Hubei Afterthoughts

It's been more than two weeks since we left Hubei. After the cruise and roughly a week back at school, I think that my thoughts and emotions have finally sorted themselves out enough for me to give a coherent account of this year's Hubei trip.

This is the third year that I have been involved with this project. The first year was simply as a participant, the second year involved only with the IT part, and this year, first as a planner/promoter, then as one of the organizers and finally as a teacher and coordinator.

To be honest, I think that I kind of overestimated my own abilities this time around. I had confidently expected that I would be able to "handle" it -- after all, this is my third time around, there shouldn't be any surprises. Leading up to the camp, I had hints of foreboding that I wasn't adequately preparing myself mentally and spiritually for the camp, but the overwhelming schedule that we had managed to saddle ourselves with in the 2-3 weeks leading up to the camp meant that the departure date was upon us before I was aware of it.

The stupidity of my foolhardiness crashed down on me on the second day of camp. I woke up with a sore throat and a heavy head, which proceeded to progress into a general fever and flu and an almost complete loss of my voice over the next few days. The worse was on the third and fourth days, when I woke up in the morning and seriously wondered whether I could last through the day.

But He was merciful. I have had it good this year with the best team I could ever have asked for: I had a fantastic co-teacher (who also happened to be my colleague) who was always there to pick up for me whenever I faltered and ran out of things to say (yes, it does happen. THE CAT can't talk nonstop, really); an enthusiastic youth leader who is one of the warmest people I have ever met; a devoted Wuhan student who put us to shame with her heart and zeal for Him; and a quiet, sensitive IT student who turned out to be fun and mischevious, but at the same time reponsible and mature. Together, they took so much of the load off my shoulders -- I always knew that if I felt that I couldn't handle anything, or even if I just wanted a break, I could just hand it off to them to keep the students occupied while I caught my breath.

And the students that we had this year -- I couldn't have asked for better. Three years ago, I had a group that took about 3 days of arguing and bickering before they decided to settle down and gell with each other; this year, our group was absolutely sweet and adorable and started looking out for each other right from the beginning. They were definitely well-behaved and cooperative, all of them -- I am glad that we did away with the practice of nominating the "best student" in class because I wouldn't have been able to choose any particular one of them!

(The funny thing about the "best student" nomination was that the students seemed to agree with me on the last point. We had left the "who is the best student in the class" question on the survey forms by accident, so all the students filled that out. I was in charge of collecting those forms, and I glanced through those of other classes -- the students in my class all put "everybody", "all of us", or something like that as the answer, unlike many of the other classes, which usually had one or two accepted "bests".)

However, even with all the blessings that He put in my path, there were so many occasions on which I felt overwhelmed and that everything was beyond me. On occasion, I caught myself heaving a sigh of relief at the end of every day and thinking "only 4 more days to go", "only 3 more days", etc -- and then feeling so overwhelmingly guilty about the fact that I would be looking forward to when the camp was over. Every night, my colleague and I would pray together for our students -- both those that we had brought from Hong Kong and also the YX students in our class -- and in my prayer every night, I would plead with Him to change my heart such that, when the camp ends and I tell my students goodbye and that I would miss them -- that it would be words spoken from my heart.

He answered my prayer, not in a dramatic fashion, but rather, through little things that had just as much impact and brought just as much comfort. Other more experienced team members confided their own feelings of tiredness and exhaustion to me, reassuring me that my guilty feelings were only natural and little gestures of concern from others showed me that He was looking out for me. And yes, when I told the kids goodbye and that I would miss them, I meant every word of what I was saying.

Over the course of the camp, 6 students in our class came to accept Christ as their personal Savior, and I know that 4 of them stayed behind in YX over their Summer holidays to attend new believers' classes at the local church. The seed has been sown; we have done what we can, save praying for them. All that we can do now is to pray and hope that He sends others along the way to nuture these seedlings as they grow.

Do I have any regrets about this camp? Sure -- I wish that I had spent more time with my students, both the local students and the ones that we had brought from Hong Kong, rather than being so caught up in managing the logistics and things. I wish that I had been more trusting in Him to take care of things, rather than trying to be a control freak and panicking whenever things did not go my way. Regrets aside, though, there is this overriding sense of gratitude and humility that once again, as flawed as I am, God let me have a part in His bigger plan. Not only that, but He also showed me that even when we feel that we are just treading water and making no progress, it's all part of His big picture and He will weave all the parts together into a unified whole.

That's all that I can say right now, and as you can see, my thoughts are still fairly unorganized, as so much happened during the camp. I will have more to tell. But to ask the big question: was it worth it? Yes, unequivocally.