Kroc Church

This was by far my favorite week of the summer. We spent the week working at the Chan Kwan Tung Kindergarten, which is located in the same building as Command Headquarters. Each day we sang songs, went over a memory verse, told a Bible story, and either played games or danced.

The dancing day was so much fun because none of us are really dancers, but they asked us to lead dancing so we did. We taught the kids the Macarena, the chicken dance, the hula, and a dance called popcorn. It was so much fun watching the little kids dance.

We also spent some time working with the children on worksheets. I was in the three year old class, so worksheets meant we just got to color. The best part was the children didn’t realize that we didn’t speak Cantonese, so they would come up to us a speak to us in Cantonese thinking we understood what they were saying. It was so cute.

This week was difficult for us because there was a lot of misunderstandings about what the principal wanted us to do and the teachers had many different ideas about how we should lead our programs. But at the same time this week was full of so many blessings.

The children were always so excited to see us. They were excited and ready to do whatever we had planned for them. Also by the end of the week many of the children knew the memory verse and the songs that we taught them.

Next week we will be helping to lead an English day camp at the Kowloon Central Corps.

Thank you again for your prayers and support. I will be adding pictures of the kindergarteners to my Flickr site soon.

Tracy Pilewski

We were tremendously blessed yesterday during our visit to The Salvation Army Shek Wu School. Shek Wu is a special school, basically a school for students with disabilities.

At the school there are students with Autism, Downs Syndrome, Epilepsy, and heart problems, as well as other disabilities.

Although we were nervous before going to the school, everything went very well. The students were so excited to see us. In fact when we got there the teachers brought all of the students into the school hall so we could greet them and they could greet us. Our first session was with a tenth grade class.

We were asked to sing songs with them because it was their music time. All of the students were very excited when we told them we wanted to sing This Is The Day because they knew the song in Cantonese.

Our second session was with second grade students. They we a lot of fun, we played Simon Says and sang the Hokey Pokey.

Then it was time for lunch and we got to eat with the students. The school provides lunches for them and they eat together in their classroom. At the end of our time at Shek Wu we were all sad to be leaving, we could have easily spent much more time there interacting with the students.

Thank You for all of your prayers and support,

Tracy Pilewski

We have been really busy this week. We spent time at Ann Wyllie Memorial Primary School, Tin Ka Ping Primary School and the Kam Tin Corps.

At the Primary Schools we lead assemblies teaching the children songs, games and a Bible story. At Tin Ka Ping after the assembly we split up and each went into a classroom to share with the students about ourselves and our experiences in Hong Kong.

My teammate Brittany and I were together. We told the children the story of Jesus calming the storm, taught them the song “With Jesus in the Boat,” and then just let them as us questions.

In our first class we were asked a lot of simple questions about ourselves and what it is like in the U.S., but in our second class the kids surprised us with some big questions.

Here are some of the things we were asked by the third grade students:

* How was Jesus able to calm the storm?
* Why did God name Jesus “Jesus”?
* Why did Jesus die?
* Why did God send Jesus, Why not just kill the devil?
* Wasn’t God mad at the people who killed Jesus?
* Who created God?
* How old was Jesus in the story?
* How old is Jesus now?

It was exciting to me that the children had so many questions about Jesus. We not only got to share about Jesus with the students but also the teachers. Although the schools are Christian and run by The Salvation Army, not all of the teachers are Christians.

At the Kam Tin Corps we are leading a ten-day Day Camp. Today we finished day four. We are helping the kids learn English using the Fruit of the Spirit as our theme. We are helping them to memorize the verse and teaching them about a different fruit each day. It has been so exciting hearing them learn and understand a little bit more each day.

July 1st was a holiday here celebrating when Hong Kong went back to China. That evening we met up with some friends that we met at the Chinese BBQ we attended last Saturday. They took us to the Golden Bauhinia, which is a statue that was given to Hong Kong as a gift from China. Then they took us out to a Hong Kong style meal. I was even adventurous enough to try pigeon and octopus, and they were both actually pretty good.

Thank you for all of your prayers and Support.

Tracy Pilewski