The last 5 days our entire team traveled to a town about 2 hours away to embark on our mini mission trip. We slept on the hard, cold floor of the church that hosted us (they were incredibly warm and friendly and made such yummy meals for us), shared 3 bathrooms between 30 of us (getting ready in the morning involved brushing teeth, washing face, and changing - no makeup or any other luxury), and showered only every alternate day. We only got to sleep at midnight every night, and we had to wake up at 6am because our days were packed full with activities, and at least 5 girls snored every night, so... needless to say, I hardly slept at all.
And now I'm down with the flu. I guess I was expecting it, because the flu bug has been going around here, and since we all live together, eat together, shower together, go to classes together, and do everything together, everyone has been falling sick one after another. So it's my turn now. I just hope it goes away soon because I hate being sick. Today I ate 3 oranges, 2 bananas, 1 apple, and drank lots of tea.
We've hardly had any down time to ourselves since we've been here. The only free day we got was last Saturday, and we spent the entire day in Birmingham city, so really we haven't had any time to relax. And it's taking it's toll on me - all this rushing around and doing things everyday. Today we got to sleep in late, which was nice, but we still had seminars in the afternoon.
One seminar was on Time Management, and we had to take the 'Urgency Test,' and I scored the lowest in the class. Most people had about 30+, and I scored 18. That's why my life is currently going nowhere. I have no sense of urgency! Why don't I have a sense of urgency?? People always tell me it's good that I'm so laidback, but maybe being too laidback isn't so good after all.
At the outreach
So anyway, at the mission trip, we planned an International Night for the town community, and it was super stressful because everything was so last minute and disorganized, but the program went really smoothly, which was a relief. We had to go door-to-door in the village and give out flyers to people in the community to invite them to the event. It was a little bit intimidating at first, but we were in pairs (I was with a Finnish guy who spoke English as a second language, and it was interesting to get to know him better), and British people (in towns/villages, not cities) are ridiculously friendly.
Those who were home smiled and took the flyers with some interest, and the one guy who declined said to us with a smile, 'I'm an atheist, I'm alright.' I don't even know what that means. How can he be 'alright' if he doesn't believe in the one true God??? I felt really sad for him, but there was nothing we could do because he closed the door and we had to leave.
We spent the hours before the International Night practicing our program for the first time. I was involved in the Korean song, the 'I love Jesus' dance, the opening costume act, and I was in charge of food and decorations. So basically I was running around like a headless chicken the entire time. But it was great bunches of fun - the dance was hard to learn at first, but when we finally got it down, it felt good. Not a lot of people turned up for our event, but those who did really enjoyed it. Everything turned out really well, even the food from all different countries (we had rice crackers 'from' Singapore), and we got to talk to the people after the event as we bonded over food and tea (British people sure do love their tea - they drink it in the morning, before lunch, after lunch, before dinner, after dinner, all the time). So it was well worth all the planning.
On Saturday
We went to another town to do street evangelism, and it was a little more than terrifying. We set up shop in the town square and did drama, Christian songs, face painting, and ballooning. The responses we got were varied - some people ignored us, some sang along with our songs, some listened intently to our dramas, some talked to us with interest. And then we took Christian tracts (those tiny pamphlets with information about Jesus written in a non-threatening, interesting kind of way) and gave them out to passers-by.
Most people took them with a smile and a 'thank you', others shook their head and smiled. I only got one guy who shook his head and told me he was a Buddhist, and another smiled and thanked me for the tract before tearing it up in front of my face. Ouch. I felt like he tore a piece of my heart. And then I felt sad for him because his heart was so hardened. But I guess he's one person out of many (we gave out about 3000 tracts altogether that day), and most of the people read the tracts with interest, so I tried not to dwell on that guy and be too disappointed.
On Sunday
We split up and went to different churches to lead their services or share our testimonies. I went with two other people to a tiny congregational church (and by tiny, I mean there were 8 people in the church, not including us), and shared my testimony with them. It wasn't as scary for me as it was for the other guy, because English is my first language (I have to say, I really admire the people here who don't speak English as their first language. Some really struggle but they're so positive about it and willing to learn). The people in the church were all over 60 at least, but they were really nice and attentive and appreciative of our presence and willingness to share our life stories.
One lady told me, 'I'm so glad you came to share your testimony. It's so hard for us here because our church is so small, and we get very disheartened by the lack of response from the community. We try to reach out to them, but they don't really respond. So it's so encouraging to see young people from all over the world on fire for God. Thank you for coming.' - something like that.
I was so encouraged by her gratitude. I realized that we all think England is a Christian country because of its Christian background and Caucasian citizens, but it's really not. Lots of people here don't even know who Jesus Christ is, and they've never been to church, the party scene here is even more trashy than in the US, if that's possible. Tons of churches here are tiny (less than 20 people) and not growing and full of elderly people who don't have a clue how to reach out to the younger generation. It's really sad to see so much emptiness in the people's lives here.
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