House Church

Well sorry I haven't blogged or didn't blog through the trip. The only way I could blog while I was there was on my cell phone and that proved to be difficult. Over the next few days as I have time I want to just highlight some of the most memorable parts of the trip and post some pictures here. So here it goes.....

On Saturday we arrived in Pinggao from Hong Kong and this is where we did most of our ministry for the trip. Sunday morning we woke up and went to "House Church" at an apartment in Pinggao. This has to be one of the most amazing experiences of my trip. There was something so unique and pure about it. I love that we weren't rushed or programmed. There was no set timeframe. No big screens with words. No prepared sermons. No set list of songs or instruments.

Please don't get me wrong, I love the church in America. There is something to say for excellence and I believe most churches here in the States do what they do on a weekly basis with the utmost excellence. In fact I believe scripture calls all believers to excellence. Colossians 3:17 says, "And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."

Anyways, for 3 hours (yes I know that's unbelievable but it didn't feel like 3 hours) we worshipped Christ and had fellowship together. We even went and bought the chinese version of donuts so that we could break bread together. When we started we just spontaneously began to sing songs about the King. Some songs we knew all the words to and finished and others we knew bits and pieces of each. We laughed a lot during these songs, lifted our hands and gave thanks to God for the lives he had given us.

My friend Chris began to share a word with us from Scripture. He never planned or processed what he shared but it was an absolute overflow of his time with the Lord that morning. I was convicted about my own personal time with Christ and that I need to spend much more time in the mornings with him.

After he shared a word from the scriptures we all shared what Christ was doing in our lives and our expectations of what he would do in our lives that week and then finished by worshiping him more.

After our 3 hours we decided to go eat lunch but this "house church" experience definitely marked my life. I appreciate the church in America, but as Matt Redman's song says, it was good to "get back to the heart of worship" for a Sunday in China.

Welcome to china

So we've been in china 3 days now and I'm sorry I'm just getting to post. This has been a great experience so far. I feel like a rock star here because every where we go people stop and stare at us. They are extremely friendly and interested in Americans.

Driving in china will scare the mess out of you. Our driver to the airport got lost so he turned around and starting driving down the wrong side of the street into oncoming traffic. I thought we were going to be in a head on collisionbut we made it fine. I won't be sitting in the front seat anymore though. In PG all the taxi cabs are motor bikes and it only cost about 24 cents to go anywhere I'm town.

I'm amazed at how cheap stuff is here. You can buy a 32 oz pepsi, sprite, or coke for 50 cents or a bottle of water for .25 cents. Meals have cost us about 3-4 dollars each and it's a ton of food. Surprisingly the food isn't bad. I've found a few things to eat every night and probably had the best fried rice ever yesterday. There are things like dog, rat on a stick and bloody meatballs that I'm not even thinking about eating. I just won't go there, nor will my stomach.

We started teaching at the school today. These students are brilliant and I'm amazed at how good their English is. I was given a Chinese name today but I can't pretend to know how to spell it so I won't try. They asked us to sing to their clas, which I did. You'd have thought i'd won a grammy by the standing ovation they gave me. I thought it was a pretty bad version of twinkle twinkle little star.

Pr for me because I'm getting sick. I've almost completely lost my voice but I'm pushing through. My Chinese friend got me some medice last night. I can read that is says Tylenol cold but that's about it.

I'm having to blog from my iPhone right now so I can't post pictures but I'll try to find a place and do it later.

The whole team is healthy, safe and having a great time. This is a great experience for all 12 of us.

Arrived in Hong Kong

Today I arrived in Hong Kong after an 11 hour flight all night long. It wasn't bad though. I went to the KLM counter to ask the lady what it would cost to upgrade to business class. To my surprise it was only $200 and I couldn't pull my credit card out fast enough. So I got to ride in the double decker part of the plane in business class and it was AMAZING!! My seat completely folded out into a bed so I got to sleep pretty well last night.

When I got into Hong Kong today I took a 40 minute public bus ride to the hotel, dropped my bags and took off. I took the subway to the peak to view the city from its highest point. The subway was great because most of the signs were in English. Below are some of the pictures I took with my camera from the peak. Looking over the city at night is absolutely beautiful. It was really cloudy today so some of the pictures didn't show up as well as I hoped but at least you will get an idea of what it looks like.






After I took the pictures I went and ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp and while I was there I got a text from Todd telling me he and the team had landed.

I went to the Hard Rock and bought a pin to add to the collection which give me a little something from Hong Kong.



I left the peak to meet up with everyone at the hotel and they all opted to go straight to bed. Todd, his son Colter and I went out to walk around for a bit. He took me to the street markets which are crazy. They set up and tear down these tents every day with their merchandise. We didn't really do any shopping but Colter found a soccer jersey he wants so I think we will be going back.

Tomorrow we leave at 6:15 AM to fly to Nanning and then drive to Pinggua. This has been a great trip so far and it will only get better. I'm so glad I've had this opportunity. Internet will be spotty at best in Pinggua so hopefully I'll be able to make a post or two but no promises.

I didn't get to post any pictures of Amsterdam so I'll put a few below. And on the Amsterdam note, I noticed three really interesting things. One it seems like everyone smokes, two all the women are super tall (I had to look up to like 80% of them) and third I've never seen that many bicycles in my life. That is the mode of transportation for most people in Amsterdam.



Above is Central Station which connects Amsterdam to about anywhere in Europe. Pretty looking cool building.



I thought it was interesting how narrow most of the streets are. They reminded me of a James Bond movie. The buildings and roads are beautiful because they are basically all brick.



I didn't realize how many canals ran through Amsterdam. They are really beautiful.



Not really sure what this building was but I thought it was a really cool looking building.



Not the best picture or angle but you can't come to Amsterdam without thinking about windmills.

Day 1 in Amsterdam

I'm in Amsterdam and I'm having a blast. I've flown literally half way around the world and in about 4 hours I'll start flying the other half. The flight was long but wasn't as bad as I thought. My seat had its on personal TV and there were a ton of movies to pick from. I watched the new Alice in Wonderland movie. Glad I got to watch it for free on the plane because it really wasn't my favorite. I ended up watching three movies and they also had a function on the screen where you could get updates on where the plane was in the world which was great.

I think there was about 1.5 hours of darkness outside during the whole flight. I've always heard the northern part of the world doesn't get much night time during the summer and now I've seen it.

The lady that sat next to me on the flight was crazy. She tapped on my shoulder about every 5 minutes (not exaggerating on this one) to ask me to help her do something. She couldn't figure out how to get the TV to work, she couldn't figure out where the bathroom was, you name it I had to help her. At first it wasn't bad but after about 3 hours of that it became frustrating. She would even tell me I bet it's driving you crazy that I keep bugging you for stuff. I just smiled and said no your fine but she was driving me crazy. Then about halfway through the flight she lost her ipod. We had 5 people searching for that thing and couldn't find it. I really thought she was going to break out in tears. She was on the verge of crying. When we landed she reached in her front pocket of her jeans and there was her ipod. Not sure how she didn't feel it there the whole time but whatever. O yeah and we got two choices for dinner. Pasta or Chicken. The lady kept begging me to get the opposite of what she wanted so she could try both. I don't hardly eat after my own child, there is no way I'm eating after the stranger from Tucson. Anyways, sorry for all the detail on her but that is what I dealt with for 9 hours last night.

Amsterdam today was interesting to say the least. I like the city. I think one of the things that amazed me was how narrow most of the roads are. It reminded me of a James Bond movie. Very old and cool and I love how most of the roads are brick. There isn't anything that just stands out about Amsterdam that makes me want to spend the money to come back but I'm glad I've been able to come here and I'm glad I'll have one more day one my way home.

I did go to the Van Gogh museum today and it was wonderful. It blew my mind at how amazing those paintings looked and they were painted over 130 years ago. There are some beautiful works of art in the museum.

I've been really tired today because the lady on the plane wouldn't let me sleep. She'd even tap my shoulder while I was trying to sleep and would wake me up. I probably wouldn't have slept much anyways. I left the city earlier than I had anticipated because I was so tired. I came to the airport and took a very warm shower which felt great. It woke me up and gave me a burst of energy. It's amazing what a shower and brushing your teeth can do.

Anyways having a great time and I can't wait to get to China. I leave in a few hours and have an 11 hour flight. I'm running on about 28 hours without sleep so I'm praying I can sleep on this flight. Thanks for following the blog. I can't wait to get to China to see what 'he' does in all our lives.

At the Little Rock Airport

Well here we go. I just checked in and went through security at the airport in Little Rock. I've got a little wait here before I fly to Atlanta.

Packing for this trip was interesting because I pack like a girl. I did get everything in my bag and carry on. I packed about 4 days worth of clothes in the carry on just in case my bag doesn't show up.

I'm a member of the Delta Sky club which is a lounge you can go to in larger airports. They have free drinks, food, internet, tvs etc. Well I found out the one in Amsterdam has showers so thats exciting. I think it will be nice to freshen up when I'm there since this is about a 48 hour journey from Little Rock to Hong Kong.

I hope that I have WiFi on the plane from ATL to AMS so that I can get on the computer because thats a long 9 hour flight.

I'll keep you posted throughout the trip but I'm on my way!!

Delta's mistake gone good, well in my opinion.

Last night I logged into my Delta account just to check my itinerary. I'm glad I did because I noticed that the flights I was supposed to be taking back from China was no longer there and in it's place were 11 different flights and none of it made sense to me.

When I originally booked my plane ticket I wanted to leave China on an afternoon flight so that I wasn't trying to get to the airport in the early hours of the morning. About a month ago Delta changed their flight schedule and the flight I was on was changed to leave very early in the morning. I called Delta to see if there was anything that could be done to get me on a flight that was late morning or afternoon. After an hour and a half of working with the delta agent we came to the conclusion that the only thing I could do was fly through Amsterdam. She said "unfortunately you will be there for 23 hours." Whatever. Unfortunately my foot. I'm all over 23 hours in Amsterdam because I've never been to Europe. So I got the confirmation email and I'm set.

So last night when I called to find out what happened to my flights the Delta Supervisor (who btw was amazing) informed me that when you fly overseas you have to fly there and back over the same ocean. The way the lady in May changed my ticket I was flying over the Pacific to China but over the Atlantic to get back to the good ol' USA. She said something in their computer system told my ticket there was a glitch and that couldn't happen and so it just kicked my ticket out.

My problem is that I've prepaid for my hotel in Amsterdam and it wasn't cheap. The lady told me she could refund my cost to the hotel and I told her honestly that stunk because I had never been to Europe and I was really looking forward to that. She said thats cool and thanks for being honest and then asked me to hold and she would see if there was anything she could do.

So long story short after two hours she told me if I had flexible travel she could hook me up. So now I'm flying from Little Rock to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Amsterdam on Wednesday and then Thursday I fly from Amsterdam to Hong Kong. Yes, I know its crazy. My dad just laughed and didn't really say anything else. But I really wanted to see Europe.

Between my Atlanta to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Hong Kong flight I have 13 hours to check out Amsterdam so I've got more time there now and I'm pretty excited. I almost ask her if I could fly out Tuesday and she could get me stuck in Paris for 24 hours but I didn't want to push my luck.

I calculated how many miles I will fly on this china trip. It's about 22,000 miles. That's crazy because I'm literally flying around the world.

The rest of our team is flying from Tulsa to Hong Kong through Newark so I wasn't traveling with them to begin with anyways. I've got points to use on Delta and because I always fly Delta for work and to see Landon I have some status as a Gold Medallion and I really loved the comfort of having that, especially since I'm staying a few extra days to go to Beijing.

So the journey starts in about 36 hours and I can't wait. Lot's to do tonight and tomorrow but this will be a great adventure. I'm excited to see what "he" does in all our lives!

Only 4 days away!!!

Got off the phone with my buddy Todd today who I'm going on the trip with. We are really excited about what we are going to experience over the next few weeks.

It's been a great relaxing weekend and I've been able to take care of some of the last minute details. Because I'm traveling overseas, I'm packing a few days worth of clothes and a tooth brush and toothpaste in my carryon. I had to go buy some of those items that TSA will allow in my carryon so I'm glad to have that done. Speaking of packing I think Dad and I are going to buy me some new luggage this week because mine is beginning to fall apart. Boring I know but I'm kinda excited about it.



As you can see I have read a ton about the country so I feel pretty prepared. My favorite travel guides have been the Eyewitness Travel guide. They show a ton of pictures which are great to me because I'm such a visual learner. Plus I don't think I'll be toting around a bunch of travel guides so maybe I'll recognize the places I want to visit from the pictures in the book.

I'm amazed at how many people have told me they are interested in reading the blog. Anyways, in 4 days I'll be on a plane headed to Hong Kong from Detroit.