July 31st Post

Greetings!

Chris Funk here, just a quick update on our Saturday here.

Today was a really good day, there was no teaching English but was rather focused on spiritual renewal and rest of the leaders. We are almost halfway through with the English camp and all the teachers really needed a day to be fed instead of feeding the students and just some down time. This morning was a very special morning for me, I got to experience a Chinese church service. There were only 10 of us that got to attend church because of all the restrictions that are being imposed. The rest of the teachers went to Jim’s (camp leader) house and had worship, a devotional time a also some sharing what God is doing within the camp time.

Church was an incredible experience, there was the whole language barrier, but it wasn't as noticeable as I first anticipated because I could feel God there. We sang "Washed in the blood of the lamb", had some special music by the choir, listened to a message by Pastor Wu on Psalm 42:1-2, and finished the service off with communion and prayer. It was amazing to connect with the strangers solely based upon our mutual love of Christ. It really helped me visualize and portrayed the universality of Christ's love and the bond that it can create with fellow believes no matter what. With the help of a translator I got a few phrases of what Pastor Wu was saying and I think they are a great representation of what this church believes in and just awesome things to remember:

“God is our power”
“Thirst for the living God”
“We are weak, but God’s grace is tremendous”
“Invite people to come to our living God”
“Jesus Christ is steadfast love”

Church was the most exciting and memorable part of the day. There was supposed to be a concert at school by Jared and our own Mark Siefert, but an amazingly powerful thunderstorm blew in and it got cancelled. Therefore, some more time was spent walking around downtown, getting greeting by all the locals or anybody who knows the word “hello”, and then more time as a team planning stuff for tomorrow’s camp activities.

Tomorrow will return to normal and we only have 4 more days of teaching including tomorrow, time is just flying back. Just be in prayer for the Bazhong church and their ministries, they are building a new church because they have outgrown their current one (that is soooo exciting) and for opportunities to share no matter how minute they might be.

In Him,
Chris Funk