So…this might be a long blog (even though it’s in multiple parts)…I apologize…but it’s how I spent my time in China!
So, as my title states…CHINA WAS HARD! Looking back at it now, I can say that God has truly taught me a few things about myself and who He is molding me into. But even with knowing that…I will probably still say that China is not quite at the top of my list of places in the world!
I went into the place with high hopes…excited about what God is going to do with us there…but it became very clear to me that He was planning on using me in a different way than I was thinking. We (as a team) were told by a few people that we are needing to be the prayers for people…that we need to intercede for all the other teams, and for China, and etc. What? What exactly does that mean…I’ve never seen myself as an interceder before…I really don’t know how to do that! But I could hear God telling me that I needed to learn how to pray for others, to sit for awhile and just enjoy His company. He taught me how to journal this month! He taught me how to just sit and be satisfied enough by it.
But our China troubles happened after the first few days of being in China…fear took over our team, and caused Satan to come in and start destroying what unity we had going on with our team. We had been so fearful of leaving our stuff behind in the hotel rooms…not wanting them to get stolen…that we divided our team in to 2 groups of 3. For the first few days in China…this is how we functioned. We were never really together as a team outside of the hotel…and that was hard on us. We hardly ever left the hotel and walked around the cities we were in as a team, and it started to destroy us a bit. After a few days..we had a morning prayer session and revealed our hearts to eachother and prayed against the spirit of fear over our team. We went against that spirit by leaving our stuff in our hotel room as a team and having our first team meal…as a whole team. That lifted our spirits for sure. We made sure to keep this kind of living up for the rest of China.
We went to 5 different cities while in China. Our contacts were amazing…the most amazing spirit-filled people we could hope for! They served us without hesitation and with such joy…I definitely miss them right now! It was hard to say good-bye to them!
We made friends in most of the cities we went to…the first city we actually traveled to after our contact city was not a very welcoming place…we, as a team, did not feel welcomed and all agreed that we should brush our feet off and move on to the next city. In the next place…Lindsay and I met a friend that worked in a bakery and it was refreshing to hear her speak English. We fell in love with her and for 3 days straight made our way back to her bakery to hang out with her and buy yummy deserts from her. We never got to share the Gospel with her verbally, but we tried to love on her the best we knew how. When we had to say goodbye to her, we stretched it out for about 2 or 3 hours b/c we didn’t want to leave her. We finaly did, and not only were we sad, but she was too. We exchanged emails with her and hopefully we can stay in touch with her and become bold in sharing the Gospel with her.
