God has given team Peculiar Treasures the incredible opportunity to minister and share with a girl who lives in our apartment named Candy, and I just wanted to share a little bit about her. Candy walked into our lives (literally) the first Sunday night we were in China. We were in the lobby of our apartment building and she came down with her puppy Honey. We quickly went to pet the puppy (I mean c’mon, we’re five girls and it was a PUPPY!) and started a conversation with Candy. We invited her to dinner and became fast friends. Her English is excellent. She bought us fruit and came over to our apartment after dinner and we talked for a few hours, and then made plans to have dinner at her apartment on Wednesday. She then rescheduled that to Thursday, but we had all forgotten that Thursday was the start of the Moon festival, so when we showed up at her apartment no one was there. We went back down to our room to make other plans for dinner, but Lauren suggested we try her room one more just to see if we could reschedule. It was totally a God thing because we ran into her and her boyfriend on the elevator! She apologized for forgetting about the Moon Festival and we rescheduled dinner. A few days later we had plans to go to KTV,(Karaoke!) with some of the girls we had met at our English Corner and decided to see if Candy wanted to come. She came and we sang karaoke, which is nothing like karaoke bars in America let me tell you. You rent rooms for a few hours so it’s just you and your friends in this little room with a TV and karaoke microphones. It was so fun, we had a great time making complete fools of ourselves, and our Chinese friends loved every second of it. After KTV Erika and I went to dinner with Candy while Lauren and Kaylaynn had a Bible study with the other girls and Carolyn and Kaitlyn, who were both not feeling well, rested. We started talking to Candy about why we were here in China and she started asked asking us questions about Jesus. It turns out her father is actually a Christian and her mother is Buddhist, and they ended up getting divorced because of it. She had a lot of questions and was very excited to learn about God. When we started explaining to her some of the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, she was amazed! She couldn’t believe that God would forgive sins and that Jesus had died for her. She kept saying she felt such joy and peace in her heart when we talked about Jesus, it was incredible. She kept saying,” I love this Jesus! This is amazing!” We showed her passages in the Bible and she would read them out loud and say, “I love this book!” It was so refreshing to see the excitement and joy coming out of her. Oftentimes we forget how amazing the gospel really is, and how revolutionary the message of Jesus is. We are working on getting Candy a Bible in Chinese, and getting her connected with a church. Thank you for praying for her, the Holy Spirit Is working in her life in mighty ways. I hope to share many more stories like hers with you this year!
