Feels Good to be Home.

Well, I’m home! My Thailand home at least! China was awesome. It was an incredible experience that I will never forget. It stretched me physically, emotionally, and definitely spiritually.

            Unfortunately for the safety of the people we worked with who live in China I have to be very careful about what I post on the internet. However, I can tell you vaguely about what we did. Everyday, a ministry we worked with would split us into teams and we would go on prayer walks, teach at schools and speak English with local university students. My team mainly went on prayer walks and spoke with university students. We went to what they called “English Corners” and helped the Chinese students practice their English. It was great. I would spend up to two hours talking with a single student. We would talk with students about various things; culture, traveling, family and school. We would build relationships with them and continue to see and talk to them when we would go back to the university. There were a couple students who I came to love dearly and continue to pray for. I also had the opportunity to go to a couple underground churches and fellowship with Chinese believers, which was incredible and so encouraging. I was also able to go to a large “registered” church. China does actually allow churches but they just must be registered with the government. That means they are closely watched with surveillance cameras and restricted on what they can preach. It definitely made me way more thankful for the freedom of religion that we have in America. I got to spend an afternoon going to the slums and playing with the kids at a school as well. Chinese children are absolutely precious!

            Below are some photos that are safe to post. I hope you enjoy them! When I get home I would love to share the rest of my photos and tell you more stories, but I want to be wise and not cause trouble for my friends back in China. As for now, I have started a new week of lecture and the topic is relationships. I feel that this is going to be a week where God is going to reveal a lot in my heart and bring healing. I am excited to see how God uses this topic to draw me closer to Him.

            We still have three more weeks left of lecture and then we go on our long-term outreach (December 15-Janurary). The staff here still has not let us know where we are going but I promise to let you all know as soon as I find out!

            I hope all is going well at home and know that I am continually praying for you.

Blessings,

Hanna

My team and I at the university

A couple girls I got to play with at the school

A poor family we often visited in the slums (notice the skyscrapers in the background)

Probably the most shocking thing was how close the slums where
to new development.

Enjoying an afternoon at the park (ignore the weird Chinese guy 

in the background)

November? Already?

China here I come!

This weekend my team and I leave for China and I am so beyond excited! I’m afraid I’m not supposed to go into much detail about our trip, but if you want to know more you are welcome to email me! I will try and post some safe photos when I get home.

As for the past week, it’s been great. We had a really good speaker named Scotty come and talk to my school about God’s calling on our lives. When I was first told about the topic I was like “Oh, great. A charismatic speaker is going to come and tell us to ask God about our destinies.” But it was actually not like that at all. Scotty simply told us stories about his walk with God, and how the most important part of fulfilling God’s will for our lives is being obedient to Him. I found this really encouraging being a young adult who is still pretty unsure about what God wants to do with my life. One moment I feel called to international missions while the next I’m heartbroken for the broken within my own country. It’s all very up in the air for me but God spoke to me through Scotty and said that I simply need to just wait, and in the meantime obey Him in everything I do, even daily activities. Because it’s all of those small daily choices that greatly affect tomorrow hence the future as a whole.

Now for the present. Yesterday a Thai guy named Judah in my school invited all of us to go to his village to celebrate the rice festival. About ten of us rented a song thaew and took a two-hour drive up the mountains into his isolated rice-farming village. It was the most beautiful drive I have ever taken. The mountains were so incredibly tall and there was so much lush vegetation. I could not help but be in awe of my Creator as I looked upon rice-covered valleys and cliff-faced mountains.

When we arrived in his village we saw that everyone (about 150 people) were gathered having their harvest celebration service. We quickly discovered that Judah’s entire village is Christian, which is extremely rare in Thailand. After singing some worship songs and playing with the kids, the village treated us to lunch and we ate delicious white rice with meatballs out of banana leaves and pumpkin soup. After we thanked and prayed for Judah’s family, we hopped back into our food filled song thaew. The village was so generous to us even though they have so little. It was a classic bamboo-grass roof village on the side of a mountain. It was absolutely beautiful.

This next week a missionary named Stan Hankins will be talking to us about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I am excited to see how God speaks through him and how He continues to move us as He prepares us for China.

Thanks again so much for all of your support and prayers. Please continue to pray for my team and I in the next couple of weeks as we venture into another country!

Blessings,

Hanna 

Here are some photos from our visit to Judah's village:

Just a glimpse of our beautiful ride. Wish my camera 

was better at capturing the beauty!

A couple of boys we played with at Judah's village.

My classmate Sarah and I

Yummy Lisu Food!

All of us with Judah's Family