Love English Camp

Here are some of the students, group leaders, and teachers of the camp. It was a really exciting trip. 3 professors from our department took 21 of our university students, joined with ~50 people from 3 Hong Kong churches and 1 Los Angeles church, and ~20 university students from Wuhan, ran two parallel summer camps in 2 high schools in separate cities in Hubei, for a total of 300 high school students. Imagine the logistics involved - the organizers did an amazing job in pulling it off.

The camps ran for 5 and ½ days, from 9 am to 10 pm each day. With lots of songs, English lessons on phonics, word and other games, arts and crafts, workshops for writing stories, video shooting with digital cameras, and video editing on the computers. Coming back to the hotel around 10:30 pm, we still have to debrief, and to prepare for the following day (with some cup noodles mixed in somewhere along the line), often staying up until 2, 3, 4 am, and getting up again at 7 am.

With the heat (T-shirts drenched, dried, and drenched again several times a day), the long hours, the greasy and spicy food, the dusty and filthy environment, the running around, and particularly the emotional interactions with the kids (it was impossible not to feel for them), it was extremely exhausting. Many of us came down with minor ailments. But seeing their happy faces, everyone agreed it was worth it, and would like to return. When the kids showed interest, we would share with them our own stories and faith. In the end, more than 80 kids put their faith in Jesus. Totally amazing!