Ever since I took my first Mandarin class 3 years ago I have had the desire to travel to China, and finally after 3 years I made it! However, I never really wanted to go to big city China, but more of the isolated small city that was hidden in the mountains and contained 3 or 4 unreached people groups. Praise God that this was the exact experience that I got to have this past month! (The only pit fall being I had to shave my beard that was 5 months long so that my ministry wouldn’t be hindered).
This past month I was in the city of Xiahe which is beautifully placed in the foothills of the Tibetan Mountains. The city itself was only about 2 miles long and at the end of the city was a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. It is not an exaggeration to say that the monastery was almost as big as the city itself. Within Xiahe alone there were 3 or 4 unreached people groups. 99% of the people there only spoke Mandarin or Tibetan. Majority of the people there walk around in their monk robes or these long nomadic/ Tibetan looking parkas. The plush green mountains that surrounded the city were littered with idol prayer. Prayer flags and prayer papers to false gods were too numerous to count… I hope this is painting a picture of where I was blessed to live last month.
Because of the heavy oppression in this city, the amount of chains that have been created due to so much prayer to false gods, and because nobody else on my team could speak Mandarin or Tibetan; we spent the majority of our time in heavy prayer and worship for that city. For chains to be broken, for eyes to be open, for revelation in dreams and visions, for the light of Jesus whom enlightens all to shine forth upon Xiahe. Praying that doors would be open for us to share even though none of us knew the language that well.
One day I was sitting on a mountain over looking the monastery and praying for the monks in the monastery, and that God would just connect me and someone in Xiahe that he really wanted me to pour into and could be a real influence for the Kingdom in this city. About that time a white car pulled up to the base of the mountain and I heard God whisper this is him. This Tibetan man gets out of his car and literally walks right up to where I was sitting and sits down right next to me. He says hello to me and we begin to chat- only thing is he speaks ZERO English…talk about feeling in over my head. So using my broken Mandarin we begin to have a conversation. Not to far into the conversation he points across the way to a taller mountain and says ‘tomorrow we hike that mountain.’ And w/o asking questions I say okay!
So we hike the next day together and it maybe my favorite moment on the race thus far. We laugh, we joke, we take pictures (especially selfies, the dude loves selfies), and we just had a lot of fun. After the hike I began to ask him what he believes in and he told me he was Buddhist, so I ask him if he knows about Jesus. He says no. And not like ‘no, I don’t believe in that’, but ‘no, I literally have no idea who that is’. Not even ‘oh yeah I’ve heard the name but don’t know anything about him’, but literally he had no idea who Jesus was. That is the moment my heart really began to break for him and the people of Xiahe. These people have no idea of the truth! No idea where true life comes from! We have been called to go because so many people are dying and never hearing the name Jesus, and how are they to hear unless we tell them!
Unfortunately, the University of Kentucky didn’t teach me any evangelical Chinese terms, so I knew next time we hung out I wanted to give him a gospel track for him to read through since I couldn’t explain much. So a few days later he invited me out to help him build a house, and I was able to talk to him more and give him a track. I asked him to please read it and we would talk about it over this Iphone app that we both have [i would have rather talked in person, but i was leaving the next day]. Even though the amount of time we got to spend together was limited I do believe it was a relationship appointed by God. A seed was planted in Xiahe. I pray it is water and begins to grow.
Please join me in prayer for my new Tibetan friend. He now knows about the life that is the light to all men. Pray he can’t stop reading the track I gave him, pray he has visions of Jesus, pray receives salvation through Jesus Christ Our Lord, pray through him the city of Xiahe may come to know The Father who loves each and everyone of them.
