Homeward Bound

Can you believe it's time to come home? The van is coming to pick us up and take us to the airport in four hours. There were times this year when time moved like molasses, but now it seems like this year was much less viscous.

I want to thank all of you who followed this blog regularly all year. Your comments here and through other mediums has been encouraging. I really think this blog was a good outlet for me to see the spiritual formation God has been working on in me and I'm thankful you took the time to read along. You who followed this blog as well as Kris' have as intimate a connection with our experience as anyone. Thank you for the prayers you offered on our behalf and on behalf of the people we mentioned here.

I'm not sure of my plans for this space after our return to the States, but I hope to continue posting once we get settled. Thanks again for reading and participating in the mission of God.

Cambodia to Laos

There are so many things to report and not enough time at the moment. The team just landed in Laos after three days in Cambodia. We'll be here in Luang Probang for the next 48 hours or so. Although we've encountered a lot of obstacles and spiritual warfare, we have been blessed with safety and God's Spirit has put us where we needed to be when we needed to be there. We count it a blessing to encounter difficulty, becasue Satan's attempts to foil our plans only confirms that God is doing an important work. In future blog posts, you'll read all about frog attacks, airport misques, frustrations and successes. But I guess this post will serve as a teaser.

We're safe and happy in Laos for now. Pray that our hearts are open as God's Spirit blows us wherever he wishes. Love to you.

Going Dark

Kris and I will be out of touch for the next ten days or so. We're finally going on the survey trip with our mission team. This trip has been on the calendar for two years now, so it's hard to believe it's finally here! I hope you'll join us as we pray for God's guidance as we visit Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. May God's Spirit work and reveal the place and the people he has prepared for us to reach. Only he knows where his glory can be revealed the most.

If you're unfamiliar with our team, Kris has provided and introduction in her blog.

We'll provide a recap when we return on the 16th. Blessings!

Goodbye, Students

A few weeks ago, one of my students told me that she was moving to Italy to be with her mother. I was shocked that she was leaving and felt a twinge in my heart. I realized then that it was going to be very difficult to leave my 200 students at the end of next month.

So I decided to make a video. It has two functions, really. First, it is a goodbye present for my students. I'm going to play it for them on the last day of class. Second, it is an opportunity for you to see some of the students you have been praying for. Not just nameless people "over there" in China, these are real people, real souls. Only a few of the students you'll see in the video know God. Many of them believe in "Science" or Buddha. If not, they believe in nothing at all. Please continue to pray that we'll make a difference in their lives in the final weeks.

Although these words are serious, the video is not. Enjoy!

Murder at HNU?

This post would be more fun to compose on a manual typewriter from another decade.

News of an unsolved mystery has permeated our quiet campus in the heart of Hangzhou. I will lay out for you the facts that I have confirmed involving this enigma. As the mystery as of yet remains unsolved, you can draw whatever conclusion you see fit.

Last Thursday, I was meeting with Nick, a Chinese believer, by the reflecting pool on our campus. He told me that it was widely whispered that someone had fallen to their death from a third story window in building five, and there was suspected foul play.

Later that day, Kris and I were to appear on a Chinese game show that was being filmed in building five. When we arrived that afternoon, the area was being guarded and there were picketers with signs and unhappy faces. We learned from our Chinese friend Chen Shu that the gentleman who fell to his death had flunked out of school, so it was likely that he had committed suicide. However, it was suspicious that his online account was cleaned out and there was blood found in the boy's bed.

More intriguing facts came in the next day: Evidently, the boy was found in his underwear, not fully clothed. Also, there might have been a knife wound on his person.

In spite of this evidence, the position of Hangzhou Normal University is that this boy's death was a suicide, not a homicide.

So here are my thoughts:

A. There are many, many buildings on campus that have ten floors. Even building five has six floors. Why would someone intending to kill himself jump from the third floor? You could be paralyzed or die a painful death this way, especially since all the crime dramas on TV say that suicides always jump feet first. I would go for a taller building. And how do they know he jumped/fell from floor three? Maybe that was the only open window?

B. There was blood in his bed and he had a knife wound. This could be explained away, but to me it screams foul-play.

C. The boy was in his underwear. Again, this doesn't jive with suicide. You would think that a person would want to maintain some dignity and wear modest clothing.

D. The online account was emptied. Where did this money go? Who withdrew from the account? Perhaps this is the party responsible for his death?

I need more evidence to prove my theory, but it seems likely to me that this boy was killed in his bed while sleeping in his underwear on the third floor of building five. Then, to make it look like suicide, the killer carried him to the nearby window and threw him out. That's much easier than carrying a heavy body all the was up to a higher floor, where suicide would be more believable.

The school has to save face now that one of it's students has died on its campus, so it is in their interest to mark it a suicide. For me, though, the jury is still out. What do you think?

Alex and Jessie

Over the past six weeks or so, I have become close to a handful of students I call my "work out crew." I have them in class on Mondays and Thursdays and we always go to the gym together afterward to "do fitness," which translates to cranking out a ridiculous number of lat pull downs, their favorite exercise. Jessie and Alex are two of my closest friends in this group.

As I got to know Alex, I was surprised to find that he is a believer. He told me soon after we met that he believed in God. He bikes to a "gathering" every Saturday where about one hundred university students learn from a teacher and sing songs.

Jessie is different. Although he's very close to believing Alex, Jessie has never gone with him to a gathering. He doesn't believe in God and is not afraid to tell you. That being said, Jessie is one of the kindest, most genuine guys I've met in China, maybe ever. So I was puzzled... why has he never given God a chance?

The answer came at the lat pull down machine:

I had been praying for some alone time to pick Alex's brain. God answered that prayer when Alex and I were the only ones to show up at the gym that week. We started talking about spiritual things and I had the chance to ask Alex why he believed. He got a faraway look in his eyes and I expected him to move me with some touching proclamation of great faith. Instead, he said, "I believe, but not very clearly. My father believed, his brothers believed, so I believe." Every weekend he bikes a couple miles to a meeting of believers to hear a lesson and sing songs because "his father and his brothers believe."

Why hasn't Jessie given God a chance? Because his only witness of Christianity has been Alex, who devotes his Saturdays to something he only believes half-heartedly. Alex's faith is actually a hindrance to Jessie coming to Christ.

I shudder to think how many times I have been guilty of this very fault. In my lifetime, how many people have I turned away because the Christianity I showed them was a watered-down version? I can't overstate how much I am writing to myself here, and I don't mean to be too critical of Alex, who clearly cares about his friend.

All I'm saying is, let's be either cold or hot, because if we're wearing the Name but not living the Life, our message to the lost is that Christianity is nothing but a two mile bike ride on Saturday morning.

Guest Blogger on Peaks and Valleys

I've had writer's block lately, so I decided to bring in a guest blogger. You might have heard of him. This is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters. The book is a series of letters written from a senior demon to his protege, Screwtape. Remember as you read that the perspective is that of a demon ("the Enemy" refers to God, etc.).

"Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily good; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Some people might think that because we are on the mission field we are immune to the "troughs." That is, of course, not true. I hope you are as encouraged by this passage as I am.