My team got to spend some time in Zhanjiajie, China, the location of several famous mountains.
Ashley, me, Stone, Zach, and Allie.
After our team leader, Eric headed back to America, Allie became our team leader.
We took our second Chinese sleeper train to Zhangjiajie. We arrived at 6:30 AM, showered, and headed to Heaven’s Gate mountain. We took a skyway up the mountain and hiked around all day.
Throughout the day, we kept meeting foreigners (from England, Germany, and France). We chatted with them, and some of them joined our group hiking around the mountains! It was so nice to see other foreigners and other people who love to travel and see the world. One of them joined us for supper in the evening.
In the afternoon, we reached Heaven’s Gate—a huge hole in the rock, with thousands of steps going down from it. It was so incredibly beautiful!
Something funny that kept happening: Chinese people randomly coming up to us and taking photos with us.
A few days later, we went to the Hallelujah Mountains. These mountains were the inspiration for the mountains in the movie Avatar. It looked like a different planet! We went on a day that was very foggy, so it looked even more mysterious.
Our time in China was a progression of boldness the longer we were there. We realized how much of a mental wall we had in our minds of a fear of having conversations about our faith, because we were in a “closed” country. On our 3rd 20+ hour train ride, we prayed for God to bring people to us and to take away any spiritual atmosphere that was suppressing us. That ended up being an amazing train ride, and there was a moment when all of us at once were having conversations with people.
Current update:
I am putting out my blogs about China a little late (we were in China in March and April). We are in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan right now, and I have a new team of all women: “Adamant Eve”. We have been spending a lot of time getting to know teenage girls from an English class.
Molly, Ashley, Me
We are in a beautiful city that is a ski resort town, so we are surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
The view out of our front gate.
Please pray for our last few weeks in Kyrgyzstan. This month, the guys were in the country of Uzbekistan. We will head to Bishkek, the capital soon, for debrief where we will meet back up with the guys. Then we will be split into new teams and head to Kazakhstan!
Also please pray for our dear friend here, Sezim, a local believer who teaches English classes and builds relationships with local teenagers. This is a predominantly Muslim culture, but the people here are so open to having conversations.
