Gospel Tracts
Kristin
translated her
Gospel tracts into the local language and made
photocopies. The touristy areas of the city were filled with Chinese tourists, so
she also made photocopies of the Chinese
translation of the Gospel tracts, and both began to be handed out.
It was ironic that we could hand out Gospel tracts in Chinese to far more Chinese people outside of China, and do it with complete freedom and far less stress. It was also notable that in a city teeming with Western missionaries, we didn't run into anyone else handing out tracts.
Kristin had arrived from China coughing and looking gaunt. Her health recovered as she breathed clean air and continued to visit various wards of a good hospital, and she liked the city, which, unlike the other southeast Asian country, was safe for Western women. We agreed that since this city is better for her and her health, we can hand out Gospel tracts to far more Chinese here than inside China, and there are more expat churches to check out, we should consider staying here longer, and looked for employment opportunities.
But the glut of Westerners in the city meant that the advertised job openings tended to be those with very low wages or those that offered only a work permit and no pay.
I was invited back to China for another semester, so we decided that I will accept it to continue to be able to provide for us and Kristin will remain in this city. She didn't want to be apart from me but agreed that this is the better option for her health, and looked forward to handing out more Gospel tracts on her own, especially to the Chinese tourists.
Two weeks after I flew to China, Kristin began to say that she misses me and that on her own, she feels more spiritually oppressed by the demons, whom she could see and who were associated with all of the Buddhist idol worship taking place in the city. After two more weeks, she flew back to China to be with me, and I tried to keep her inside, away from the air pollution outside except when handing out the tracts or casting out demons on the freeway overpass.
When that semester ended, we took the train to another city, and from there flew to a city in China's far north which should have better air and where I had witnessed a vibrant revival a decade earlier. The air was better but not by much, and the revival, to our disappointment, had subsided. An expat Christian explained that the locals, including Christians, became more greedy as China's economy developed and are now busy chasing after money or wasting their time on their mobile phones instead of reading the Bible and serving God.
We did find a small but vibrant expat church. The sermon was fine but they had no experience in spiritual warfare. Having been rejected and abused by so many pastors, Kristin and I were becoming increasingly cautious about approaching others for help with spiritual warfare. If the sermon is Biblical, we asked general and then increasingly specific questions to gauge their openness to and experience in spiritual warfare; with most pastors, we didn't get beyond the first question.
Meanwhile, alters continued to surface and then disappear one after another, including a very shy and dependent 18-year-old alter who just wanted to stay inside with me, and when outside, held my hand with both of hers. She was endearing but also so reliant on me that after a while, I asked her to try to learn to be more independent. The next day, she was gone, and I regretted not having been more patient with her.
As that northern city could also be crossed off as a long term option for us, we flew and then took the train back to the city where I taught, and then flew out of China back to the southeast Asian city where we had been three months earlier, and spent the summer trying out more expat churches, even a local church, and handing out Gospel tracts to the locals.
Handing out the Chinese translation of the Gospel tracts to the Chinese tourists, however, suddenly became much more difficult. Whereas before, the Chinese tourists accepted the Gospel tracts politely and even thanked us, surprising numbers of them now drew back, even shuddered, when offered the Gospel tract and looked at us as if we were a danger to them. Given their reactions, we suspected that the Chinese government may have issued a warning to its tourists heading to our city about a dangerous cult handing out 'spiritual opium,' which is what they call the Gospel message.
As the summer wore on and the prospect of returning to China loomed, I asked Kristin about returning to USA, which would hold many more options for us, but she remained against it. She said she sensed that her Satanist father was looking for her, had connections with other Satanists in the US government, and would identify her as soon as she landed in USA and her passport is scanned at immigration.
I was invited back to china for a fifth semester, so I again left Kristin in the southeast Asian city and returned to China. This time, she lasted not even two weeks before flying to China, saying that she didn't want us to be apart.
The air pollution in the Chinese city where I taught was even worse than during the two previous falls and her health quickly deteriorated again, so she couldn't remain in the city. As we had tried China's extreme south and north and neither had had better air, I took Kristin to another city on China's east coast one weekend. The air seemed somewhat better and there was even a Three Self Church that had both an English service for foreigners and a Bible study for Chinese that foreigners could attend. So I put her in an Airbnb, which had begun to spread in China, above a small shopping mall, and began to take long train rides on weekends to visit her, attend the English service with her, and then teach a Bible study group to English speaking Chinese with her. I advised her to stay inside to avoid the air pollution but she continued to go outside and hand out her Chinese Gospel tracts.