“Take the 87 bus to the subway, ride it two stops, find a bus with these symbols on it… ride it for two and half hours, pray for an angel to show you where to go, here’s a picture of what the outline of the train station looks like… then you find a hostel for the night and catch your train tomorrow morning to your site” – our directions into China
We received these directions from our contact in Hong Kong as our team was being rushed out a day earlier than expected. I think all six of us had similar reactions along the lines of… “excuse me? you want us to pray for what exactly? an angel?” To which our host matter-of-factly explained that angels are everywhere in China… you just ask God to send you an angel, wait for a few minutes and one will approach you and ask in English (a rarity in itself) “may I help you?” Then the angel will help you with what you need and then disappear into the crowd.
So with that 6 skeptical world racers headed out, symbols for the bus and sketch of a train station in hand.
Our journey went smoothly… awkward and hilarious watching the 6 us of navigate through seas of Chinese people… but smoothly.
Then our bus ended and we were loaded with gear and Chinese strangers into a van… this was not on the directions. We piled in and started praying… this was our time for an angel… no clue where we were going and a very exclusively Chinese language driver.
Danny called up to me to try to ask the driver if we were going towards the train station. Then the woman sitting next to him turned and said “may I help you?” and started calling up to driver in Chinese.
When the van stopped she spent 45 minutes showing us where the station was and directing us to a hostel that was not on our map and cost half of what we were expecting to pay. As we finished checking in she said “may I go now?” and we thanked her as she headed out the door.
We learned that there actually are angels in China… but more importantly we were learning the lesson that would repeatedly floor us for the next two weeks… God has a perfect plan for every day and God delights in answering our prayers.
Things that would have previously floored me have started to become this new understanding of who God is and how divine His plans are.
When we arrived in our city Danny went to check email. Only to find out that our contact had fallen through… but he was able to get the information of a hostel from her. We decided to spend the night and just ask God to show us why he brought us there. Wait it out.
We arrived at our hostel and sought out food and headed into a random Tibetan restaurant on our street. On our way in we passed a Canadian family on their way out… we did the “hey, you’re white people in China” encounter and by the end of the conversation they invited us to church with them the next morning.
Sweet, church in China… in a city we don’t know anyone… we’ll take it.
The next morning we walked into a registered foreigner church… just grateful to have met a few Christians.
During the service they introduced us as newcomers to their church and during the greeting time a woman approached us and said “Are you the World Race team? I’m ****… I was supposed to be your contact this month… but there was a communication mixup, I’m really glad you’re here!”
We were stunned… she has not been at that service in two years but they decided to randomly check it out that Sunday while people from their house church were on vacation.
We walked into that service with an empty schedule not sure of our place… and we left once again amazed at God’s plan.
Like I said, this was just the beginning… I think I could type for hours about all the amazing things we saw God do.
The overview of our time there looks like this: we met amazing missionaries who welcomes us into their homes, we connected with Chinese friends that impacted us greatly, we went to English corners and helped people practice English, we prayed for and befriended strangers that God put in our path, we shared with people how much God loves China and how much he loves them.
Behind the scenes looks like this: I have never seen God so intricately involved in the details of my day to day affairs. I’ve been praying that this isn’t just a China thing, an amazing couple of weeks I had that one time on the World Race but that this just becomes another piece of the puzzle of who God is. He is a God of the details… he knows the number of hairs on our head and he knows what restaurant we should eat at… he is everywhere and he still cares to be right here invested in each of us.
