Looking at my last blog post, I guess I never posted the next update. Sorry! But here's a little more about the last two-ish years...

As for China… I had a great four and a half months there. My first semester of English teaching was challenging but super enjoyable, and it was a pleasure to get to know many of my students during that time. Life in China was interesting, and I had a lot of fun learning the basic phrases and all the little things I needed to know to get around the city, order food, and buy things at the grocery store.

Things changed big-time in January 2020, as Covid blew through mainland China, while I was away on vacation. At the beginning of January, I traveled to the Philippines for vacation, since we had about 6 weeks of free time between the fall and spring semesters. While I was there, China closed the borders, and I was unable to return. I waited until the middle of March, but with no good news, flew back home to Montana.

I signed on for another year of teaching, believing I would be able to go back for the fall 2020 semester. Things were continually delayed, and last month, I completed my third semester of remote teaching. While I had a really difficult time with not only teaching online, but also thinking all the time that I’d be going back and ultimately staying here much longer than I’d hoped, I’m thankful for the time I did get to be in China, and for the time I got to spend with my students, even remotely from here in the US. 

Now that my time teaching with the university in China has ended, I’m excited to share a little about a new opportunity! Next month, I’m heading out for a year of training and volunteering with YWAM (Youth with a Mission)! I’ll be part of a yearlong program based in Greece called Year of Mission. The gist of it is this: the first 3 months will be at the base in Greece for training as well as working with refugees there, and then I'll spend the rest of the year in continued training and volunteering in the Middle East!

I won’t share too much about it here in this blog, but if you want to sign up for future updates, I’ll be sending out a newsletter during the year! Sign up here:

">Subscribe

Or you can send me an email (laurenliz95@g.ucla.edu) or Facebook message with your email, or additionally you can leave a comment here on this blog, and I’ll sign you up!

Lastly, this is likely to be the last post on this blog. I want to give a HUGE thank-you to each one of you who read my posts while I was on the World Race. It’s been such a pleasure to have you in my life, and I hope you were encouraged by what I wrote about that year. And, an even bigger thank-you to those of you who partnered with me through prayer or financial support; good work simply doesn’t happen without a community of people dedicated to seeing it through. The upcoming year will necessitate some support-raising as well-- I’ll be sending out support updates along with the newsletter, but please let me know if you would be interested and willing to partner with me again this year through prayer or funding!

All my best, 

Lauren