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Since April I have been working a summer job at a Sherwin-Williams warehouse distribution center here in central Pennsylvania. I plan to use the money I made there to return to Northern Ireland where I was invited to help staff the Fall ‘08 DTS. My primary responsibility during the DTS will be serving and guiding the students while they seek to better know God and make Him known. The DTS is a 6 month experience that includes a 12 week lecture series followed by an 8-12 week foreign outreach. Some staff responsibilities during the lecture phase include helping lead small groups, leading the students in local ministry efforts, conducting weekly one-on-one discussions of the week’s teaching and how it affects and applies to the students’ life and performing work duties for the YWAM base. During the foreign outreach I will co-lead a team of students for 8-12 weeks as they apply what they learned in the lecture phase to real-world situations. A staff retreat and training begin August 26th. The DTS is September 2008 thru April 2009.

My staff fees, travel and living expenses will be approximately $8,000. I will have earned $3500 from my summer job which I will put towards these expenses. I still need another $4500. Please consider making a commitment to this upcoming DTS with me by contributing towards the funds I lack. It is my goal to have pledges for all of the remaining funds by the end of August.

Thank you for considering joining me in my commitment to this DTS. I am very much looking forward to this opportunity to serve.

For information about making tax-deductible donations online (credit/debit card) or via mail (check) visit: http://greg.colkerfamily.org/help. Please note that funds donated go into our family account, so please let me know if you’ve sent a donation specifically for my DTS staff expenses.

My family has entered a new season as God is leading them which involves serving Ukraine and YWAM in Pennsylvania. I feel that my first responsibility is to my family and that’s why I’m with them in the states helping them get settled and transition into life here.

While I am not sure what I will do once all the dust has settled I know that there are many opportunities and God has a plan. As a spend time with and help my family I am prayerfully considering my options for future service.

This is a difficult time for me and my family and we’d very much appreciate your prayers.

This is the bathroom that I shared with two other guys for a few weeks in China. See that hole in the floor? That’s the toilet a.k.a. “squatty potty”.

AND the shower drain.

Yes, that’s right. The bathroom is best described as a large tiled shower with the addition of a squatty potty into which the sink and shower drained. Oh, and how could I forget that aptly-named “wastepaper basket” where all the used toilet paper goes. (We quickly learned not to get it wet when showering, dirty toilet paper smells less when it’s dry.)

That wasn’t the only thing that was “different” about our hotel… We ended up spending a lot of time praying for the owners, employees and err… “guests”. You see, many people wouldn’t stay a full night in their room. TVs blaring at their highest volumes couldn’t quite drown out the sounds of the other “guests”. It didn’t take us long to figure out what was going on… Though the hotel wasn’t quite a brothel it wasn’t just a hotel either. It was something in-between.

Eating was fun, too! The most popular meal in the area we stayed in is called Hot Pot. It’s generally something you have with a big group of friends no more then once a week. As you can see from the picture (above) which I took during a meal with some Chinese students, there is a big boiling pot of oil with chilies, peppers and spices in it and then lots of little plates with various kinds of food for you to put in the pot and cook. The pot in this picture is divided into two kinds of Hot Pot, one is the traditional spicy kind (the red side) and the other is a much more mild kind (the yellow side). The food on the plates includes small hard-boiled eggs, cow stomach, meat from the pig, “glass meat” (marbled beef), another plate of “glass meat”, more glass meat and pig brain among other things.

To be perfectly honest all the strange things weren’t as bad as you’d expect. I even enjoyed the cow stomach. (Not nearly as much as a nice medium-rare steak though!)

Something else that took getting used to was the crowds of people. Asian culture is group culture and you can see evidence of it everywhere in China. For instance, there are no suburbs in China. There are farms and very remote rural areas and then there are cities. Mega-cities with millions and millions of people… and they’re not “mega” because there’s no room for smaller cities, it’s because they like to group together.

We were out in western China and many of those people have never seen Caucasians in person before. (All of them have seen white foreigners on TV.) When we were spotted it was not uncommon for people to gather around us and just stare. It was weird and annoying at first but eventually we got used to it.

Our last week in China was spent in Beijing and we were able to go see many of the “sights” that most tourists visit, like the Temple of Heaven (above). They were incredible and some (like the “god of fear”) were very telling.

While the sights were very impressive, it was in living among and talking with the Chinese people in western China that I learned, grew and was most challenged.

The long-term Servants in China told us that prayer is the greatest thing we can do to help China become the country God intends it to be. Several times a week we broke up into groups of two to four and went on prayer walks all over the city. We prayed in universities, at shopping centers, outside elementary schools, in busy city-centers, in quiet gardens, at national monuments, over historic sites, outside the gates of government buildings and lots of other places, too.

We often prayed at Buddhist temples for those worshipping the golden idols and also for the monks who have dedicated their lives to a false image. In the picture above you can see two of my friends praying for an old blind beggar outside a Buddhist temple. It was a common sight to see disabled people begging outside temples hoping somebody would throw a few cents their direction for “good luck”. None of the Buddhists I spoke with in China were “following” the Buddhist religion for any reason other than the hope that they would have “good luck” and make more money.

One night, towards the end of our trip, we all piled into a city bus and headed to one of the parks. This particular park occupies one of the highest points in the city and has a big tower which offers a 360 degree view of the city from the top. We all climbed up, Erica with her guitar, and we began to worship, pray, praise and proclaim God over the city. Looking back on my time in China I think this was one of the best moments of the entire trip. It was amazing to be up there looking over the city at night, with all it’s lights, traffic and earthly distractions and to be proclaiming God as King over it all. To be asking for His grace, mercy and blessing on the millions of people around us.

As impressive as the lights of one of the world’s largest cities were, they paled in comparison to the heavens stretched out over them.

Here are some prayer points for China.

Then Paul stood up on Mars’ Hill and said, “Men of Athens, I see how very religious you are in every way. As I was walking around and looking at the things you worship, I found an altar where you worship with the words written on it, To The God Who Is Not Known. You are worshiping Him without knowing Him. He is the One I will tell you about.
Acts 17:22-23 NLV.

To be a police officer in China you must be a member of the Communist Party and to be a member of the Communist Party you must renounce all religions. Period. One day I had the privilege of speaking with a relatively high-ranking police officer. During our conversation about faith I learned that his views of Christianity were the same as many of the other Chinese people I had met. That Christianity is a “western religion”, that “God didn’t make Chinese people” nor does he “care about China”. I asked him what he lived for and he replied, “The future.” Then he went on to explain in broken English that he decided to be a police officer because he wants to help people. To be honest. (He was offended at the idea of taking a bribe and upset that it is a problem in his country.) He wants to help make China better for the next generation. To protect people. To serve them. To do good.

I told him he wasn’t just serving people but that he was also serving God.

That blew him away.

He didn’t believe me. I told him that Jesus said that when you serve people you’re serving him.^# That serving people is at the very heart of Christianity and that Jesus performed the ultimate act of service when he laid down his life. I could have put it another way: You are serving Him without knowing Him. He is the One I’ve been telling you about.

At this point in the conversation his whole demeanor changed. He was listening. He was questioning. He wasn’t rejecting a foreign religion anymore… He was considering Christ.

In addition to that police officer, the other members of my team and I met a lot of English-speaking students, teachers, soldiers and even a man who works for the Chinese military’s ministry of propaganda. Almost always religion, faith and Christianity came up in conversation and talking about our faith in a country where where the vast majority of people have never heard the good news was always a challenge. Words like “Salvation” “Sin” “Saved” “Son of God” and even “Jesus” all had to be explained. I think there are very few (if any) people in our western culture who don’t have a basic understanding of the Gospel. Think about it, you could say all those words and maybe even “Trinity” and “The Incarnation” to anyone on the street and chances are they’ll have a good idea of what you mean.

Not so in China.

People like to call themselves “men of science” who “don’t believe in spiritual things” yet burn incense to idols, consult the stars and and wear Buddhist jewelry for “good luck”. Spirits are things to be appeased and pleased in order to receive financial blessing or an attractive spouse. Christianity is something they were taught in school alongside Greek and Roman mythology. For me to say “I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ” is akin to someone you meet in McDonalds telling you that they worship Zeus.

Though many of the Chinese don’t know it and it’s easy for us to forget: God is in China. He has always been there! I’m thankful that I had an opportunity to go and, like Paul in Athens 2000 years ago, point him out in a place where the “Good News” is actually news.

I took a lot of pictures in China. (Just over 1100.) I’ve uploaded about 100 of them for your enjoyment.

You can view my pictures from China here.

God has provided all the funds I needed for my outreach and tomorrow I’m leaving early in the morning for Asia with my team. In total I estimate that our travel time will exceed 50 hours! (Three flights totaling almost 20 hours in-air followed by over 30 hours on a train.) That is going to be very tiring! There will also be many opportunities for baggage get lost and flights to be delayed or even missed. Please pray for our safety and that everything goes as smoothly as possible.

I will not be able to update this blog until I return but I will do my best to keep everyone updated via email.

Have a great couple months! I’ll be back in July!

Everyone on the team got a visa for all the time we need… YAY!

Our passports are at the embassy now! Please pray that we’re granted visas!