It always seems that I meet the most interesting people when I am on mission trips. On my flight from Atlanta to Tokyo I sat next to an individual who was currently living in Brazil but had lived in Tokyo and in China. He had worked on exporting oil paintings out of China. He talked about how he had always wanted to get involved with philanthropic work but that he had only so far worked in business.
Later, I met some Americans at the terminal in Tokyo who were also heading to China. It was a bit surreal, partly because jet lag was settling in, but we all sat and talked for a couple of hours in Tokyo and it was almost like we had known each other for a while.
Hong Kong
When I finally made it to the airport in Hong Kong I had been traveling close to twenty four hours. I was tired. I just wanted to get my bags and drop into bed. But first I had to go through customs. I think customs is a metaphor for life. Perhaps some of the worrying that I had been doing related to this metaphor. When you get to a new stage in life at times there is a waiting period. Anxiety builds as you await entrance into that new land of what God has for you. Will I be accepted? What's on the other side?
Well literally after a wait in line I was accepted into Hong Kong and strolled to where I met the taxi. You can go back to my last blog to catch that the taxi went fine and I got in my room, met my roomate and went to sleep.
Day Three - Hong Kong Cont.
This is straight from my journal:
"I had some great conversations with Duncan, who informed Dr. Michael Smith
and I about what to expect in mainland China. It was exciting because he said that some of these villages are like "viking villages." they are very primitive with little touched by technology. He also said that Colonel Tsang [officer commanding in Hong Kong] expected to have corps operating in mainland China within 10 years."
I didn't have time to journal the rest of the day so the next day I penned this about this day:
"Yestaerday was great. We spent the day in the board room discussing human trafficking.
I was jetlagging pretty hard but I sensed that India has had the most success in this work.
The thing that I got the most from this meeting was that the army has barely scratched the suface when it comes to getting involved with this type of ministry."
The session actually seemed to be much more a brainstorming session about how we can work together internationally to combat this problem. I was left convicted that I needed to do something about it back home.
For Lunch we were hosted by Colonel Alfred Tsang who is the officer commanding for the Hong Kong and Macau command. He seemed to be a very energetic man and supportive of thejourney that we were about to take. I had never eaten chicken feet before but this was thrust on my plate and I found that it "taste like chicken."
With the preliminary meetings over my gaze began to turn to mainland China. The next day we would depart to begin our assessment of what we can do there.
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