After checking out of the hotel today we proceeded to the church service at BICF. The guide walked us to the doorway and wanted to take a look inside. This is where it gets serious for me. The attendants at the doors would not allow her to come in and take a look. You must have an international passport. I made a statement that I later regretted saying “No, you’re not allowed in, sorry”. I didn’t immediately realize what I had just said to this young 24 year old girl. The service started with worship and as I was singing it had come back to my mind that I had told this girl she could not come into the church. I had this vision of being in heaven and going through the gates and then turning back at this lost soul with a heavy heart. This is the fourth time I have broken down in tears in this church. This time it was very different. The other times it was for Abby, Jadyn and Ethan that now have the freedom to chose their religion, but this time it was for a young lady who really does not have that freedom in the same sense.
This story does get a lot better so keep reading. When we left the church service and got back into the van this young lady was eager to know what we had just done. I told her that we sang and worshiped and listened to the pastor teach us. I don’t think she understood that part. She asked what our religion was about, why do we do it, those types of questions. I am so glad that David was there for this part. He told her how our religion is about knowing God and Jesus who died for our sins and that we are taught to do right and follow Gods word. She said so it teaches you to be “good people” and that good people will go to heaven. He told her how it was more than that and then pulled out his bible to show her what we had learned today. The passage was the Great Commandment “Love God and Love others as yourself....”. She wanted to see the bible - If you can believe this she had never seen a bible in her life and had no idea who Jesus was. This was shocking to us although I am not sure why. Beijing has a population of over 22 million people.
I asked her if she had “religion” which she answered “No.” “How about your family”, “No. Not parents or their parents or their parents”. I couldn’t believe that this may generations had no religion at all. They know about Buddhism but only respect it, they do not practice it. A few minutes later she was talking about the changes here and a women's rights movement. This movement was about “believe it or not, not physically abusing your wife”. They honestly thought it was “legal” to do this up until recently. She told us how abusive her father was to her mother and herself. She laughed it off that she was bad and deserved it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I think at this point we decided to change the topic, especially with the girls in the van.
So, from this point we went to lunch (you’ll have to wait to the end of this post for the rest of the story). The lunch was is the basement of this Chinese restaurant, which probably sounds worst than it was. The food was okay. Oh, someone decided to eat a chicken foot and it wasn’t me or the girls.
After lunch Jane took us to what she would call a friendship store although I would call it a Chinese Flea market maybe. It was a mix of Chinese souvenirs and electronics, watches, shoes and hand bags. Kind of crazy here. they try their hardest to get you to buy their goods. Jane called it adversing, I called it annoying. It was fine just hard to really look at anything. Once you stopped they had you and did not want to take no for an answer.
From the flea market we went to a silk factory that was right next door to the Bird’s nest. We got a few long distance photos. The silk factory was cool. They showed us how one cocoon from a silk worm would stretch to 1 mile in length and it would take 80 cocoons to make one layer of a silk comforter and 100 layers to make the whole comforter. It was really cool. We got to stretch one layer out to see how hard it actually was. The girls in the shop made it look so easy. Of course, just like Disney, they drop you in a shop to purchase the stuff that they made. There was actually some pretty cool things in there and the prices were not that bad. No bargaining in these types of stores.
So this pretty much rounded out our Beijing portion of the trip (well until I tell what is happening right now). We went to the airport from the silk factory, about a half hour drive. Oh, I forgot about the jokes - Jane was trying to lighten our mood this morning, not knowing that we were just not morning people today. So she told us these jokes that you would probably read on a McDonalds bag. It was funny.
Okay, here’s one so you catch the meaning: “A hunter sees a bird flying and gets out his shotgun and fires. You here a very loud BANG! The bird falls but the hunter missed. Why did the bird fall?”..........When he heard the loud noise he covered his ears with his wings”.... Get it, hahaha.
So we made it to the airport and Jane helped us find our checkin location. Before she left David had reminder her of the conversation earlier in the day and handed her a track “Steps to peace with God”. He told her that this was the whole story about our religion and basically how to become a part of it. She looked very excited to get this. We said our goodbyes as the driver was waiting for her back at the van. As she left we could see her walking away reading the track with a very serious look on her face. It was really amazing. The seed has been planted... Let’s see what God can do with it.... Please remember Jane in your prayers!!!
Okay so back to now, we are sitting at the gate waiting out a storm that has delayed our flight. We are already one hour behind schedule and someone walked by saying they think the rest of the flights have been canceled for the day. I really hope this is not true. Maybe God still has more work for us in Beijing? We will have yet to see.....
From Beijing International Airport, Terminal 3, Beijing, China, China Team out.
No comments:
Post a Comment