So a few weeks ago my squad and I finally landed in Beijing, China. We stayed there for a night and then headed out on a 19 hour train ride to Harbin (pronounced Har-bean) which is in the most northern province of China. We get there and are surprised to find that in the middle of nowhere, there is this small little city with a population of about 10 million. My first thought was: "Wow, this place makes New York City look like the cleanest city in the world!" Seriously though, If you want to find a trash can, you will be looking for a while because there are almost no public trash cans.
We then get bussed to our new home for the month. Its an apartment complex, probably the best accommodations we will get all year. I shared a room with four other guys. There was a bed, a couch and the floor. I took the floor… because it was the most comfortable out of the three. The drain for our shower almost never worked, so there was constantly a half inch of water on the bathroom floor. Other than that, it was amazing and I loved being in that room!
So our ministry was this: We were paired with another team and the both of us were assigned to one section of the city. In this section we were supposed to count houses, get to know people and preach the gospel to them. Our section also included a university, Harbin Institute of Technology, or HIT for short. HIT was awesome, and people there were so cool and had so many questions about God!
We ended up finding this little coffee shop called Milk and Honey Land Cafe, which is owned by two Chinese Christians that lived in England for a while. They are the sweetest couple, they allowed us to take over and use their coffee shop as a home base for evangelism! They have an awesome story too: they had just opened up the shop a few months prior and they were asking God for confirmation that they are doing the right thing. And then 11 people from America (and one from Canada) show up and start spreading His word to the students at HIT, using their little shop as the building in which lives were being changed! I felt honored to be a part of that!
The majority of our ministry was either handing out flyers for English corners, which are get togethers where they only speak English, or actually hosting the English corners. We talked, we sang, we studied the Bible and we even watched a movie once!
The problem with China is that it only has one political party, and in order to join that party you must not have any religious beliefs. So kids grow up thinking that religion is bad, and while they're still curious about it, It is hard to find people who actually believe it. We planted many seeds though, and a few even came to Christ! Like this guy Jim that my teammate and I talked to. He was so curious and wanted to know everything about Jesus and the bible. He ended up accepting Christ, we gave him a bible and through Milk and Honey Land Cafe he now has people that can connect him with a church or a bible study etc.
After our ministry we debriefed with our squad mentors and coaches and then headed off to Beijing. There we had a little bit more debrief and then we went sightseeing. We all saw the Great Wall and few of us went to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and the Olympic Stadium. It was fun, but now we are back to work again! This time in Thailand! Thanks for reading!
Route change!
Instead of going to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the Philippines we will now be going to Japan, Turkey, Swaziland and South Africa! This means that we are the first squad to get to go to Japan!
