Journal

I truly feel as if our camping has not yet ended, as if something fundamental has shifted in our lives; our church life will not and cannot be the same. I am thankful that the Lord paved a very specific time for us—including enjoyments and struggles, corporate and by household, sleeping and not sleeping, warm and freezing cold—to be enlarged and broadened to see the meaning and purpose of our sojourning on the earth today.

What touched me the most during our camping (churching) this time was that we can live a simple life. I have never done real camping before, so it was a new experience for me. We learned how to start a fire, how to cook a meal using basic utensils, how to set up a tent to sleep in, how to get water from a hand pump—but most of all, how to be still and joyful without doing anything.

One of the memorable moments I had during our camping trip was building a fire. There are many things that are needed in order to enjoy a roaring fire. First, you must have the proper environment; there must be a place to host the fire. You cannot just build and start a fire anywhere—you must find the proper ground. Second, there must be the proper materials: very dry wood, kindling and a heat source. Then, you must assemble these materials in the proper order.

At the junction of marriage, the sisters and brothers in the church began to tell me, “You need to have the Lord in your marriage.” I heard this phrase so many times that I was immune to it; the next time I heard it, without thinking, I said, “Amen!” Sometimes I would even utter the same sentence to others, saying, “Don’t worry about me, I have the Lord in my life and marriage!”