So today it rained, and all of the snails came out to play. I was walking to leadership meeting, and I saw this huge snail sliding slowly on the ground, so I stopped to look at it... after a minute or two, I got up from my fob squat and went to my meeting, and on my way back I was walking through that same cement path, and I remembered that big snail I saw earlier, so I was looking for it, and at first I only saw a few small snails that weren't there when I last walked there, and then I saw him. He had been stepped on, and he was DEAD! :( so sad.
then while I was squatted down and looking at the snails, I looked up and saw this girl there, and she asked me if I was looking for something. I said, "No, I'm just looking at the snails." :) how nice of her.
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Epic
Hawaii Summer Project 08
Hello, for those of you who don’t know me, my
name is Priscilla Gee, and I’m going to be a second year at UCI. I just wanted
to share with you a little bit about what I did this summer in Hawaii. First of
all, I would like to thank you for all of your prayers and support – It is such
a blessing to have such a solid church family to come home to and to see the
body of Christ come together to support me this summer. I really thank God for
the opportunity to go serve Him in such a beautiful place, and for giving me my
church family to pray for me during project.
So
in case you are not familiar with Summer Projects, they are basically summer
mission trips to various parts of the world (over 150 places!) with Campus
Crusade for Christ, in an effort to reach out and bring other college students
to Christ. I had the opportunity of going on the Epic Hawaii Summer Project for
the first seven weeks of my summer, literally a few days after my finals ended,
to go reach out to the Asian American community on the college campuses of
Hawaii. I know that before I left, I got a lot of feedback from people like,
“Hawaii? That’s not missions!” but the truth is, even people who live in
so-called paradise need Jesus, and if no one thinks that’s an ideal place to
share the good news with them, who will? During one of our trainings on
project, our director shared a quote with us. It said, “A missionary is not one
who crosses the sea, but one who sees the cross,” and I know, technically I did
cross the sea, but I think this is a vision that not a lot of people have, and
it is really important to understand that everyone needs to hear the gospel,
and even in a beautiful place in the US that is known for being the perfect
vacation spot, there are still people who are lost. I think that Hawaii is a
great place for missions, not the easiest, but because their culture is so
different from the rest of the US in the way that people are a lot more laid
back, very friendly, interested in showing you around the island and they just
want to share your life with you, it is very easy to get to know people and
build relationships with them, but at the same time they cling to the Hawaiian
culture and a lot of people believe in spirits and other beliefs of their
culture. If you aren’t familiar with Hawaii, there is a very large Asian
population there, pretty much like UCI, as the University of Hawaii is about
60% Asian American/Pacific Islander, so as an Asian American group we were able
to more easily connect with most of the students we met on the island. We had
29 students on our team, from colleges all over the US, and 9 staff from Campus
Crusade with us – the staff were there for the first four weeks, and they left
and handed down their responsibilities to us for the remaining three weeks so
that we could continue in what they had set up for us and take leadership of
the ministry for ourselves.
As
for what we did specifically, most of our time was spent on our three separate
campuses on the island of Oahu, which were University of Hawaii (UH) – my
campus, Hawaii Pacific University (HPU), and Kapiolani Community College (KCC).
I will be talking about what we did at UH at Manoa, because that was the team
that I was on. Our mission statement for UH is: Turning lost students into
Christ-centered laborers (which is taken directly from Campus Crusade) and,
Giving every student the opportunity to know and follow Christ and also that
believers can get plugged into a community in which they can grow spiritually
with other believers. So to follow through with this vision, our team spent
most of our campus time sharing with the students taking summer classes.
Sharing, meaning we would approach people and initiate spiritual conversation
with them through evangelism tools such as spiritual surveys and a picture
survey called the Soularium, or just randomly approaching people. The point of
using these tools was for us to share our lives with the students and be able
to hear about theirs and be able to better apply the Gospel message to their
lives. So we would basically go on campus and have spiritual conversations with
random people (okay not really random, since we would prayerwalk first to see
who God was leading us to talk to), and build relationships with them even if
we didn’t talk about anything spiritual, so that we could hang out with them
later and continue in our relationships with them. This is sort of like a
friendship ministry, because we were able to display the love of God with them
through the friendships we had, and help them understand what it means to have
a personal relationship with God. The relationships we built with people were
really important through the seven weeks we were there, and because we were
there for so long, we were able to spend time with people consistently so that
we could really share our lives with them and build their trust. It was a very
personal ministry, a lot different than having VBS or other activity-based ways
of outreach, and I think that because it was so personal and real life (since
we were making friends with other college students just like we would at home),
we were each able to grow individually and learn about the importance of living
out the gospel in our daily lives at home with our friends on our own campuses.
After our staff left, we were given
responsibilities of our campus ministries and our own team debrief time and
things like that, and we were able to specify the kinds of things we did on
campus, and our UH team decided to have a prayer table for people to come and
give prayer requests and we could pray for them on the spot or later, and also
use that as a means of starting spiritual conversation, and a reverse
confession booth, a table where we would discuss and apologize for hurts that
people have had from the past due to the church or other Christians. These
activities were just a means to help us transition into communicating the
gospel with the students, and it stretched us as a team because we learned how
to share the gospel in different ways. I think we learned a lot about how
ministry works, and how there aren’t really rules for how you’re supposed to go
about sharing God’s love with people and leading them to the cross, or even
just helping them take a look at their spiritual life and prompting them to
look deeper.
Outside of our campus time, our whole team
had an outreach day planned for every Saturday, where we would go out to a
specific location and go sharing with people there. We went to a lot of beaches
and shopping centers, and it was different than our campus time, because a lot
of the people we shared with on outreach days were adults, rather than our
peers, so it was harder to relate with them, but God was still able to use us,
despite that barrier. One example that I remember is a time my teammate and I
went sharing and we talked to a man who was going through a divorce, and some
other difficult things in his life. I remember it being really hard for us to
say things to encourage him and bring God’s plan into his situation in a
non-awkward manner, but eventually we were able to share some encouraging
verses with him and share the gospel with him, and although he wasn’t ready to
accept Christ that day, I know that God was working in him, because he said
that he needed a little more time. I think I learned the most through
experiences like this one, in how there are so many different ways that we can
share what God has done in our own personal lives to help other people see Him.
We also had something called Body Mode
Evangelism, which was basically events that we held where we would invite the
contacts we made on our campuses or during outreach to, and use that night to
glorify God through being intentional with our time and have fun at the same
time. The name Body Mode means that we are expanding the body of Christ through
the different modes of evangelism. We had two Open Mic nights, and a Karaoke
and pizza night, and these events were really to make our friends focus on God
and spark their interest in spirituality. We were also able to spend time to
hang out with the locals that we met and were able to invest in our
relationships with them during our free time. During all of our time spent with
the locals, we had to make sure to be intentional with our time in the things
we talked about and to direct our conversations toward God and the gospel. It
was a lot of fun to hang out with new people all of the time, and also really
awesome that we could talk about spiritual things comfortably. At the beginning
of our trip, each of our team members shared one thing they hoped to get out of
summer project, and mine was that I would learn how to share the gospel
comfortably and be able to transition smoothly into spiritual conversation, and
I think God taught me just that during this trip. When we first started
outreach, I was really intimidated by the fact that we had to talk to strangers
and share the gospel with them, but by God’s grace, it wasn’t that bad. I
remember on the first full day on the island, we had a day of beach outreach,
where we went sharing on Waikiki Beach, a very popular tourist beach, and we
were all nervous about going out because it was our first time and tourists
generally aren’t really looking for conversation, but God was faithful and five
people ended up coming to Christ that day. So even though outreach seemed scary
at times, it was good to see and feel that God was still in control and He was
still able to use us despite our insecurities.
I personally have learned so much from summer
project and I really thank God for giving me this opportunity. I feel like God
has definitely grown my heart for the lost, because during project, I made a
lot of friends who I know that I would normally not be drawn to talk to or
befriend at home,and it was different
because my teammates and I were able to share the gospel with them and connect
with them made me see how all different types of people need Christ, and we
need to reach out to all of them, not just the people that are easy to talk to
or people that you get along well with. And yeah, just keeping in mind that
God’s love extends to everyone, so we are to love everyone, and it’s so
different to actually go out and do that, rather than just saying it. God also
taught me how to be bold in my faith, by sharing the most important part of my
life with the people we met in Hawaii. It was interesting because during
project, something huge that I learned was that even though we may not see the
fruits of ministry, like we may not see students receive Christ right after we
share the gospel with them or even after investing a lot of time with them,
it’s okay, because we are just part of God’s plan, and we may not be the part
where He chooses to use us to pray the prayer to receive Christ, but we are
like stepping stones on their way there, and I think the second week after I
came back, Pastor Jinchang talked about that in his sermon! I was like so
excited to hear that haha. Anyway, I also learned a lot about how important it
is to be intentional with the time we spend with our friends, because during
project, we focused so much on the way we interacted with our local friends and
the types of conversation we had with them, but looking back on how my attitude
is at home, I tend to focus on my own life rather than take advantage of the
people that God has placed in my life to minister to. The truth is, we are on
the mission field wherever we are, and God is calling us to share the good news
wherever we’re at, and it’s not a matter of whether you feel God’s calling to
go share your faith with other people, but it’s a matter of obedience to the Lord
and taking steps of faith in Him. God has already called us in the Great
Commission to go and make disciples of all nations and promised us that He will
be with us, and it is our job to fulfill this command He has given us as
believers. I think that through this trip God has also given me a bigger and
better picture of His kingdom, in seeing people as people that God wants in His
kingdom, and it’s my job, our job as believers to show them how much they need
God and how good it is to have a personal relationship with him. I also learned
a lot about how people work, and how we need to show them the love of God and
His grace before anything else, and yeah just being able to see how people
respond differently to the gospel, how some people need a long time to take it
in and understand it, whereas other people are ready to accept Christ right
away. This summer project in Hawaii helped me understand how we need to
actively live out our faith and pursue nonbelievers, and actually practice it.
God really put together a great team for us this summer, and thank you for
being a part of it by supporting me in your prayers.
We did some big damage for God this summer :D
haha i dont know how many people made it this far, but if you did, thanks for reading :)
"My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. " -Psalms 73: 26 (from James' lesson on despondency.... haha i put the paper up on my closet door!)
