Blog title credit to Erin.
Today was really a delightful day in The Lord! This morning I got to wake up and go on a run with Sarah along the River Dara. It was really refreshing to be out in the crisp air again. When we got back, we got ready and went to the cafe below our hotel and got pastries. The specific pastry that I got was filled with Nutella! It was phenomenal and I decided that I will be getting that every day while I'm here.
We then went to the colleges to pass out fliers for the start of the clubs tonight. It was super encouraging to me! Many people took the fliers and seemed excited that they were free. We then had team meeting and spent time in worship, prayer, and a small teaching. It was really and incredible time. I realized how hard it has been for me to focus when praying and just how I feel like God has been putting me through this time of asking me to fight. To fight feeling bad about myself or just lies, to fight through my current tendency to not pray without ceasing. That's what I felt during that time.
After that, we prepped for the English clubs. Candice and Paul are working with our English club which is a huge help since Paul is fluent and Candice is nearly fluent. We had about 10 people join us for the beginner class. We started with our vocab for the day, all about food. We played games and had a lot of fun learning. We then taught some English idioms that they can use. There was a special one that we taught them that we got to video but it's a surprise. I'll hopefully put it up later today!
We took a short break and then went into the bible portion of the club. Paul was telling us that at first we needed to keep it very surface; read a passage and then talk about what it says or means. When you start asking them how it applies to their life, that's when they start closing up so right in the middle, I told Rudy that we had to scratch our questions and he said okay, you run it.
Now. I had no idea what to do. The first question was do you trust God? Which I changed to are there people in your life that your trust? We had a good discussion about what it means to be trustworthy and to trust someone else. I then turned to one of the passages that was on our sheet not knowing what it was and hoped I could work with it. I asked The Lord to guide my words and it ended up being the story about the woman at the well. In this story, Jesus offers the woman living water and she quickly asks for it and wants it. In my head as it was being read I was thinking, where can I go with this? But of course, divine inspiration to the rescue, I ended up focusing in the fact the the woman trusted Jesus right away even though he was offering this strange water. I was really glad I was given new words to speak over that passage.
We then cleaned up after the clubs and went to dinner. On our way, I noticed myself talking slower to the Americans. When we got to the restaurant, we had our own private room upstairs which was pretty cool. We had 4 students from the advanced clubs join us for dinner. Alejandro, Wei Yung, Yasir and one other guy whose name i forget. I got to talk a lot to Wei Yung, a student from China who is studying engineering. It was really cool to talk to him. When he introduced himself, he said his last name first. We ended up talking about why and it's because they want to show respect for their parents and elders. They actually have two word for respect, one that means respect and one that means respect for your elders. I believe that the one that means respect for your elders is pronounced "chin-shay". When he was telling me and I asked how to say it he was so confused and asked why I would want to know Chinese and I told him it was because I love culture and wanted to know more about it.
Most non-Americans think that Americans are egocentric and only think about themselves so when I started asking questions about China and Wei Yung's life he really opened up. I ended up sharing with him about being a good person in Christianity. He has someone who had talked to him about being a Christian who had said that they are almost like perfect now. And I got to share with him about how when you become a Christian your heart is transformed. How the Bible says the old is gone the new has come and that we are a new creation in Christ and we are constantly dying to our old self and filling the holes in our heart not with fleshly things but with God. About how we live in the world but not of it. It was really cool and he seemed interested and remained very attentive. He was very confused when I told him my major and that I was going to work with a church instead of using my major. He asked if many people who go into business do that.
Before dinner I got to talk to Alejandro. He is from the Philippines. He wants to go back because even though he has lived here his whole life he feels like home is in the Philippines. He said the culture there is that you invite people into your home even if you don't know them but in Italy you're uncle could come to your house and you would say why are you here? I didn't invite you and send them away. We also talked about settlers and he said it sounded like a way to make enemies. Haha.
While we were still hanging out after dinner in the restaurant, we had a dance party and we showed them the flash mob we did for Jamie and Eric's wedding.
Overall, a successful English club and a successful day.
The Lord is working! Be praying for my students :)
Majid, Christina, Jessica, Sanek, Laura, Jenny, Giseppe, Matilda, Ori, and Domani.
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