Hawaii June 12th.

All week’s complete chaos was in preparation for one night. A night where churches from around the island came together to learn more about the life of missionaries and Nepalese culture. Mission Overnight is an event where kids are reminded about how amazing it is to live in a country where we are free to worship Christ.

This year we “traveled” to the country of Nepal. All of Tuesday was spent printing, cutting, and stapling together pretend passports that the kids would use to get through our pretend security check. Praise and worship was kicked off by none other than The Great Commission song. “The Bible says, ‘Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.'” Though we weren’t able to have missionaries come from Nepal to speak to the children, we were fortunate enough to have the Nepalese Society of Hawaii come and teach us about their culture. Throughout the night kids rotated between a Nepalese cooking class, a Nepalese dancing class, a station where they made sock puppets, a station where they learned more about current events in Nepal because of the earthquake, and a station where they learned about missionaries in Nepal. It was a night of opening them up to a new culture and teaching them what life is like outside of Hawaii. From Nepalese food for dinner to learning Nepali dances, we immersed ourselves in a new world.

It was a long and tiring night. I slept really late on my makeshift bed made out of chapel chairs, and I woke up really early to the sun shining right through the chapel windows and into my eyes. We spent a couple hours the next morning cleaning up, but looking back on the night it was all worth it. I didn’t realize it at the moment, but I was taking part in something I love- cultural immersion. I got to expand my worldview while also doing children’s ministry. So not only was I learning about new cultures, but all the kids who attended the event were too. It might take long days and busy office hours to plan an event like this, but my hope is that the kids took as much away from it as I did.