You Make It Work

Since getting back from Burma, I've been pretty busy! I went to work for two days and then had Sunday off, and then the following week was pretty relaxed because most of the preparations for the end of the sports season were already done beforehand. Last weekend (Saturday) I left to Taipei with one of our teams as a chaperone, came back on Tuesday, and got asked to be a Site Director for a volleyball tournament we hosted. This tournament is the Big Mama of them all: the Asia Pacific Activities Conference Volleyball tournament. As I write this, the men's championship is about to begin! But let's cover the older stuff first.

So as soon as I got back from Burma, I coached my volleyball team and cross country teams to the end of their seasons. It was kind of a bummer, but it's also good to be done! My volleyball girls are a bunch of cuties. They're almost all ninth graders, with a couple of tens and elevens mixed in, but just watching them interact with each other (not to mention with boys) is a pretty funny sight. They're from all different cultures and none of them are catty at all, so they make it work. That's sort of a theme with international schools from what little I've seen: you make it work.

That Saturday, I left the school at 0600 for the airport with the dance team. I was looking forward to traveling somewhere else of course, but I wasn't too enthused about going with the dance team. I've never been exposed to dance culture at all. No clue about the terminology, what's considered beautiful and what's a mistake, and how to evaluate it. Now that I've done it, I appreciate dance a lot more. It's pretty fuzzy as to the evaluation of it because there's just no way to communicate something through the way you move your body. There was one girl at the school that hosted us that blew my mind. She walked up on stage, and said, "this song is about grief." That's it. I was expecting a slow, fluid dance, but what she did was so cool because it was a sad song but it was a faster pace than most slow songs. It had a beat to it and not all of her movements were fluid; they were pretty sharp at some points. I haven't had a walk in the park this past year. I'm not as well-acquainted with grief as some, but I know grief. 

A year ago from this past week I broke off an engagement to a girl from school. It was a very difficult process. I won't give the reasons for it, but it was something that I prayed over and fasted a lot. There are some wrong decisions that you can make in life and there are right ones. This one was a hard one to decide, but through a lot of counsel and prayer, I made it with this advice: "There are some choices that we will never know the right decision to. Some choices don't have a clear enough biblical basis to decide. Your task is to make a decision, and whether right or wrong, to live righteously with whatever consequences come." Isn't that beautiful? I think God expects us to make wrong decisions but what made Abraham righteous and what made David a man after God's own heart (despite their poor choices) was the fact that their lives, though tainted by sinful choices, were lived righteously in the ensuing consequences. Repentance followed for the wrong decisions, and the best was made of them. Much like an international school, you make it work, poor decisions and all. So was my decision "right"? I believe so but who really knows? What I do know is that God is pleased in the way it was done because it was made with a focus on Him at the front of it. The consequences that came from the decision were dealt with with righteousness in mind.

After that decision a year ago, life was difficult dealing with the grief. The young lady's dance that depicted grief was so beautiful because grief is not slow and fluid. The last year has been the fastest year yet because it's been filled with grief. This girl, Kimmie, danced grief so well. Fast and sharp at times, but slow and thoughtful at others. Well done, Kimmie. You made your dance work.

We saw the sights in Taipei, and they were some sights to see for sure. Taipei 101 is a 101-story building that overlooks the city. It's gorgeous up there. It was a little bit cloudy, but it sure was cool. We also went to a boardwalk along the river called Dom Xue (shway), and that was pretty beautiful too. On the flight back, I got the privilege of talking to a young lady from the team about some problems she was having, and she asked me what I believed. I basically gave her what I said in my first blog post and we talked about it for 3 and a half hours! It was a late night flight and everyone looked like they were asleep, except for one girl (who is also from my volleyball team) writing on a piece of paper presumably doing homework. When we landed, they all came over to me and asked me questions and gave some input. It was a great conversation because the full gospel was never compromised, but at the same time, the girl I was talking to never once interpreted what I said personally. There's a difference between a soft gospel and "the gospel." The gospel is offensive by nature, like most of the New Testament says. When people say Christians are judgmental, they're interpreting it as the Christian judging them, when in reality Scripture is judging them and the Christian is the deliverer of the offensive message. A good conversation is one where the non-believer understands that they are being judged but they are still on good terms with the messenger because it isn't personal at all. A conversation where the word "judgmental" comes up can also be good because seeds are planted but rarely do those conversations lead to further conversations and real relationship building. This girl and I had a good conversation, not because of the way I presented it, though I felt that it was done thoughtfully and tactfully, but rather because of the way God works. I see her everyday at school and because of how the conversation went it's totally possible for me to talk to her more. Beautiful. Oh and the girl writing in her book? She was taking 11 pages of notes. THAT tells me that the harvest is indeed ripe for picking at the Western Academy of Beijing. What a good opportunity, huh?

After I got back, I walked into the office and got asked to be a site director for APAC volleyball. What a huge honor! The tournament was from Wednesday-Saturday at 10pm and it was awesome! So much skill and practice and heart! Those kids were great. It was a very well-organized tournament on the part of our office, and I was very blessed to be a part of that.

I also got asked to be a TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR for another volleyball tournament this Saturday! That's a huge thing to put on a resume, and I'm pretty excited to do it. Planning has been a big task but things are wrapping up and now it's just the execution of it. After that, the church kids are away at camp for the weekend so I have Sunday off and I'll get to relax :)

So the moral of the blog post is: life always gets worked out. From stressing out about big decisions to working in an international school, the Lord holds everything and makes things work. He sustains, preserves, and organizes. He's a Doer. The personal moral of the story is that the gospel is spreading in China because the Lord chose to put me here. It's been an honor so far to serve him here.