When we got off the 31 hour train ride, we got a piece of paper from our contact in the country describing what we were supposed to do for our 3 weeks in China. Our contact was back in the U.S. at the time we were there so we didn't have a whole lot of guidance during our stay. However, the piece of paper was enough, it thoroughly guided our time in China.
The piece of paper described what was known about the city that we were going to. It is a small developing city filled with the minority population and the city is 90% muslim. There are no known Christians in the city or the general area surrounding the city. No Man's Land is on the border of two Provinces and neither province really claims the city which is why it is known as No Man's Land. There are not many English-speaking people in the city, but there are nearby schools where there are English teachers that we can probably talk to. There has hardly ever been a white person in the city.
Our mission from the piece of paper was to scope out the city and make contacts so that someone else could potentially go to that city to do missions work full time. The person that we were working through lives in a nearby city and wanted to know what the No Man's Land looked like and what kind of mission would best fit the city. Thus, we spent our three weeks in No Man's Land scouting out the city and making contacts with everyone possible.
We met several english teachers and became friends with them. We went out to dinner with them and shared the gospel message with one of them. (We were going to share with more of them, but we were not allowed back into the school that they worked in… we're still not sure why).
We made friends with the people who worked in our hotel and the people who worked in the restaurants that we frequented. We were friendly to people we saw on the streets and tried our best to share Christ's love without using words because hardly anyone spoke english.
After being in No Man's Land for a few weeks we decided to make a detailed map of the city so that whomever goes to the city next can start where we left off and not spend the first week just figuring out how to live in the city. Our map included the location of all of the schools that we discovered in the city and neighboring cities and the names of the people who we were friends with. It included the location of our favorite restaurants and what we got to eat. It included the prices of taxis and busses so that in the future people are not ripped off. We tried to hand over a map that would save the next group time and efforts so that they can go much further than we did.
Naturally we found ourselves with a lot more down time and time to spend with our team so we got creative with the time we had together. We did a form of Bible study everyday together. We watched some of David Platt's Secret Church sermon series, we did one titled, "How to Study the Bible," and another one titled, "Angels, Demons and Spiritual Warfare." We also started a Bible study on the book of Acts together. These studies led to some very interesting conversations together.
We also took some awesome hikes together as a team! Where we were situated in the mountains was absolutely beautiful so we had to take advantage of that. We went on two big team hikes up nearby mountains…. well at least the foothills of the mountains. I am curious to see where we were on a map and see if we were in the foothills of the Himalayas or not.
This was what we did with the month. It was very different than anything that I have ever done before and it is vastly different trying to setup a ministry from scratch than going to a place where the ministry is all in place and we just join in for the month.
