Nate Flake

One of our alum­ni (Netha­neel Flake) post­ed this to a group dis­cus­sion list and I thought some of you might find it inter­est­ing. To give you con­text, Nate was a lin­guis­tics major who set off for the Ori­ent upon grad­u­at­ing. He had no def­i­nite plans except to prac­tice his lan­guage skills.

For those of you who know me and might be won­der­ing, I’d just like to let you all know what I’ve been up to in the last month.

So, it turns out that after spend­ing a week in Chi­na (Xia­men) mak­ing friends and find­ing a uni­ver­si­ty to spend a semes­ter, I had to return to my Aun­t’s house in Hong Kong to apply for a Chi­nese stu­dent visa. But, while in Hong Kong, I found out my class­mate from my YWAM dis­ci­ple­ship train­ing school in France was in Tai­wan with his Los Ange­les church. They were in des­per­ate need of a trans­la­tor and helper in their sum­mer Eng­lish camp, and I was in des­per­ate need of a place to spend a month, so I came on down. I’ve had such a great expe­ri­ence among these Tai­wanese Chris­tians that I have decid­ed to study here instead of China…also, I need make a bit of dough on the side to pay my bills, and frankly, teach­ing Eng­lish in Chi­na is like work­ing for peanuts.

I feel a lot more at home here at this church than I do at Stan­ford. Peo­ple seem much more coop­er­a­tive than com­pet­i­tive, and work­ing with the kids here has been much more reward­ing than Bayshore (that may be because while at Bayshore I learned a few things about deal­ing with kids from the first day you meet them). I’m real­ly hop­ing I can find ways to have an impact on the kids here of all ages, both in Eng­lish class­es and hope­ful­ly also on pub­lic bas­ket­ball courts. We’ll see what actu­al­ly hap­pens.

I’m very very aware of God’s work in my life right now. All I was hop­ing for dur­ing this six month win­dow was a few friends and if pos­si­ble, con­tact with a church. Now I find myself com­plete­ly immersed in both. Being sur­round­ed by pure-heart­ed Chris­tians with healthy life goals (as opposed to the self-con­cern­ing over­achiev­ing one I’ve devel­oped over the years) has already begun to have its effect on me. I’m excit­ed to know that I will be spend­ing the next 6 months liv­ing in a room at the church/pastor’s house and earn­ing mon­ey by tutor­ing most­ly young adults that I already know and like.

All I have to do is get all the visa paper­work for the uni­ver­si­ty fin­ished by tues­day, fly to Hong Kong, get the new visa, hang out with my friends in Xia­men and then come back here in ear­ly sep­tem­ber (if I come back ear­li­er, my visa will expire before the six months is up).

So, when you think of me, pray that with such a com­pli­cat­ed plan every­thing will fall into place. My biggest fear/lack of faith–going broke–appears to be tak­en care of. Instead of hav­ing to beg peo­ple to help me find a job or let me be their tutor, every­one has come to me and asked. A cou­ple high school stu­dents gath­ered enough of their friends togeth­er and orga­nized their sched­ules so that I can reach my min­i­mum mon­e­tary require­ments teach­ing one Eng­lish class, twice a week.

Well, that’s it. I just want­ed to stay in touch. Write me back when you get a chance, but if you don’t I under­stand. We’re all too busy for our own good, aren’t we?

Your Broth­er in Christ,

–Nate

Get­ting this email was cool for two rea­sons.

1) It was good to hear from Nate.

2) It remind­ed me of our vision all over again. When we touch the cam­pus, we touch the world.