This mission trip was a lot of firsts.

First mission trip, first time traveling by myself, first time in Taiwan. It was pretty fun.

To be honest I didn’t want to go to Taiwan at all. I had plans for the summer. there was no way I was going to miss a week for VGM. my mom wore me down and I just decided it was easier to agree. So I just said yolo and got onto that plane early in the morning. I landed in Taiwan and kind of just went with the flow. The first few days were a blur, mostly me just following people and doing what everyone else was doing. When we got to DongShi I got to meet all of the Taiwan coworkers which was pretty cool. They gave me a lot of great advice and I was able to learn a lot from them.

Camp life was pretty tiring, we had a packed schedule from 7am-7pm. I was pretty tired at first but I got used to it pretty fast and started having fun. The first day in the bilingual camp was pretty slow, apparently I look like an American so all the kids wouldn’t talk to me because they thought I didn’t speak Chinese. After they heard me speak Chinese I suddenly became everyone’s favorite big brother. These kids would not stop grabbing me and shouting in my face. Even kids who were not in my group were following me around. One of the kids in my group, Big Mike was probably my favorite camper. He was the nicest, most thoughtful kid.
He weighs more than me, but he would grab onto me and just wouldn’t let go. The girls in my class would follow me around when the boys got tired, they would stick stickers to my back and play around with my hair. You could really feel the love from these kids. I was always surrounded by kids looking for hugs or piggyback rides. At the end of the day most of the sweat on my body wasn’t mine.

When the last day rolled around it was pretty emotional. Big Mike was crying and grabbed my legs so he wouldn’t have to go and a couple other kids did the same. The kids from my group wrote me thank you notes and some kids from other groups wrote thank you notes for me too. All of the kids made me add them on Facebook and promise that I will come back next year. When I got back home all these kids added me on Facebook. A few kids from my group would message/call me daily, there’s also this little girl from another group who messages me everyday. I would recommend that everybody go join VGM at least once, it truly is a life changing experience and as an added bonus you can hear me try to speak Chinese for a week.