Basically when we arrived in China we were handed a sheet of paper with the details of our ministry assignment, and directions of how to get there. Our assignment was a rather vague one, go to City X and try to befriend the English teachers and possibly any Tibetan monks from a supposedly nearby monastery which we never found. That was pretty much it. Basically as it turned out my team was pioneering this city for possibly future missions work.
After a few days of searching high and low for an English speaker we began to lose hope. So what do you do when you are stuck in a place that resembles more of a movie set, rather than a town, and you can’t speak to anyone around you? Well like you we had no idea what to do either, so we prayed. And what do you know, it worked. The next day we stumbled upon the middle school in the town and some how managed to nonverbally communicate that we wanted to meet the English teacher. Side note: by the time we return from this trip I have a feeling that Amanda and I will be unstoppable at the “Piece-of-Paper*” game. The day we met Hannah and Bill, the English teachers at the middle school, we went to dinner with them and were invited to come and teach their classes English songs that evening. It turned into so much more than that though. After mastering “Row Your Boat” they wanted us to sing songs individually to the class and once that was done they wanted us to dance, thankfully I got out of dancing. But in return the students sang and danced for us.
Through our friendship with Hannah and Bill, Team Leader Kevin and I were invited to play basketball with the teachers as well as ping-pong. We were even invited to Hannah’s wedding reception. We also ended up meeting another English teacher, Jimmy, at a nearby elementary school and also had the opportunity to go to dinner with a few high school students. One day on the streets a few from our team even got to meet some Chinese missionaries. We were able to learn so much about China and the people there from our friends.
We were able to discuss religion and faith with our friends, but religion is something the Chinese would rather not discuss. Not for fear of persecution but for cultural reasons. However, I do believe that our time there was not wasted. Dring our stay in City X we took the time to map out the town and a few outlying areas so that future teams and/or missionaries can go farther than we did.
One of the biggest revelations I had while walking the dusty streets in that foreign land, among a people with a foreign language, is that there was nothing foreign about that place or the people there. I may not understand why in the world they decided to build a small city in the middle of nowhere. I may not understand what the people are saying on the streets. I may not know the story of the family walking towards me on the road.
But God does.
He knows why that city is being built, He understands the language and He knows each every persons story. He is there in City X among all the noise, and dust. I would like to conclude this blog series by asking you to pray that Hannah, Bill, Jimmy, and the high school students we met, would see Him there among them.
