I’m in the airport now with the whole team. We board in 15 minutes so I wanted to let everyone know that Sunday (yesterday) went VERY well. 360 came on Cruise #1 and 280 came on Cruise #2. Our performer, Christian, did great and our team did great too! We’ll write a full blog-report when we get home.
There will be more to come as soon as we get back . . . I promise!
Thank you for ALL your thoughts, prayers and support! See you soon!
Team Hong Kong 2008
Christian Bautista came on board and sang a few of his songs as we handed out gift bags with free Bible’s in their native tongue. Bible distribution was definitely a key part to the success of this free cruise. Our guests kept coming back and thanking us for the free Bible’s and for Christian’s free performance.
Today’s Top Videos: Video #1: This video gives you a GREAT idea of how many people came and lined up for Cruise #1.
Video #2: Christian Bautista sang LIVE on the cruise and he really did a GREAT job! Even though our sound system wasn’t up to professional standards, he humbly made the best of it. And it didn’t matter anyway, the women on the boat went CRAZY for him!
As Sunday, June 29th draws closer we decided it was time to take a bit of a break in between visiting churches, passing out flyer’s and buying things for the BIG EVENT and go out into the city and enjoy Hong Kong before preparing all final event details. If we could visit JUST ONE place while we were here then we’ve been told that we need to go and see The Peak so that’s where we went . . . and it was gorgeous!
Victoria Peak
These past two days have been a mixture of fun and pleasure! We “took” a FUN DAY yesterday and just finished another “WORK DAY” today. For fun, we went up to The Peak which is the highest point on Hong Kong Island. From there you can look out and see both the Hong Kong and Kowloon side of the channel. You take a trolley from the bottom to the top – sitting at a 45 degree angle the whole way up. Looking out the window is really a trip because the buildings are standing up straight and you look like you are being pulled up the side of a building at a really freaking angle. But the trip up the mountain is WELL worth it because the view from the top is breath-taking, especially at night.
This is what 750 bags looks like!
Today was time to get down to business. We had about 5 items that we needed to place in 750 bags total. We had a GREEN bag, a YELLOW bag and a RED bag. The GREEN & YELLOW bags are goodie bags for the people who will be on the two boat cruises while the RED bags will be given out to the people who can’t make the boat but will be hanging out on the dock with us enjoying music and our free raffle. After about 4 1/2 hours of stuffing bags, we finished our project in time for dinner. Now, we just need to get ready for the 1,000’s of OFW’s we are expecting who will be trying to get on the boat this coming Sunday!
Today’s Top Videos: Video #1: This short 3 sec clip shows you what our assembly line looks like while in action.
Video #2: The Peak was beautiful. This clip scans the whole scene – don’t mind the 50 mph winds.
Video #3: Casey on Zack’s shoulders up on the Peak
Our Sunday Invitation: Matthew 9:37 The 3,000 flyer’s we brought with us were not even close to the amount we actually needed for all of the OFW’s we met this Sunday (yesterday). We could have brought 10,000 flyers with us and we still would have been rid of them in 1 day. So we decided to hit two major train stations in Hong Kong where we went looking for OFW’s. Our team started off alone at the “Sha Tin” train station from 9:00-10:30 where we met OFW’s on their way from one place to the other. By 10:30, our Filipino friends met us at the station and we broke up into groups and hit the public parks. It was not hard to find them in the public parks at all – you can find anywhere from 5 to 30 of them sitting in groups playing cards, socializing or relaxing on their day off. After our time at Sha Tin Station we went to a Filipino church and enjoyed a time of worship and picture taking with some new Filipino friends. By 4:00 we were off to “Central” Station and THAT is where we went into “OFW shock.” As soon as we got off the train we could see hundreds of OFW’s within a 3-block radius. Overall, it was an AMAZING day of invitation and outreach . . . minus the local police force pushing us out of the parks about 10+ separate times.
Creative Thought: Casey’s Sunday-Rap Sunday! Sunday! Its a big day!
We got a free cruise and you don’t have to pay.
3,000 flyers that’s what were handin out
so lets get this all goin with a lil’ shout out.
Women recognize our shirts, call us mista mista
as they start flippin’ out, cuz we got Christian Bautista.
He’s comin to Hong Kong, in just one week
so you better get ready cuz Pastor Wood’s gonna speak.
Our ministry started in a station called Sha Tin
lots of Filipino women but not many men.
After lots of passin’ out flyers, we needed some food
so we went to a restaurant that set a perfect mood.
Stuffed from lunch, it was time for some church
an amazing experience, but lets get back to the search.
We traveled to a placed called Black Man’s Square
street or park, OFW’s everywhere.
Flyers went fast, many people will know
we appreciate their work, and love we will show.
Today’s Top Videos:
Video #1: On any given Sunday . . . OFW’s can be found EVERYWHERE. Watch this video and be thinking to yourself, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”
Video #2: Picture Time With Friends: Watch this video carefully. We started with 5 people wanting to be in the shot and then ended up with nearly 20 or more as more people tried to jam into the shot one by one.
Video #3: Brad jumped right in and started mingling and talking with the OFW’s until local police started pushing him out of the park. He moved where they told him to and then went right back to work on another group. Can you spot him in this video?
Hong Kong Nightlife: “Hollywood” Walk of Fame Last night, after a full day of ministry preparation, we took a tour of Victoria Harbor by night. This city is BOOMING once the sun goes down – people are everywhere! A new friend of ours took us shopping for all of our gift bag goodies in preparation for our main event next Sunday. If you can, picture 5 American’s walking through a busy street market, each of us carrying a HUGE bag of socks. We bought 750 pairs of socks for the OFW’s goodie bags and that was a hard find. We still have about 4 or 5 other items that will go into the bags as well and only have a few more days to find it all. Pray for us.
Heat Strokes & Talking Donkey’s At 10:00am today we met up with some friends that we made earlier this week. They had invited us to a morning of soccer & basketball. We took the train for about 30 minutes and got off at a beautiful university stadium. One of the kids is a student there and got us in to the main field without any problem. This was a beautiful grass field with a rubber track that circles the soccer field. By 10:45am it was SO hot though that even our local Hong Kongese friends were dying so we ended up finishing one last soccer game and gave up because we couldn’t handle it anymore. These are some really good kids and we enjoyed hanging out with them so much!
Later on that day (today) we were invited to attend a Chinese youth group that meets on the rooftop of a 20-story high building. There is a youth room and roof access that provides a beautiful view of Hong Kong. We had an equally great time there as well. These kids are from a different church than our soccer/basket ball friends. All together now, we have been able to network with 2 Chinese churches here and about 5 to 7 local Filipino churches so far – what a great week #1! Kenneth, the Pastor here allowed us to prepare brief testimonials, some music, some games and even an evangelistic message. We started with some ice breaking games so that they could feel comfortable with us (a song game & a game called Murder) and then we acted out the story in Numbers 22 about Balaam and his talking donkey (Casey was the donkey) – we wanted to give the kids a unique Bible story about listening to God amidst a “reckless” lifestyle. Brad finished our time together by clearly presenting the gospel. In the end, we made some great friends and we hope to continue communicating with them when we return home!
Top Video’s Of The Day!
Video #1: Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah, Praise Be The Lord! This song/game was hilarious. The boys sang one part and the girls sang the other and it ended up making for a fun time!
Video #2: Teach a Youth Group “The Murder Game”
Greeting and winking at each other really lightened things up a bit. The kids got to meet us and we got to meet them too.
Video #3: A Night At Victoria Harbor
Across Victoria Harbor you can see an amazing display of lights as they dance across the water towards us on the Kowloon side of the bay.
Attention: We’ve just added TEAM PHOTOS to our Hong Kong blog! If you look off to the right hand side of this page . . . you’ll see HK City Shots. Click on any of the three photos below the heading and it will redirect you to a page where we have stored ALL of our local city shots from the past few days.
Finally, A Complete Team! After a fun long day (10am – 2pm) of “airsofting” in mainland China with a local Hong Kong-based youth group we got back to our dorm rooms just in time to freshen up and grab a bus out to the airport to pick up our last two teammates. The remaining members of our Hong Kong team (Brad & Casey) arrived at the International airport around 10:30pm last night. We road the city bus back to our rooms at the Hong Kong Baptist University WITH luggage in tow which took about 45 minutes to get to our bus stop and then another 15 minute walk to our dorm rooms. We checked the new guys in around 12:00 midnight and went right to bed. That was a long and fun HOT/HUMID day! In the picture above we’re holding the OFW flyer’s that we intend to hand out all day this coming Sunday, June 22nd with hopes to personally invite 2,000+ OFW’s to 1 of our 2 free cruises aboard a Star Ferry Boat on Sunday, June 29th. Our printed flyer’s originally stated that we will be having 3 cruises, not 2 cruises, so our team spent about 3 to 4 hours today whiting-out the third cruise off of each individual flyer.
Get To Work: Ferry Boats & Milk Toast! We all got up today and got ready by 7:30am to cross Victoria Harbor via the Star Ferry Boat (which is the boat we will be hosting the OFW”s on next week). We wanted a preview of the seating arrangements and the necessary details we will need to prepare for next Sunday. It was a really fun adventure as we got dropped off on the banks of Hong Kong Island and then walked around what looked like New York City for about 20 minutes looking for a restaurant where we could eat breakfast. We finally found a place called “Noodle” that had a variety of interesting menu choices to choose from . . . Casey’s daring choice “Milk Toast” ended up being a winner – way to take a chance for the team, Casey!
Today’s Top Videos: #1 The Noodle VIP Room: Once we crossed over to Hong Kong Island via the Star Ferry Boat, we found a restaurant for breakfast. As we walked in the door they immediately directed us into a “VIP Room” which was air conditioned and separated us by glass from the rest of the restaurant. Check out the tour.
#2 The Star Ferry Boat: This is the “appreciation day cruise boat” that the OFW’s will be cruising on during our Sunday, June 29th event. Beautiful sights and a nice ocean breeze.
#3 Airsofting WarGames: The local youth group took us out to an abandoned house in Mainland China that had been renovated into an airsofting ministry for teens. Zack gives a tour of the facility just before a match.
With Oralia’s full permission I share this story with you: We arrived at LAX at 8:00am on June 16th. By 8:30am we were in line getting ready to check our bags when I (Zack) said, “get out your passports.” We all pulled out our passports when all the sudden we hear, “Oralia, what did you do?” Oralia had pulled out her passport, opened it and instantly went into shock – she had packed her husbands passport by accident. Oops. Well thankfully, we serve a perfect God and He must have known what was going to happen that morning because . . . as of Sunday morning, we originally thought we were leaving LAX for Hong Kong at 10:45am but we came to find that our flight wasn’t until 1:20pm SO we still had time for her husband to drive home, pick up her passport and drive it directly back to LAX in time for our flight. Now that’s what I call some crazy timing along with some grace too!
So after 16 hours on a plane, we got in to Hong Kong at 10:00pm – Hong Kong time – on June 18th and took a bus from the airport to our accommodations at the Hong Kong Baptist University. By 11:30pm we were checked into to our dorm rooms and ready for bed. The next morning (today) we got up, had some breakfast and headed down to the CBAP office (Conservative Baptist Office) in downtown Kowloon via Hong Kong’s amazing bus system. Figuring out the transit system here wasn’t too difficult because we got here right on time for our first meeting with our Hong Kong & Filipino partners. It’s been hot and humid all morning and now we’re ready to go out on the town and explore a bit. We have a checklist of things we need to find before Saturday and we have no idea where we are going to find them. We’ll let you know how it all goes!
Thanks for all your prayers! Please enjoy the two videos below . . . Video #1 is Bethany’s FIRST EVER foreign vending machine experience. She didn’t even get to pick what she wanted. If you look close enough, you’ll see that the buttons are heat-censored and she ended up getting a cool glass of Pocari Sweat . . . yes I said SWEAT . . . mmmm mmmm good!
Video #2 is Zack being cheered on to eat a baby octopus for lunch – you can mark another notch on Zack’s “weird stuff you don’t want to eat” list.
MONDAY, JUNE 16th, 2008 is creeping around the corner!
If anyone would like to come by and see us off at Grace Church at 6:00AM on Monday morning, PLEASE be our guest as we load up our bags, hop in a car and shove off for LAX! Our team is so excited as all the details are fitting right into place. Our 1,000 goodie bags came in on Friday, our 3,000 invitations came in on Wednesday as well as our 900 boarding tickets for the Sunday cruise ship. Our team is ready, I just hope that the OFW’s are ready for us!
LAX to Hong Kong International airport will be a delightful 14-16 hour flight! We fly direct from LAX to Hong Kong which is a good thing. Any kind of stops in between here and there would be a waste of valuable time. Upon arrival, we hop on a train that takes us UNDER the bay and pops us out in the center of Kowloon where we will be staying (apart of Hong Kong). We’ll be using trains, buses and taxi’s as our main source of transportation while we are in Hong Kong – how fun! Come back to this blog and look for updates WHILE we are away – if we have an Internet connection, we’ll use it to post more information. Blessings.
At first, as I thought about how my team and I would possibly find and hand out 3,000+ invitations to OFW’s (Overseas Filipino Workers) in Hong Kong on a Sunday afternoon (June 22nd), I thought to myself . . . how are we going to do that in one day? Where will we know to look for them? How will they “stand out” in a crowd? Well the more I thought about it and even started worrying a little bit, I decided to hop on the Internet and look for some answers. That’s when I came across THIS website. I don’t know who this person is and can’t stand behind anything they say on their blog but they definitely answered my question!
I am now fully confident we will find OFW’s in Hong Kong! Apparently, they socialize like this EVERYWHERE! You can find them huddling together in parks, hallways and under trees. They are simply enjoying one another’s company from morning to night all Sunday long. I am so very excited to get to Hong Kong and have the chance to offer them an invitation to something that is truly eternity-changing!
This ‘blog author’ explains OFW-life in Hong Kong like this, “Shortly after descending into Hong Kong’s Central District for the first time I notice hundreds of women laying blankets or pieces of cardboard boxes on sidewalks. Is this some type of sit in like protest in the making or the prelude to a weekend event? Eager to catch the boat I keep moving.
We hope you keep coming back here to visit our Team blog! This blog will be the best place to keep up with us while we are gone so please do us a favor and sign up for email updates so that you can get emails as soon as we update our blog (just click the envelope to the right). As long as we have an Internet connection you will see updates on all of our adventures while in Hong Kong.
The Mission:
This summer our team will be taking an airplane half way around the world to deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ to a very specific group of people. In Hong Kong, there are over 130,000 OFW’s (Overseas Filipino Workers) living and working there who have moved from the Philippines for a chance at better pay and better living conditions. Most of these workers send money home so their families can have a better life. And most of them only get one day off a week . . . Sunday. They can usually be found walking around Victoria Harbor socializing so that’s where we’ll be.
Our plan: On the Sunday before our free cruise through Victoria Harbor, our Grace team will be walking around the harbor inviting as many OFW’s as we can find to come back to the harbor the following Sunday for a free “Filipino Workers Appreciation Day” cruise with our special guest, Christian Bautista, a famous pop star from the Philippines. We’ve already booked the cruise liner and the pop star, now we just need to pray that people will come and bring friends! Most of the major details like invitation cards, goodie bag preparation, passenger registration and boat/dock preparation are waiting for us once we get to Hong Kong.
Please pray with us as we try our best to make this trip a success,
Team Hong Kong 2008
Zack Grelling
Oralia Cuellar
Brad Kear
Casey Kear
Bethany Uyboco
Last night, after a full day of ministry preparation, we took a tour of Victoria Harbor by night. This city is BOOMING once the sun goes down – people are everywhere! A new friend of ours took us shopping for all of our gift bag goodies in preparation for our main event next Sunday. If you can, picture 5 American’s walking through a busy street market, each of us carrying a HUGE bag of socks. We bought 750 pairs of socks for the OFW’s goodie bags and that was a hard find. We still have about 4 or 5 other items that will go into the bags as well and only have a few more days to find it all. Pray for us.
At 10:00am today we met up with some friends that we made earlier this week. They had invited us to a morning of soccer & basketball. We took the train for about 30 minutes and got off at a beautiful university stadium. One of the kids is a student there and got us in to the main field without any problem. This was a beautiful grass field with a rubber track that circles the soccer field. By 10:45am it was SO hot though that even our local Hong Kongese friends were dying so we ended up finishing one last soccer game and gave up because we couldn’t handle it anymore. These are some really good kids and we enjoyed hanging out with them so much!
Later on that day (today) we were invited to attend a Chinese youth group that meets on the rooftop of a 20-story high building. There is a youth room and roof access that provides a beautiful view of Hong Kong. We had an equally great time there as well. These kids are from a different church than our soccer/basket ball friends. All together now, we have been able to network with 2 Chinese churches here and about 5 to 7 local Filipino churches so far – what a great week #1! Kenneth, the Pastor here allowed us to prepare brief testimonials, some music, some games and even an evangelistic message. We started with some ice breaking games so that they could feel comfortable with us (a song game & a game called Murder) and then we acted out the story in Numbers 22 about Balaam and his talking donkey (Casey was the donkey) – we wanted to give the kids a unique Bible story about listening to God amidst a “reckless” lifestyle. Brad finished our time together by clearly presenting the gospel. In the end, we made some great friends and we hope to continue communicating with them when we return home!
After a fun long day (10am – 2pm) of “
We all got up today and got ready by 7:30am to cross Victoria Harbor via the Star Ferry Boat (which is the boat we will be hosting the OFW”s on next week). We wanted a preview of the seating arrangements and the necessary details we will need to prepare for next Sunday. It was a really fun adventure as we got dropped off on the banks of Hong Kong Island and then walked around what looked like New York City for about 20 minutes looking for a restaurant where we could eat breakfast. We finally found a place called “Noodle” that had a variety of interesting menu choices to choose from . . . Casey’s daring choice “Milk Toast” ended up being a winner – way to take a chance for the team, Casey!
The Mission:
On the Sunday before our free cruise through 
