Touching their hearts

Eva J. Chung

On our first day at the Public Health School at Luzhou, we were overwhelmed by the number of students in the classroom! They were jammed packed sitting at desks and in chairs arranged in rows. We were surprised that the students’ ages covered a very wide range from thirteen to over thirty years old! Their backgrounds and educational levels were also varied. This included high-school students, graduate students, English teachers, and workers in the school. The evening classes were attended by doctors, graduate students, and also high school students.

After the first session, we prayed to God for wisdom of how to plan our lessons and how to reach out to the students. And He had a plan for us. We felt that He told us to share His love with them. We realized this especially after Erica’s story told by Ma Min, made a huge impact on the students. Erica came to join us at the beginning of the trip despite her dad having gone into a deep coma. Because of her dad’s deep faith, he told her to go. She unselfishly came because she loved her dad and God.

Many times when we were challenged both physically and emotionally, God always answered us and showed us the way. In one session, we were going to teach on the topic “Sports.” Our plans had been to have the students play basket ball and soccer outside! The days before that had been extremely hot, above 40’s C everyday! The air was so stifling and sticky that it would be basically impossible to stay outside for a long period of time. Again, the Lord watched over us. It rained and poured the night before and the temperature dropped to the 30’s! The event went by smoothly and everyone had a great time.

Our session on Christmas also shared the good news of love. Many of the students had not heard the story and some of them were very receptive. They enjoyed the unit by acting out the story and talking about it. They were deeply touched by the MSI theme song which they learned to sing. Then we wrapped up the two weeks in a unit on Weddings, which was the climax to the lesson on the love of God and of two human beings.
Although our time in Luzhou was very short, we all felt that we had reached out to the students and had shown them what love is all about. The students were very happy to have had a chance to meet and communicate with English speaking people from abroad. They appreciated the non-traditional teaching methods and strategies which helped bring out their creativity by their participation in the activities. They told us on the last day that they had learned what true love is. They also felt that love is patient, kind and envies no one; love is not boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish; love does not gloat over men’s sins, but delights in the truth…and love will never come to an end . They also marveled at the joy of our teaching team members in rendering our services to them in such a hot and difficult situation.

Throughout this trip, I have personally learned a lot about China, and her people. I have come to empathize with them and to love them even more. I hope that we have left an impact of love with them. I have also grown spiritually and felt that God had a plan for each one of us and was with us at all times. We have been touched and humbled by the lessons we learned from the people we met.