Roger's trip to Xi-an 11-Jun-2011

Last week I went to Xi’an in NW China to follow up on an invitation I had received from a church in the city to teach its Bible school students on the subject of missions, as a number of the students believe they are called to become foreign missionaries.

The Purpose

Most Chinese have little or no exposure to foreign or other ethnic cultures and have never travelled abroad and so they do not know what preparations to make in order to be a missionary. Therefore I was asked to teach them about some of these, including cultural adaptation, language learning (the target language(s), not necessarily English – many Chinese think that the word “foreign language” means English, as this is the one most commonly learned), food, local apparel and local church cultures (many Chinese Christians find it difficult to accept communion using bread or crackers: they only use unleavened bread). This process took two days, including having the students repeat what they had learned and then (as a group are targeting Afghanistan) teaching them the Persian alphabet. What is amazing is that the pastor’s husband told me that night that the local Foreign Languages School has a Persian course!!!

Move of the Spirit

Every morning started out with praise and worship, during which the Holy Spirit moved and touched the people in every session. One sister who was troubled by demons also experienced release. In addition two people received healing outside the teaching sessions. The students were extremely attentive and receptive and it was a great pleasure to minister to them.

Other

One evening after dinner, we walked by a mosque (which looked more like a Chinese temple from the outside), and so we decided to have a look inside and got talking to one of the Islamic teachers, who showed us some of the old books. He told us that most Hui Muslims have very little knowledge of their religion and only know the prayers they say and not to eat pork. We shared our knowledge of Jesus with him and he asked for a Bible, which we gave him. Please pray for him to be saved.

It is highly likely that I will return to Xi’an to minister with this church in the future. Please pray about this.