Sunshine Camp 2009 - a podcast by Failla Family

“Those were the best two weeks of my life!”

I was happy to hear that, because I had talked him into coming with me and he had no idea what to expect. But when my little brother Blake and I were leaving the Sunshine Camp I could tell he had made some great friends and had had a wonderful experience. He spent all of his time with his Chinese friends, learning phrases in Mandarin and hanging out with them. He’s already planning his move back to China after he graduates from high school!

I had a great time also, making new friends and reconnecting with old ones. On top of that I had the privilege of speaking at the camp. The first of my talks was about stereotypes and cross-cultural friendships. I brought 150 fortune cookies to show them about stereotypes, and you should have seen the American student’s faces when I pointed out that only five Chinese kids out of over 50 had ever eaten fortune cookies, most of them outside of China! After that I was part of a panel of speakers and we answered questions regarding purpose, relationships, career choices, etc. My final talk was on focusing our energy, not just our time, on the things that matter most in life (which was ironic considering how sick and exhausted I was the morning I gave the talk, thanks to some stomach problems). But the highlight of the time for me was hanging out with Jess and Lisa from our Xi’an crew- it had been five months since I had seen them, which was hard because they are like family to us.

There are some other potential developments that came out of the camp but it will be awhile before we know if anything will materialize. We’ll keep you posted as to how things progress.

We had an offer on our house, but it was withdrawn by the buyer after the inspection for some vague reason. We appreciate your prayers for wisdom and God’s help in the situation.

We leave next Tuesday (the 18th) for China! Joshua asks us pretty much every day when we are going back to China. Soon we can tell him "today!"

With Love,

The Failla Family