Dongshi VGM Camp Recap Video

Recap Video from the Bilingual Camp from Dongshi at Dong Rong Middle School 

UPDATE!

Hello everyone! Just to let you all know, I just uploaded a late post from Saturday about what we did... Sorry it was late. But if you're interested in reading about what we did that day, go and check it out. It should be below the post from Sunday that Hannah wrote.

ALSO. I am currently writing this from the airport. We are playing games before waiting to board. We should be leaving soon! Please pray for our safety and we hope to see you all very very soon :D

A-weem-bow-wahing through Taipei...

 Hello all! This is Hannah coming to you from Taipei :D We have just made the transition from short term missionaries to tourists, having just finished our last camp for the trip yesterday. Haha, just kidding, we're always missionaries, as our lives are devoted to Christ! No blasphemy here...haha :P

Anyways, since coming out of rural Taiwan, there have been a few nice changes. We are now giddy Americans running around Taipei, being on the whole, jovial, English-speaking, a bit on the rowdy side, and doing more than our fair share of a-weem-bow-wahing as we take a lot of pictures and time loitering from place to place. This is our hotel where we get to sleep in real beds for the first time in over 2 weeks! As well as enjoy some respite from the heat and humidity. The bugs though are still very very real -_- ...unless you're Timothy Lu...he seems to be a living bug repellent.

At the hotel, there is a continental breakfast that is a cross between American and Taiwanese styles. After this, we got ready to go to church, which began at 11am. Oh by the way, Jenny Aiyi and Shih-lien Shushu have been checking us in, taking LOTS of group pictures and teaching us how to get from place to place here in Taipei.

Outside the hotel is a really pretty waterlily pond/garden. Andrew almost fell in, haha, just kidding, Ben obviously was there to pull him back to safety. Speaking of which, Andrew has been having a lot of problems not climbing on things he's not supposed to... 

"Rules are meant to be broken."

-Andrew Geng

No one needs to be concerned....

We just encountered that pond as we were walking to the train station. We are taking public transportation everywhere! Here is a nice picture of one of the many escalators that leads to train platforms. In particular, we were going to church! 

We were super early in leaving for church, so Jenny Aiyi and Shih-Lien Shushu had us stop in an underground mall with many many touristy and cutesy things to buy. We didn't really have that much time to look around though and kind of just got a feel of the place before continuing on to church.

Okay, so I don't exactly know what everyone else was expecting, but I was expecting more Chinese. Well, actually I think they were expecting more Chinese, because we were all quite shocked at the number of...um... *cough* non-Chinese looking people there? And then everyone started leading in English, and it was like 0.o WHAT?! I can actually understand everything that's going on?? But yes, that was an unexpected surprise. Oh! Also, on the way, we met up with some of our Taiwan coworkers, Irene, Wendy, Elly, Dorcas, and Jamin from Baozhong :D It was really good to see them again (: Thanks for coming out guys!

After church, we went out to get some of the famous Taiwanese cuisine. A traditional Taiwanese snack that Irene calls "Taiwanese hamburgers" haha and a famous boba (that's bubble tea folks, in case you haven't made the correlation) place, which was reeeaallly good! And the Taiwanese coworkers unexpectedly paid for us. Thanks guys! Since ya'll said you were hosting, we expect you to make a trip out to America so we can take a turn! :D

More public transportation ensues. The selfie extravaganza doesn't stop. As we make our way to Mao Kong. We had to transfer three times. Thank goodness Mr. Lu was there. We all just followed his lead.

When we got off at the zoo, we walked over to the gondolas that would bring us to Mao Kong. Along the way, we found many a cute kid. This one has a superman cup. Pretty darn awesome.

I also may or may not be tired. 

But all tiredness fades as we finally get through the lines and onto the gondola! The views were quite amazing. We all had a good time riding in the hello-kitty ridden gondolas, talking, joking, singing and such. Hello kitty really was quite annoying though. We wanted to rip them off.

The gondolas pass through several stations. At these stations, paying customers can also get on. One of our gondolas was singing the accursed in the jungle song... And some white people waiting in line started singing along. All in all, it was a massive face-palm.

Then, on the way back down to the zoo, we got to see the sunset. It produced some pretty amazing pictures.

I couldn't decide which I liked best, so I posted all of them :D

Riding back to Taipei 101, we sat in the very front. Everyone was energized from being at Mao Kong and seeing the wonderful sights.

And finally we make it to the 101! It's quite pretty at night and pictures don't really do it justice. It also looks like a bunch of purple lightsabers

Of course, with a trip to the 101, we had to take a bunch of touristy pictures with all the landmarks there. Unfortunately, the love sign was accompanied by a do not touch the artwork sign ): This is where Andrew played devil's advocate....for himself and it took Timmy restraining him to keep him off of it. I should also note that I may or may not have climbed it -__- In my haste to get on, I most definitely did not read the sign...haha.

Nightitme cities also make for the best long exposure shots. with so many buses and taxi cabs passing by, we got a pretty nice shot of Taipei.

The selfies continue. Everyone at Taipei 101!

the funky chicken! and Solenne makes it out to join us at the night market.

The night markets here are pretty amazing. They get really packed, but there's so much to see! You can literally get lost in there. Trust me. We did. And there's so much good food! Most things cost just 1-2 dollars. Amazing :D Nathan and I unfortunately, got swindled by a fruit vendor ): In our excitement for mangoes, we ended up accidentally paying 16 dollars for a bag of fruit...sigh...

Mango shave ice! :D We like mangoes...

All in all, we had a wonderful day of looking around Taipei, seeing old(ish) friends, and eating waaayyy too much food haha :D We're pretty tired though, so home is looking better and better! be prepared for us tomorrow guys...WE'RE COMING HOME :DDD

Prayer requests:
1) Safe travels! We're going to be doing a lot of it and technically have no "adult" making sure we get there alive, so that the team would stay together and make it home safely!
2) Jetlag for when we arrive. There is a significant time difference between here and home. We're trying to adjust by doing an all-nighter tonight...but it's only 3:30am and I'm pretty sleepy... A lot of us have many things to do when we get back, so quickly adjusting would be ideal!
3) Saying good-bye to the coworkers again ): We really get withdrawal from these guys... Just ask Arthur and Andrew hehe (;
4) Arthur seems to have a horrible bugbite/possible infection on his leg. Please pray for his health as he is staying here and may need to see a doctor.

Not a goodbye, but a see you later

Hello everyone!! It's Doris again. Sorry we weren't able to update for Saturday... We had a hectic day and got really tired by the end of it, so there was no time to write anything. BUT it's my job now to fill in the gaps.

Our team started Saturday morning with a short 30 minute devotion time, followed by breakfast and a time of worship. We then swept and mopped the first floor in preparation for the Gospel Meeting. A lot of the kids actually started showed up around 9:30 am, even when the meeting officially began at 10 am.

All the kids at the Gospel Meeting Saturday morning

We played human knot with them as an icebreaker. For those that don't know, human knot is basically when you get into a circle with maybe about 10 other people, cross hands with people in the circle and try to untangle yourselves so you form a circle again. My team sort of struggled and in the end, we ended up with two circles of people, with one circle entangled in the other. Following the ice breaker, our STM team performed our sin chair skit for the last time and then we had a time of testimonies from Nathan and Gary.

Nathan giving his testimony in Chinese

Gary giving his testimony! No skit this time :( I was sad. But it couldn't be the same without Raymond. 

 After the testimonies, Pastor Lin gave a message about the gospel and invited the kids to close their eyes and raise their hands if they wanted to receive Jesus into their lives as their Savior. 30 kids came to the Gospel Meeting and 13 of them raised their hands! God is good. It's amazing because the night before, I had prayed with my small group for Saturday and asked for at least 10 to raise their hands to accept Christ.

Pastor Lin giving a message

Some kids passing around an information sheet (I think)

 After the Gospel Meeting officially ended, we had a time of eating snacks, taking pictures and chatting. Many of us had some kids who truly liked us a lot and as usual, would ask to add us on just about every social media site (Facebook, LINE, instagram, etc.). Some of us were more popular than others :P

Ben was quite the ladies man the entire week... 

Eliza being super cute

Ben really liked this little girl... He kept talking about her after they left. She is very cute though...

 After most of the kids left, we had our last lunch in Dong Shi :( Pictures of our food are below.

I don't quite know what this is...

Some type of fried chicken I believe

Tofu!

 Since this was our last day in Dong Shi, I invited my kids from last year to come join the Gospel Meeting as well. Unfortunately, they came really late and weren't able to make it to see everything. BUT I was happy to be able to see two new faces (Ken in the far front left and David in the middle who isn't smiling). I still can't believe how sweet they are to come visit me. They got to know some of our team members (like the two Philips pictured below and also Angelica). They stayed with us until I left on our bus and even rode their bikes beside the bus for quite awhile... I will miss them a lot :(

On the bus, it didn't take long for most of our team to pass out. We were clearly exhausted.

I was tempted to drop something into Ben's mouth but... decided against it cause I'm too nice :P

After leaving all the coworkers and kids, we were quite sad. Some tears were shed, but at least we had one last coworker with us... Gary! Angelica and I spent a good 4 hours talking to him before the bus dropped him off at his home in Tao Yuan. Like we mentioned before in previous posts, Gary has been a huge helping hand to our team throughout both weeks. His English is incredibly good and he was one of our main translators both from English to Chinese and Chinese to English. We are so grateful for him. So before he left us forever, we as a team decided to pitch in our weekly spending money from Dong Shi towards his mission trip. We also gave him one of our extra CEC shirts (because he's an honorary member) and a card that we all wrote messages in. We tried to be as sneaky as possible, but he was so oblivious that it didn't even matter. He was very surprised and very touched. When he got home, he even posted the card onto his wall :D

Look at how happy he is. If you read his testimony on the go fund me page, you wouldn't even be able to tell he was once a gangster :P

 After many hours, we finally arrived at our hostel in Taipei at around 8 pm. We set our stuff down into the rooms (FINALLY ROOMS WITH BEDS) and then went to a nearby restaurant to eat dinner.

The view is quite nice. I believe this is from the rooftop.

Before dinner! We still look happy, which is good.

Mr. Lu ordered a ton of food for us... we ate a lot of it but there was still a lot of leftovers! But we were all very satisfied. After dinner, we went back to the hostel and had a debriefing session to talk about our two weeks and what went well and what could be improved. I was kinda tired by that time, but I think overall it went well... Though this has been our first overseas mission trip and first time working with VGM, I think we all had a really good experience learning more about each other, the coworkers, and getting to know the kids.

K-Pop stars are born

 Pastor Lin left after the first 15 minutes of our debriefing session to go to his home and visit his father. After our debrief, we met up with one of our Bao Zhong coworkers named Jamin! He came to visit us and we chatted for a little bit before going to sleep. We had church the next day and a lot of activities planned so we tried to start getting ready around 11 pm. So we ended our day being very excited to see everyone again!

Seeing Jamin again after a week!

All of us were quite excited

Cheese :D

So much excitement

We played a lot of "Silent Football", which is a really fun game that is a "gentleman's game". We started speaking in a British accent for fun, so excuse me if I started typing like I'm British... ANYWAYS. Thanks for reading :) Sorry again for the late post!