Know Chinese and Use It

8. I want to grow in my knowledge of Chinese so that hopefully one day I would be able to share it with my grandparents and parents.

Grow in my knowledge of Chinese. Spending time in East Asia, I definitely was soaking up the language on steroids because we used it the entire day. We went to class, communicated with people, and did everything in Chinese. It was great. One thing that the more fluent Chinese speakers on our team had to do was to learn certain key terms that we would need to be able to communicate the gospel in Chinese.

The first day of class was a God sighting in itself. We were asked to go sit in on a class to see if it was a good fit for our language level. That day in class they were talking about Christmas in the week’s lesson. And in the lesson itself, the book gave a decent gospel presentation in Chinese. So we were seeing people learn about the gospel in a class setting through the story of Christmas! I definitely looked over that lesson again when i got the textbook and tried memorizing basically the entire passage. This got me even more excited for what was ahead of us.

During the trip, I realized that my language skills werent exactly up to par with the rest of the university students and I had to use english a lot of the times to try to communicate through conversation. Thank God they all had a decent knowledge of english. Their english was definitely much better than my chinese. haha. But as time went on I realized that I needed to reach out to them and be able to really communicate the gospel on a level where not only they understood it, but without having to use crazy vocabulary so that they would be able to explain it to someone else also. For someone to understand it, it’s better when they grasp the meaning behind it and not have them remember words that you’re spewing out at them.

Closer to the end of the trip, i was much better at having entire conversations in Chinese, even spiritual conversations where we would be looking at the Bible and explaining the passages which we were looking at. This definitely got me excited about coming back to the States and being able to communicate more clearly with my family.

Sharing the gospel with my grandparents. When I got back from my trip, i spent a week at my mom’s place in Philly. But during this time, my dad called and told me that my grandpa had a stroke. I didnt know what to do because I was still at my mom’s place. All i did was pray for him and my family. When I finally got back home, I got to see him in the hospital and he was fine, just a bit out of it from the stroke. He couldnt remember a lot of stuff and it seemed as if some of his short term memory was affected. But since I wasn’t doing anything during this summer or at least, friends was now a second priority, I went to the hospital every single day to see my grandpa and just spend some time with him, talking about things. I really like my grandpa, he’s funny and likes to joke around, especially when it comes to the topic of girls. Since he was in the hospital, he asked me if he was going to be able to see some grand-grandkids. I said of course. He was like, how’s that going to happen, you dont even have a girlfriend. I told him dont worry, I’ll find a girlfriend when i go back to school, date for a year, marry the year after, and he’ll have grandkids the year after that. lol. he thought it was funny. but now he asks me if i got a girlfriend yet everytime i come home. lol, love the guy

But we also got to talk a lot about spiritual topics. We talked about heaven and the gospel and what does being a Christian mean for me in my life. It was really cool because even though he’s not totally supportive of my being a Christian, he sees a lot of good coming from it and even wished that I brought along my step-sisters and half-brother. I would agree, they’re kind of spoiled haha. But it was just really cool being able to spend that time with him and talk to him about all these things. When he got discharged from the hospital, he was sent to a rehabilitation home so he could get better while being watched by nurses 24/7. So during the day I would go over to the Rehab center and I would spend the rest of my day with my grandma. I also gave him a copy of my Chinese new testament and said if he had time, he should read a bit. He would have a lot of time. lol

My grandma was having a hard time through this entire thing and i thought it would be much better if i stayed home and just spent time with her instead of going out. So during the day I would be with my grandpa and during the rest of it I would be with my grandma. And during this time we spent a lot of time talking about life and stuff. I was able to share the gospel with her and clear up a lot of the misconceptions that she had about it. And the best thing was that i did this all in Chinese, where I was able to communicate and clear up the gospel for her. She went to church before but didnt understand it and just left. I got to spend almost everyday talking with her and she enjoyed it too. She called them our little sessions. She said she would come up with questions to ask me and we would talk about it and we did.

Even though my initial reaction was that this is really bad, my grandpa had a stroke, but I also knew that God uses all things for good, no matter how bad the situation. My grandpa’s stroke brought me closer to my grandpa and grandma where I got the chance to spend a lot of my time talking to them and being able to live out more of my love for them. Before I knew it I had to go back to school again.

I didnt get to see a lot of my friends during this past summer and some thought I was just being a butthole but I didnt want to go into too much with the situation. But I dont regret it because of the time I got to spend with my grandparents. They’re not always going to be here and I needed to remember that. Even though they didnt accept Jesus or anything, I was glad to have been able to communicate the gospel to them in their own language and talk about it with them. I believe that in any situation, no matter how bad, we need to be on the lookout to how God is planning to use it to benefit our life.

For His Glory,

William Poon