In the September Holidays this year, God provided me with an awesome opportunity to visit with a Missionary from my Church (Forrest Hill Presbyterian), in the Sichuan province in China I went with WEC on one of their short term missions called “WEC TREK”. There were 5 of us in the team from all around New Zealand.

One of my expectations was to see the work that my friend and her husband have been involved with. They work within the realms of an aid agency to provide for the Kham Tibetans who live in the Mountain Plateau’s in Western China. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into to be honest, but I knew that God had some awesome things for me to experience, and then relate all that back to the kids in my Youth Group, and hope that some might seriously take hold of the challenge that Jesus laid before us in The Great Commission.

It took 2 days to travel to our ‘base’. We started in Chengdu, a smog filled city, and traveled on some very “interesting” roads – by interesting, I mean rough!! Our first night out was spent in Kanding, around 2000 m’s above sea level, the next day was a 12 hour car ride to Ganzi – 4000m above sea level, this was about as far as Auckland to Mt Ruapehu. Our main concern was altitude sickness, but no one suffered in any way. We spent 5 days in Ganzi, during this time we got to spend time praying around the town, praying up on the hill where the monastery lies, and just spending time with the locals, whether it was out on the street, or visiting friends, or at the local hospital. There was even an opportunity to play badminton with a couple of the locals outside our Hotel. It was an awesome and tiring 4 hours, despite the fact that no-one could communicate in each others language! (our friends who would translate was doing some other work 8 hours “up the road” for a couple of days) It provided us an opportunity to spend time with a couple of the street kids too.

The best time for me was visiting a school that my Church has been involved with raising funds for; the kids there are so awesome! With being so high up, it’s pretty hard to play for long with them, but I made sure that we had some fun! I also had the opportunity to meet the boy that the Sunday School supports.

God provided us with the security we needed, good health, and wonderful opportunities to relate with the locals. What I learnt from the trip is that even though there is so much that people need over there, the most important is that they come to know Jesus, and be set free of the bondage that they are living under – which to us could be a seemingly impossible task. My Missionary friends have been working in this area for the past 17 years, during this time firm relationships have been set up, but the good news is that God is opening doors for them to work and share the love of Jesus.

I only spent 2 ½ weeks away, but during this time I learnt many lessons; one would be adaptability to the situation that I was in (like living without power or water 3 ½ of the 5 nights in Ganzi, another was coping with a different diet). I had to learn patience in some seemingly frustrating situations (like traffic jams, and language barriers) I had to learn to cope with seeing poverty all the time – and dealing with that when we felt appropriate. Most importantly I learnt that we need to be encouraging and listening and praying for our friends out on the Mission field.