Day 4: Kids camp

hello dear, how are you? miss you :)

Today is the second day of the kid camp, it’s also the last full day, as we will only be doing a half day camp tomorrow.

Thankfully today was a bit cooler than yesterday (or I might just have adjusted to the heat here, haha), I think I feel less exhausted today.

I have been feeling really grateful to be part of this trip so far. There are just so many small, detailed moments that made me feel God’s touch throughout this journey. Whether it is during my non verbal interactions with village kids here (because they can’t speak English), the time with the team during meals and sharing time, or even the car ride to the mountain village as I look out to the window and appreciate the beautiful nature, it’s been such an “eye”-opening experience.

I find it kinda funny, you know how I shared that I felt nervous and self-doubting about having to lead the worship. In the end, because some kids are really small and our projector for lyrics didn’t work, I had to pivot to let the translator teach them the Vietnamese version. In order to do that, I also had to make a last minute song change. But that turned out to be really successful, the translator was so good with kids, and we worked together to make it really fun for the kids. I am also so thankful that I have the experience to improvise with music, which turned out to be the most important skill to do this.

And that is not even the most heart-touching moment for me in this camp so far. It was the interactions I had with the kids, their very adorable smiles and excitement even though they can’t speak english, they were just really happy and refreshed to see some foreigners visiting them.

I also started to bond with the team as we have deeper sharing and more interactions. Maybe I can share more about that with you here closer to the end of the trip. But basically one thing I has been quite cautious about during this trip is I tried not to force myself to social when I don’t feel like to. So I have been such an introvert compared to most of them. But even though I am just listening to their sharing a lot of times, I can feel that I am being encouraged, it’s like God showing me that all these time I have been feeling alone or weird just because sometimes I can be quite “spiritual”, but there’re actually people out there who might have a different faith journey, but still ended up encountering God in their own unique ways. And over the last 4 days, I am starting to feel more comfortable to share about myself and my faith journey.

So our trip leader has asked one person each day to share about their testimony/faith journey, and I volunteered to do that for tomorrow. I won’t go into the details and will keep it light, but I am still quite nervous because as you know, I am a super shy person and it’s so uncomfortable for me to open up and talk about myself. But I think that will be a good “stretch” for me :)

I need to wake up at 6am again tomorrow and we will be leaving Buon Ma Thuot. Before I go to bed, let me show you some photos :)

This is a lake next to the church we’ve been in. It was very beautiful with cows, chickens, ducks etc.

This is all the adults in our team, the girl next to me is the trip leader

Unfortunately I can’t put any photos of the church or the kids/camp as public content to protect them. But here is a shy boy in our team who loves psyduck too, and we bonded and had a selfie. And some photos of the place :)

Good night dear 🤍