China. Where the government controls a LOT of stuff, and where missionaries are not welcome. Not at all.
China. Where I didn’t expect to share the Gospel openly. Where I didn’t expect to meet people hungry for the Lord.
China. Where God is moving.
June 24, 2015 was quite possibly the greatest and most rewarding day I’ve had on the World Race thus far. Maybe in my whole life. I’d classify the events of the day as nothing less than miraculous.
So here we go. I promise every bit of this is worth reading. Not because of me, but because Jesus.
PART ONE (2:00pm)
On our first day of ministry at the university, Team Woven met our friend Betty. She was super excited to hang out with us and practice her English and we were super excited to have a new friend, so we ate lunch together and met her friends and built relationships throughout the month. We eventually found out that not only had Betty met some World Racers the month before we came, but she and her boyfriend Daniel were very new recipients of Chinese/English Bibles!
After we figured out that Betty and Daniel owned Bibles, we asked if they would like to get together with us and study the Bible together. They said they had a lot of questions, and we promised to do our best to answer them.
So on June 24th, we met Betty and Daniel for lunch. Afterwards (because it was raining outside), we found a quiet place to sit together – in the MUSLIM CAFETERIA on campus. That’s right. Smack dab in the middle of where all the MUSLIM students eat their KOSHER food, we parked it and pulled out our Bibles. We spent 3+ hours talking about who wrote the Bible, what kind of stories are in the Bible, where to find advice for living like a Christian, the differences between Jews and Christians, and everything else under the sun. Guys, it was SO COOL. Who would have thought we’d be studying the Bible openly in such a closed country (and in such a public area)?!
PART TWO (6:30pm)
After we left Betty and Daniel, Allison and I had made plans to go to dinner with our friend Andy.
Let me give you a little background: Allison and I met Andy when we were eating dinner at a restaurant, our first week in the city. He came up to the unsuspecting white girls and said “hello, you speak English?” We replied “yes, what’s your name?” Not more than 2 minutes later, we had exchanged numbers and set a date to get dinner together at the same restaurant the next week. (We waste no time on the race, when we’re only in each country for a month!)
This night was our second time getting dinner with Andy, and we knew it’d be the last time we saw him before we left. Earlier that day Allison and I had (separately, unknown to each other) prayed that the Lord would give us boldness and an opportunity to share our faith with our new friend.
As we walked with Andy, he told us about his “terrible” day at work, and he introduced us to a fun little restaurant I thought would be a highlight of the night. Not even close. We ate together (Andy paid, because he’s an awesome Chinese gentleman who knows how to treat guests right), and we laughed a lot, and Andy taught us Chinese (including tricking us into saying “I love Andy”).
When we were preparing to leave, Allison had her Bible in her lap as she was re-packing her purse (keep in mind, we had our Bibles because we had just come from Bible study with Betty and Daniel!). Andy saw it and asked “what is that?” Allison told him, and in the blink of an eye Andy jumped up from his seat, ran around the table, and came to sit next to us.
“I’ve seen these in movies, but I’ve never seen a Bible in real life! Can I hold it?” He asked, and the doors of opportunity we had prayed for earlier opened right before us.
We were all smiles as we tag-teamed sharing the Gospel, reading Scripture, and answering sweet Andy when he said “I have a stupid question. …Does God really talk to you?” “YES, Andy! YES YES YES!! I’ve even talked to him about YOU, Andy!!” I got to say. Throughout all of this, Andy’s eyes kept getting wider and wider, as he exclaimed “WOW!” to everything we told him about Jesus.
The icing on the cake was probably when a police officer walked into the restaurant and sat at the next table over, already staring at the white girls. As we continued flipping through the Bibles on the table, Andy noticed the man staring and said “it’s okay. The police don’t really do anything here anyways. What does this mean?”
Andy told us about how Chinese believe there’s a god always 3 inches around you, waiting to punish you for doing something wrong. So we got to share John 3:16-17 with him:
“For God SO LOVED the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God DID NOT send his Son into the world to CONDEMN the world, but in order that the world might be SAVED through him.”
Y’all. That’s the Gospel, and Andy heard it, and Andy believes it. HE KNOWS THAT GOD LOVES HIM. HE KNOWS THAT GOD ISN’T OUT TO CONDEMN HIM, BUT TO LOVE HIM SO SO MUCH.
It gets better.
So Andy held a Bible for the first time, and he looked at it and then blurted out “I think I’d like to have one of these for my own.” And I felt Jesus nudge me, and so I got to say “Andy, this Bible is really important to me, and I’d like you to have it. Would you like this Bible to be yours?”
Andy looked at me with big eyes and took it, and as he held it all the way home, he said “I will read this Bible and honor this Bible, because I know it is very important to you. Thank you! I’m so excited!”
Oh, and one more (pretty gigantic) thing. As we walked out of the restaurant, Allison felt that same nudge from the Lord, and turned to Andy and said “do you want to talk to God with us right now?” And right there, in the middle of a busy street, next to cars and food carts and lots of staring Asians, we prayed with Andy and ANDY DECIDED HE WANTS TO FOLLOW JESUS. ANDY TALKED TO GOD, AND GOD RESPONDED, AND ANDY WAS FILLED AND BURSTING WITH THE JOY OF THE LORD.
Guys. It was the BEST. Because all of a sudden Andy’s terrible day at work faded away, and all our worries about closed countries and saying goodbye and all the things didn’t matter anymore, because ANDY MET JESUS. And we told Andy how now he’s our brother and we’re his sisters, and all the way back we talked about joy and how God is really good and Jesus isn’t dead and how we’re just SO EXCITED.
After Allison and I said goodbye to Andy, we went inside our hotel and started crying. We cried, and we prayed, and we thanked the Lord that He is good and faithful and so stinkin’ cool, and we thanked him that he let us be a part of Andy’s life and Betty’s life and Daniel’s life and the work that he’s doing in China and in all of our friends.
1,000 words later, and I still feel like there’s a million things inside me that I want to share. No words at all can do this day justice. No words can explain the joy that came out of Allison and I as we shared the most important thing to us in the whole world. No words can explain the joy of telling Andy, who had never even SEEN a Bible before, the best news ever. The news that China says no one’s allowed to tell him.
Jesus, man.
It started with “hello, do you speak English?” We asked Betty. Andy asked us. One question, and it opened up a month of friendships and conversations and boldness and Jesus.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of God in a closed country.
^^ Allison, me, Rachael and Kristen with Betty and Daniel after our Bible study!
^^Me, Allison and Andy at dinner
^^Andy and I, and his new-to-him, well-loved and well-marked Bible!
