by Katherine Lin

It was a bit of a weird, unorthodox design –that in order to be healed spiritually, I had to go through being a type of broken physically… and then get better through a process of chasing kids up and down stairs I couldn’t climb and writing letters to them in a language they couldn’t comprehend. But it was God’s plan, so of course it worked… as odd and confusing as it had seemed at the time (and even now).

That was my first mission trip with VGM – last year in the summer of 2016. I worked at Suantou, the village that the other team was stationed at this year. Right before that trip, I was just recovering from an ACL reconstruction surgery, painstakingly and slowly, with a limited ability to walk and a diminishing grasp on my already wearied faith. And then I met the kids, and just working with their joyful, innocent selves and seeing God’s amazing love grow in them, sometimes through my injury, put everything in perspective – my faith, my life. I find that the most accurate way to describe it is that it was a very changing experience.
And so of course, this year, I signed up to participate on VGM again. It was not much of a decision as it was given. I was so excited and willing to serve at Sauntou again.

And so when I, alone out of my best friends, got assigned to the team going to Dongshi instead… that kind of sucked – especially because my best friends, last year’s Taiwan Team, and my past students, all the people I was really looking forward to being with again, were in Suantou… without me. The loneliness settled in even within my own STM team as I felt isolated and awkward around familiar church members who either too busy with other people or I didn’t feel like I knew very well.
Perhaps something else was that last year, I was Pastor Michael and Jenelle’s unofficial translator for near all interactions in Chinese. That was one of the main reasons that had contributed to my feeling of change and meaning in Suantou – because I felt very, useful, like I was actually doing something and that God actually had a special purpose for me on that trip. However, this year, my team to Dongshi was equipped with two very fantastic, church official translators, Zhangyi and Chunghsu, who are way better than me at both English and Mandarin. So… I definitely felt like I was out of a job. And then it became to feeling like I was not very needed… and very useless.

And that was especially true during the first two days of VGM when everyone was just prepping for the camp. I was in a place where I felt like I had no friends, no passion, and no purpose at all. All my thoughts were things like what was I even doing here? And why would God put my somewhere where I was so… useless? I felt like I was basically wasting time and resources and getting in the way of everyone else.

I spent a lot of time by myself, alone and isolated by my own choice on the highest balcony of the church overlooking the town, just thinking and letting myself feel sad and wishing I was with the other team. And then, on the second day, there was rainstorm, and I was there again just staring off into the distance, when the clouds kind of parted to reveal a bit of sunlight, and then a rainbow. It was such a faint thing but it reminded me of God’s promises, like the one He made with Noah when he also painted a rainbow across the sky. And of course as horribly feeling sorry for myself as I was then, the thought didn’t really help that much… but it give me a bit more of strength, a bit more of courage and comfort.

The day after that, things started to turn around, or maybe I was just letting myself get involved more, and I began to see more of what I was doing there. Michael made me leader of the Sing part of the Sing and Play activities so then I was leading everyone in songs and movements and working to develop ways to make it fun (I think I will have Peace like a River stuck in my mind for all eternity). I started making posters for other people’s stations because I liked to draw. Perhaps the most meaningful occurrence that happened during that two day time was when James, our lead contact between the STM and Taiwan teams, invited me to participate in a meeting with the Taiwan Team’s activities director because I “was more familiar with the materials and such.” I’m still not sure if that was necessarily true, but it was just the little things like that that just kept helping me little by little understand more of God’s purpose of sending me here to Dongshi.

But I believe that the real turning point was when I met the students. I had eleven fifth-graders in my class and I loved getting to know little things about every single one of them. Ray, perhaps the most active and boisterous student liked to read old Chinese legends. Tina giggled and squealed whenever anyone so much as even slightly moved during a card game. Just being with them, even from just the first day, and I was reminded of how these children are so beautiful, beautiful creations of God, so innocent, joyful, youthful, and curious… like the beginning of something that could be so potentially extraordinary. And it’s so beautiful and so amazing. And I say this every time I work with kids, but it’s true. I fell a little bit in love with them – it’s a motherly love though, and even more it was Jesus’s love channeling through me as a vessel.

I remember when I was teaching a kind of business game on Day Two where for some reason a bunch of six year olds signed up for it. Skeptical, I asked them, “Do you know what money is?” And they, very uniformly, very enthusiastically, and very confidently replied, “No, we don’t!” It doesn’t translate very well to English, but in a sense still, I was thinking well… this is going to be a problem.

A lot of the students couldn’t tell that I as an American at all, and when they figured it out, they accused me of lying to them (even though I had never told them I was from Taiwan). They then very quickly proceeded to pepper me with questions about American and specifically with all Americans lived in mansions with swimming pools like in the movies. And then when I told them no, one of my boys declared that if he lived in America, he would buy a swimming pool for his house at the department store… and I don’t think he meant the inflatable kind, but to each their own.

And of course there were the usual questions prodding into my personal life that they were for some reason fascinated with (I think the strangest one was if I had ever had a baby before). And then there were the questions about faith, for they all knew that we were all Christians and the camp itself was run by the local church. Everyone there also knew about the church. And they knew that Christians were, in general, really good and caring people. That was something that they could understand, but that was really they understood, or really cared to understand. They couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to be a Christian. Going to the temples, in contrast, was routine, just a part of everyday life that they did like going to school or doing chores, nothing they really noticed. Christianity though, seemed to be extra work on top of everyday life, which makes sense since most of their exposure involved people sacrificing time and energy to care for and provide free meals, shelter, and tutoring to kids who they didn’t really know. And so there were questions about why we were Christians and why we would choose to go on a mission trip.

And everyone’s answers are different for that. Mine is because God loved us so much first, and continues to love us infinitely for eternity, so I find it worth it and necessary to try to help more people experience His love and accept it. That’s always been it… but I think that at the beginning of the mission trip to Dongshi, I forgot about it –that mission isn’t about me, or even my work. It’s not to put it most honestly and simply, “I go to people so that I can help them”. It’s about God and His plans and His work. It’s really, “God moving me and others so that He may bring His people to His glory”. And it’s all part of his infinite and perfect plan for His glory, as weird and unorthodox and incomprehensible it seems to us mere human beings in His infinite universe. And realizing this, from interacting with the children, my fellow STM, and the Taiwan Team, and going through this experience again –I’m reminded of my true purpose, this mission’s true purpose, and it’s humbling and yet so amazing at the same time.
So looking back, I honestly do believe that I was able to do more meaningful work and learn much more in Dongshi this year than I could have working in Suantou. Of course I did. It’s a lesson I learn again and again, fully every time. God doesn’t make mistakes and there’s a reason for everything. He has a grand design. He moves all of us in this universe to achieve His glory for all His children, as weird and unorthodox as this design might be.