There's a lovely team here from CA. A couple of strong, wise, wonderful adults and six young teens. Luke and I are kind of in love with them. Which is good, because we're supposed to stick with them all week as they run a five day club for kids and health classes for adults. This is our only real VBS outreach this year, so we're hoping to channel these unchurched kids into our Sunday school. The most exciting part is that the VBS is bilingual! Everything is presented in both English and Mandarin (and sometimes Cantonese). This is something we would love to be able to do all the time, but is only possible when churches like this one (another Chinese EFC on the opposite side of the country) volunteer it. We're so grateful to have them, and to get the opportunity to learn from them. I'm blown away by these kids, who are 12-16 but so mature and enthusiastic about the work God has given them!
As if an excellent team weren't enough encouragement, God gave me a fun bonus Monday. Following last summer's successful solving of the Rubix Cube, I decided to make this summer's hobby friendship bracelets. I've been taught how to weave these at countless summer camps and slumber parties, but I've never been able to make a bracelet on my own. So this summer, at 23, I intend to learn.
Not a week after I made that resolution, I met the CA team. And you know what they were doing when I walked into church Monday? Yep, making friendship bracelets! The girls were eager to share their skill - and string - with me, and by Monday night I'd made my first complete friendship bracelet! Since then, I've graduated to more difficult patterns and finished six bracelets and necklaces so far! I love having something to fiddle with when I'm not at church, and it's so fun to be able to give such simple handmade gifts away, and receive them as well.
Of course God had no obligation to help me with my silly summer goal, and the fact that He provided even that is so incredible to me! If He is attuned enough to my life to give me that tiny thing that I never would have expected from Him, what more is He waiting to do? The summer's barely begun and already I've seen so much! SAY Yes starts Monday, so I know there will be more soon. I can only thank God who gives above and beyond anything I could ever ask or imagine!
