Her name is Cloud. She is a university student studying to be a dancer. How we met her was all the Lord. Three weeks before entering China, Katie, my teammate, started day dreaming about ballerinas a lot in Swaziland. It seemed like no big deal at the time. Our first day of ministry we walked around a university to see if we could meet some people and start building relationships. We started looking around and we found the fine arts department. We entered a building and through the window of double doors, we saw ballerinas dancing. Katie's lightbulb went off. She remembered her day dreams and we decided to go ahead and try to see if this was really where we were suppose to be. We asked the people coming out of their class if anyone spoke English. One person did and so we asked if we could sit and watch one of the classes. She went to go ask someone, but didn't see her again. After the next class started to flood in, we again asked if anyone spoke English. And that's when we met Cloud.
Cloud is a 19 year old who is selfless, sweet and hospitable to say the least. Since the first day that we met her, she took us under her wing. Just to give you an idea of what she was like I'll tell you a few things she did for us. We went out for lunch the first day we met her. Without us noticing, she paid for all our food. We had just finished our month in Swaziland where it's hot and then went to China where it's freezing. She gave up her coat for one of us. She bought us gifts and food on the street and took us to the market and invited us different places with her friends. In return we took her out for dinner a couple of times, spent time being in her classes both dance and English class and invited her over for dinner at our housing site.
By the end of the month, we got attached to her. We had the opportunity to share the gospel to the English class because it was right around Christmas time and they were asking why we celebrate it. One night we were able to go into her dorm with her friends and as Katie and I were sitting on the bottom bunk of a bed, one of Cloud's friends asked us why we were here. Katie and I looked at each other and gave each other the green light to share with her why were really there. In that moment, we shared the gospel and tried to make it as simple as possible. I remember her looking concerned when I told her about Jesus dying on the cross for us. She said something along the lines of how she could tell how much it meant to me because my voice started shaking. I could tell she looked sad and I think she might have thought I was talking about a boyfriend or something. I again tried to make it as simple and clear as possible that I was talking about God sending Jesus and how he rose again three days later. Her demeanor then changed from sad to happy. Her philosophy in life is do good and good things will happen in your life. Do bad and bad things will happen in your life. We respected what she believed, but the Lord had already spoken to our team that she is His.
The night that we thought we were going to see her for the last time, each of us bought her an apple, which in Christmas time in China means that you like someone. Rachel felt like the Lord was telling her to give her her personal bible to Cloud. On that night she presented it to her. We asked her if it was ok for us to gather around her, lay hands on her and pray. She said yes. After praying we saw she had been crying. All of us were either teary eyed or crying. We thought we were not going to see her again because the next day was Christmas Eve (we needed to rest for our travel day) and on Christmas day we had to clean and pack. BUT we were able to see her one last time on Christmas day. We decided to go to a coffee shop as a team (side note: being there I seriously had tears in my eyes because I had not seen a coffee shop that reminded me of home or had real coffee in a long time…Katie and I stood next to each other, held hands and said to one another that we were going to cry). Cloud showed up again with gifts and said she was the big fat man (meaning santa) and pulled out our gifts from a santa hat. She gave each of us a gift and a note. She asked us not to read it in front of her, but after she left, we all cried again. Before her leaving she said to us, we will see each other again. All of us immediately thought the same thing. We'll see her in heaven if we don't get to see her again on this side of eternity.
