I got to speak at church last week about Mission Megumi (in Chinese!) and church members started to support me straight away. Two weeks into support raising..I actually already have about 20% of the total raised! Praise God for this because He ALWAYS provides for our needs. I'm so grateful to Him for giving me a peace and comfort about all the support raising even before I had made a definite decision about going on this project. It gave me one less thing to worry about in applying for the project as I knew if it was God's will then He would provide everything in due time. I still have a fair way to go but I'm trusting in the Lord's provision for it all.
All praise to Jehovah-Jireh!
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Mission Megumi and teaching
I've been meaning to update on things about Mission Megumi and teaching since maybe three weeks ago. That was when the application deadline for the summer project was and I still hadn't spoken to my parents about it. I was about to finish my first placement as well where I was teaching ESL. I had a good time at that school but I actually haven't got the report for my teaching at that school yet, because I had two supervisors.
Mission Megumi
Anyway, so it was the week the Mission Megumi application was due and I printed off the information and church leader reference to show my dad. He was pretty much the only person really suitable to fill in the form at my church so I needed to get his approval to go on the mission. I gave it to him in the morning before I went to teach at high school and then talked to him after I came back home that day. I couldn't really understand why but he was still not really supportive when I brought it up again. He was talking about the money needed, that it was a lot and was questioning how effective things would be. I don't really know what he was trying to get at because he was comparing the amount of money with the period of time that the team would be there and yeah he wasn't explaining to me what he really meant. I was quite frustrated and annoyed because I thought his reasons for not giving me support were sort of "stupid" because he is a pastor and of all things I didn't think money was something to worry about if we are working for the Lord. I realised though that there was no point in getting annoyed so I tried to stay calm and explain to my dad so that he wouldn't be so concerned and non-supportive.
Anyway he said that him and mum didn't like us asking church people for money. I didn't understand his reasoning but my sister had come out to help me talk to my dad because I had mentioned planning to go on the project to her. In the end, my dad agreed to fill in the reference form. He had remembered that an aunty at church had already said to him at the start of this year that she would support me if I went on another mission so that also helped. I hoped that he would remember that so he wouldn't worry as much, so I'm really thankful to God for already preparing the way since early on. I was very happy that my younger sister supported me too. At the time she was planning to go on summer project too so I'm really grateful to God for how he has been working in her in the past few months after MYC.
So I sent in the application and they received it the next week. About a week after that (on the 10th of September) I was officially accepted!! I need to start support raising ASAP, so I'm going to talk about the project tomorrow at church. But somehow the projects people have messed up some stuff and sent my information and deposit book to the wrong person (someone with the same surname as me...but different name :S) Anyway, hopefully I can get the stuff this week. I'm not really sure how things got messed up since my details on the projects website are correct.
Teaching
Anyway as for teaching, I finished all my placements yesterday. For the past three weeks I was doing my Chinese placement. Blehhh, there were ups and downs in the placement, but I'm glad I've finally finished! The year 7s and 8s were difficult to manage but I really liked the year 10s. Year 9s were ok too. It was a little difficult for me because of the way the Chinese teacher had set up the class. He taught each class with two sets of books because the students' levels ranged too much. And also because it was my first time teaching Chinese to high school students I wasn't really sure of the best way to do things (last time I taught primary school). So when I had to teach two different textbooks in one class, it felt like I was pretty much teaching two different classes at the same time. The supervising teacher helped with classroom management a bit but most times he was just on his laptop. He was on it every lesson, and only gave me written comments once. I didn't really like the placement, but also I couldn't put more effort into it. In a way, I didn't care so much because I just wanted to get through it. I sort of figured that I didn't really want to teach Chinese in the future so it was just like whatever...
In the end the supervisor gave me a pretty good report. He hadn't filled it out before the last day and was doing it with me while I was sitting there, so yeah I don't think it really reflected how I did on the placement. It's good that the report wasn't bad, but it doesn't really seem right. I know I need much more experience and confidence in myself. hmmm but confidence, humility, arrogance, inferiority. I think I struggle with these and to what extent I am displaying or am supposed to be displaying these. praying to be more like Christ...
Mission Megumi
Anyway, so it was the week the Mission Megumi application was due and I printed off the information and church leader reference to show my dad. He was pretty much the only person really suitable to fill in the form at my church so I needed to get his approval to go on the mission. I gave it to him in the morning before I went to teach at high school and then talked to him after I came back home that day. I couldn't really understand why but he was still not really supportive when I brought it up again. He was talking about the money needed, that it was a lot and was questioning how effective things would be. I don't really know what he was trying to get at because he was comparing the amount of money with the period of time that the team would be there and yeah he wasn't explaining to me what he really meant. I was quite frustrated and annoyed because I thought his reasons for not giving me support were sort of "stupid" because he is a pastor and of all things I didn't think money was something to worry about if we are working for the Lord. I realised though that there was no point in getting annoyed so I tried to stay calm and explain to my dad so that he wouldn't be so concerned and non-supportive.
Anyway he said that him and mum didn't like us asking church people for money. I didn't understand his reasoning but my sister had come out to help me talk to my dad because I had mentioned planning to go on the project to her. In the end, my dad agreed to fill in the reference form. He had remembered that an aunty at church had already said to him at the start of this year that she would support me if I went on another mission so that also helped. I hoped that he would remember that so he wouldn't worry as much, so I'm really thankful to God for already preparing the way since early on. I was very happy that my younger sister supported me too. At the time she was planning to go on summer project too so I'm really grateful to God for how he has been working in her in the past few months after MYC.
So I sent in the application and they received it the next week. About a week after that (on the 10th of September) I was officially accepted!! I need to start support raising ASAP, so I'm going to talk about the project tomorrow at church. But somehow the projects people have messed up some stuff and sent my information and deposit book to the wrong person (someone with the same surname as me...but different name :S) Anyway, hopefully I can get the stuff this week. I'm not really sure how things got messed up since my details on the projects website are correct.
Teaching
Anyway as for teaching, I finished all my placements yesterday. For the past three weeks I was doing my Chinese placement. Blehhh, there were ups and downs in the placement, but I'm glad I've finally finished! The year 7s and 8s were difficult to manage but I really liked the year 10s. Year 9s were ok too. It was a little difficult for me because of the way the Chinese teacher had set up the class. He taught each class with two sets of books because the students' levels ranged too much. And also because it was my first time teaching Chinese to high school students I wasn't really sure of the best way to do things (last time I taught primary school). So when I had to teach two different textbooks in one class, it felt like I was pretty much teaching two different classes at the same time. The supervising teacher helped with classroom management a bit but most times he was just on his laptop. He was on it every lesson, and only gave me written comments once. I didn't really like the placement, but also I couldn't put more effort into it. In a way, I didn't care so much because I just wanted to get through it. I sort of figured that I didn't really want to teach Chinese in the future so it was just like whatever...
In the end the supervisor gave me a pretty good report. He hadn't filled it out before the last day and was doing it with me while I was sitting there, so yeah I don't think it really reflected how I did on the placement. It's good that the report wasn't bad, but it doesn't really seem right. I know I need much more experience and confidence in myself. hmmm but confidence, humility, arrogance, inferiority. I think I struggle with these and to what extent I am displaying or am supposed to be displaying these. praying to be more like Christ...
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