Judy Durbin's trip to China

            I’m sorry it has taken me so long to give you an update on my China trip in July.  It was a unique and wonderful trip and we are praying that God will continue His work in the lives of the Chinese English teachers that we taught. 

            We were located in a missionary camp outside Lincang, Yunnan Province, China.  Although China is still a Communist country, the missionary family who live and work there have made no bones about being Christians and for the most part, the government leaves them alone.  They’ve been there seven years and the camp is actually a working agricultural camp.  But they do hold English language training sessions during the summer. 

            There were 13 in our group, most from our church.  We taught 68 Chinese teachers who teach English.  We had a specific curriculum for ten days of teaching that was approved by the Chinese government.  It consisted of teaching better teaching methods in the morning, a cultural lesson in the afternoon, and games and fun activities in the evening. 

            When the students arrived at the camp in the afternoon (and some traveled over 400 km to get there) they filled out a registration form.  Because there were only two classrooms, we had to divide the students into two groups.  We decided the best way to do that was to have our team divided into five groups of two and each of these five groups would interview a single student at a time to assess how well they could speak English.  On their registration form we numbered them 1, 2 or 3.  The ones would be the lower group, the threes the higher group, and the twos would be split between both groups to kind of even out the number. 

            At the beginning they were kind of shy and didn’t really know what to expect, but in short order they came to see that we really wanted to help them be better teachers.  They thought the government had paid us to come and were quite blown away to learn that we received no money from anyone and had paid our own way to come. 

            A typical day began at 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.  Early on, class began at 9 a.m., but we soon changed that to 8:30.  The English lesson ended about 11 and lunch was around noon.  The Chinese are used to having a siesta after lunch for about an hour, so the culture class started at 2 p.m. and lasted until 4.  Supper was around 6 and was followed around 7 by games or movies or dancing until 8:30 or 9 p.m. 

            As part of the English lesson, each student had a writing assignment every night and the English teachers had to grade them so they could give them back the next morning.  Also, before the end of the camp, each student had to give a 20-minute teaching practice lesson in front of their class and it was also graded. 

            Our culture sessions consisted of lessons on direct and indirect communication, idioms and slang, families, Christmas, Easter, other holidays including Thanksgiving, July 4, St. Patrick’s Day, a lesson on how our country’s founding documents (10 commandments, Declaration of Independence, Preamble to the Constitution, Bill of Rights) determined our laws, and a lesson on our geography. 

            We were told that we had to be careful about what we said about our Christian faith and that we really couldn’t do a lot of evangelizing.  We were, after all, in a communist country and although we might not be criticized, it was possible that the students could be jeopardized in some way.  On the whole, our English teachers really didn’t have much of an opportunity to share Christ, but when we taught about Christmas, Easter and the Ten Commandments, us culture teachers really did share as much as we could about the Most High God and His Son, Jesus.  We shared about why God sent His Son into the world, why He had to die and what it means to us today.  The day after we had the Easter lesson, the morning teachers asked the students to write about their view of death and life after death.  The majority wrote that they felt it was just a part of the natural order of things.  You were born, lived to an old age and died.  However some of them had a hard time justifying the death of so many children in the earthquake.  They really don’t believe in life after death.  We were saddened about that, but just pray that God will send someone else to water the seed we planted while we were there.  Some of the students asked why we were so happy all the time and that opened the door for more sharing about Jesus. 

            Our pastor and his wife were on the trip and his birthday occurred while we were there.  The students found out about it and three of the men went into town and bought tee shirts for each of us and the missionary family.  Then they ended up getting shirts for all the students as well.  It was quite a sight to see everyone wearing their shirts.  We wanted to have a group picture taken, and when we got everyone together we had the students sing the Chinese national anthem.  What a wonderful experience!  After that we found out that the students were getting a birthday cake for the pastor.  We weren’t sure whether it was just for him or for the whole camp, but learned it was for everyone.  Little did we know that the students had bigger and better things up their collective sleeve.  After supper they wouldn’t let us go in the bigger classroom until they said we could.  When we went in they had pushed all the tables to the outside walls with stools behind to sit on.  Each table was covered with food:  mangoes, bananas, grapes, soy nuts, lichee nuts, muffins, cookies and sweet breads.  In the center of the room were two huge boxes sitting on a table.  At the front of the room were special places of honor for the pastor and his wife.  After we had eaten what we could, they had the pastor come to the center of the room where they put a paper crown on his head, opened the boxes and there were two beautifully decorated cakes.  They put candles on them, had him make a wish and blow out the candles.  After everyone was served cake, the entertainment began.  They had all the men sing a song, then it was the pastor’s turn to entertain.  After that each group took turns doing some kind of entertainment.  A marvelous time was had by all. 

            To those of you who prayed for us on travel days, we deeply appreciated and could feel your prayers.  We flew from KC to Chicago where we had a 7-hour layover resulting in missing our connecting flight out of Beijing to Kunming.  So, we had an unscheduled overnight stay in Beijing but saw nothing due to the lateness of our arrival.  The next day we then flew to Kunming, then on to Lincang.  Fortunately our return trip involved no unscheduled overnight stays, but a 3-hour delay once again in Chicago.  But God was watching out for us and blessing us the entire trip.  Praise Him!!   

            To all of you, many, many thanks for your prayer support.  You are the greatest!