Nehemiah Update 2

We are now eight hours into our flight to Taipei. Most of the students are asleep, a few are awake, staring at the movie screen. It’s been a tiring but satisfying trip so far. But before I get too far ahead, let’s see if I can reconstruct the last few days.

The first-year teams arrived last Saturday. Nehemiah was in charge of making dinner and serving dinner to the just-arrived and shell-shocked students. Nehemiah crushed it!  Divided between the six teams, they were prepared, organized, and confident. The meal went like clockwork and according to the schedule – a task that’s not always as easy as you would think.

Keeping our regular schedule of morning silent times, devotions, and discussion, we added cleaning the bathrooms each day before breakfast, and teaching the first year students drama and puppets each afternoon. Between Sunday and Wednesday, they taught the teams two dramas and four puppet skits that they’ll use for outreach once they get to their ministry locations. It was a great learning experience, and each evening we would take time to discuss what they did right and what they could have done better in their teaching. There was a lot of learning but they got better each day!

We might have had an interruption to our day on Tuesday, when a strong storm brewed and hit the camp hard during dinner on Tuesday. Thankfully, all Nehemiah students can swim and therefore didn’t drown when they finally got in their tents. We had to sleep in the Admin building that night and put up new tents the next morning between continuing rain showers. The old tents all went to the dumpster.

Wednesday was travel day, and it was a whirlwind! We have three Leadership Groups (LG’s), The Orphans (Nora, Maren, Colton, and Lydia), Nealmiah – which is a play on the first letter of each of their names (Nessa, Eli, Abbigail, and Liam), and RomCom (Renae, Madison, and Ollie). First up to lead was the Orphans. Their job was to pack us up out of Training Camp and get the team to Chicago and on to the plane to Seattle.

The Orphans had the team up at 5:00, and out of camp to the laundromat by 5:15. Then off to Walmart and Dunkin for breakfast and a few last items. We were back at camp at 9:00 and began the packing process. After lunch, they were back training the skill groups for the last time, and began tearing down our cooking cabana and team meeting area. It was a full day and everyone was in their tents by 9:30. But we were up again and off for the three-hour drive (me) to Chicago by 1:30 am. The drive went smoothly, and we got to Seattle without a hitch, where Nealmiah took over. So far, so good! Once we land, they have to navigate us through customs, and then on to Taipei’s subway, followed by a short walk for the final lap of our travel day.

As you can imagine, the team is pretty tired. But their attitudes are great and the overall morale of the team is positive and optimistic. They spontaneously sing a lot – I like that. And at Training Camp, they were gathering on their own initiative to pray before getting in the tents and after praying together in the barn. They are also a loud team. That’s not a bad thing, they just have to rein it in a bit at times.  Not everyone is loud, of course, but we have some individuals who make up for the quiet ones! But our quiet time discussions are lively and full of questions, and most students join in when we pray. It’s a solid team and I look forward to seeing them take on the challenges of ministry.  

Addendum: We landed at 8:00 pm local time and finally made it to the hotel around 10:30 after navigating customs, the train, and the subway system. I lost count of how many escalators we went up and down. But the team is finally lying flat, and tomorrow begins our first day overseas.

For the Nehemiah team,

Tom

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