AMAZEing

i told myself i'd write/finish a blog today. however, due to the constant influx of crap that comes with the impending doom of college, i now sit writing, 26 minutes till tomorrow.

as a part of my mother's "michelle is going off to college" campaign not only am i being bombarded by continual "why dont you start packing?"s and "dont forget anything"s, i've also been showered with multiple toystory 3 references. odd? not quite. everything is "... it'll be like andy in toy story" which makes me just wish i never let her see the movie in the first place.

BUT WAIT. this post has not been started to share with you the warmfuzzies that my mom is spreading all over the world this week, nor is it for all the surprises and joys i found whilst dumping everything out of my desk, including: old notes to/from friends, a large amount of notecards (reminiscint of the dreaded KIDs), my now huge collection of headphones, the random socks, or even the plastic microphone. no no, i am not here to share all that. i am actually here to write about the one month of summer i was, um, not in america.



KOREA! i was there for exactly a month. i spent the first week and a halfish meeting up with my family, eating a whole lot, and being a tourist in my homeland. then the next two week and a halfish i spent as a teacher for e-camp! missions for me was a really rewarding and humbling experience. i definitely did not expect the growth i saw in myself by the end.

where to begin.. well, when we first went in i 1)had a terrible mindset from the week and a half of vacationing prior to starting missions 2)was completely oblivious to how spiritually starved i'd been while in korea and 3)had no idea what i was getting into. opening ceremony was all good and i remember we had team meetings/ QT time every night. here i should mention how terrible my attitude was. i HATED listening to my leader talk. i just wanted us to have our usual kinda self-run quiet time/ prayer and then get some sleep. i was always a bit negative and a lot stubborn. but in retrospect i learned so many things from our leader. he mainly showed us the meaning of "do your best and let God do the rest" and just watching him and how dependent he was on God was ridiculously humbling. and i remember the first night, pre-missions, he was praying saying how we need to ready ourselves and make sure we were in a good place with God before we went and taught anything and i dont know why but i suddenly felt panicked and started doubting myself and my role in the team. i started questioning Him and whether i'd really seen him work in my life.

i know, terrible time to come to facts huh. anyways, that night/ morning i talked to kelcie about it and she reassured me that God probably had some big plan for me during the trip and i agreed, albeit halfheartedly... buuut

KELCIE WAS COMPLETELY CORRECT. evidence:

fastforward a bit and we're at the first church. which brings us to blessing #1: honestly, the whole church. we met, seriously, the most loving and welcoming people in the world. when we left that church i felt we took more than we left! i will cherish the 5/6 days we spent there and remember the kids/ volunteers we met there till i die. they were THAT amazing. i really hope that God's will for me somehow has them again in my future but who knows. not only were the people great but we got ridiculously amazing accomodations for missionaries! we slept in their prayer house and some people got beds and the rest got plushy blankets and everyone got multiple pillows! the guys were fortunate enough to get an air conditioned room and the girls had fans on the walls. three of our classrooms were air conditioned and the food was AMAZING. plus the church was in a BEAUTIFUL area. it was like a miyazaki film menos totoro. it was simply incredible there.
i almost forgot to mention, blessing #2: grace! it was a blessing in itself that we even got an extra volunteer but grace unni made it 12093893084x's better. the best way to describe her would be to say that she is a stone throw away from being a female Jesus. she literally defined God's grace and was such a huge impact/ influence on all of us. she never complained, always worked for the kids and the team, and was overall a huge boost to our team.
blessing #3: kelcie and her testimony. i dont know if i have any right to share what she shared but in a nutshell what she shared was probably the most blatant evidence of God working in someone's life. craaazy.

along with these more obvious bigger blessings, there were millions of little things that should have helped me realize the huge sign God was waving in my face that screamed "I AM HERE" but i didn't really notice anything until i looked back on the whole trip at the end..

now, to the second church, where i honestly was drained/ not up for letting go of the first church. it also didnt help that i got sick going into the second church. and though i initially decided (on my own) that the second church had nothing for me but rowdy unresponsive children, God provided and worked even when i gave up. so blessing #4: i distinctively remember praying as a team on the third night for the kids, the church, and the works we were doing. we were all drained and seeing no response. but it was crazy how quickly and evidently God responded to our prayers. the last two days were exponentially better and God was really with us. proof: i asked a couple of girls in my class on the first day whether they regularly attended that church and one said yes, one said no, she was actually catholic, and the last said she didnt ever go to church. but while talking to those same three girls on our fourth day they excitedly told me they were coming next sunday! i wasn't sure what they were getting at so i asked why and they said they were coming to meet us and because they liked the pastor. it was SUCH a good feeling and all praise goes to God because that small thing lifted a lot of our spirits. along with that, we got a girl who spent the whole first day crying to have fun and smile and by the last day she was initiating the games with us and smiling and laughing. another amazing work of God. so many things we never expected happened.

FINALLY. blessing #5 and the most impacting moment for me on the trip. like i said, i was oblivious/ ignorant of all these things going on so when jubilee (a talent show of sorts on the last day) for the second church came around i was just wiped and had nothing to show for it. after a quasi- disastrous jubilee rehearsal our leader recommended that we all just go into a time of prayer. while i was praying i reflected on how i felt at the beginning of missions and how i felt at the end. i didnt really feel different.. and had we been doing anything for the kids?? basically, i had another moment of intense doubt. i can imagine God was feeling extremely frustrated by my blindness to everything going on. he basically gave me a slap in the face with the most obvious answer to my prayer. after jubilee, which ran eerily smoothly, a girl from the first church that i grew extremely close to came to visit us! i was REALLY excited to see her but what was even more exciting was her mother and what her mother told us. some background info: the girl, mary, was initially in my E-1 class at the first church. E-1 was the lowest level class/ youngest kids. mary, however, had no problem with the alphabets and could read. she was a great student but she had the worst attitude. the first day i tried to get her out of her quiet shell by making some small talk. i asked "did you have fun? wasnt that fun?" and she straightup shot me down with a "no, it was really not fun. i'm bored". haha, definitely shocked me for a second. i SOO did not want to deal with her and i figured she would just not show up the next day but she did and SOMEHOW we ended up being the closest teacher/student pair ever. she was literally my mini-me and held my hand wherever we went. ANYWAYS. back to blessing #5. so mary's parents are both missionaries and had been in china while we were at the first church. but mary's mom told us that they could just SENSE how much the kids had changed. more than half the kids we taught were from broken families and she said a lot of them felt hopeless/worthless before we came but after we left she told me they wouldnt stop talking about us and how they had friends in america and she said she just felt such earnest hope in them. she couldn't stop thanking us for what we did. it was an INCREDIBLY humbling feeling. especially because i left feeling that they affected us a LOT more than we did anything for them.

basically, God just poured his blessings upon us and TRULY showed me how he works in my life. i only hope that i can keep the lessons learned in my heart for a long long time:)

it is now 1 hour and 27 minutes into tomorrow and i hope my rushed but almost complete testimony will inspire some of you! God is truly AMAZING.