Highlights of China

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Posted by deconbrodi

The Untold Truth About China Revealed.

When I was in China I could not view my website because the government blocked it. It had too many references to God. Today I walked into Lifeway Christian Bookstore and saw one my friends who works there. She asked how my trip went and I told her it was amazing but that a place like Lifeway would be illegal in China and that we would all be thrown in jail. I was walking around the store and I got tears in my eyes just thinking about the Chinese Christians; about how they were arrested for meeting together to learn about the Bible, not only arrested but beaten, tortured, sent to hard labor camps and killed. We have this wealth of information just sitting at our doorstep and on the other side of the globe Christians risk their lives for knowledge about the Bible. I have not been able to stop thinking about them and about what I take for granted.
The unsaved Chinese friends I met in my travels are also on my mind. Most of them don't even know what the term Christianity means and have never heard of the Bible. This larger awareness of the persecuted Church and all those untouched souls created upon my heart a meloncholy that I have not been able to quell and I pray that it doesn’t alleviate. God has lifted the veil from the confines of my comfortable life and I feel led to share my limited experience with everyone else. More than any other trip, going to China has really made a profound impact on me. God has really laid a burden on my heart for that country and its people; both the saved and unsaved.
This trip has given me a much different perspective on life and on my Christian walk. The number 1.3 billion constantly hovers in the conciousness of my mind. That’s nearly the number of people who know nothing about God, or the Gospel. The tragedy of that number initially grieves me but then it inspires me to further the Kingdom of God in that land. I took every chance to share the Gospel with those I met and each time I did I was sharing something completely new and foreign to them. This changed the last night when I met a girl who had the color bead bracelet that represented the Gospel story. A westerner had sown the first seeds before me and had shared the Gospel with her and given her the bracelet. This made me incredibly excited and opened the door for me to share more with her about God and the Gospel. In the end I gave her my small Bible and she told me she would cherish it.
Seeing this one photon of light in a dark country was both exhilarating and sobering. Most of China lives in the dark; and this is due to their government. Everything they've been told about the world today and the history of the past 60 years is skewed and often outright false. For example, they are told that China liberated Tibet. Liberated from what? Themselves? China invaded Tibet and killed over a million people. The people literally have a veil put over their eyes not only about history and current events but of not really being aware of the outlawing of Christianity and the persecution their own people.
While I was there I felt the desire to lift this veil and shed the light of the Gospel. The Chinese Christians are doing a good job at this but need help. Imagine the early church after Christ and how they held councils to determine doctrine, this is the similar situation in China. These new churches are reading their Bibles without the aid that we have and they desperately want to know more about Theology. This is where my good friend Daniel comes in. He and another Westminister Seminary student named Eric, went to China earlier this summer to teach reformed theology to the underground church. It was the first missionaries and teachers this denomination had seen ever seen. They were incredibly appreciative of them and treated them like royalty. Daniel and Eric took turns teaching 7-hour shifts and the pupils were eager for every bit of it.
On August 2, things went bad when my friends went to a high-risk part of China. The taxi driver turned in my friends and the Chinese Christians. Dan and Eric were taken to a holding room in an unmarked government building, interrogated but were released 7 hours later. The Chinese Christians with my friends were not so lucky. They were put in prison, beaten, and tortured for an "illegal meeting."
This might be graphic for some but it deserves to be told. The Chinese Christians were beaten with metal chairs to the head, tortured with cigarette burns to the face and arms, needles stuck into their wrists and their thumbs pulled out with mini-handcuffs to the point where they couldn’t use their hands. One girl was stripped naked and beaten on the legs and rear so hard by bamboo rods that she bled and couldn’t walk for weeks. Most have been released. Two are still in prison; one an older frail lady who owned the house and the female leader who tried to stop the police from arresting my friends. Both are beaten daily and there is no current release date set.
These are people that my two American friends knew. Not just names in a paper but friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. In 2000 the pastor of the church was arrested along with some women of the Church. The women were tortured to sign a document that said the pastor had raped them. After extensive beatings four signed the letter but after release recanted. (They are now in hard labor camps for reeducation) The fifth girl who didn’t sign the document was beaten to death because she didn’t sign. The pastor was given the death penalty but his wife and the church sold everything they owned to buy off the government, so now he has life in prison.
These stories I have heard from Chinese Christians themselves, and from my friend Daniel. These events weigh on me and I don’t believe I can ever truly be the same. The Christians hunger and thirst for the Gospel like I've never seen before and they willingly pay the price for it. The American Church pales in comparison. There has to be something more we can do for them.
I feel like the Holy Spirit has truly touched my heart for both the saved and unsaved in China and I am looking for ways to be used by God to help the people in China.
If your interested you may look up an article in World Magazine dated August 27th about my friends and their arrest in China.
http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=10971
This link gives further information on recent Christian persecution in China.
http://www.earnedmedia.org/caa0818.htm

Please keep the Chinese Christians in your prayers.

Hello Banana?

Hello Banana? Was the greeting by several of the old ladies in Yangshou when we would walk down the street. Now I know what your thinking. She thought we were banana's but my hypothesis is that she actually wanted to sell us the banana's she had in her basket. Later that day we saw T-shirts for sell that had a picture of a banana and the words Hello Banana. So the whole trip Dan and I would walk around and say Hello Banana, Hello Apple, Hello Mango...to all the vendors...and one time I said it just as we walked up to a lady and sure enough she said, Hello Banana?
So this trip has been chalk full of funny things like that and not so fun things.
Like walking home to our hotel everynight we had to wade our way through a small market that was set up in the street every night around 8. The problem was not the market or the people but what they were cooking. They had tanks of water with live fish swimming around, crawfish clattering around, frogs all bundled up in a mesh bag, and the occasional group of snakes. Now this wasn't the problem. The problem was the smell. (What I look forward to the most back in the USA is the fresh air!)
The minute we stepped inside this death zone for small critters we automatically felt the sting of airborn spices that permeated everything....and most notably our eyeballs. And as our eyeballs cringed in pain our nostrils where filled with the rank smell of critter blood being fried for the Chinese palatte.
Anyway...two small stories among hundreds...I could go on and on but at this point my stomach is beckoning me to lunch.
I leave tomorrow and I am sad. I loved Yanghshou, not so much Beijing, but Yangshou was great. I love the Chinese people. It is so sad to see an almost entire country of 1.3 billion people in the dark. We need to shed the light on this country.
I took every opportunity I could to do just that and I have several stories to tell about those experiences as well but that will have to wait until I get back to the States.
I do look forward to seeing everyone....I look forward to being back with my church family in Baltimore. I miss you guys in the youth group!!
Much love to everyone and even though I may be back home I will still post stories and pics from my trip.
-Jordan
Oh and by the way, I have been able to see the comments to my blog through email, and thanks so much for all the responses...although I cant respond to them at this point because the government won't let me see my own blog.

Observations about China

I am now in southwestern China. Sitting in the West Lilly hotel listening to the bustle of the crowded street outside with its bicycles, scooters, screeching mini buses, three wheeled trucks, oxen drawn carts, motorcycles, mini motor bikes, a 40's vehicle with a bed and an engine precariously perched on the front of the vehichle exposing the antique tractor engine that it uses. It truly is a cornocopia of transportation that leaves wondering if there is any other place in the world with such a wide array of transportation.
So here I am in the back packers paradise of Yangshou. It sits in the middle of Karbst mountains that literally look like God took balls of clay and threw them on the ground to make giant balls and some he dripped from the heavens like a child would drip wet sand on the beach to create jagged peaks. And these mountains raise from the flat ground in all directions and line up and down the Li River which snakes through the southern part of the town. Yesterday we spent $1 to take a man powered flat boat up and down the river for about 20 minutes and today we got up at 5:45 am to take a bus and a mini truck/motorcycle hybrid to a town 1 hr north to take a bigger motor powered flat boat up and down the river to view the otherworldy mountain peaks. It was mythical, it was exotic and it was beyond words.
This place is truly one of the most beautiful and exotic places I've ever been.

Some observations about China:
1. It seems that there is not a man in China who doesnt smoke. Young and old alike. I have yet to see a woman smoke.
2. Even out in the countryside the air is dirty. The smell in the cities is a mix between pollution, trash, excrement at times, and the spices of food.
Last night we walked through a market and the spices were so bad we could hardly breath and at one time we had to close our eyes because it stung.
3. Things you can eat on a stick, silk worms, other bugs, whole fish, baby chickens, snake, scorpions, chicken hearts, squid and lets not forget that dog may not come on a stick but it is on the menu.
4. Everyone here sits by squatting. Butt almost touching the ground and the feet are flat footed. I cant do it, I can only squat on the balls of my feet.
5. The kids here dont wear diapers and instead are allowed to go where ever they so desire through the method of split pants. And we have seen them go wherever they want.
6. Wherever we go I see people just lounging around as if they have nothing to do.
I have seen people working but it seems most people arent up to much.
7. The room that we are staying in here has two single beds, AC, a TV, bathroom and shower and only costs $4 per person per night. Suffice to say things here are cheap.
8. Generally people are good natured and helpful. Although everywhere we go peddlers are trying to get us to buy things. At the Great Wall we had our own personal peddlers for half the day follow us...not heckling the whole way but simply following. I have yet to see anyone kiss in public...not even mom's or dads kissing their kids. I have seen a couple of people holding hands. I have yet to see a pregnant lady.
9. Everyone dresses with slacks and short sleeved button down shirts. And the ladies with pants, a blouse and heels. Unless your a Chinese tourist and then you see them in shorts.
10. Everyone uses umbrellas all the time. Especially in the sun. Ladies often have them becuase in Chinese culture the whiter you are the prettier you are.
11. Bicycles. Half the worlds bicycles are in China and I think that number is higher!
12. I do get looked at a lot. So I just look right back. Its amazing that a whole culture can have the same traits, the same color eyes, hair, body shapes, heights, little hair and yet at the same time they dont all look the same.
13. I had a Chinese girl tell me that if I lived in China I would have a line of potential suitors. Too bad its not like that in Baltimore! And too bad only 100 million share my faith. That is out of 1.3 billion.
14. Chinese history is completely different from 1949 to the present. The Korean war was fought in the defense of Korea against the American aggressors, etc. and etc.

Well, I need to go but I will update again soon.
In case your wondering, I am unable to check my blog for comments or questions, courtesy of the government and its blocking of my site.

Great Wall

Yesterday was miserable...cold and constant raining...today was the opposite. Absolutely gorgeous outside with a cool breeze, a warm sun and puffy white clouds.
It was a perfect day to head up to the Great Wall. The rain swept away a lot of the pollution too so it made for a very clear day up in the mountains.
The normally 1 1/2 hr bus ride took neary 5 hours because of traffic and an accident. But it gave us a chance to get to know the rest of the international travelers on the bus...3 guys from Switzerland, an older English couple, a young Belgium couple, a Morroccon girl, an Austrialian girl and a girl from Maine thrown in there for good meausre. The wall was beyond words stunningly amazing spectacular wish you could have been there experience. Imagine jagged peak lines of an infinity of bright green mountains in all directions and imagine putting towers and a wall along the precipice and thats only a very weak description for an amazing sight to behold. I did post some pictures earlier but I cant wait to post my pics once I get back. Seeing the wall alone has made this trip worth it.
We also had personal tourist knick knack peddlars follow us around the whole time.
Dan and I had a good time teasing them and sharing jokes. Humor is the best way to cross the langauge barrier.
Tomorrow we see the Forbidden city which is not so forbidden anymore.
And then hopefully we'll be able to get a train ticket to Suzhou near Shanghai.
We've been told they have been selling out several days in advance.
We'll see what happens.
I will update again soon.
Have a splendid evening or morning or afternoon....actually its about 125 pm over there and 125 am here....if I closed my eyes right now I would fall asleep.
So on that note.
Good night.

Tiananmen Square is around the corner

Hey everyone
I am in Beijing now...Its 730 pm and it feels like 730 am because there is a 12 hour time difference, so needless to say I am exhausted. The flight wasnt bad as we took the northern route over the north pole to get here.
Anyway...Its been raining here since I got here and were hoping the weather changes by tomorrow so we can go hiking down an old section of the Great Wall.
Right now its dark and the Tiananmen Square is all lit up..its pretty crazy that yesterday I was back in the USA and now I am on the opposite side of the globe chilling out next to Mao Tse Dong's Tomb....and chilling is the literal word as they lower it down each night to cryofreeze it. My friend here has had some crazy stories....I'll have to share when I get back.
There are some crazy jobs over here...like girls walking around with brooms to sweep the water down the drains in the street and guys with red flags that wave pedestrians across the street as if we needed them, they also yell at you if you cross his imaginary line. And ladies with mops that continually wipe down the entrances to these huge malls. I guess when you have 1.3 billion people you need to make up things to do for everyone. Not to mention the countless cops and military on every corner just standing there. And a lot of the corner cops look like they belong in my youth group.
I ordered Rice and diced chicken for dinner and the chicken breast came out with a hard bone running through it and the meat was light pink, suffice it to say I didnt eat the chicken and whent the waitress took the plate away she smiled and giggled.
I also had another waitress giggle at me as I fumbled around with the chopsticks.
Anyway...nothing too exciting yet. I will keep everyone posted.
Wan An and Zaijian

China here I come

I leave for China on Monday at 9 am...get to Newark around 10 am and then take off to China around 11....and nearly 14 hours and 6,834 miles later I will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday at 1 pm. I lose a day going there...but the cool thing is on the way back I leave at 3 pm and get back to the US at 4 pm of the same day! I've always wanted to experience time travel.
Anyway- I just wanted to say that I will be away for a while. I get back on the 25th. So I will post some pics in about 2 weeks

Please keep me in your prayers. And know that even though I will be away on a grand adventure that I will think of you every now and then. : )

Beyond the Sea with pictures!

I already posted a blog about Bobby Darin and I wanted to be able to play one of my favorite songs of his on my blog. So turn up your volume because the slide show is about to begin.

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Posted by deconbrodi

Ahora... Maintenant...Heute...Now

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again, he thought and so you better take what time there is and be very thankful for it. If the bridge goes bad. It does not look too good just now.
But Maria has been good. Has she not? Oh, she has not, he thought. Maybe that is what I am to get now from life. Maybe that is my life and instead of it being threescore years and ten it is forty-eight hours or just threescore hours and ten or twelve rather. Twenty four hours in a day would be threescore and twelve for the three full days. I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years; granted that your life has been full up to the time that the seventy hours start and that you have reached a certain age.
What nonsense, he thought. What rot you get to thinking by yourself. That is really nonsense. And maybe it isn't nonsene too...
So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am happy with it. Now, ahora, maintenant, heute.
Now...it has a funny sound to be a whole world and your life.

.......these lines were taken from one of my favorite books....i thought they went nicely with the quote of the day...

Beyond the Sea

This is a picture of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. Both movie stars, one a grammy winning singer. They were married and in their hay day were the hot couple of Tinsel Town. : )
I just watched "Beyond the Sea", a movie starring Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin. A movie based the real life of the famous 60's and early 70's singer and movie star. Most of you would recognize him as the singer of "Splish Splash". That was his initial hit that raised him to stardom. Just like today's music there are songs and artists that appeal to the teenieboppers and that song, his break out hit, did just that. But most of his songs were more like the Rat Pack style, along the lines of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
And its a funny thing that I watched this movie tonight. Last night I decided to download some songs from the 60's and that included some Bobby Darin songs. I listened to Splish Splash and then I listened to his other songs, Beyond the Sea, Dream Lover, & Sea of Love and I instantaneously fell in love with them. And I wondered why I had never heard this side of him before. I am glad this movie introduced me to Bobby Darin.
I think most importantly this movie touched my heart. I am finding out that these drama films based on the lives of real people seem to have a more profound effect on me than regular movies. Its because I get a glimpse of someone elses life and their ups and downs...their heartaches and their loves. And just as the characters life flows forward and up and down, I see a microcosism of their life right before me and it speaks to me of life...of their life, of my life and the nature of life all around me.
It makes me want to make my life into a movie. Not because I am an egomaniac. But because it seems so nice and tidy yet powerful and touching at the same time. To have a soundtrack to my life...linked to my swaying feelings seems appropriate.
To somehow plug into that streaming life of mine and put it in a box where there is a beginning and an ending where it displays all the passions and struggles...where there are moments of happiness and joy and moments of struggle and ultimately there is a climax and it ends.
We all are in a drama like an act to a play and we live our part and it is played out on the cosmic stage.
Some of us think a legacy of some great achievement will be needed to make our act stand out in the countless others before us and the countless ones after us but in fact the best legacy we can leave can best be measured by how much we loved.

At the end credits there are little biopsies of some of the people in the movie, and the line following Sandra Dee (His wife) said the following:
"Sandra Dee lives in Los Angeles, she has never remarried. She remains in love with Bobby Darin to this day."
That line pierced my soul. 22 years have passed since Bobby Darin died and a part of him lives on in the people he loved and the people who loved him. (Read my previous post titled "Graveyard", it echoes this sentiment)
Sandra Dee actually died in February of this year, very shortly after the movie was made.
I may have never met them in my life but I know Bobby and Sandra.
Just as the last lines of the song in the movie said...." as long as your singing then the world's alright and everything’s swinging, as long as your singing your song." - Bobby Darin is still with us in his words, in his songs, in his movies.
But its not just a legacy, its so much more than that. On a much more lasting and intimate level he is with us through those who loved him and he is with us because we relate and know what it means to love and for that reason a part of him will always remain.
And so it is with all of those that have gone before us.... and so it will be with us.
The song we have written and weaved with the beats and rhythms of our life. The hearts that have touched ours and the hearts we have touched...and world is spun by the beat of our hearts and even when time has passed beyond the fingertips of our presence and spun beyond the charted seas of our lives our song is still sung, echoed in the hearts of humanity throughout eternity.