Hey everyone! This one is pretty long sorry. It has been quite some time since I have been able to sit down and hash out a blog and so much has happened since I left China. It has truly been an incredible ride highlighted by personal growth, wild times, and watching the Lord work through us as we serve the people of the world. I count myself blessed every day to wake up serve a Good Father who has laid out his plans before me. The last two months have been full of trials and victories but in the end, Christ is the one who has been glorified in everything. My journey has taken me through Mongolia’s wild countryside, back into west China (Where the Chinese are unapologetically trying their hand at cultural genocide to the Uigur people who live there), to a brief stay in Kyrgyzstan’s silk road city of Osh, and finally to Uzbekistan’s vibrant capital city of Tashkent where I have spent the last month. I leave tomorrow to go back into Kyrgyzstan and spent a week in the capital city of Bishkek before heading into the great unknown that Kazakhstan.
My expectations were high as we left China and moved into Mongolia. China had been a reckoning of sorts for me. Between the frequent bouts with illness, creeping thoughts of self-doubt, and a lack thereof in faith, I had to make a decision on the trajectory of my time here. It’s easy to wallow in self-pity when you are this far from home and things get hard, it is even easier to blame God. In these times of trial, I began to hear Holy Spirit speak to me and work in my heart a completely new beginning. God used China to set me on a track for the rest of my time on the World Race, leading me to choose him over myself. Stepping onto the train to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia I felt new life and excitement, adding to expectations of a country I already felt drawn too. Mongolia did not disappoint. Our first week, which we spent in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, was focused around finding a guide/translator who could take us from one side of the country to the other and get us into remote areas of the countryside where nomadic herders live. Mongolia has a population of just over 3 million people, and half those people live in the capital, so you can imagine how sparse the population is throughout a country the size of Texas to Maine. There are only two main roads that run east to west, and much of that is not paved. We had come into some Mongolian Bible’s (which has only been translated for a few years now) thanks to some ministry contacts we had in the city. After deliberation and prayer, my team decided we wanted to get into the remote areas of the countryside and deliver these Bibles, alongside the good news of the Gospel, to nomads. Thanks to the Lord’s Providence we happened upon an elderly gentleman who led treks into the nomadic countryside and just so happened to be within our world race budget, and just like that we were off into the wild. This was to kick off one of the most memorable and fruitful times I have not only had on the World Race but that I have experienced in my life. The next two and a half weeks were spent camping in the Gobi desert, in mountain valleys, alongside herds of goats, sheep, yaks, and horses. We drank yak milk tea, ate mutton filled buuz, and warmed ourselves around fires heated by animal dung. I got to wrestle a Mongolian man, ride on motorcycles, and help the nomads set up their gers (or yurts). The most beautiful part of it all was that Christ was at the center at everything we did. Our days were spent hiking into the heart of the countryside from where we were camping and upon finding a nomadic family, our guide would introduce us and we would be warmly welcomed in the family’s ger. After a time of pleasantries, questions, snacks, and tea, we would shift the conversation towards religion and beliefs. The nomadic people of Mongolia are very religious, mostly practicing a derivative of Buddhism, worshipping father sky and mother Earth, and giving thanks to an otherwise unknown deity. This created an amazing segway into the Gospel. Tying all the creation back to one creator, and one King, the nomadic people were increasingly fascinated and interested in knowing about Jesus. As is nomadic custom, we would always leave them a gift of snacks and candy, alongside a newly translated Mongolian Bible. The spark and passion that entered the eyes of the nomads upon handing them their first Bible was in itself enough for me to know why I was called onto the World Race. Alongside our guide, we trekked across the entire country, east to west, from Ulaanbaatar, to Bayanhongor, to Altai, and finally the border town of Khovd. It was an incredible experience day in and day out. As we parted with our guide to cross back into China (en route to Kyrgyzstan), we had just enough Mongolian Bibles to leave one with him. He grew up in Soviet-dominated Mongolia and had no inclination of religion, but after he translated to Gospel countless times for us in speaking with nomads, you could sense his eagerness to dive into the Word.
Our trek then moved on to the westernmost province of China, called Xinjiang. We were simply traveling through this area for about a week but it had a profound impact on me. Xinjiang, though part of China, is ethnically dominated by a people group called the Uighur, a Turkic ethnic group who practice Islam and are more culturally affiliated with the people of central Asia. The cities and towns of Xinjiang look and feel more like those of central Asian and the Middle East than they do Chinese. During the 21st century, China has turned this area into a militant state and is doing what they can to end the culture of the Uighur for good. One example of this is government incentives put in place to get Han Chinese citizens from mainland China to move to Xinjiang and marry Uighur people in hopes that they can essentially breed them away. Another example is the intensive surveillance that goes on within the region. Though China uses government surveillance throughout the country, Xinjiang is especially bad. Every phone call is tapped, every text is read, every email monitored, and most living spaces bugged. Every 100 meters or so there is a police guardhouse along all streets. Outside of every single restaurant, convenience store, clothing shop, mosque, etc there is a camera. These cameras are not just for video but for facial recognition, a new and extremely invasive surveillance strategy being tested by the Chinese. They can keep track of every person who enters and leaves anywhere. At all times they have eyes on the people. The scary part of this facial recognition is that from it, they are building databases for people who are practicing Muslims, who have disabilities, who have a criminal history, and so forth. Basically anyone they consider out of place and unfit for this “NewChina”. It is an alarming situation that sounds published out of the novel 1984. The worst and most despicable part of what is going on here is the “re-education camps.” The Chinese government is taking Uighurs from their homes and families under the guise of “mandatory re-education” and putting them into camps created to indoctrinate them into Chinese culture. Many of these people put into the camps are never heard from again, or come back to their families completely changed, having their minds altered and being too scared to say anything. Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs are said to be in these camps that one official in the U.S. Department of defense referred to candidly as a concentration camp. Being in the region, spending time with the people, and seeing this cultural genocide first hand left a lasting impression on me. Though I was only able to spend about a week there, it is all I can do to spread the word in hopes of making this more known. During my time there the New York Times posted a few articles and podcasts regarding the situation of the city I was spending time in, called Kashgar. If you would like any further information on that I will post the links at the bottom of the blog. As somber as it felt being in Kashgar, there was a resilient sense of hope. The Uighurs have been thriving as a people group well before the reign of Ghengis Khan and are not easily put off. The kindness and generosity of each person we met was astounding and I firmly believe in a positive future for these people. I hope and pray for the Uighurs and that I will again have an opportunity to visit there wonderful land and beautiful people.
After Xinjiang, we moved on through a 16-hour border crossing, into Kyrgyzstan for a few days, and then split off into teams of guys and girls, the girls staying in Kyrgy and the guys moving on to Tashkent, the capital Uzbekistan for the month. To be honest, I’m not sure I could have told you I knew Uzbekistan was a country more than a few months ago, but I can tell you now that I will be talking about it for the rest of my life. Being a month of all men, we focused ourselves around the idea of what it looks like to be and act as men in the image of God. We strived daily to live as sons of Abba and in the image of God, Imago Dei. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan came under an autocratic ruler who kept the country closed off and opposed religion. Having had a change of power four years ago, Uzbekistan has finally opened their borders to foreigners and is starting to tolerate religion in the slightest. Islam takes precedent here, and Christianity is still mostly contained to underground churches, but the paradigm is clearly shifting. To be at the forefront of the new initiative to raise up believers and churches in this country is has been both humbling and exhilarating. The best part of being here has been the friends we have made and the relationships we have built. It seems like every person in the city wanted to befriend us and spend time together. Community and family are so important to the people here, and it took no time for us to be brought into that. To protect of underground brothers and sister here I cannot go into too much detail as to what our ministry looked like, but it included making a lot of friends, all over the city, and living life with them. On top of the wonderful time of ministry, we were able to pour into each other as a team of men and challenge ourselves to step into the sonship that has been set before us by Christ. There has been exponential growth for each of us and we have no other to thank than our Lord Jesus. I will miss this place dearly, I know that, but I leave with such an excitement of what is to come here for the Gospel. It is a country on the cusp of exploding with commerce and the brave brothers and sisters here are ready to steer that in the direction of Christ. I leave Uzbekistan tomorrow with hope.
All in all, I am doing really well. Trials and tribulations come as they do with everyone but the Lord has been so faithful in turning those into exceptional growth. Of course, I miss you all deeply, especially my family and Lauren. I have spent a lot of time reminiscing on my time at Auburn and the relationships I built there. I count myself eternally blessed for each and every one of you. I cherish your prayers and reciprocate them. Your support is never, ever taken for granted.
Love you guys,
Parker
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/podcasts/the-daily/china-surveillance-uighurs.html
