I wanted to give you a quick recap of our time spent in China last month. As most of you may already know- China is a closed country, where we can’t openly talk about our relationship with Jesus or the Gospel, with just anyone. There are even some areas of the country where citizens still get persecuted for being a Christian. The government monitors phone calls and Internet usage- Facebook is even blocked! So needless to say, I was unable to post any blogs last month in an effort to protect our contacts and stay safe 🙂
So here you are. A glimpse of what last month looked like for me…. In CHINA!
My team spent the entire month living in our very own furnished apartment, complete with hot showers and a WASHING MACHINE. There was even an entrance to a 4-story mall (with STARBUCKS) that was basically in the lobby of our apartment building. These things might seem common to those of you who are reading my blog from home, but these luxuries are extremely uncommon on the Race…. so you can only imagine our shock when we found out our living situation for the month. I’ll never forget the look on some of my teammates faces as we got off the elevator and walked into our new “home” for the month. Priceless.
As far as our ministry for the month- our goal was simple: to find friends and build relationships with them. Our contacts wanted us to focus on the local universities, so we would attend their English Corners, hang out at their local coffee shops, or simply walk around the campus in an effort to meet new people. This was the fun part. I don’t know if you’ve ever attended an English Corner on a foreign campus before… but if it’s anything like the one I attended, you’ll immediately feel like a CELEBRITY!!! I’m pretty sure within the first 5-10 minutes of us being there, my teammates and I were pulled on stage and handed the microphone to talk about our hometowns, our families, and what we love. I entertained them with the fact that Taylor Swift is from my hometown…. Let’s just say I had friends the rest of the night that wanted to sing her songs with me haha.
After initially meeting all of our new friends, it was time to start building relationships with them. This was the more difficult part of our month, only because we were sharing ONE local phone between 5 girls. Trying to follow up with 50 different people to set various dates and meeting times sometimes got a bit confusing, but I must say that we handled the situation extremely well for the most part! One of my favorite nights was when we all invited 2-3 of our closest friends we had met throughout the month to a night of KTV. If you don’t know what this is… it’s basically a private karaoke room that you rent for a few hours to hang out and sing with your friends.
Finally, after establishing good relationships, we would start inviting them to learn more about Christianity. Discipleship 101: we would share our testimonies, the Gospel, and our faith…and answer any questions that they may have. This was a safe way to spread the Gospel to as many people who were actually interested as possible! We also connected our individual friends to our contact’s church and each other- so that they could continue meeting together and learning about their new faith, even when we are gone!
All in all- our China experience was unlike any of the other months we’ve had so far on the race. If it weren’t for the Chinese lettering all over the buildings and streets, I would have felt like I was back at home, living in an apartment in downtown Chicago. Instead of evangelizing door to door, praying for the sick, or playing with children on the streets or in schools- we were given the opportunity to simply live life in a big city… learning how to branch out, meet new people, and build trusting relationships with them. We learned what it felt like to completely LIVE out the Gospel as a complete lifestyle, and what it looks like to truly walk as a disciple of Jesus Christ. We still prayed for the sick and played with children when given the opportunity- but it was integrated into our normal day-to-day routine. This past month didn’t necessarily feel like ministry. It was LIFE!
