I need the AC ev'ry hour

Hey everyone! It's Arthur here.
Hi Arthur.

Well, today was the last day of the camp and also the least stressful day.

We woke up today some time before 7:00 and did devotions by ourselves. The walk to the school was excruciating as usual because of the lovely weather over here. All the students were already in the classrooms and running around with air-filled water balloons. There was a lot of shouting and popping until things finally settled down. My group (Ben, me, and two taiwanese co-workers, Rita and Dorcas) practiced their skits (they performed these skits later in the day) which in all honesty was really just people walking on and off the stage, with some Chinese yo-yo-ing thrown in the middle. It was supposed to have something to do with two people meeting in a park, but only God knows what it really was. We also played a game of pterodactyl, in which people make odd noises to make others show their teeth and laugh. The kids were much more obedient today. I'll have you know that I had the rowdiest group out of all the other STM members. Except for maybe Hannah and Andrew's group. Their Taiwan co-workers are pretty quiet compared to ours, and we were fine for the most part because Rita and Dorcas are literally superhuman.

Here's a picture of me doing my part.

I promise you I was just adding my kids onto LINE. Really, though.

After that, we went to the auditorium, held hands, and sang a song together in Chinese that we learned sang last night. I'm fairly certain most of the STM members just la-la-la'd or watermelon'd the song, because that's what I did.
I'm sure you'll enjoy a visual.

I'm not too sure what happened after that, but our kids my kids ordered some boba for us. I bet your kids don't do that (because I don't do that, sorry mom).

Are you jealous? Because you should be.

We went back to our classrooms and practiced skits some more, performed them, did a presentation, half of our gospel skit, cleaned up, and went back to the gospel center.
That's all you wanted to know, right? Wrong. Get your tissues out, because I'm going to start cutting onions.

There's a kid in my class named Tom. He's really cute and also loud and annoying at times, but mostly cute. That was my first impression of him. That's what my current impression of him is, too.

Tom is the one that looks the cutest.. waait a second, that can't be right.

His mom wanted to abort him because his family already had two children, and they couldn't really support a third. She even jumped off a closet (or so I am told) in an attempt to abort him, but that didn't work out, and so he was born with a mother that wished (and I am told, still wishes) he wasn't born.

Which absolutely sucks because he's really cute.

I learned very quickly that a large amount of the kids we were teaching had very serious family issues. One of the my kids, Sam, is taken care of by his grandmother because his mom left. My favorite kid, Mike, has an unemployed gambling father. And then there's Eric. He has some chronic disease that makes random bone protrusions pop up at random times. I'm told that it really hurts.
In short, there are very few happy families in these classes. Very few happy people, even.

I was also supposed to give my testimony today, but instead I just gave a quick explanation of the gospel, which I think I made unnecessarily complicated, because it was hard to tell if the kids eyes were just too asian or if they were having nice dreams (eyes were closed.)

I should mention that both me and Ben are super thankful for our Taiwan co-workers. I'm not kidding when I say they are superhuman. They literally did everything in our class, and the two of us just butted in from time to time. I had fun tickling some kids as discipline. Ben helped out by holding them down.
I could not have asked for better leaders co-workers. Rita and Dorcas are awesome.  

This is Ben and Rita standing in front of a boba shop. Don't they look fabulous?

DON'T IT LOOK FABULOUS?

I should also mention that we had fried rice for dinner today.
Unfortunately, today the best group in the world my group decided to fast and pray for the kids going to the gospel meeting tomorrow.

There were no leftovers.

That was probably the lowest point of my day.

Anyways, please continue to pray for us. We're only doing half the work; you're doing the other half. Even so, God does the whole work.

Prayer requests:
-- Even today wasn't as stressful, we were all still incredibly tired (or at least I was.) Pray that we could have energy for the next week.
-- Ben has some monstrous mosquito bites. He could probably use some prayer.
-- I need to remember to take all my clothes hanging around tomorrow morning. We need to remember to drink lots of water. Someone's probably missing some clothes. Pray for good memory.
-- By the time you read this, the Gospel meeting will probably be over (?) Pray that God works in the hearts of the kids.
-- We're going over to Dongshi soon. Pray for a safe trip.
-- Pray for a strong stomach. It takes guts to talk to new people, and to eat weird food.
-- Please pray also for our hearts and minds coming from Bao Zhong and preparing for the new camp in Dongshi next week. A lot of us are feeling burnt out. Please pray for a "reset" for our minds to be able to fully commit ourselves to the children in Dongshi.

Thank you all for reading :)