Speak Up For Jesus.
I am inviting former and current tentmakers to submit their written experiences for a chance to be included here in Adventist Frontiers. Have you lived abroad and spoken up for Jesus? Have you worked as a professional in the 10/40 window and had a memorable experience living out your faith? Send your story to GoTential@gmail.com.
This month’s tentmaker feature article is by Parks, a landscape contractor from Lincoln Nebraska.
— Barnabas Hope

It was late summer, 1992. We were new in town, having arrived in China just five days earlier. I had finished my first game on the outdoor basketball courts at the university where we were teaching when my wife Esther called me over to meet a new friend, Niu Feng, who was eager to work on his English with us. Little did I know at the time how deep this friendship would go.

Niu Feng invited us to go with him to ShenYang, the provincial capital with about 6 million people, “The English corner has recently reopened after the Tiananmen problem,” he said. “Come, it will be a good time!”

“What do they do there?” I asked apprehensively, envisioning an arrest and jail time for unwittingly fraternizing with some rebel group. We were in China for a year to teach English and make friends. Our city was strongly communist, and we had been warned to be careful about speaking publicly of religion or politics.
In those days, plainclothes police would often mingle with crowds to keep the government aware of any potential problems.

“What do they do there?” Niu Feng looked quizzical. “They speak English, of course!”

So it was that Esther and I trustingly boarded a smoke-filled, lurching public bus with Niu Feng and chugged through the crowded streets of our city.
Forty five-minutes and dozens of stops later, with more people boarding at each stop, we were stuffed into the bus like sardines in a can.

“We must walk now,” Niu Feng announced. I was wondering if we would have to slather ourselves with butter to squeeze out of that press of people and exit the bus. But it seemed to be the end of the line, so everyone got off in one huge, churning mass of humanity, and we were swept out with them.

Niu Feng led us deeper into the downtown area. We passed vendors selling boiled eggs, a seamstress doing on-the-spot clothing repair, a noodle seller and a sidewalk dentist. We walked by a huge night market where one could buy a new suit or a pig’s head without walking ten paces.

As dusk fell, we walked by the four-star Zhong Shan Hotel and finally into the heart of Shen Yang city, the huge Zhong Shan square. A 70-foot-tall statue of Chairman Mao smiled down at us, his hand raised in greeting. A cadre of cast-bronze soldiers gazed reverently up at this mighty figure, their rifles raised in silent salute. It was a startling scene for a fresh-from-Nebraska, corn-fed, freedom-loving American.

I had envisioned the English corner as a small, intimate experience. But all around the square, perhaps 300 people in four or five groups were engaged in listening and talking with several experienced English students.

Niu Feng led us across the expanse of the dimly lit square toward the base of the huge statue, hoping to introduce us to an acquaintance.

Suddenly, without any apparent cue, the entire square began to key in on our location, and we found ourselves surrounded fifty deep in a tight ring of bodies. The entire crowd must have had the same thing for supper. The odor of the evening meal descended upon us in one gigantic, converging cloud of garlic.
We were the only Caucasians in the square, and everyone seemed to be focused on getting close enough to us to ask us at least one question.

“Where are you from?”
“We are from Nebraska.”
“We haven’t heard of that country. Is it near Russia?”
“No, it is in America. The middle of the United States.” I glanced up at Mao, half expecting to see the giant arm descending in a signal to attack.
“Oooooh, America!” The murmur rippled back through the packed circle.
“Mei Guo Ren.” (Americans.)

Immediately the press of bodies became tighter, and the questions came at us loudly from all sides. Niu Feng shouted a few words in Chinese, and order was restored as they went around the circle asking various things about our persons, our lives in America and our reasons for coming to Shen Yang.

Late August in Manchuria can be stiflingly hot, and in the middle of three hundred bodies packed together on a still evening, it was sweat city. We shed our backpacks, and the people behind us stepped back just far enough for us to perform the maneuver. Then the crowd got the bright idea that they could get in more questions if Claudia and I were separated. They pulled and pushed us until we were about 50 feet apart. We felt like two drains as the crowd spiraled around us for the next two hours as we answered questions and asked a few of our own. At first, our conversation was mostly, “What?” “Could you repeat that?” “I am sorry, I didn’t understand you. Would you please say it once more?” Our answers were generally superficial to the sometimes pointed questions about American or Chinese politics.

Then out of the crowd came, “What religion are you?”
“I am a Christian,” I answered, casting a worried glance around.
“And what good is the Christian religion? What does it do for you?”
I drew a slow breath of hot, garlic-scented air to gain some time to think.
Before I could reply, a voice on the other side of the circle a few rows back piped up, “It gives you peace in your heart.”

Trying to spot the speaker, I wheeled around, but I could not identify the person. I was stunned to think that someone here knew Jesus!

Suddenly, the oppressiveness of Mao towering over me and the likely presence of plainclothes police in the crowd seemed to lift from me. Jesus was much bigger than Mao. He was in control even in China and could take care of me even under the watchful eyes of Communism’s greatest hero. Jesus was here in China, too, and His Holy Spirit was even now working on hearts in that crowd of people. In a city a half a world away from my home, worrying about sharing my faith with unbelievers, I had been blessed. Jesus was here with me, reminding me that He takes care of His faithful ones and He gives them strength and courage to tell His Good News. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isa. 26:3).

That was my turning point in how I proclaimed Jesus in China.

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