I just got back from macau. I havne't written in a long time so let me tell you about the gospel camp in HK and then the macau trip. The gospel camp was like a retreat, 2 nights and 3 days. It was really disorganized but it was interesting. I got to hang out with the kids a lot more. David, Chris, Amanda, Nikki, Rachel, all raised their hands to accept Christ. It was cool. David was in my class. The rest were in thomas class. I think I bonded a lot more with them at the camp, but then we had to leave. I didn't think it was that hard to bond with them. It was actually pretty easy. ONly 2 and a half weeks and we bonded. At home its not like that dude. Working with the jr high for a year and a half I still didn't really bond with them. That sucked. I taught my guitar workshop. That went okay. The first lesson was kinda lame, but the second lesson was good. I tried to teach GDC the first lesson, but it was too hard for them. So the second lesson I taught E and then slide up for A B and I even taught them F#m. That went a lot better. I met this girl named Amy who taught at the Carmel church. She just graduated from UCLA and she goes to CBC West LA. Amazing huh? She's pretty cool.

Macau trip was really interesting. When I went to Guangzhou I already wanted to come back to China. Now I totally want to. The people in macau are so much poorer than the people in HK. I told my students about the clothes and how I got a pants for 69 dollars and how cheap that was. They were like, dang that's expensive. They buy clothes for like 30 dollars or something and thats the most expensive they'll buy. What is that? Thats like 3.50 US. Can you believe that? Thats crazy. They were much more attached to us in the period of 1 week than the students in HK were in 2 and a half weeks. Everyone felt it. It was like, they opened up so quickly. I felt like the Spirit worked much faster in macau than in HK. There were so many students who had never heard that jesus is alive. They've never heard the whole gospel story. Amazing. My heart really went out to them. If I coulda spent more time with them, man it woulda been over! I felt a lot more spiritual warfare in macau too. Just getting off the ferry, I felt like something was different. I felt like something was definitely going to happen in Macau. It was weird. And dude, macau was totally different than HK. People connected so fast with their students. There were doorpost altars everywhere throughout the city. only 1% of macanese are christians. Wilson hit his head and lost his memory short term. That gave our team a scare. He kept going to the restroom like every minute. He forgot that he just went. He kept looking in the same places for his watch. At least 20 times. He cracked the same jokes over and over again. It was strange. Our living conditions there were not as plush. I totally felt like I, as a Chinese American was uniquely positioned to reach out to these kinds of people. They listened to me so much just because I was american. Even though I don't have mastery over Chinese at all, I'm sure I can learn to be fluent in a year living here. I could probably be fluent in cantonese in a year, not to speak of mandarin. Steven K told me a white missionary couldn't say he was fluent after 10 years of living in HK. Thats crazy. I read a book that said it takes a typical westerner 5 years to become fluent in Chinese. My pronunciation is bad, but not as bad as bobby or kristina or the other white people on our team. Bobby said he would have loved to work closely with the house churches while he was in beijing, but he wasn't able to because a white person would attract too much attention. Also they don't trust white people as much as Chinese people. I so feel like Chinese-Americans have the best of both worlds. We are able to gain audience with Chinese because we are Chinese, and they respect us because we are american. Its so crazy. I think God is totally calling our generation, Chinese Americans to minister to the Chinese in China. A large percentage of Asians are Christian. I heard from a professor in Rex's class that it was 50 %. Thats a crazy large amount. We're blessed with money and opportunity. We are a ton richer than the people here. WE have a ton more opportunity. My students in macau kept telling me that I was rich, just because I had ridden on an airplane or held a 100 dollar bill. 100 dollars here is only 12 dollars in HK or Macau. Good thing they didn't see the 500 dollar billS in my wallet. Much less the American money I had. If you speak english well in Macau, you are already upper class. I so want to go back to china now. I am going to learn mandarin fluently and hopefully work on my cantonese. I want to be able to speak all three eventually like my dad. If I can't do that, at least speak mandarin fluently and have some broken cantonese. I was speaking mandarin with a student in macau named Gary. He speaks mandarin also, so I was like totally going off. It was so much easier for me to speak mandarin. That was really encouraging to me that I could at least carry on a pretty decent conversation about sushi, going to china, learning english, who likes who, what is expensive what isn't, that kinda stuff in mandaring without too much trouble. It was awesome. When i shared the gospel in both of my classes, I wrote the chinese words for "perfect" and "gold" and "believe" on the board. It wasn't that hard. I don't think chinese will be unsurmountable for me. Maybe its just that I have daily exposure to it for 16 hours a day right now that I can learn faster, but hopefully I'll be able to get somewhere so that when it is time for me to go to China, I'll be able to read, write and speak Chinese.

Dude when I get back to America, you guys are all going to hear from me in much more detail. We're going back soon and then debrief and then I'll be home. It'll be awesome. You will all hear in much more detail how YOU SHOULD GO TO CHINA! It doesn't even have to be as a normal missionary. It doesn't even have to be like long term. You can be a teacher and spend every summer in china. You can go for 1 year and then come back. You can go for a year come back and then go for a year and come back regularly. I don't know what I want to do, but we don't even have to raise support and stuff. If you speak fluent english, you can get a really good paying job in China. Not comparable to US jobs of course, but enough to totally support yourself in a third world country. English teachers make a lot of money too. I want to bring people on a short term mission back to china very soon. I not only have a heart for china, I have a heart for Chinese Americans. Specifically I have a heart for Chinese Americans to bless others through the blessings they've received from God. We are blessed to bless others. Gen. 12. My students in Macau may never encounter another Christian in their entire lives. That breaks my heart. Well they will I know, because I'm praying for them, but many may never. The ones that do only spend a short time with them. Even the 1 week we spent in macau was awesome for them I think. They really saw God's heart. Don't diss short term missions man. Short termers can do a lot in a country that has very little Christian influence. We shared the gospel so much. So much opportunity to share the gospel. (man my english has gotten worse. I am speaking in fragments now.) If there is a short term mission to macau every year, oh man that would do so much. Praise be to God. He works so much. The harvest is defintely plentiful in China. There are so many who are so ready to hear the gospel. If they just heard it, they would accept. God only calls us to sow and reap. reap and sow. Thats all we gotta do. God does all the work. He does everything in between. We dont' have to worry about convincing people. It is so awesome. There are so many people who have never heard. All you do is you gotta tell them, and they'll come to the Lord. Half of our class in Macau expressed interest in God after we told them the gospel. Many of them wrote to God "I believe you forever." "Please let me come to you." We had them write a letter to God after they heard the gospel message. It was crazy. Please pray for macau. Please pray for China. Please pray about coming to china in the future. I now totally know the meaning of "the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." The harvest is not Christians. The harvest is in harvesting non believers. The workers are not youth advisors or pastors. The workers are evangelists and missionaries. Not to diss discipleship, there is a huge place for that in the bible and jesus ministry and the church, but I think that verse specifically talks about evangelism and missions. PRAY PRAY PRAY.

Daniel