It was a really tiring day. Full of ups and down. I felt uplifted, bored, tired, hungry, embarrassed, hopeful, scared, depressed, and cocky. Felt it all today, so let me start to tell you about my day at church and fellowship with my cousin's good friend King Lam.
I woke up around 8:50 and scrambled to get ready to leave for church. I had a schedule to keep, I was supposed to meet up with King at the metro station near the church because he lives near the station and offered me a ride. I was supposed to meet him at 10am and it was already 9:10 when I left my dorm. I had a feeling I was going to be late, but that apparently didn't stop me from getting breakfast at Lilian's (Macau bakery). The doors to Lilian's opened at 9:30, which was about the same time I got to the plaza where the station was so it a quick detour. I had a portugese egg tart and a sponge cake for a total of 6.80 =D awesomeee. I needed to transfer once to get to my destination and it was a pretty long ride. Longer than I expected, I kept looking at my phone for the time. After transferring lines, I realized that I was low on batteries, probably due to the subway, so I gave King a call and turned my phone after. The church has this technology that blocks phone service inside so he went ahead to save me a seat. After arriving, I got scared because I realized that I needed my passport to go to church and I didn't have it. I didn't know what to do because King was already inside and there was no way of contacting him. I panicked, but found out that we didn't need it after all (strange, I really thought Chinese people couldn't practice Christianity? Iono anymore..). I was 8 minutes late and it was a full house so I didn't have time to look for King. I didn't even know what he looked like so I just sat down and went through service for 1 and a half hours. The sermon was delivered first which I thought was interesting. It was a woman and she was LOUD. She was VERY ethusiastic, especially at the parts that praises God for saving us and loving us. She really worked the crowd, they seemed like sheep to me, nodding and muttering Hallelujah. After the sermon we sang songs and did regular church stuff. There was no offerings though, however, which was interesting because this church is definitely not government funded...not my problem I guess. So after service I met up with King. I was wondering what he'd look like up til now and judging that this is a Stanford grad who left the States for Shanghai for 6+ years...I didn't really know what to expect. He turned out to look kinda nerdy. Like...really into academia nerdy lol. Not that it's a bad thing, he wasn't bad looking or anything, it's just an observation. So after exchanging hellos, I hopped in his car and we drove to a cafe. Apparently, he owns part of this cafe and he was ordering take out so we could feast at someone's house and then have bible study. King was really something else because he is super Christian, works in Shanghai, speaks really good Mandarin, owns part of a restaurant and it seems like everyone from church knows him. Pretty crazy stuff. So we got food and went to someone's house (the food is amazing btw, it's all foreign food like Italian and American [they have popcorn chicken lol, pretty awesome to own a restaurant like this in Shanghai I must say]) After getting to this person's house, we set up the food, sat around in a circle, said our prayers, started eating and introducing ourselves. There was a couple from HK, a Korean guy that married this Chinese lady who was 6 months pregnant already, and the rest looked like Mandarin people. So I introduced myself and I was really embarrassed because I was the only one who couldn't speak Mandarin really well. But it's church people, so of course they were really accepting and stuff. I really felt out of place because not only was I the only one who couldn't speak, I was the only one in my age group - a lot of them were married, some adults, and some small children. During introductions, this little girl who was really cute said she was full and pushed her bowl to King and then ran into the bedroom. So then King takes the bowl and pushes everything in it into my bowl and tells me to finish it. I was really shocked because I wasn't expecting that from him haha but the food was pretty good so I wasn't complaining I guess. After lunch we split into guys, girls, and kids and did bible study. I didn't really understand what we were talking about during bible study. The scripture in Mandarin is extremely difficult for me to understand because I have to translate it from Cantonese in my head and even then, bible lingo is hard to understand in Canto. I had to really struggle to pay attention to catch maybe 50% of what they were saying. I got kinda bored here because once my mind starts to wander, it really wanders and I get sleepy because what they're saying sounds so foreign that it just puts me to sleep. After that long session, I got to know the guys a little better and got to practice my conversational Mandarin with them which was great. I really liked that part because no one in that group could speak English that well so I was forced to use Mandarin (King led the little kids group). After bible study we went to play basketball and tennis. The canto dad was taller than me, at least 6'2, and was actually really athletic. I was scared when he drove it to the hole though because he's not that young anymore and he looked like it was straining. The guys we played were part of a team, and they were really short but pretty good shooters and screeners. They used their teammates to creates space between them and their defenders to get some room to shoot and it worked for the whole like hour that we played. I was just like whatever because our guys weren't a team and I wasn't expecting to play well as a team so I just stuck to guarding my man and not helping out with the defense. King was on my team and he wasn't that great but he has the hustle, the drive to win. I got a blister from playing cause I was wearing chucks, sigh. It hurts lol. After basketball a group of us had dinner together and it was "practice English" night since I was there lol. So I spoke mostly English just for them to hear and kind of try to interpret. It was sorta like a game, I would say things and they would consult with each other then ask King if they interpreted it correctly lol. So after we finished eating, King asked me to tell the group "how I found Jesus". I was a little hesistant to answer because this group was super Christian and I was feeling a little uncomfortable telling them about my family. They didn't seem like they were going to budge so I ended up telling them about my story of Cameron House and my parents divorce. I told it and I felt the pity go around, but I didn't know how to alleviate it because King seemed really concerned for me and they wanted to pray for me. So we prayed and it was the longest prayer I ever had. Everyone spoke for like 5-10 minutes. Apparently their church has this service where they text prayer requests to this one person and she texts it to everyone so every member of the church can pray for them and stay connected, I think that's pretty cool. They all also talked about me for a little bit and when I heard King repeat my story, I felt the tears come up. He kind of extracted my reasoning for going to Cameron House, I didn't even tell him why I went. I just told them the story and left out the meaning of things. He said that it was the stable part of my life during high school and some other things and it made me think about my parents a lot. When it got to the 3rd person, I had tears and I didn't know what to do. I've never teared in front of people I met on the same day, I'm sure most people don't either. But I was, and I was really shocked at myself. I guess it's hard to not when everyone keeps talking about me and telling me that I made it through the hard times, and how it has shaped me to be the person I am today.
I wasn't ready for that prayer. I didn't see it coming. I feel uncomfortable being around these super Christians because they pray all the time and seem like they want to convert me. On the other hand, I had a good time, it's a good place to practice my Mandarin, I get to see the other half of Shanghai which is pretty nice actually, and I like the people. I don't want to talk about my family anymore though. I haven't talked about it with anyone since I told you. Even when I have to deal with my parent's shit, I don't think about how I'm actually involved because I'm focused on them and the problem at hand. It's a little depressing to look at it altogether right now. I'm worrying about everything now and the problem is that I don't have a solution for this problem.
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