I surrender all

Man, God is so good.

I led my first full worship set at React this past Thursday. It was great working with such talented musicians because our practices went smoothly and the end result was glorious. I think God blessed the congregation through allowing me to use this set as a response to what He has done in my life during the past 2 weeks. Not only was I able to sing from my heart to reflect His truth, but I also had an opportunity to share about my China in Pomona experience in between the sets. I thank God for giving me this chance to bless my brothers and sisters in Irvine!

I have diagnosed myself with CIP Withdrawal due to symptoms including an extreme desire to speak Mandarin, a new ear for Chinese worship (STREAM OF PRAISE), and a strange urge to talk about Justin Bieber. Just kidding about that last one.

Yesterday I had lunch with my good buddy Jimmy and got to share with him what God has been doing in my life during the past year. I was really blessed that he was really blessed by what I had to share. I was also really blessed by what he had to share about his experience in the middle school ministry at Newsong. AHHH so much blessing everywhere! TFG.

In the afternoon, the entire apartment was gone and I was bored out of my mind, so I rode Fukuda’s bike to a beautiful isolated grass field behind Turtle Rock, sat under a tree and prayed my heart out for the students from China. God gave me so much peace and joy there. I know that He has their steps carefully planned out and that He will use “中國的未來” to impact the world.

Here are some pictures from CIP (sorry if they’re a bit blurry):

^My friend Jason translating in the Christian beliefs class (spiritual law #1!)

^Jason and Pam teaching the Christian beliefs class (yes that kid’s name is indeed “Cloud”. We also had an “Air” and “Sunny” ehehe)

^Pam, Jason, and me with one of our students

^Performing 禱告 with two students

^The three girls that Jason & Nina hosted at their house, this was taken just before they left on the buses (I miss them *tear)

Well… although this adventure has come to an end, I know God has new beginnings to show me so I will ask and seek and knock and wait patiently for the next journey He will take me on.

Thank you Lord for Your abounding grace, 我的嘴必充滿讚美。

This morning, we sent off all the Chinese students from church. The past 12 days I spent with my little brothers and sisters from the Mainland have become the highlight of my summer. Many tears were shed because of the amazing bonds and relationships that have been formed with friends, teachers, and host families. This was an experience I will never forget. I saw God working through us every single day and He has done a great work in these students. For the seeds that have been sown, we pray for continual nurturing and growth in their spirits.

Yesterday, two middle school boys ran up to Pam (the Bible class teacher), gave her a big hug, and told her, “Because of you (referring to all of us teachers), now we know Jesus!” When Pam told me this, I started tearing up instantly. NOW THEY KNOW JESUS!!! Also, this morning, before we left, two girls prayed to receive Christ with Jason as the translator. That was SO BEAUTIFUL. We are so blessed to be given this opportunity to witness the eternal impact of the Gospel in these students.

I’m going to miss them all very much, even the girls that had extreme cases of Bieber Fever (this is a whole ‘nother story in itself). In Jesus’ name, I pray protection and safety over them for their last 9 days in the US, and in the midst of all the chaos and confusion, that they would never forget to 禱告, pray.

奉主耶穌基督的名求, 阿門。

Let’s shine for Jesus.

Jesus was CLEARLY in Pomona this week. He showed up like a rushing wind and swept us all off our feet. I still feel like I’m floating……….. AS;DLFKJfjas

Today was the last day of class for the students from China. I didn’t realize I would get so attached to them :(. Even though I’ll still be seeing them on Sunday-Tuesday, I don’t want them to leave! Yea this whole trip was planned for the students and to give them a chance to accept Jesus, which is totally freaking awesome, but man I felt like this trip was planned for ME to give ME a chance to receive more revelation from the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE. I wouldn’t be surprised if Holy Spirit is having a bonfire and cooking smores in my heart right now because I feel a burning warmth and the sweet aroma of His love inside me…… T.F.G.

Near the end of each class, we gave students an opportunity to nail their sins to the cross. We set a huge wooden cross down in the front of the classroom and provided them with pushpins and small sheets of paper. It was a beautiful sight, to see so many of these young ones closing their eyes and folding their hands in sincere prayer to God, whom many of them have just heard about not more than a week ago, and then nailing their sins to the cross as a sign of confession and repentance. If you were there you would have CRIED SO HARD. No lie.

I don’t know if many of them did truly accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but His name… the sweet, sweet name of Jesus Christ is now on the curious hearts of every single student from China that passed through Pomona this week. They have heard and felt a part of His endless love and UNFAILING GRACE AND MERCY. Now they know. Now they know the Truth! Now they have hope for eternity! Now they can know and experience the fullness of the power of God’s love in their lives. They are the future of China and they are God’s ELECT in a key nation that will bring the Gospel BACK TO JERUSALEM.

I had a wild time in the car tonight… by myself! And Holy Spirit of course. OH THE JOY. OH THE PEACE. OH THE SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS BECAUSE I CAN AND I FEEL LIKE IT. An “eruption of glory” I like to call it. I want to be a volcano of love.. HAHA Jesus make me a volcano of love!!

I’m really sorry if my blog posts are hard to follow! It’s difficult to keep things linear when I’m just trying to pour out as much of what is on my heart as possible. I think I’m about done though, but if I remember something major that I want to retain on the interwebs… I’ll be back to bring you more CHINA IN POMONA.

Let’s shine for JESUS.

TOO. FREAKING. GOOD.

Those are the three words to describe my week so far. WOW! My spirit is BLAZING right now. It’s been blazing all week, actually. Funny thing, cus my prayer for the last few weeks has been “God, I want to be on fire for you 24/7.” I’m surprised my clothes haven’t burst into flames yet. Shoot… I dunno where to start!

I guess just to start off, I want to share the questions that some students left in our anonymous question box at the back of the classroom. Some of the simplified Chinese was difficult for me to read so I tried using context clues. They are SO CURIOUS about God and I can see a stirring of and a hunger for more in their spirits:

• Why God love us?
• How God help us?
• Why we need believe God?
• Is there a God or not?
• I did a lot of wrong things, can I go to heaven, or I need go to hell?
• How does heaven and hell look like?
• How can I go to heaven?
• How can I love others?
• How to put love in my heart? <—such a sincere question 
• What can’t God do?
• 神會幫助和愛每一個人,但神會需要我們的愛嗎? <—so deep
• 如果我們需要神幫助和賜給我們力量,那誰又去幫助神呢?
• 為什麼神愛我們?
• 神為什麼創造天地?
• 為什麼我們沒有看到神?
• 聖經是誰寫的?
• Jesus帥不帥,長成什麼樣? 而神又長成什麼樣? <—“was Jesus good-looking? what about God?”
• Why does God help us?
• Why does he love us?
• Nobody knows and understands God’s feeling, is He lonely? <—so cute

I’m also seeing my Chinese improve in front of my eyes. This is mostly due to the fact that most of the students’ English levels are horrible (in a good way) so I’m forced to communicate in pure, unadulterated Mandarin Chinese. Thanks JESUS! Answered prayer much? THIS IS GREAT.

So as I said in my last post, I was planning on sharing a song called 禱告 (prayer) with the students in my classes today. I LOVE this song. It has such powerful lyrics. If you can understand it, listen to the whole thing and tell me how hard it is to hold back the emotions. Actually, listen to it whether or not you can understand because it’s just such a beautiful song. Today, the response was amazing. Not only was I able to share my passion for prayer with the students, but a handful of students even approached me wanting to learn to play and sing the song! PRAISE JESUS. These kids, who have only stepped into a church for the first time not even a week ago, are already declaring that they will live for Jesus through the lyrics. The last line of the song: 你恩典够我用, which means “Your grace is enough for me” sounds so beautiful in Chinese…. OH GOD AAJSHLKJAHSF;lakj; (my textual interpretation of the heavenly language)

I can’t BELIEVE what is happening this week. I thought last year’s trip was almost close to the extent of how much God can work through me… but man He blew past those standards I subconsciously set for Him like a freight train plowing through a puny Smart Car (no offence to Smart Car drivers; it just seemed appropriate to use in this analogy). After E-camp missions in Taiwan was cancelled—and cancelled TWICE—I thought Summer was just going to be a very uneventful season of working and sleeping and waiting for Fall to come, but He brought the opportunity straight to my front door. AHHHHHHHHHH GOD YOUR PLANS ARE SO PERFECT!! HOW DO YOU COORDINATE EVERYTHING SO WELL??! He’s gottabe using the new iCalendar on OSX Lion of Judah.

GLORY GLORY GLORY GLORY GLORY GLORY GLORY GLORY——-

TOO. FREAKING. GOOD.

Day 3 update: I was able to share the Gospel with a boy named Jerry this afternoon. He had a ton of questions during class so I told him to come talk to me after lunch. Jerry reminded me so much of a student from Taiwan last year that I got to share with, named Jeremy (is it coincidence that their names are only off by a few letters?) Jerry was one of the few that are so curious and eager to believe! Oh and he probably has the best English of all the students there so I was able to use English for a good 40% of the conversation. Some things that I got to explain to him were Jesus’ payment for our sins and what it meant to be “reborn.” SOOOO GOOOD.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing with our classes a song called “禱告”, or “Prayer.” I first heard this song in Taiwan and it was so powerful—so many students 被感動 and were moved to tears. I’m praying that God will do the same through the song for the kids in this program. HOLY SPIRIT SING THROUGH ME! BURN IN ME!! BRING AN ERUPTION OF GLORY ALL AROUND US!!

Let’s shine for Jesus.

Side-update: MY FRIEND’S 1.5 YO DAUGHTER, ABBIE, CAN SAY “Y.Y.” and “哥哥” now!!! She can’t say them together but she can say them separately! SUCCESS. She also reminds me of Lily from MODERN FAMILY lolol

AKA China in Pomona part 2

I’m not gonna write too much today because I need to start sleeping earlier. These 10 hour days are becoming 12 hour days because of all the hanging out after classes and dinner with J’s family and the 3 girls they are hosting. I need to make sure I’m not falling asleep during class like in Taiwan (“the definition of bad students” lols).

Three main praises today:
1) It appears that Jason and I are literally the only two people there that can speak both languages fluently (at least conversational for me), so I was asked to help out in a different class today for a little bit. They had me explain (in Chinese) the activity/simulation they wanted to do with the students in the history class. I definitely felt a lot more comfortable explaining instructions and the activity than translating phrase after phrase. I’m so glad I had this opportunity because it really reinforced the reason why God brought me here.
2) Class went very smoothly today. The kids were so involved in the skit (the unmerciful servant), one class even went to the extent of doing it all in Sichuanese, which sounds REALLY funny to me. Actually the whole class was laughing but I don’t know if it’s because of what they were saying or the dialect actually sounded funny to them too.. Anyway, we were able to explain to them the concepts of Justice, Grace, and Mercy which a lot of them thoroughly understood. I could tell by the number of heads nodding to the explanations and analogies that the teachers used to depict each.
3) After classes were over, we got in the van back to J’s. If you want to know how the ride went.. imagine sitting near three of the most bratty teenagers you’ve ever met talking at the top of their lungs in Chinese NONSTOP. LITERALLY NONSTOP!! Now how is this a praise? It was actually more amusing than annoying because I was wondering if they were ever gonna run out of things to say. Plus, I’m starting to feel more comfortable speaking Chinese to them. Also, I figured that their favorite phrase is “去死吧!” or, literally, “GO DIE.” I spent several more hours with them at Jason’s. The more I observed how they acted, the more their behavior felt so OUT THERE. One of them even asked me if I ever had plastic surgery—I guess that’s a compliment??

My confidence in speaking Chinese with the students skyrocketed today. My vocabulary is still really subpar (I could barely explain to them how to play UNO, the card game), but I know that God is doing a good work through me either way. Anyway that’s today’s update. I’ll try to update on here daily because I don’t have time during the day to write in my journal like I usually would and I wanna be able to look back at this someday.

Let’s shine for Jesus (man it felt good to type that again)

This was originally an update email that I wrote in response to Elliott Kwong’s (lookitsell) email update about his 3-month stay in China, but a few paragraphs in… I thought it started sounding more and more like a blog post – with a few added exclamations of “ELLIOTT!!” – so here it is (I made a few edits):

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ELLIOTT!! A crazy opportunity came up for me! Well I knew about this for more than a month, but it finally hit me today that I’m actually on a(n inverse) missions trip!

So my friend Jason asked me to help him out at his church this week. They are holding this annual camp/trip thing called “China in Pomona” where they have 100 or so kids come to the US from China and stay at host families’ houses and go to their church every day for classes and activities. I call it inverse missions because instead of me going to the nations… the nations are coming to me! You might have seen that on my Facebook status, hehe.

Today was the first day of a week-long session, and this church in Pomona is pretty much an all-white church, so Jason and I were the only Asian Americans there. Funny story: we were introduced to one of the church members today and I guess he thought we were part of the China group so he said to us, “Welcome to our country!” HAHAHA I wanted to burst out laughing and I didn’t know how to respond but he was already busy with another conversation pretty much right after. I guess I looked pretty fobby with the bag I got from Taiwan…? Anyway I thought it was HILARIOUS because that has never happened to me before.

Jason and this older black lady are teaching the Christian beliefs and faith class, so my job is to help with name tags, facilitate discussions, answer questions, and other TA stuff. Most of these kids are in jr. high to high school so they have a TON of energy. It’s hard to keep up with them even at this age… I’m only 20 so I don’t know how the other teachers are doing it. Also, a large majority of them come from wealthy backgrounds, which makes things interesting. Jason and his wife took the 3 girls that are living with them to the Apple Store because they said they wanted to buy iPods, iPhones, and iAnythings. I saw a decent amount of iPad 2s and iPhones in the hands of a lot of the kids today so I bet they all went on a shopping spree this past weekend with their host families.

Anyway, this entire experience (WOW IT’S ACTUALLY ONLY BEEN A DAY SO FAR) is totally nostalgic of my time in Taiwan last year, except this time it’s with younger people and they’re from the MAINLAND. It’s so hard to understand what they’re saying sometimes cus I’m not used to their accents. I’m sure you (Elliott) are improving by leaps and bounds though! SO LUCKY. This camp thing is going on all week til Friday and I pretty much wake up at 7 and don’t get back home til around 5. It’s tiring, frustrating at times, and it’s draining too because I have to be in the same classroom for 5 classes (1 hour each) listening to the same lesson over and over, and there’s no one my age to talk to or connect with so I get bored very quickly. I even had thoughts of “man.. I’m not even getting paid for this, I could be at Jamba Juice right now making a good 9 bucks an hour,” but total super-rebuke all up in my face when I realized that I’m so worried about my time and money when there is huge eternal impact at hand. I really want to see breakthrough in these kids. And even if there isn’t, I know that they will be closer to Jesus than they ever were before.

Another thing that frustrates me is that my Chinese isn’t too great at the moment. I have such a passion for language* but I feel like I’ve been spreading myself too thin by taking up Korean when my Chinese is still subpar. Sometimes when the kids ask questions about God, I have the perfect answer (to my understanding) in my head, but I can’t express it in CHINESE. And a handful of them barely understand English – their English levels are probably lower than my Chinese – so I can’t even say it in simple English terms. You are so blessed to have the opportunity to learn more Chinese ELLIOTT!! For the KINGDOM!!

Dang this email totally turned into a pseudo blog post. Actually, now that I think about it, I haven’t updated my tumblr in a while so I might just post this up, HAHA! Sorry if this took a long time to read. I’m looking forward to your next update El.

<3
JTang
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*I believe that language is such a key tool in the advancement of the Gospel. It can so easily bridge gaps and tear down walls that exist because of language barriers. Yes, love is a universal language and we can spread the message of Jesus through actions, but pair that with WORDS that they can comprehend and you’ll be able to form even stronger relationships. Oh, and you also get access to communication with millions or even billions of people once you’ve mastered any major language. — Or we can just continue teaching the world English and it’ll be much easier for everyone (justkidding).