Hi from Taiwan！I came back from China recently. Time flies and I had a great month there. This time all my family (dad + mum + brother + sister in law + me) and three more friends ( Dinger + Er Ling + Cheng Chin) went to China to help a Catholic group with their youth cams. In total I attended three camps. The first one was to train the university students and Catholic Brothers who would be the facilitator for the camps (around 30 people). The second one was the senior high school students’ camp (113 students attended) and the last one was the university students’ camp (73 participants).
We Taiwan team were in charge of the first camp. We planed five days sessions for them. Er Ling and I were responsible for the morning Quiet Time session. It was not easy we found. Nearly each of them has strong Catholic faith and used to be quiet and pray to God. I found it is a really challenge to introduce the idea of quiet time to them. We had three mornings and each time is one hour. The first day Er Ling and I tried to introduce quiet time base on our own experiences. I don’t know how much they got the idea but we found they were really easy to be quiet and simply went into meditation. Not many people written down their thoughts on the paper. The second day we encouraged them to write down their thoughts and during the sharing time some people found something new in their life. The third day was more on the preparation for the camps, we invited them to write down their fears and hopes for the camps. It was hard to see how the QT has worked it out, but I was happy to have this chance to share QT idea with them and also happy the team work I had with Er Ling.
The second and the third camps was my first time really mingled with Chinese local young people. Each group had 3 facilitators, I was in group working with the other 2 facilitators from local. The camps were really different from what I had attended before. Most of the camps I attended were based on IofC ideas, having QT every morning, putting ourselves under the four absolutes, and have lots of sharing and many personal stories. These two camps were based on Catholic ideas and have Mass+ Prayers every day. There was one day we went for outing and walking on a track as a way of worship Jesus. Through these camps I got to know deeper about Catholic faith and their difficulties and challenges as a religion to grow and survive in China.
The students I got in touch with were born in the late 80’ s to 90’ s. They were born under the one-child policy. Being the only child in the family I can see they are under great pressure. Many of them struggle between being themselves or meet parents’ expectations. Most of them were from Catholic family so they also struggle with the moral ideas and the reality. I was touched when they opened up to share with me what their deepest worry and fear. Through their sharing I can see the pain and hurts they had been through.
Another thing I found was that most of them can’t get alone with friends in the school. They said because of their religion, they can’t easily say they are Catholic in the school. And through the religion they have different way of thinking than friends. They don’t know how to make friends. They are the only child in the family. Nowadays out of school time they also spent most of the time in the computer world. Not much chance for them to experience and get a long with people. There was one day I lead a team building game to give them the idea of negotiation. It was so difficult for the game to continue and afterward one student came to me and said that their education had taught them to be strong on what they think and don’t need to compromise then you will be the winner.
During the camp I was working with a group of Catholic brothers. They were all younger than me but played an important role during the camps such as the head of the camps. Their thinking and the way of talking are so mature that I hardly believe they are younger than me. For a Catholic brother to become a father needs ten years training in China. Some of them were only 24 years old but already been through nine years training. They have given their lives to God at a small age and willing to be single their whole life to serve to God. For them to make this decision was not easy especially they are the only boy in the family and Chinese culture think the boy must get married and have a baby boy to pass on the family line. I was very touched by their strong faith and commitment.
They were all very nice to me and gave me space and freedom to ask them questions on Catholic belief. I even interviewed one brother and wrote down his life story.
After the camp our group went to Shanghai. The day before I came back to Taiwan we had a dinner with the two girls who went to Malaysia APYC, one girl who went to Caux internship program and one girl who is going to join AfL5. It was a great gathering to hear from them how were the programs in different places and their discoveries about IofC.
Stop here. Best wishes
H.Y
