After two shuttles, two planes, two busses and one 18 hour train ride!… We finally made it to Harbin China! This is our first stop on the race and I am so excited about ministry here I can barely contain myself. I'm sure everyone has heard horror stories about the Chinese government and Christianity, and I do not mean to discount any of the sacrifices that have been made, BUT for at least the area of china we are in now, there have been leaps and bounds toward openness to the gospel.
First, we can flat out worship in the middle of the street! Holy crap it was amazing. We had church this morning in a little courtyard near where we are staying this month and amidst tons of random Chinese observers. The area we are in now rarely has any foreigners visit, so we get a lot attention anyway! We're kind of celebrities actually. They want to take pictures with us and have us hold their babies. But anyway… When all 50 of us are together praying, singing praises, and worshipping Jesus, we DEFINITELY stand out! Several of us were able to stop and talk to people walking by, through broken chinglish, about why all of us were here. It was amazing! Just stop and let this sink in… We were freely worshipping, without fear of going to jail, in public, in China! That makes me want to shout how good God is!
So basically this is the breakdown of ministry for us this month.
1. Meet Chinese people.
We're not speaking in code or holding back why we are here. We are straight up like, "Hey, we're from America and we're christians, and we're here to help grow the church in Harbin. That simple. Our ministry contact has reassured us that it's ok, and that if we did get put in jail our blogs would go viral! So it's a win win (JUST KIDDING MOM IM NOT GOING TO JAIL!!!). We talk to them get their names and numbers and ask if they would like to ever get together and study the bible. We are not in china long… So we're not wasting time. We are being very straightforward about why we are here and investing all of our time in the ones who are interested and the ones who God has gone before us and prepared their hearts.
2. We contact them and set a time to meet up to talk about Jesus. One on one, answering questions, and preaching the gospel. In China! Take them to dinner, to a coffee shop, to whatever and talk about how good God is and how he desires to know them. EASY STUFF RIGHT???
3. We take the ones who are really interested and get them plugged in with a church. There are currently 4 churches here in Harbin (for 10 million people). So if there is a church nearby them then great! If not, we are going to let our contacts know so they can get something going where they are. We are also surrounded by a ton of universities, so there are so many people that we can talk to, and that generally speak a little English.
That's the breakdown. We are going to also be assigned two teams to one specific location here to cover in prayer, to hand out flyers/tracts, and to get in that community to get phone numbers too. But basically this month we are making disciples. One of the preachers that is training now was a contact found by a past world racer. Now he is being trained to preach the gospel in his nation. It doesn't get any better than that.
So prayer for me for this month looks like this:
-Pray for opportunities to meet people
-Pray for willingness to hear the gospel
-Pray for growth for the current churches here in Harbin and for future churches
-Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide our every action, word, and thought as we spend our time here.
I love you all and thank you so much for your prayers and support!
