Honestly, before going on this mission trip, I knew next to nothing about Taiwan. I only knew that calling Taiwan a part of China could be offensive to some people. Besides that little detail, I could only imagine that it was kind of like China.

Upon arriving in Taipei, I was struck by the humidity and heat. I expected it to be hot, like in Georgia, where I go to college, but it felt like I stepped into a sauna (maybe a small overstatement). I wasn’t sure if I could ever get used to that amount of heat and humidity, even while staying at a hotel for the day.
After the initial day that my family and I used to get somewhat used to the time zone and climate, we travelled from the big city to a small-ish town of Suantou. There, we met our Taiwanese co-workers for the first time in the elementary school that we were going to teach in.
The school was actually quite nice, considering that it was a small town, apart from the lack of air-conditioning that I desperately wished for (I don’t really do well in heat). It seemed that they had renovated recently, or at least that’s what I think.

The coworkers were extremely welcoming and kind, my group (5th grade teachers) in particular did their best to speak English to me as much as possible, regardless of their own preferences. The Taiwan VGM team members in my group were named David, Judge, and Jean. They each had pretty good English, and spoke to me quite often. I really appreciated that gesture, and in return I tried my best to speak Chinese to them.

The first couple days went quite smoothly; we prepared for the upcoming bible camp as a team and got everything that need to be done completed. However, I had some qualms about my own role in the up and coming classroom of 5th graders. “Will I be able to communicate with the kids well?” “Am I really cut out for teaching?” These were some thoughts floating around in my mind, coming to the forefront on the first day of camp.

The first day was quite disheartening for me, to be honest. I was introduced to the elementary schoolers as a ‘foreigner’ who speaks only English, as was planned, and as a result the kids seemed to not really know how to speak with me. If the kids don’t know how to communicate with someone, and they are presented with a better option (e.g. our Taiwanese coworkers), they probably will interact a LOT more with their native language speaker. My Chinese is quite bad, but I could at least understand what they were saying and could maybe attempt to respond but it felt like none of them wanted to talk to me or anything. Instead, they were all over Judge and David, the more outgoing Taiwanese co-workers in our group. I ended up just sitting in the back of the classroom and helped keep the kids under control when needed.

The next couple days were similar to the first day, besides the fact I led some activities in English, with David or Jean translating what I said to Chinese. I still felt like I wasn’t doing my job, touching the children’s lives in a positive way, which was the goal of this bible camp.
However, when we got to the last two days of camp and got into outdoor activities, that’s when I got my chance to do something. I led the activity (with my dad) of teaching soccer to a group of about fifteen kids.
Something that I noticed in the first couple days was that all of the kids loved to play sports. Even the smaller kids, or girls. Whenever there was a break, many would run and grab a basketball and go play, even if the break was for a measly ten minutes.
So when I got to teach soccer, they saw that I was pretty good at it, and wanted to play ball with me. They even dragged me out of the classroom during a break to just kick the ball with them for a couple minutes.
Even when I went to a house visit, Hank was the name of the elementary-schooler I visited, I ended up playing soccer with a volleyball in his driveway. His friend from the 5th grade class even came over to play too. I kicked the ball with them for a solid hour and a half while the Taiwanese coworkers who came with me chatted with Hank’s dad.
When all’s said and done, VGM was a great experience for me. I got to experience some of Taiwan, teach the bible and English to some children, and even got to play soccer with them. Kind of funny how in the end, I used sports to get over the language barrier and reach out to the children in the camp. God works in mysterious ways, what can I say.