Last month in China, my squad and I were wanderers, journeying without a set route and with little plan insofar as ministry was concerned. Yes, you are hearing me right: a bunch of 20 and 30-somethings were given the freedom to travel anywhere and do anything and engage with people however we wanted in a massive country where the discovery of the purpose of our journey could lead to severe consequences for us and for the future of our organization.
Did that concern you a little bit? I’ll explain our situation further.
Our new teams required us to appoint people to do logistical planning for travel, to learn how to manage team money and to lead and steer our team in a direction. We had to adopt new roles halfway through the race (well, all of us did on my team, except for Nicole who had past experience as a team leader) without any sort of formal training or preparation time.
My team for China (Andrea D, me, Alissa, Nicole and Janea)
For all intents and purposes, we were newbies out gallivanting around a country where we couldn’t speak the language.
Yahoo, right?! I’d equate it to setting a bunch of children loose on a city-sized playground and telling them to meet up at the swings at this time. Except the swings represented a city we’d never been to before, and one hour on the playground represented 1 day of unknown adventure where anything could happen.
But we did it! We planned all of our transportation (maybe a little last-minute and with unnecessary stress at times), at the end of each day we managed to get to where we originally intended to go and we only went $10 over budget (I’ll take responsibility for that one as the temp treasurer…oops).
And not only did we successfully navigate the country, to my surprise, we got to experience some incredible moments of connection and “holy cow” with locals and with other travelers along the way (also to my surprise). And they taught me a lot about who I am and what it means to persist in interactions where verbal communication isn’t the primary medium of love-exchange. …and that powerful encounters can happen not on purpose.
One event sticks out in my mind, burned forever into my memory.
Immediately following debrief in Kunming, in the Yunnan province of China, my team and I set out on a 7 hour train to a mountain/lake town called Dali.
One of our new Chinese friends we met there, Rick (that’s his “English name”, he told me), remarked that Dali is “a place where people go to feel loved”. He said he goes there to be inspired and write ukulele songs (he ended up writing a song dedicated to us called “5 American Girls”…I wish I could tell you I recorded it but my camera-readiness is needing work).
Rick (on the ukulele) and another friend who came walking around town with us for the day
Each morning we were there, our team had a casual church service on the rooftop of the hostel we stayed in. We’d usually sing some worship songs, someone would share a thought/devotional to help center our minds for the day, maybe have some group chat time and we’d end in prayer. A couple times Rick joined us and then, on the last day, another young friend and hostel employee, Tchiku (really probably killed that spelling but that’s how you pronounce his name) sat in.
There wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary that we did. We sang our songs, Janea shared a brief message and then we prayed, thanking God for bringing us to this lovely place with new friends who blessed us so much.
The prayer ends, and the 5 of us look up. Tchiku’s demeanor has shifted completely. Now he sits low in quiet solemnity, lifting his sunglasses and wiping tears from his eyes. We all pause, afraid of breaking from this moment too soon, recognizing something is happening that’s deeper than something we could have orchestrated ourselves. We ask him what’s going on, and this is what he says:
“My family, my parents are Christian. They pray to God too. And…you guys reminded me of them. Thank you.”
Hmm wow. We reminded him of his family, of their faith. While Tchiku isn’t a Christian himself, his connection to his family has still influenced his spirituality and idea of Christianity and who Jesus is. Language was transcended in those moments and bypassed altogether and the Lord worked in a way where we couldn’t take the credit for our words or their convincingness.
I think that’s really what it means to be a ready missionary: knowing God works regardless of our feelings of adequateness and nomadness, our knowledge that AIN’T NO WAY we’ve got life figured out entirely. Cathartic moments happen despite our newbie-ness and our own things we’re wrestling with.
The gospel isn’t just spread when we’ve got it all together. It can happen in the midst of not knowing what’s going on (in our case, in the midst of learning how to traverse across a country without leadership and knowledge of the language).
After chatting with Tchiku for a little about his family, we all asked if we could pray for him and then shared some thoughts with him about faith and what God wants his identity to be rooted in. He was receptive and later told Janea he would consider the things we said.
What a moment with such a neat friend! Please keep praying for Tchiku and for Rick, that they would continue seeking honestly with their whole hearts, recalling either family or friend’s faith and our brief interaction with them! The Lord sees these two Chinese young men, and I want them to really see the Lord for who he is.
