Day 4

Day 4 - 6/9/23 (Paul)

Hi everyone

Today was the first day where both Clement and Uncle Guangli were snoring and according to some, a lot of girls were snoring "in harmony." Today, breakfast was some sort of tortilla + meat + yogurt + cereal kind of meal. I personally sort of skipped this meal. After that, we went to our morning session where we started off with a game -- chicken in the hen house. It's a game where one leader shouts from a list of 5 commands and everyone has to do them. Whoever is last is out. Nathan and I got really close to winning but in the end we slipped and got 4th. SO close. We are still aiming for our first win.

After our game, we had devotionals. Today's devotional was Ephesians 2:1-9. These verses talks about how Satan "rules the kingdom of air" and that he is "at work in those who are disobedient." It then preaches how God saved us all through "grace" and that we "raised up with Christ" where we can be with Jesus. I personally love verse 8 which says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" which signifies the extravagance of God's holiness where God saved us because we believed, not by our own worldly doings.

Next, we had our outreach mission to the Hope Zone. Our task there was to build fences to prevent unwanted cars to pass by and to help finish the framework and put dry wall up for a house. Hope Zone is run by Oscar and his wife where people have been breaking into their property to dump trash (and sea urchins for some reason). When we got there, we split up into two teams. Team one -- comprised of me, Nathan, Rachel, Uncle Guangli (he kinda just stood there) and later Gigi -- worked on making the fencing to block cars. Team two -- comprised of Jodie, Grace, Clement, Uncle Chris, and my mom -- worked on the housing framework.

For the fencing, our team leader Silas showed us what to do. We were slow to start at first because we had the wrong drill bit (if you don't know what that is, it's ok) but I ended up breaking it a few drills in (because of my intense strength). When we had the right drill bit, we got to work. Nobody else had neither the experience nor strength for working with power tools so I did the drilling. Nathan inserted and tightened bolts to hold the wire and Gigi + Rachel laid out the wire.

Honestly, I don't know what the other team did exactly. My group finished early so we helped them with their task. Here are some photos:

By the time we needed to go home, we finished a ton of work and we'll be back on Monday to complete the job.

There was no evening session today. Instead we had team night where we went out with our team, including our leaders + Silas's wife out to a sushi restaurant called Seki. Never would I have believed that such amazing Japanese cuisine was made by Mexican chefs. Anyway, a little game that Nathan and I played was guess the bill where we had to guess the total cost of the dinner in USD and whoever is closest wins. I locked in 380 and Nathan locked in 350. It ended up at 306 USD so Nathan won. The food was really good and everyone enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we went to get ice cream from a place I can't remember what it's called. There has been a running joke that I'm allergic to dairy because during our introductions on the first day where we had to say our name and our favorite ice cream flavor I said that I couldn't eat ice cream. Somehow they remembered so now I have been getting dairy-free sandwiches for lunch and have to pretend that I'm dairy free. I sneaked in a few bits of ice cream thanks to Rachel sharing some of hers and Uncle Chris giving me his.

Finally, the day ends. Back when we return to base, we see people in the prayer room using both guitars so we decide to play some beach volleyball. At first I didn't play (because it would be unfair) and later we decided to play me vs everyone else. I won haha. On another note, I did this cool "trick" where I spun the ball on the ground and it would travel in a curved path. Nothing too special, just some simple physics. Rachel was stunned by the amazing-ness of a ball moving in a curved path and eventually that spread to everyone else wanting to see and try spinning a ball. Still don't get what's so impressive about it.

After a while, we managed to get a guitar and did some worship outside next to a camp fire with no fire. After it hit 10:00, which is quiet hour, we mustered up the courage to go back to the prayer room and luckily the group already there was willing to worship with us. Thanks to ACF from Alaska! We had a great time and eventually headed back to our rooms.

Finally, it's time for me to go to bed. I stayed up late tonight, its 12:37 and funny enough, the relationship of days to number of people snoring has been linearly increasing. Night 1-2 (the night connecting day 1 and day 2), only Uncle Guangli snored. Night 2-3, Uncle Guangli and Clement snored. Now it's night 3-4, and Uncle Guangli, Clement, and Nathan are snoring. I will try my best to go to sleep, and see everyone tomorrow!

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