The first few days in No Man's Land were very hard days. It was dusty and dirty. We couldn't find anyone who spoke a work of English. The food wasn't very good and we could't read a menu to find something better. We felt like we were being ripped off at every store because they wouldn't barter with us for prices. Our hotel rooms weren't nice (squatty-pottys are very common in China). It was a hard time for me and for our team. Our team was with another team in the Philippines and this was the first time we were really out on our own. We missed our friends on the other team and after going from being with 12 people to being with 6 it felt really lonely.
We were all having breakdowns. We were feeling frustrated with being in No Man's Land without a defined ministry for the month. I have never been the start of a new ministry somewhere, so I didn't know what to do.
After about three days of feeling down and depressed about where we were, we had one amazing breakthrough day.
On the piece of paper it mentioned two towns on the outskirts of No Man's Land that had schools with English teachers in them. We had finally figured out how to get to these cities and felt comfortable getting around the area so we split into two groups and were determined to find someone who could speak english! We had so many questions at this point, such as what is a fair payment for a taxi, what is good to eat, how long had this city been around, etc. So we set out on a mission to find teachers who could help us around.
Chris and I were a team and we took a taxi out to another town. The taxi ride was beautiful! We were up in the mountains and the leaves were changing color, it was very refreshing to have a taste of fresh air and autumn. The taxi dropped us off in the town that we told him to, but we were literally in the middle of nowhere. There was no sign of anything near that resembled a town, we were just in the middle of a road in a small neighborhood. At this point I thought, oh no, we are going to have to walk home. There is no way the taxi will come out here to pick us up.
We walked to the school in the town. We passed it on our way into town, that was the only way we knew where it was. We walked into the school during the children's break time and they were all infatuated with us being there. We made quite a stir. We asked the kids if there was an English teacher at the school but we got no response. We spotted an adult walking around, so we approached him and asked if there was an english teacher there. He seemed to understand what we said and took us to a door that we assumed was the english teacher's dorm (the teachers live at the school that they work at, it is very much like boarding school because if the kids live too far away from the school they stay at the school overnight too). He knocked on the door and talked to a lady in the room and finally took us a few doors down to what appeared to be the headmaster's office. We had no idea what was going on at this point. We thought that this meant that the english teacher was going to come meet us in the headmaster's office, so we gladly waited patiently. We sat and had tea and nuts with the headmaster for quite some time. He didn't speak english and we didn't speak Chinese, but we sat and had fun for about half an hour together. We began to wonder about the english teacher. Chris had downloaded an app for his iPod that translated english to chinese, so we used the iPod to try and communicate with the headmaster. We finally found out that the english teacher was not there today but she would be back tomorrow. We thanked the headmaster for his time and went on our way.
We contacted the other team that had set out for a completely different town and tried to see how they were doing. They had good news! They met the English teacher in the school! They sat down with him and talked for a while. They were so overjoyed to speak to someone in a language that they understood! They said that our towns were really not too far away so they would walk to where we were.
Sure enough about half an hour later they came walking up the road. We went with them back to the town they came from so that we could get a taxi back to No Man's Land. It was such a beautiful walk. The road winded through the mountains and had beautiful scenery. It was just what the team needed. A nice afternoon walk through fresh air after meeting someone who spoke english! We were all overjoyed and praised God for answering our prayers and sending us someone who spoke english.
Once we got back to No Man's Land, we spotted a yellow building that we hadn't seen before. Chris, Kevin and I were curious and since we had nothing better to do we walked up to see what it was. When we got there, we realized that it was another school! Not one that had been described to us on our instruction paper, but a bigger school with older students! We had found a large middle school with MANY english teachers! We walked in and it there was a basketball game going on in the yard. After the people playing basketball saw how tall Chris and Kevin were they immediately invited them to play. One of the people they were playing with was a…. can you guess???…. another ENGLISH TEACHER! And while I was waiting for them to play basketball a sweet lady came up to me speaking…. ENGLISH! We mad met so many people at this school who spoke English it was like being in a dream!
I talked with Hilda, the female English teacher and we had so much fun together! We had tea and baby oranges and just sat and talked for hours! She had just gotten married a month before and had moved to this small town from a bigger city to teach in this school. It was just so much fun getting to know her. So I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner with us and she gladly accepted the invitation. She came with another English teacher from the school and we met the rest of the team at an amazing restaurant that they suggested and they ordered real food for us! It was an amazing meal with rice and MUTTON ("Meat of the sheep," as it was described to us).
We had fun at dinner and then the teachers had to go back to school (yes, school goes from 7am to 9pm with two 2 hour breaks in between). They invited us to come meet their students and teach them a song in english. So we all gladly went with them. We split up and in two classrooms we spent hours with the students teaching them songs in English. (In the classroom I was in, we taught them the song, "Row row row your boat" which might have been too advanced for where they were at english-wise, but they loved it anyways.)
At the end of the day the teachers gave us rides back to our hotel on their motorcycles and we all sat in wonder at all that had happened that day.
We had been praying to meet one person who spoke english… but God provided us with so much more than that. We had made friends with many people in the town that we were in for the next 3 weeks. We went from being down and depressed about our time in China to energized and excited about what we were going to do with our new friends. It was a miraculous …. and long… day.
