Father, Thank You

As I write this it has been six days since I got back from Hong Kong; six very hard days. I had no idea what lay ahead for me on this trip. If I did, I don’t know if I could have gone. As long as I have known Hongmei I have always been called dad. I didn’t know until I got to Hong Kong that she also has a person she calls mom and another elderly man in his 80’s who is grandpa. I have not met the mom yet, but I spent five hours in very intense emotional conversation with grandpa. He was a director for Campus Crusade in Europe. He presently has a big work here in China. That is when I began to understand how deeply this might affect my life

We had to leave by a certain time to make our connections, but by the time Hongmei arrived back from her appointment we were already forty minutes late. Another thirty went by before we headed to the train back to China and two custom inspections to get through. I knew we would be late and miss our train in Guanzhou, but I didn’t think it would be over an hour. I had no problem with customs, but because of the mass of Chinese coming through, Hongmei got held up. What made this stressful was to meet on the other side of customs without the use of cell phones. Once I waited for 30 minutes in a crowd of Chinese for her to arrive. I looked down for a moment and when I did I heard her say, “Hey dad.” What a beautiful sound that was then.

We got to the train station and bought our tickets to travel from Shenzhen to Guanzhou on the fast train. We arrived after our train to Wuhan had left. But that is not the worst of it. We came in at the East Terminal and still needed to take two subways to go across town to a station where the night train leaves from.

 We arrived there, found a ticket counter open and exchanged our tickets for the first fast train in the morning. Our slow train would have taken 13 hours, but it provides a place to sleep. The fast train takes four hours. Both pull into Wuhan shortly after noon.

Here it is 12:30 at night and we have five hours to wait until we take a taxi across Guanzhou to the fast train station. A hotel is out of the question, so we join others at a nearby KFC for the night. Since I was an American, people wanted to practice their English and learn things about me and my family. At a certain point the Bible was mentioned and before long Hongmei and I were working together presenting the Gospel. I taught and drew diagrams and she interpreted. As we did this people began to gather around us for a great conversation. Some asked Hongmei for her email address so they could continue the conversation. Some have.

That night at KFC was the breaking point for me because it brought into focus dreams I had in high school of going to Asia with someone who would share ministry with me. When I realized that was now not possible along with other dreams that come into focus, I knew that I was in for a very difficult time getting my life back together again. I needed to get this kind of stuff out of my life and get back to reality.

I got back to Wuhan with only six hours of sleep instead of 16 and for the first few days back, sleep was almost impossible. As a result I came down with a good chest cold. Today I am a little better, but when it came time for me to go out and get lunch it was very difficult.

I got what I wanted to eat and found a spot on a bench along a wall. Very soon two young Chinese couples with a three year old son each came and sat down next to me. The boys played while the parents watched and ate. They were eating tentacles from some sea creature. These tentacles are coated in a red sauce which is very spicy. One of the boys wanted to try one. The mother asked the father to give the boy a small one. With it in his mouth the boy starts to chew it and realizes this was like fire and spits it out. He immediately comes over to the dad and starts pounding on him. He was really mad. For us watching it became a very humorous time and drew me into their group. That time with them brought some life back into me that had been leaking out over the past few days.

I have a very long way to go to understand what God is doing at this time in my life. It will take a lot of work to get things back in the right places. I am sure these places will be different for some things and I am sure that I will have to throw away some things that don’t belong in my life now.

Father, thank you for the work you are doing in my life. It is really painful, but I know you know what you are doing and I trust you. Please make the changes because I long to be more like Christ.