Hello everybody,
Here is bit of a rundown on what it was like followed by what we did.
So Woodsy, who is the dean of students, and i set out on a 9 hour flight to Hong Kong from Sydney on Thursday April 4, after leaving the school at 7am. We set out trying to be like brothers instead of teacher and student. I watched Sweeney Todd the second time and also watched Juno on the plane. As we came into Hong Kong, we went under the clouds and i was hoping i would get to see Hong Kong as the sun set from the air. We didn’t leave the cloud, at all, we landed on the runway in fog. After getting off the plane Nathaniel and a brother from the house picked us up and we bought them Burger King. We got to the house and the guys were all sitting around in the common area. There were probably about 10 guys that were older (like 40-60) some guys around 30ish and probably 10-15 guys around 18-25. I met them all but only remembered one or two names because they were Chinese names and alot were very similar sounding. I wasn’t sure what to do so i basically followed Woodsy around most of the time because he had worked there for 4 years before and knew most of what was going on, along with some Cantonese (which i knew exactly none of). After unpacking some gifts downstairs, we went up to our rooms. I was on the top bunk in a room with 4 beds on the second floor and woodsy was on the 3rd floor. I got a drawer to put all my stuff in on the second day, it was full. The guys all went to bed at 10 and they turned on the hot water so i could have a hot shower.
That was the first night. It was weird not to be able to just talk to people, it was a learning experience. Made good friends with one guy (Sai Wai Leung) right off the bat, even though he know barely any English.
A little background, each day we got up at 7:30, had a little excercise, brekkie(rice noodles...) 10 minutes of praying in tongues and just under an hour of quiet time (awesome). Then a half hour break followed by worship in Cantonese and a bible study of sorts. Then usually an hour of duties. Lunch at 1:30ish, afternoon tea at 3:30, dinner at 6:30 and worship at 7:45 ish for about an hour. The weather was hot, around 25-30 during the day, even if the sun was hidden by the fog, it was really humid, about 75%. My contacts got dirty from the moisture and pollution so i stopped wearing them in Hong Kong after a few days. The hill the houses were on was a decent sized foothill/mountain and have a nice view of New Territory/Sha Tin. They were building a 5th house for the teenagers with a schoolroom and a pool, also a conference center. Newboy house was started all on faith, they don’t charge money to anyone to stay there/live there, its all on faith that God will provide, and God has provided the funds and people to keep it going and expanding for 40 years. The transit in Hong Kong is amazing. There is even a shuttle bus that stops at the house every 20 minutes. There were double decker busses everywhere, way more then there were cars. Everyone takes busses and the trains there (except those that have a ton of money) because you can get anywhere by transit. There are something like 9 or 10 train lines that service the city, going all sorts of directions and with service it seemed like every 5 minutes.
On the Friday we got up and had rice noodles for brekkie, yuck. At 12 Woodsy and I were on gate duty, so we sat there and talked and prayed while signing people in and out until 6. We came back to the house and had worship.
On the Saturday we hung out with the guys and played some soccer. On Sunday we got to leave the house to go to church at Kowloon Vineyard. We left around 10 and made our way from Sha Tin to Tsim Sha Jui where we changed our money to Hong Kong dollars and got some really good Chinese lunch, then we got on another bus (there were double decker busses everywhere!!) to the church, which is at a college in another part of Hong Kong. The service was really cool and a really cool thing happened. God used me to pray for Woodsy. He responded to a word that was given, two of us prayed for him. Woodsy said he didn’t get much from what the other guy said, but my prayer seemed like it was spoken right into his heart and was exactly what he needed to hear. it was also an answer to our prayers that we could be like brothers....It’s hard to explain it online but just know it was so cool to experience that, and with the dean of students from capernwray. God did some cool stuff while i was in Hong kong, providing things i was looking for, having busses show up after less then 5 minutes almost everytime we took one, exciting news from home, new experiences. Great stuff, i even got to pray for Jackie Pullinger twice which honestly Woodsy was more excited about then i was, but she is a great lady...
Before i get off track, lets keep going. That week was hard at first because i got really sick at the beginning of the week. The people in our house noticed i wasn’t doing well during the afternoon, i felt naseaus, had the chills (it was like 25 degrees)a sore throat and a headache. So about 5 of them prayed for me to be healed, i went to bed after soccer and woke up the next morning better, my throat was still a little sore but i was much better, and i got to sleep for over 12 hours, awesome.
On Tuesday April 8, we took one of the helpers out for coffee then went to the drug addict meeting, which was interesting. Afterwards we rushed back as i had a night duty. My night duty i stayed up and talked to one of the 2 newboys (Ah Cheung) and prayed for him with another guy til about 2:30am.
Wednesday to Friday went well, we went into Sha Tin on Friday to buy things for an English class we were helping to lead. One of the helpers was starting two English classes that week so we were part of that. There were about 10 in the beginner one and 3 guys in the intermediate English. The more advanced one was cool because we could just talk to them and one of the guys asked me to share my testimony so i did that and it was totally cool, i wasn’t expecting that at all. It had become easier to connect with some of the guys as i talked to more of them and connected a bit with the ones that spoke English. I learned more Cantonese with the help of a few of the guys my age which was cool, and they enjoyed teaching me.
On the Saturday Woodsy and i had our holiday. We left in the morning, got some Mcdonalds in Tsim Sau jaui, then got some starbucks (we had starbucks and mcdonalds pretty much every day we left the house, way to much). I found out some awesome news when we stopped at the YMCA to check our emails on the net, my sister Natalie had her second baby. My little nephew! – Silas Josiah Thacker (i kinda thought it would be boy). Silas was born on Tuesday April 8, 2008. After getting that good news and also some news about my U of C application, we jumped on the ferry and it was really foggy but we saw a bit of the huge buildings going over. We met up with a friend of Woodsy’s (Gin Kurn – or Joel) and did some shopping in times square and that area of Hong Kong island. Later we went for lunch with some other friends of Woodsy (Ron and his family) and then went and got foot massages (that was cool, first time doing that). We did a little more shopping, went to Ron’s and then to KFC before going back to the house. Sunday we went to the church again.
On Monday we made spaghetti dinner (along with garlic bread) for the house, it was a day full of cooking and a little shopping, where i had a good chat with A Lam and then got my haircut finished by Dai Wai Leung. The guys loved the food (it was good, but Woodsy put carrots in the spaghetti?! Different but still spaghetti) after we played some games with the guys.
On Tuesday we went to the drug addict meeting again, it was really cool, a guy who was in the same house Woodsy was working in 10 years ago was back, so we prayed for him. Afterwards we went to temple street and shopped there for little things, bargaining with people, fun stuff. Like everything else in Hong Kong it would’ve been better to stay longer.
On Wednesday we had an average day, but went into town for lunch to buy stuff for two mini parties were were having for a few of the young guys (pop, chips, oreos). We also printed off some of the pictures we made for the guys and made some albums for them to keep. We said our goodbyes Wednesday night and they prayed for us and blessed us, it was really cool. I also had a cool God moment right after all the prayer. We sung a song that i recognized (Lord i lift your name on high), i hadn’t recognized any of the songs we had sung all week and we sing them all in Cantonese, so this makes worship difficult. This time it was one i recognized and i didn’t have a song book near me so i just sung it quietly in English as they sang and just absorbed the worship of the brothers and it felt like God was filling this room with his presence at that moment. Cool stuff. I could go on about more details but thats the essence of things.
Thursday we had a holiday (though our holidays were often way to rushed). We made our way to Hong Kong Island and to a half hour ferry ride to the island of Cheng Chau. The ferry ride was cool, we went along the side of all the buildings and there were so many big buildings, some cool looking ones too. Hong Kong is all about high rises...everywhere. the island town we went to was a fishing town, no cars, tons of boats tied up, lots of market shops, nice little town. We met up with Ron’s family and Dai Wai leung’s mom made us some awesome fresh seafood, just off the boat that day. Hmmm that was good. I got some time to myself so i wandered around and bought some more stuff. After taking a ferry back we went to this really nice high end shop in downtown Hong Kong called Shanghai Tung, beautiful store with super expensive stuff. I splurged and spent a ton of money on a silk shirt and a Kashmir/silk toque. Crazyness. Thursday night Woodsy went to his friends for supper so i went to Sha Tin and relaxed, had some McDonalds for dinner. Mcdonalds was cheap there, like $4 Australian to get a big mac meal, supersized. I got back the guys helped me pack and said some last goodbyes, ended up being up til about 11:30.
We got up and left for the airport around 5:30 in the morning for our 9am flight. The flight was long, i watched i am legend again, watched some Simpsons, slept and had a little quiet time. Friday night around 9, Forgie picked me up at the airport and we wandered around Sydney, checked out the opera house at night, got some slurpees and talked about stuff til about midnight on the roof of our hostel.
Saturday we met up with Tyler C, Daralynne and Mark and we went to pancakes on the rocks where i got chocolate pancakes! Cool. Then we looked at the little vendors in the rocks, i’m going to have to head back there before i head back to Canada to buy some more stuff. We walked back down through Sydney til it started raining, then we took the train to Forgie’s car and he drove us back to the school. We met up with Lisa for pizza in Bowral. Tyler C, Mark and Daralynne found out they had to stay somewhere else for the night so me and Forgie were the only students at the school, we hung out in the Hilton and unpacked stuff etc.
Sunday morning i slept in til 10:30, that was awesome. Sunday was a relaxing day, Forgie and I went and got subway for lunch and caught up with people as they came back, talking about stories and adventures. Sunday night we had dinner and had a little sharing time where people talked about opportunities they had had to minister to people during the break. Its nice to be back again, it feels like home here, but i still miss everyone back in Calgary and there were times early on in Hong Kong that it really hit me. Another crazy thing is that school is done in 2 months. Wow.
On Monday it was tough to get up after staying up with the guys then talking with Kiwi on Sunday night. Our lectures this week are on Abiding life with Ray Andrews, He is an awesome speaker and his lectures have been great so far. I have a devo on Friday morning and share my testimony on Sunday at snac.
another thing, i took just under 800 pictures in Hong Kong, putting me near halfway to my target of 5000 pictures, we'll see how it goes. there will be no shortage of pictures as well as videos when i'm done in Australia.
So i got pretty much everything in, i also opened two notes from the Youth back home, which was great as usual. One said be proud of what youve done and be ready to move on...true enough, i think. For Justin’s note, no i haven’t found your penny? Did u hide one? Haha i may bring you guys back some stuff but you will have to wait and they don’t use pennies here haha. Also i haven’t found anyone like you guys, shows how unique you guys are, plus i haven’t worked with youth much so far, maybe on our prac week. Thats it for now everybody, let me know if there is anything else you’d like to know, and let me know how you are doing/whats new with you.
Thanks for reading.
From Down Under,
Adam
From Down Under,
Adam
