With the Youths

I finally understand all the rain…its rainy season over here! From April until the end of June it rains a lot and gets very humid. I was told today that the best time to visit Shanghai is in the month of October, where it’s still warm but not humid. Whenever I travel back to China I need to remember that…

Today I hung out again with Amy and Christy, and we went to their youth group that meets every Saturday. Background info: they went to a German International school while in Shanghai, and this youth group is for International students. I’m pretty sure that Chinese students aren’t allowed to participate, but there were probably about 60 people there that were from the U.S. and Japan and Singapore. It was AWESOME! They have a small-ish room in the basement of the church with beanbags and a couple couches. We worshipped in song (the songs that are typically sung at U.S. youth groups) with one person up front playing a guitar. Afterwards, one of the students (a junior) gave a talk about the “Greatest Love Story”; he had a powerpoint and other media prepared. I thought it was very brave for him to go up there and do a 45 minute talk, and bold of the staff to structure their weekly meetings with students taking the stage.

When one of the staff members was making announcements, she talked a little about missions and how it’s common for people to go to impoverished areas to do mission work (they are participating in a habitat for humanity build next week in Sichuan where an Earthquake hit…not necessarily a missions trip, but serving those people down there). She then went on to say how that people shouldn’t forget about the spiritually impoverished areas such as Japan, England, and the United States. This lady was talking about people being missionaries in the States, something I really haven’t heard much before (probably because being from the states you would want to be living out your faith anyway).

It was a cool experience and I was glad to see what established churches (or in this case, a youth group) looked like in China—even if it didn’t have any Chinese people.

Tomorrow is my last full day in China. This trip has gone by so fast. Be sure to check back tomorrow for my last blog post, it should be a good one to end on ;)

-Alex