Americans In China
After
the semester ended, Kristin and I traveled to a large Chinese city
where a Chinese Christian couple I knew took us to a sizable
English service at a large Chinese church that was led by two young
Americans, both recent seminary graduates.
They warmly welcomed two fellow Americans, so after a long chat, I pulled them aside, shared with them what Kristin was dealing with and asked if they could pray - not even cast demons out of, but just pray - for Kristin.
They told me to wait and walked away. Soon, a Chinese woman came over, introduced herself in English as a psychiatrist, said that she had been sent over by one of the two Americans, and seemed to want to be hired for her services. So I walked over to the guy she didn't mention, relayed what the Chinese psychiatrist had said, and reminded him that I had asked for prayer, not a psychiatrist. He replied with a stern, very different demeanor than earlier, "I was taught that rats don't gather unless there's trash," and then walked away.
He seemed to be saying that Kristin must have demons because she must be engaging in sins that attract demons. While committing (occult) sins does attract demons, that neither was her case nor precluded praying for her and casting demons out of her as Jesus commanded.
We then flew to Kunming, the 'forever spring' city in south China that was said to have a mild climate, less pollution, many missionaries, and many more Chinese Christians.
The air pollution in Kunming was just as bad as in the city where I taught. There were indeed more missionaries, but it seemed to be a 'missionary ghetto,' where missionaries just live and socialize amongst each other. The sermon at the large expat church in town would have made Joel Osteen proud, and as for the large number of Chinese Christians, we were told that they are the nearby hill tribes that converted to Christianity generations ago and are now just cultural Christians. The great harvest among the locals was decades-old news that the missionaries in the area continued to regurgitate to keep receiving financial support from their donors.
We flew from Kunming back to southeast Asia, whose humid but less polluted air was a relief. But Kristin's health had deteriorated in China, so we spent quite a bit of time visiting hospitals.
No longer financially broke, we rented a two bedroom apartment with good internet access, which allowed me to do more research online about Kristin's condition.