A Dancing Divine Appointment

As a foreigner, the biggest challenge to doing ministry in China is the language barrier.

It’s hard enough to order food let alone tell people about Jesus.

Therefore, China really pushed us to rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us in our attempts at ministry.

Our contact had suggested visiting some of the nearby universities as a place to start.

So we prayed, and trusted Dad to show us where to go. And oh, how He did…

Upon arrival at the university, my team mates walked in to the first building they saw, which just happened to be the performing arts building. When they turned the corner, they peered into the first classroom and saw a group of ballerinas.

Excited and stunned, my team mate Katie explained that she had been having visions of ballerinas since Africa, but didn’t understand why until now. We knew then that the Holy Spirit was leading us on the right track, so my team mates entered the classroom, trying to find someone who could speak English.

And that’s when we found her – our English-speaking, dancing divine appointment.

Unable to pronounce her real name, we called her Cloud.

Cloud quickly became like our Chinese best friend. We spent almost every day with her. We went out to eat. She took us shopping. We hung out in her dorm with all of her friends. We helped her with study. We went to her school’s performances. We cheered her and her friends on at their dance class final exams. We sang “Rolling in the Deep” in front of a group of her friends. We even went to English class with her one day and got to tell her whole class about what Christmas is like in America.

We just “did life” with her. And she knew we loved her.

We sought the Lord for Cloud every day, and God began to speak to us about her salvation, assuring us that she was His daughter.

With this confidence, two of my team mates shared the gospel with Cloud one day in her dorm room. She understood for the most part, but didn’t receive Jesus right then and there. But we knew the Lord wasn’t done using us to point her to Him.

We had Cloud over for dinner on the night before Christmas Eve. Thinking it might be the last time we were able to see her, our desire was just to bless her. Because a Chinese tradition is to give an apple to someone you care about on Christmas Eve, we each gave her an apple to show her how much she meant to us.

Additionally, God had been speaking to me about giving her my Bible. I knew that was what I was supposed to do, because I was really fighting it internally. So that night, I handed Cloud my Bible along with a note explaining what it was. I told her that it was my most precious possession, but she was more precious to me so I wanted her to have it.

And then we explained to her that the best way we knew to bless someone was to pray to God for them, and she let us pray for her. We gathered around her, lifting up every part of her life that she had shared with us to the Lord. I know the Holy Spirit moved in her heart that night because she was overcome with emotion and cried – something Chinese women don’t do easily.

We all soon joined her in tears, realizing we might not see her again.

But she wouldn’t let that happen!

She came all the way to the center of town on Christmas to visit us at a coffee shop, and brought presents.
“I AM THE LITTLE CHRISTMAS MAN!,” she said with glee as she pulled out a Santa hat stuffed with gifts she had for us.

She gave each of us small tokens, and then the most meaningful gifts – individual letters written in her broken English letting us know how much we meant to her. She wouldn’t let us read them until she left us. We said goodbye to her the last time, and returned to our booth overwhelmed by tears and joy to read our notes.

In my letter she thanked me for “the book,” assuring me that she will read it. She ended her letter with the most beautiful words I may have ever read – “Don’t be sad. I know we will meet again one day. At a beautiful one day.”