Day 5: Hakuna Mungu Kama Wewe

Hakuna mungu kama wewe
Hakuna mungu kama wee
Hakuna mungu kama wewe
Hakuna na hatakuwepo

Nimetembea, Kote kote
Nimezunguka, Kote kote
Nimetafuta, Kote kote
Hakuna na hatakuwepo

There’s no one, there’s no one like Jesus
There’s no one, there’s no one like him
There’s no one, there’s no one like Jesus
There’s no one, there’s no one like him

I walked and walked all over, over
I turned and turned all over, over
I searched and searched all over, over

There’s no one, there’s no one like Him!

Today was the last day of Urbana and it was a GOOD one!

We finished off our last manuscript study.
We had a last powerful morning message.
I had lunch with AACF people.
I went to two seminars.
I visited the prayer journey room.
I visited the world vision display.
I visited the art room.

We worshipped the Lord with all our hearts -worshipped him into the new year 🙂

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Day 4: Sometimes I Can’t Think Straight

Today was our day of rest. Manuscripts started a half an hour later and there were no seminars for the day.

We had hoped to meet up with CEFC people for lunch, but there was a miscommunication and it fell through 😦

We went to White Castle for lunch! What a fun experience. Almost all the customers today were asian… most likely from the west coast. We saw some of Elliot’s TCF friends there 🙂

After eating a whopping 6 sliders we headed back. On the way we found a nice plot of snow 🙂 and in that snow we played for an hour. Freshly fallen snow is amazing! It’s softer than cotton (and colder).

Afterwards I just needed time for prayer and reflection… and sleep. After a little bit of prayer I found myself dozing off even with my eyes open so I decided to take a nap. After a half and hour I reluctantly dragged myself out because I had told myself to go finish looking at the booths today since it might be my last chance. It was a fun experience. Usually at places people tend to target me because I look friendly and the type of person who would say yes and because I smile at them as I pass by. I guess the same goes for missions conferences. I decidedly walked extremely slowly through the booths so that I could read the titles of all the booths. I guess they saw me slowly moving and looking at their signs and so almost every missions organization beckoned me over. Being the push over that I am, I went over and left with a handful of papers.

Interestingly OMF was the only organization that prayed for me 🙂

We finished off the day with our solidarity meal, which really wasn’t that bad, I’m sure hungry families have it MUCH worse. I did get to meet a girl named Stacie from North Carolina. She’s really cool. Both her parents are from Hong Kong as well and she’s a 3rd year Bio major.

In the meal we had a bread tortilla type thing and beans as well as 1 dixie cup of water.

We made commitments today to serve the Lord. I turned in my card 🙂 On the bottom we were to write a person we would share our commitment with to keep us accountable. I wrote a name on there… but after we had our family time I may have decided on a different person. At the time I didn’t really think about who to put on that line since my commitments made were pretty easy, but now that I think about it… I think I have a better one in mind, but I think I need to pray on it a little.

Day 3: A Lot Has Happened

Though I went through the day very sleepy and very… out of it, I feel like a lot has happened, but I’m not sure what.

The morning started off with another cold breakfast and manuscript study. They didn’t change rooms but instead cut the herd off and sent them else where. Something I did enjoy was that we sang a song, no instruments, just voices. It was a hymn and I loved it.

After the morning session we searched for lunch by the water. We found a small bar and burger kind of place. Unfortunately lunch went over time and most of us missed our first sessions 😦 but it’s ok. Instead I spent the time at the book store where they hold an enormous amount of overwhelming materials. I think I was a bit too overwhelmed and didn’t buy any books. Instead I bought a nice handmade notebook and an Urbana bag to support the women who are looking for trades after being rescued from sex trafficking. At first I wasn’t too sure about buying the bag because it’s a little pricey for me even though I was looking to buy a bag much like it. Something I thought about was from yesterday when Juanita talked about not just looking to save money but looking at where your money is going. I think that my $15 is going to a good place 🙂

Luckily dinner moved faster today both because of Urbana staff’s efficiency and also because many people decided to find dinner elsewhere to avoid the Urbana lines 🙂

Today we talked a lot about money and overall in Urbana we talk a lot about poverty.

After the Urbana day, we gathered once again for family time 🙂 This is one of my favorite parts of the day. I have to admit I was really excited to come with these people from church because I want to hear from them what they’re thinking and what God is doing in their lives and I think it’s wonderful 😀

Joyce is right. I’ve changed a lot over the last 2 years and in my opinion it’s a good change. Actually, I’ve changed a lot over the last 6 years, but most drastically in the last 2. I’m starting to see now what my mom meant. If you know my mom, she’s crazy – in a good way. She’s definitely an E and is always out there. She used to tell me though that she used to be really quiet when she was younger and she’s told me before how amazing it was that God changed her and decided to use a shy quiet girl to teach Sunday school, lead children’s ministries and become a great speaker. I remember distinctly how in 7th grade I met up with one of my elementary school friends and one of their first reactions to seeing me again was “WOW, you’ve become louder” haha. I also remember how people from church told me once that it took them a long time to even know I was there because I was always so quiet. Now I try my best to go out of the way to talk to people. I also remember how in freshman year I didn’t like eating with other people and would frequently take just me and my bible to the dining halls. Now I’ve taught Children’s Sunday school and for a while was the main teacher. Now I’m leading the skit team at my college fellowship. Now I invite people to share meals with me on a daily basis (and last year had breakfast with people everyday!). Where I once used to want to hide in the corner I now push my self out to shake a hand and meet a new person. Not that it’s easy, I don’t think it’ll ever be easy for me, but I can do it now. But I still wish I could be super hospitable. I wish I wasn’t so afraid to talk to people. I wish I trusted God more to give me the words to say.

Anyway, today my mind is everywhere. I think they made a good choice of making tomorrow the digestion day.

Day 2: First day of Seminars

Today was our first full day of the conference filled with fun 🙂
The day started out great with me getting my actual nametag and becoming the right Audrey and Evan getting to register 🙂

Unfortunately the line at the registration made us slightly later for the line for breakfast (blue berry muffins, an apple, and yogurt). Luckily it didn’t make us too late as we still made it in time for morning manuscript reading. The room became so filled that 20 or more people were actually turned away because even the floor space was gone.

I was able to stay awake for the morning’s sermon thanks to my stash of Bon Bons and my desire to take notes 🙂

For lunch I decided to join the UCLA get together which ended up being larger than anyone expected. We crowded into a Subway, but they ran out of bread after a little. The remaining people went to Quiznos next door, but the store soon got filled to capacity. We checked out an Indian restaurant nearby and they had already ran out of food. Darn me and my passiveness. So us leftovers went to a small convenience store where I bought my first Chimichanga. Luckily Christina also got stuck buying a $3 sandwich. A few of us went to one of the hotels and sat inside comfy and warm and ate our food 🙂 It was a fun blessing in disguise.

Then it was off to the seminars.
I was amazed when the architecture and Engineering seminar was filled beyond capacity. Unfortunately it was uninformative, stuffy, hot, and extremely uncomfortable 😦
The next seminar I went to on Developing Christian Community (or something like that) was not full, but very good 🙂 I’m glad I went! The speaker was engaging and interesting. She hit a lot of good points and even though they seem to be obvious, they were things that I never necessarily thought out into words and action.

After the seminars I had an hour to kill so I went down to the booths. I hit up the engineering group and I hope to apply for an internship for the summer. They have an information meeting later I hope to go to… though I wonder if it’s really worth my time. Perhaps I’ll just go and talk to the people at the booth and ask them more in-depth questions myself.

I also got to meet Erin, Katie’s friend from OMF. I like OMF people, so far they all seem very cool.

Then at around 6:20 I thought maybe I’d take a quick peek into the bookstore before lining up for dinner… to my surprise the dinner line had already started and had reached the exit to the booths so, I immediately was placed in line haha. The line took about an hour and I missed worship for the session 😦 but I did get to meet some interesting people. A girl named Sarah who is a zoology major from Ohio State and a guy named Drew who works for OM. I ended up sitting with him during the session. That was fun.

I like how we get to close the day off with our family group time and hearing about what everyone did and learned for the day 🙂 I shall look forward to the next one tomorrow!

Day 1: Arrival in St. Louis

Happy New Year from St. Louis!

Until yesterday I didn’t know I got free wifi in the hotel 🙂

I typed up my journalings in my journaling area of my laptop, but I figured I’d share it here as well, so here you are, a copy and paste 🙂

So I guess I’ll share starting today, the first day of the year – my Urbana experience!

Sunday December 27

Today we arrived at St. Louis at about 10am in the morning 🙂

Unfortunately I barely got any sleep (but the money saved and the adventure earned taking the red eye was worth it!). I almost finished all of C.S. Lewis’ biography 🙂

It was amazing landing in St. Louis. The moment we dropped out from the clouds you could just see the ground covered in white and snowflakes beginning to fall on the windows of the plane! This was only my second time seeing snow and it was… it was just wow! Last time there were only a few small snowflakes but this time it was tremendous! You could easily see all the small intricacies of each flake 🙂

After landing, some Urbana helpers directed us towards the metrolink and the waiting shuttles. While walking down the platform looking for somewhere to squeeze in, to my surprise I heard my name being shouted. Aaaand who was there? Millie!!! 😀 I knew Joyce told me she was going with Millie… lo and behold, out popped Joyce and the twins 🙂 what a great way to start the never ending day! So we rode on the metro with mah buddies and departed at the shuttles. I wouldn’t realize till later that our hotels were right next to each other and that we were supposed to take the same shuttle… but I’ll say this much, we got on the right one 🙂

Driving down the snowy streets, someone made a remark I found to be completely true. It looked just like the movies. People in coats walking briskly down the white streets around old looking buildings and an occasional open space. It really was surreal.

Our hotel is quite amazing 🙂 the girls have a perfect view of the arch, I mean, really a perfect view. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the lighting right to take a good picture of it at night, but man is it gorgeous!

After checking in at the hotel, we decided to go check in at the conference center. Apparently there’s another Audrey Lee out there that lives in San Francisco cuz I’m fairly certain she accidentally took my name tag… because now I have hers. Looks like I have to return to get a new name tag tomorrow and fix the problem.

Next it was onto sight seeing and the arch!

Underneath that magnificent engineering feet lies a museum of some pretty interesting things 🙂 we walked around looking for almost an hour before our ride up to the top of the arch and I still only got through a little less than 1/2 of the material. I woudn’t mind going back and finishing up the rest, it really was quite interesting. Going up the arch was stupendous! We squeezed 5 of us into a super tiny room thing. It sort of reminded me of those space escape pods like in starwars or something. Anyway, up and up and up we went! The view from the top was awesome 🙂 According to the handout it only takes us 4 minutes to reach the top. According to the guard it takes 45 minutes if you take the stairs. Glad we didn’t have to do that!

Then we met up with Bonnie and Willie and went off to dinner. Unfortunately Evan fainted on the way to his first plane stop and was held up at the hospital in Chicago for the day 😦

We went to eat at the only place in town that seemed to be opened; Zuzu’s Mexican restaurant. The food was good… but it took about an hour to get to us and the portions were small 😦 I don’t think they expected SO many people. It was obviously a family owned place and I felt kind of bad for them. Our waiters were 2 little boys between the ages of like 5 and 12, the guy taking our order was their teenage older brother, and our chefs were their parents. You could see how they would be backed up being one of the only restaurants open for 17,000 hungry college students!

Our first session was good. Unfortunately it wasn’t very memorable as I admit, I fell asleep… yuuup and that’s that!

Random funny happenstance:

A very nice guy named Tom approached us asking if we were here for Urbana. After hearing our reply he asked us … well almost stated more like a so you guys are staying at the international hotel?… We all gave him blank stares … so the international students typically house together…hahaha… international, it must be because we’re Asian.

Random sadstance:

I notice at conventions or times such as these I become very fustrated or dissapointed in the Christian community. Walking around you can obviously tell who is here for Urbana by their name tags. It really pains my heart when I over hear talk that isn’t quite as nice or not necessarily mean… but could have not been said or at least said in a softer way, and I know it’s coming of out a Christian’s mouth 😦