This e-mail update is going to be a little different than previous ones! In almost all of my past e-mails I’ve talked mostly about how God has been moving down here (and of course He still is) but I wanted to take the time and give you all an update on how I’ve been doing personally. Since being in Asia I have grown leaps and bounds in many areas. Spiritually I’ve really grown a lot in boldness, and of course in going out and sharing God’s Word. But I’ve also changed physically too! I’ve lost a total of 22 pounds so far since being here! Ahh! It’s due to a combination of eating less, drinking WAY more water, and working out. However, recently I’ve hit a spot where I’ve kind of come to a plateau. I’ve just been maintaining lately, I haven’t gained anything, or lost anything more, which is fine, but I just know that by the time I come back to the States in six more months that I am going to be where I want to be physically.
One of my main prayers before coming over here was that God would totally transform me spiritually, mentally, and physically and I’m seeing that prayer come to pass. God has also blessed me with CRAZY opportunities to sing for him and use my gifting. I’ve taken steps of boldness over here regarding singing that I would have never imagined. For those who don’t know, I joined a singing contest at the last minute on our college campus and was blessed with the opportunity to make it to the finals. My roommate Bourne and I performed on stage for a packed out audience of over 300 + people proclaiming the name of God and we even won an award too! It’s just been so awesome seeing God’s faithfulness and how He is providing all of these different avenues for me to rise up and do what has been inside of me all along. I’ve been tremendously blessed.
I’ve also been learning the native language since I’ve been here. (Learning is a strong word LOL) more like TRYING to learn. While we are here we are taking language classes twice a week for two hours each. I’ve been having a VERY difficult time getting this language down. Please oray for me because I really do want to learn, and it would be so much easier communicating with friends who speak broken English, sharing God’s Word and more if I just could learn more of the language. The reason I find the language so difficult is because the native language is extremely tonal. There are four main tones and it’s so easy to learn something perfectly fine, and then if you speak it in the wrong tone you can either be completely misunderstood, or you can even say something totally different than you were intending to say. Fun, right? Right now I know how to say a few key things. Things like: Hello, how are you, what is your name, how much money is this, where is the bathroom (that one is important) and a few more. However, I’ve honestly been feeling defeated lately and feeling like I’m never going to learn the language. I know it’s not true, but the enemy has been using this area to really beat me up so to speak. Again your prayers for me in learning this language would really be greatly appreciated. Pray that I would learn faster, get the tones and pronunciations down, and that God would take away this feeling of being defeated, and feeling like I’m never going to learn.
I also want to take the time and tell you about our recent adventure in HK that we took a few weeks ago! While we are over here we’re under a travel visa that expires every sixty days so we have to leave the country every two months to renew it. We flew out to HK and our trip (that was just supposed to last one day) ended up lasting three days due to an unexpected typhoon that hit! (It rained SO MUCH! Hence the title of my e-mail! Also shout out to those who get the reference :P) Most of the team had a not so great experience in HK (Some of us literally slept in a McDonald’s overnight) I didn’t but still that’s not fun for anyone to go through! This happened because of our hostel situation and the place not having enough rooms for all of us to stay in. However, everything worked out in the end. One of our teammates has a friend who lives in HK and she picked us all up and let us stay in her beautiful house. We went out grocery shopping with her, got to eat an amazing dinner with her family, (Spaghetti and meat sauce PRAISE THE LAWD) and had an amazing breakfast the following morning. We all got to rest up and sleep comfortably. It was such a much-needed blessing for all of us. I personally LOVED HK. The awesome thing about it that I loved so much is that HK has two parts. On one hand it’s this mega metropolis that rivals NYC with millions of people. There are foreigners everywhere, and mostly everyone speaks English. It was such a weird experience because even though I was there overseas, I honestly felt like I was back in America. I thought it was really cool. The countryside of Hong Kong is really beautiful. This is where our teammate’s family lives that put us up for the night. It’s much more tropical with these massive scenic vistas everywhere you look. Beaches, palm trees, huge mountaintops, waterfalls, huge bodies of water everywhere you turn. It’s incredible. It seriously looked like you just entered Jurassic World. Breathtaking stuff! The next time we will be heading out to HKwill be in December.