The Chinese immigration officer gave me a cold stare as I
approached her booth. The line of Chinese officials and military personnel
behind the booth meant for security and intimidation purposes wasn’t helping
the uneasy feeling I had in my stomach. The immigration officer took at least
five full minutes with my passport and visa, furiously typing numbers and characters
into her computer. She pounded a stamp into my passport and shoved it under the
slot back at me. I smiled and thanked her quietly, but she didn’t change her
blank and cold expression. I joined the others at the meeting point and
exchanged my Hong Kong dollars for Chinese yen. Our group kept a low profile as
we waited for everyone to get pass through immigration. As soon as everyone was
accounted for, we started walking in the direction of the train station to
begin our insanely long journey to our ministry site.
Our 35 hour train ride was just about to terminate. We had
climbed aboard the 9PM train, so we had spent the last two nights sprawled out
in the train seats, trying to find a comfortable spot to sleep among the people
and luggage which were everywhere. The night before that we had slept in a
train station, so we had already come into the train ride sleep deprived.
Though the train ride was tough, so much good came out of it. We met William, a
brand-new 6 day old Christian. He was born in China, but had lived in Australia
all of his life. We had the opportunity to hang out with him on the train and
share our stories and testimonies with him. He was so thankful to spend time
with us and learn more about the God he desired to serve.
As we jumped onto the platform from the train, I realized
that I had made a huge mistake. In Hong Kong the weather was beautiful, always
about 65-75 degrees Fahrenheit so I was wearing short sleeves and jeans. In the
city that we stayed, the temperature was about 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit. I had
one hoodie and one warmer long sleeve shirt- I was FREEZING. We were forced to
wait outside a KFC for hours until our contact came and gave us further
details. We made good use of bandanas, sleeping bags, and blankets to deter the
bitterly cold weather.
Our contact, Cottonball, finally arrived and was able to
show us to the location that we would be staying at. Chuckwagon spoke fluent Chinese
so it was great having someone who spoke the local language. Mrs. Wagon was so
hospitable, always seeing if we needed our clothes washed and making sure that
we were comfortable where we were staying. C-Wag really enjoyed playing basketball,
so we would shoot some hoops with him and that was an opportunity to get to
know him on a more personal level. Chuckelberry is working hard in China for
the Kingdom of God. (Understand these pseudo names yet?)
What in the world did we do in China for one month?? What
did December look like for me?
Because China is so closed and it is very difficult to do
ministry there, our options were limited in what exactly we could do. During
December we did a couple of things:
Really grew as a team. As you know may know, the teams were
changed at the beginning of this month in Hong Kong. I was placed with two
other guys and four girls from our squad that I had not been teammates with
before. As you can imagine, it was difficult to adjust to this change. I’m very
proud of our team though as we really came together and grew during this month.
Prayer walks. We spent time in our city walking around in
groups of about two or three praying for the Chinese people, government, and
attitudes. We prayed that restrictions would be lifted making it easier to talk
about God in the area, we prayed that people would be open and interested in
hearing about God, and we prayed for encounters that we could have with people
in the city.
Relationship building. I tried to see some of the same
people every day. The reason is because I know that I can make an incredible
impact on someone by my actions and my attitude; even if they can’t understand
my words. Even though it is incredibly different to communicate at all because
of the language barrier, we tried to create some relationships with gestures
and broken English. Mary, the lady at the bakery, was a prime example. I wrote
a blog about her that you can check out here!
Basketball. About four or five times during the month,
Cottonball would take us to go play basketball. We would sometimes just shoot
around ourselves and have some fun, but if there were other players on the
court we would always ball with them. This is a really good way to make friends
as we would ball with them more than once. This is also an amazing way to show
teenagers and people my age Christ’s love as we interacted with them.
Teaching. My BFOTR (best friend on the race) Sarah and I made our way through the sea
of students and into two schools- both the secondary and a primary school down
across town. We wanted to attempt to
teach at these schools. The secondary school we were told to come back tomorrow
at 8AM, the headmaster was not there. Sarah and I couldn’t make it, but Teresa
and Natasha went and were able to do some awesome teaching that you can read
about here. At the primary school, the headmaster was in Taiwan so they told us
we unfortunately could not teach.
As you can see, serving God in China is very different than
serving God in Africa where we were the previous three months. I really did
love China and the relationships I was able to create and build with the
Chinese people.
