Hair is getting long...

This'll just be a short post. I already posted this on my facebook, but thought I'd put this up for Shin and others. Should I totally buzz my hair, or grow it out until I get to Japan and get a crazy haircut? The thing is...Japan is 2 months away, so it'll become really ugly and nasty by then (not that it isn't yet).

I know I know, I totally need conditioner, but I'm a poor lil YWAM student, so don't expect much >=O! Only thing really keeping me back from cutting it here is that it'll probably turn out really ugly if I try to get a trim...(bad experiences before with people trying to cut my hair). But if I get a buzz or shave it, most people in China might think I'm a Buddhist monk or have cancer. Not the best pic, but oh well.

Well tell me what you think ^^

Sore Muscles & Outreach talk

So on Sunday I helped out with the construction work happening to the new prayer room here. It's a LOT bigger than the one they're using now and they said they want to be able to do recording there and air the praise there on radio 24/7 xD. The day before, I went into the prayer room to catch up on readings...and ended up staying there for 5 hours! It was all my decision, wasn't forced or anything...didn't even feel that long cuz I was so into it (reading the Bible and praying) and by the time I went to my room, it was already 8pm o.o; Well on Sunday, a guy from my DTS woke up my roommate telling him that he should help out with the construction cuz they were short on men. I just suddenly felt like I should go and got up right away, got ready, and ended up going.

The whole week before they announced that the people from our DTS could volunteer and help out. There's about 70+ people in our DTS and the amount of people that came was...7 (3 of those were staff) haha. I thought all the leaders would come and help out but none of them came o.O; Even with our small numbers, we surprisingly got a lot done and everyone was really glad cuz we surpassed the quota for the day.

After that I ended up playing a few hours of basketball and looked like I just got out of the shower haha. My hair was so soaked, and cuz I haven't cut my hair yet since I got here, it looked pretty nasty xD. I'm debating if I should just shave it in China, or let it grow LONG and get a Japanese haircut in Japan (even tho it'll probably be PRICEY). My right ankle was so sore cuz I sprained it the week before and just put it through a lot of physical work, but even still, I decided to walk to Dennys which is a 15 min. walk with a hill at the end ><; To top it all off, it was raining when I walked haha.

Well now my body is aching and so sore >.<; But eh, it was fun, so it's all good xD. At Dennys I met a group of YWAMers that just came back from their outreach trip. One guy told me he got really sick and had to go to the hospital twice when he went to Rwanda, Africa. The doctors said they found an amoeba in his digestive system which cased him to diarrhea like crazy and such, and by the end of it, he said he lost 20 pounds :O!

While talking with them, I asked if they experienced anything crazy on outreach (cuz I always here about stories about people being demon possessed, or healing the sick) but they all were like "Umm....hmm...no not really" which kind of disappointed me in a way cuz I was thinking "If we're paying almost $5000 to go on our outreach, we better see something exciting" haha. Seemed like one of the highlights of some of their trips was like...texting people from other outreaches saying they're in prison (when they weren't) and finding out that some monkeys have blue balls >.>; They also told me not to have any expectations before going.....which made me think "What the heck, I had such high expectations...the heck?" So now I don't know what to expect or if this is pretty much just going to be a "trip" more than a mission. I'm really hoping it's not going to be and that their missions just sucked and that there's something more in store for our team, but I guess it's up to God. I don't really want to go back to Canada and have no stories to tell and come back the same and disappointed cuz that'll just seem like I wasted my time and my parent's money here.

Well anyways, I'm just going to go with high expectations anyways and just say "screw it, ours will be better >=O!"

Well on a different note, I went to Wal-mart with some friends and we all went on the scales to see if we lost or gained weight since coming here. This was the first time I weighed myself since I came to Kona, so I was kinda shocked at the result. When I first came here, I gained a bunch of weight and was 175 pounds (79.4 kgs), but now I'm apparently 164 pounds (74.4 kgs). What the heck, I lost 11 pounds :O!! I didn't really notice it cuz my hair makes my face look bigger, but my friends were like "Whoa! You totally don't look that light" which made me say "Wah? Are you saying I look fat? o.O" haha jk. Ya, so I bought a bunch of cup Ramen/Ramyun and some drinks to help me gain some weight, cuz I'm guessing in Asia I'm going to lose more weight (either from sickness or lack of eating). I'm hoping to hit at least 170 before I leave, so wish me luck.

Well I gotta go now, so see ya all later. Please keep praying for me seeing that I'm going to be leaving really soon, so a lil spiritual boost would be nice xD haha. God bless you all~

Chinese name? and other random stuff

So one of my friends here is Taiwanese and he's really excited for our team to head into China. Lately he's been trying to make a Chinese name for each member of our team to make it easier for the Chinese to remember and pronounce. He said to give me my Korean name and tell me the meaning so that he can get the Mandarin version of the word to make up the name. In the end, my name is Song, Eun Song haha. Only thing that changed was the last letter chul -> song, which means wisdom. Kinda weird, but oh wells haha.

Man, I should totally make a Japanese name too haha. Make me one Shin xD haha jk jk. Probably end up being like "Man-who-eats-a-lot san" or something after translation. Well if all else fails, I'll just call myself Shin-chan haha jk jk.

Anywho, lately I've looked up some stuff about the Chinese underground church, and it's pretty crazy. They actually all meet up in abandoned buildings to praise God and worship Him (cuz its illegal in China). Here's a clip of a more recent video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do7jIUg6l0k . You're going to have to excuse the lame beginning, but you get to see what it's more like late in the vid.

I also was looking Japanese Christian praise, and the church in this clip actually has a lot more people than I thought. I heard Japan is one of the hardest places to tell people about Christianity and only like 0.01% are Christian o.o; Here's a clip of a Japanese church in Tokyo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCbe3EehrnI . I totally want to go to this church and praise in Japanese xD. Sounds so cool ^^. I remember a bunch of Japanese held a Christian Korean/Japanese concert in Japanese and English. It was to help with the tension between the two races and to bring them together through the church, and one of my friend's is a Korean/Japanese mix and ended up singing on the praise team xD. I missed it though cuz I didn't have a ride, and now totally regret it ><; But hopefully I can visit this church xD.

Well this is totally off topic but felt like sharing. So yesterday's service topic was all about the Father's heart and at the end while we were praying, the guest speaker said he just felt like God wanted him to say something that could be weird for us. He said something like "If growing up, you've never been hugged by your biological father or mother, I want you to take a step of faith and come to the front. All the older members or grandparents, I want you to come to the front as well and hug one of the students here, but when you hug, I don't want you to let go. Just hold them for a while." About 15-20 people came to the front and right when they got hugged, a lot of them broke down crying. It was really sad, but beautiful at the same time. Sad that even Christian fathers would feel ashamed to hug their own children, something that's actually hard for me to comprehend cuz my dad's always been pretty loving. Christianity is all about love, so its really sad to think of something like that, but it was really beautiful to see them being hugged and letting go of those past heartaches against their parents. Even the guys were balling their eyes out on an older person's shoulder, really touching moment.

Well anyways, this was a really random post, but oh well. God bless everyone ^^

Another One Leaves

So today we had to gather for a 1:15am meeting out of the blue. We all gathered at the big area where we do corporate worship and they announced that a guy named Ben that's in our DTS was going to go home. He was caught doing some stuff before, so he had a chance to stay or go, but he decided to stay and try his best to behave. His dad even ended up coming to Kona, Hawaii to help encourage him which was pretty crazy because whose parents would do that? They all had big hopes for him, but then yesterday (I'm guessing) he got caught doing something again. I wasn't close to him at all and only talked to him maybe once, so I have no clue what he did, but ya.

So I guess this makes the 4th person to leave YWAM (another guy left, but ended up coming back [none of my old roommates]). Everyone then started to say words of encouragement to him that was pretty touching. At the start of it, one of the leaders walked up to him and gave him a hug for like 5 min. and whispered something into his ear. All the girls started crying of course, but it really was pretty sad. They were all saying stuff like "We're a family now, so even though we're going to be separated, know that you'll never be distant from us anymore because we're now related by blood, the blood of Jesus."

Well this guy's going to be leaving tomorrow morning and for a change, the one leaving isn't a Korean haha. Man, what's with Koreans and always being the trouble makers haha.

Anyways, this week the speaker is apparently really famous...and is from the city of Vancouver (where I'm from) and I totally didn't know who he was until I read his little profile in my binder, but apparently most of the Americans know him haha. I asked another guy from Canada (and from my city) if he knew him, and he had no clue haha. How ironic. Well he's speaking a lot on having a relationship with God by spirit pretty much. Like being in constant communion with God through your spirit to His spirit. Really different teaching than what I'm used to learning, but it's pretty interesting. I'll write more about it later most likely.

I forget if I wrote this, but they said we're going to get the lecture recordings, so I'll upload them eventually when I get them so you can all hear the kinda stuff we're learning.

Anyways, see ya all later, God bless.

Outreach Rough Draft Timeline!!

So today we had a little meeting with our outreach group and talked about the rough plan of what we're going to be doing in China/Japan xD. Shin, is it ok if you check what bands are playing during my Japan times? hehe. Anywhos, here's the plan:

March 31st - Departure from Kona, Hawaii

April 2nd - Arrival in China (I know, its weird arriving 2 days later, but apparently with the time difference, thats how it works xD Time travelling, here I come ^^)

Apr.24-25 - city: Dallian - lots of coffee shops here and there's a place where they teach english and the government actually allows people to sing english praise songs :O So we'll probably totally take that chance to sing and evangelize.

Apr.25-30 - city: DangDong - (3 hour long bus trip to get there) Join the DTS group there and meet up with Andy Byrd again.

May 1-9 - Potential road trip across the Korean/China border to meet up with the Christian underground house churches.

May 9-19 - city: Beijing - Go to Copeland concert and other religious stuff

May 20-31 - city: ChongChing - Mercy ministry teams (help random people) Intercessory praying and helping out the homeless (poor city).

May 31st - Take the train back to Dallion to take a plane to Japan

June 1-12 - city: Tokyo - House of prayer, join their DTS groups there, and maybe go to the parks and play some praise ^^

June 13/14 - Arrival back into Kona, Hawaii


So that's our really rough schedule for now ^^

Quest to Learn Japanese

So I'm going to be going on my mission in 4-5 more weeks, and so I thought it'd be a good idea to learn the language a tiny bit, so if I get lost, at least I could say some VERY basic stuff. I figured, there's no way I can learn any of the Chinese languages cuz they're way too hard and the pronunciations...eh haha. So I decided to try and learn Japanese at least. So far all I memorized is colors ^^. Lets see if I remember them...

Blue = Ao
Green = Midori
Pink = Momoiro
Black = Kuro
White = Shiro
Grey = Haiiro
Yellow = Kiiro
Red = Akai
Purple = Murasaki
Orange = Daidaiiro
Brown = Chaiiro
Sky Blue = Mizuiro

If I skipped any or wrote them wrong, please tell me hehe.

Right now I'm going to venture into learning some simple Japanese phrases ^^. Wish me luck everyone and if anyone wants to help me, I'd really appreciate it xD.

Tsunami Alert

So we all got woken up at 6am from a siren blazing in our ears. Apparently Chile had an 8.8 earthquake, so Hawaii is on a Tsunami alert. Oh...it just went off again o.o; I'm guessing it's going to be like impossible to sleep now cuz they're probably going to ring the sirens every hour for like 10-30min. It's crazy annoying cuz its surprisingly loud. Gah, right when I wanted to sleep in too x.x;

I heard Japan also had a 6.9 earthquake, so I hope they're all doing fine. Haven't seen any pictures of the earthquake damage in either city, so dunno the destruction damages yet.

I totally want to go to the beach and videotape the tsunami, just gotta make sure to wake up. It should hit Hawaii at 11:19am xD. How amazing would it be to see a tsunami upclose? xD Going to be so awesome~!