we just had and hopefully improve for tomorrow. We talked about what made us happy, the impacts of our lesson, and things to change for the next lesson. A long and tiring day didn’t prevent Aiden and Jan from having a HK style shootout – who has won (pictured)?
Overall, our time today has been full of blessings and we are so grateful for everything.
Praises:
1 Participation and energy from the kids
2 Kindness and generosity from the local people here
3 Stronger relationships being built
4 Snacks!
Prayer requests:
1 For teamwork and collaboration among TMT
2 For patience when working with the kids and each other
3 For health and safety for multiple members who are feeling sick
4 For students to hang out with us after the lessons in the afternoon
Please look forward to hearing from Team 4 tomorrow!
Love,
Team 3
Esther, Stephen, Aiden
PS: Sorry but we forgot to mention about our multiple monkey sightings on ErShui Jr High campus; Today on Yuanlin campus we spied multiple Malayan night herons 黑冠麻鷺, which was nicknamed 大笨鳥.
