God Calling!

By Everett R. Boyce

When we take InterFACE ministry trips we require that internationals going must be students in American higher education, so that we can be sure they speak English.  The only exception is that students can bring their visiting parents.  We assume that the student will interpret for their parent(s), so that everyone hears the directions, and even more important, the devotionals.  

Last summer we had a graduate student from mainland China (studying in Knoxville) reserve space for two on one of our trips out west: Wei, and her mother, Ping.  But we didn’t know until we were well into the trip that they “were not speaking.”  It became apparent that something was seriously wrong when we noticed that a young man from Hongkong, who went by the name of Caleb, did all the interpreting for Ping.  Since Mandarin was Ping’s second language (her first language being a minority dialect), and it was also Caleb’s second language (his first language is Cantonese), translation was difficult.  Although Caleb’s English is quite good, trying to translate spiritual ideas from English into something she that could understand when they were both so limited in Mandarin was a real challenge!

Upon inquiry I learned that Ping and her daughter are from a minority people group in China that is historically Muslim.  Wei had become a Christian recently in the U.S., and when her mother learned about it she came to visit Wei “to see if she had lost her mind.”   Ping was impressed that Wei understood what she was doing, but they had a bitter argument over a dream that Ping was having repeatedly.  The pastor of the Chinese Church Wei attends in Knoxville told her that dreams and visions are demonic, and that if her mother would not agree to have the demon “cast out,” she should not talk to her!  I thought I might be able to mediate the issue, so I asked Ping, through Caleb, to tell me about the dream.  She told us that a man had visited her in her sleep four or five times.  Each time he told her to do “crazy things.”  When I asked her to be more specific, she said he told her to: become a Christian, be baptized, and go back to her village in the mountains of China and tell all her friends about Jesus!  I was dumbfounded!   I never heard of a demon with a message like that!  When I tried to ask Wei what she thought of that message, she refused to listen.  Her pastor had so frightened her about demons that she didn’t even want to know what this man in the dream had said.

I asked Ping if she had questioned the man in the dream.   Who did he say he was?  She said no, she had not asked him that, but she had asked him if Allah sent him.  He had told her that it was not Allah, but “Yahwey” who had sent him!  As Caleb was translating all this (with great difficulty) he was overwhelmed.  After translating that last statement he blurted out, “She has no idea who Yahwey is!”  We tried to make her understand that a messenger must have visited her from the true and living God.  She seemed to understand, but could hardly accept the idea.  After struggling with the language problem a while longer, I realized we had gone as far as we could, under the circumstances.  Ping was returning to China the day after we returned from the trip, so I asked her if she knew any Christians in China.  She thought about that, then suddenly brightened when she recalled a merchant in a neighboring village who had been in trouble with the authorities for having a Christian meeting in his home.  I asked her if this man spoke her language, and she said yes.  So we agreed that when she got home she would go see this man and tell him about her dreams, and ask him to tell to her about Yahwey and Jesus Christ.

Please pray that the Lord, who has so amazingly reached out to this woman, will draw her to himself!  I read recently that more former Muslims have been coming to faith in Christ annually in the nineties (primarily through dreams and visions) that had come to Christ in the last century! And pray for the many international students in America whose hearts are prepared to learn about “the Way, the Truth and the Life."