China was the only country on our race where we weren’t allowed to use the internet. At first I thought it would be for crazy Chinese security issues, we would be dashing in and out of street allies, trying to stay out of eyesight from the crazy Chinese police that would be out to kill us!
In all actuality, some World Race group wrote too much information and got a contact in trouble, so to play it safe we couldn’t use the internet. When we got to meet our contact he actually said to not hide anything. We are Christians, working for a church, sharing the gospel and the love of Christ, let’s tell people that! So we did.
We went to “English Corners” to meet college students wanting to practice their English. If we started up some good conversations we would ask to meet them again later, build relationships and ask them if they would like to study the Bible with us. We also had get to know you events at our house, including a spa night for ladies and a movie night for everyone. Every morning we had English lessons at local daycares and every night we had one on one English lessons with people form the church or people that saw our flyers we hung all over town. We held church at our house every Wednesday and Sunday and even over the month we were there we were able to see the awesome ways the church was growing.
The church we were working with used to be one large church body, held at a church, but the cops broke it up, respectfully, and told them that they can have church in their homes, but not in a public place. So, now they have three smaller house churches, that also house World Race teams!
We were paired up with Team Cannonball, Eric Miller’s team, and it was such a great experience living with them and getting to know them and their hearts better. I lived with 4 other girls, sharing one small room. I almost died every night crawling on top of the rickety bunk bed without a latter, but all in all we had a nice room and SPACE, which was such a nice change from last month.
I was building three main relationships, one of which I was able to disciple! I miss those girls so much, they were some of the sweetest girls I have ever met! Our afternoons were free so we could spend as much time with these girls as possible. I would have them over to watch movies, we’d go shopping, study the word, paint, lots of things.
China is mostly Buddhists. It’s so interesting going to countries that aren’t accepting of Christianity and not everyone knows what it is, let alone anything about it at all! One of the girls I met with kept equating Christianity with America, so when I asked her if she believe in God she would tell me about how much she loved New York. She also thought God literally sent a sheep to Earth, when the Bible calls Jesus the ‘Lamb of God’.
Other things that were apparently confusing to Chinese people was picking an English name, or so it seemed. We met women named Roger and Jack Sparrow, people named Paper, Smell, Sound, Music, Rice, etc. All sorts of silly names.
We were able to do some really fun things during our off team like visit a Tiger Park and see tigers, ligers, white tigers, cheetahs, panthers and cheetahs. We also went to KTV (which is basically a private room Karaoke), made dumplings at a woman’s house and see the famous Harbin Ice Sculptures.
We had our 8 month debrief in Beijing, which was just fantastic and so refreshing, inspiring and provided healing and clarity, along with incredible worship! We spent a week there, where we hiked the great wall, saw Tiananmen Square and explore the Forbidden City! It was SUCH a blessing being able to have debrief in Beijing, instead of Kiev like it was originally planned to be in. Especially since this month we are in Kiev doing ministry, which will be a whole other blog!
More to come in the next few days. Thanks for bearing through this longer one, recapping the last month.
PRAYER REQUEST: Please pray for God’s grace and love to drench my heart these next few months. I want to see people and this world the way He does. It has been getting harder and harder as the race goes on to love my team without expectations or ceasing. Having the passion to serve the way we had our first few months has been draining somewhat too and I want nothing less than the fullest experience and the richest impact on these communities with the brightest lights shining for His glory for the rest of the race. Thank you all, so much.
