Ch!n@ trip!!!!

I’m back. Now, time to tackle the whole trip. Oh boy. This update will focus on my time in Ch!n@, so it’s going to be a doozy. However, if you’re more interested on what I learned during my time there, and what my plans are for the future, I will put out another update (much sooner than it took for me to release this update, God willing).

Let’s start with some simple facts about Ch!n@. I think I mentioned this before, but here it is again, in case you forgot. I misspell the name of this country because the government tracks for the name of the country, and really doesn’t appreciate the kind of stuff that YWAM does. In fact, YWAM was named a terrorist organization a few years ago. Ch!n@ used to be extremely hostile towards Christianity (especially during the Cultural Revolution), but recently it has started to open up to Christianity. Perhaps the government realized

that the movement had grown so large that there’s no way that it could eliminate it. So, what is happening now is the government allows churches that register with the government to exist. The message these churches teach is regulated, to make sure that the government’s version of Christianity is taught. From what I understand, the government-registered church teaches people that Christians must work for the good of the community. Basically the government doesn’t want Christians to be rising up to overthrow the government. The government heavily monitors what the people know through what is known as “The Great Firewall”. Information such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident are unavailable to the people. People are oblivious, and maintain that the government is perfect, and doesn’t do anything wrong. It’s really sad.

Onto the people. The culture is what is called a ‘save-face’ kind of culture. There are no direct confrontations, people are extremely polite, and people are quite shy. Around where we lived, Guangzhou, there is a lot of westernization (since it is one of the trade centers of the world), so we didn’t feel a lot of the communist influence. A lot of the trade that occurs in the world goes through Guangzhou, especially during the Import/Export fair, during which there are almost as many foreigners as locals. Another source of westernization is Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong has been under British rule up until 1997, much of the culture is more British than Ch!nese from what I understand. So, when it came under Ch!nese rule again, that culture spread to the areas near it, and it's harder to get much closer to Hong Kong than Guangzhou.

Schedule:

Sunday- We go to church. Usually we went to an international church, though there were some weeks we would do something different like an underground church, or listened to a podcast. In the evening there was a Bible Study at another apartment in our complex. Some of us would go to that, while the rest of us would stay home and clean.

Monday- Our day off! We would have 2 hours of internet on this day to facetime/call family and give updates/find out what’s happening in the land of the free. Because of the time difference, we would either have to get up early, or stay up late. On Monday we would sometimes have cool stuff planned to do as a team, such as go out to dinner all together.

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday- These were the heavy-duty ministry days. We were split up into groups (Me, Megan, and Faith were in a group), and then we were assigned to two C-home leaders. A C-home is a Christian/Church home, and the house belonged to the C-home leader. These C-home leaders would have ‘fellowships’ on Sunday/Saturday, but during the week we did English corners. These are places where people can practice their English. English corners generally are in the universities, students have to pay, and are kind of boring. The English corners we held were fun, free, and centered around the Bible. And the cherry on the top is that people get to meet foreigners. There is a certain fanaticism around meeting foreigners. Our days would start around 11:00, when we would make the journey to the university in order to go to the school canteen and try to meet friends. From 2 to 4, either have plans with friends, or wander around and try to make more friends. Around 5:00, it’s time to head back to the canteen, and try to make more friends. 7:00 is when the English corner starts. We start with a game, then we would go to a song, then the teaching, discussion, and then wrap up with some prayer. English corner ends somewhere around 9:00-10:00. We get home close to 11:00. Long days, but rewarding.

Friday- Most of the day off to hang out with friends/make new friends, but in the evening we had another English corner. This one was on the campus of the university, so we couldn’t directly have the teaching about the Bible. So, the teachings/questions were always kind of loaded so that we could easily start conversation about the Bible, i.e. what is success? Or is money the root of all kinds of evil?

Saturday- Here is a choice to either go to the orphanage, or help out at an English corner and a Bible study. The orphanage takes several hours to reach, and it is a sad sight. There are hundreds of children (all suffering from some sort of mental disability) in a couple of buildings. The volunteers are few, so the conditions of the children are not very good. The children spend most of the time sitting on potties, or in these wooden benches that are designed so that they can’t escape, but can still poop/pee into a potty. Our job was to hold children, and just make them feel loved.

One of the highlights of my time there was meeting a guy named Ben. We were in the back of a mall during the first week of outreach, waiting for people to get out of the bathroom. I went into a sports shop to look at jerseys just to kill some time. A guy who works at the store walked up from behind, and just starts talking to me. I figured that this was God’s first opportunity for me to make a friend, so I continued the conversation. I kept going to that shop, and talking to him (btw his name is Ben) while he worked and found out about his story. He’s almost 30, not married, didn’t go to college (so he’s kind of considered a failure), doesn’t have really any friends (because he’s from another province), and works from 11 to 9 every day of the week. He didn’t really see a future for himself, as without a college education he can’t get a better job. As you might expect, I wanted him to know Jesus and have a greater hope for his future (Jeremiah 29:11). The second-to-last day in Ch!n@, I finally got to hang out with him outside of the workplace as he had a day off. It was then that I found out that he did believe in Jesus, but he was never taught about having a personal relationship with Jesus. I tried to talk to him about it as much as I could during that time, but I know that this is the kind of thing that takes a while to talk about. I’m trying to stay in contact with him and disciple him. It was amazing to see how happy he was for just something as simple as a friend.

We were originally supposed to go on a trip to another province called Hubei. We weren’t sure what we would do there, but one of the teams from a previous school had taken a trip there. However, around halfway through our outreach, it became clear that we would not be going to Hubei. About the sixth or seventh week, Tim and Caleigh called our team together. They told us that they had something awesome planned, but they wanted to get confirmation from God. So they gave us 15 minutes to go pray, and ask God what he wanted us to do. Then we wrote down what God was telling us, and gave the paper to the leaders. First thing that popped into my head was Beijing. Not sure if it was from God or not, I wrote it down, and continued to pray. Other things came, but not as clearly/quickly. A few days later, and sure enough, we are definitely going to Beijing.

What an opportunity, and a crazy week did we have. First we had to travel there, and our chosen mode of transportation was… the train. Part of me wishes that we had the super fast bullet train, but the other part of me was glad that we got to take the slow train. 21 hours would be the length of our journey, but we wouldn’t be spending them in seats, we would be riding in triple-bunked beds. I rode in the highest bunk both ways. It’s kind of cool for the first few hours, but then you realize that you are climbing Mount Everest every time you want to get to your bed. The time went super fast on the train however. Maybe it’s because you can actually lay down to sleep, or having the ability to walk around, but it felt muuuuch shorter than even an 8 hour flight. When we got to Beijing, it was clear that we were in a different place. Guangzhou was extremely westernized, so we didn’t get a great idea of the communist mentality. However, Beijing is the heart of communism, so got a much clearer idea of what people believe, and what information the government controls (i.e. Tiananmen Square 1989). While we were in Beijing, we did manage to do a lot of touristy kind of things (Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven), but the highlight for all of us had nothing to do with these cool places.

 

Admittedly, pretty awesome- but not the highlight of our trip up north

One of our contacts in Ch!n@ had done a lot of work in the North, so she contacted the YWAM leader up there asking him if there were any ministry opportunities for us. He put us in contact with a teacher of English at Renmin University. A little background of Renmin University- It’s one of the top universities in Ch!n@, comparable to Harvard. A lot of future/current Communist Party members go to this school. I was nervous because traditionally Asians are very hierarchal when it comes to age. If you’re younger, your voice isn’t considered to have as much value. And then we found out that on top of this all the students are PhD students. We were given some time at the beginning of the class to learn people’s names and a little bit about who they were. Doctor, lawyer, comp sci major, comp sci major, member of the communist party for 15 years- this really is the crème de le crème. Then we assisted the class in ‘pair work’. We (the foreigners) sat in two rows, while the students sat next to us. Then we went through a kind of speed-dating cycle. The teacher would put a question on the board, and we would talk about it in our pairs. We had only about two minutes to talk about questions like “What’s the meaning of life?” and “Discuss this quote ‘The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil’.” During that three hour class, it was clear to us that a lot of people were searching. They felt that something was missing, that this school was not everything to life. So, we did what a proper missionary does- we shared the Gospel. However, with only a few minutes with each person we could not see anyone come to know Christ. But what we did was take down the names of the people who were interested in learning more, and gave those names to the teacher. He planned to follow up with these students. It truly was the most incredible experience, and was one of the most important moments of our outreach.

Us speaking into the lives of future leaders

I don’t think I have anything else to add. Sorry for the lack of pictures (I literally have over a thousand pictures on my computer), but I seriously have no idea what I can put on the internet. And I'd rather not risk it, even if it is for the biscuit. I’ll have future plans/what I’m doing now in the next update, so keep an eye out. Hopefully it will be out soon, but my computer is acting up/crashing, so I can’t promise anything. Thanks for following me throughout this journey, and I look forward to the next chapter that God has planned for me.