08.07.2011 Eric's Far East Adventure

James is serving with the National Guard and is being deployed - currently doing training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Letters of encouragement can be sent to:

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This is for 8/10/11 - 10/25/11

08.07.2011 Grace Summit - Prayer for James from Grace Summit on Vimeo.

08.07.2011 Grace Summit Sermon - East Asia Update with Eric Chen from Grace Summit on Vimeo.

I’m Eric Chen – I’m with Intervarsity at The University of Akron –
I went to China for 6 weeks –
We had a diverse group of students
14 students – West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania (6 states)
4 staff – Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, California
One girl had never been on a plane – or a train – and we did a week in Beijing for orientation – what will daily life look like – what does it mean to share the Gospel with those from a different culture.
Coming out of Beijing, we had a 24 hour train ride -
Staff Team
John – from LA, pastor of a large multi-ethnic church in the city – He has always had a heart for Asia – especially SE Asia – as a staff team, we arrived a day early to share with one another.
Corrie – International Student Ministry at University of Kentucky – She came because her specialty is working with International students and helping Americans bridge the gap and she led some classes on Cross Cultural skills.
Christy – Undergraduate Campus Staff Member at University of Michigan – Dearborn – similar to Akron as a commuter school. Neither John nor Corrie had done undergraduate ministry (working with older students) – Christy and I had a good time helping them learn about working with angsty 19 year olds – sorry – you guys aren’t angsty…
Steve – ex-stateside IV staff, now on loan to the Chinese movement, our receiving staff – has been there for 7 years!
What was exciting was that none of us had any foreign mission trip experience (longer than 2 weeks) ever!
The funny part about this picture is that we had spent a week in China already, and the staff team was already craving burgers… - As staff, we were supposed to teach about culture integration… and here we are at the American joint.
Sitting at Lakers – you see internationals (like us) wander out of the shadows and see an American Restaurant – and wander in.
Global Project style – Typically, they would pair student to student to engage in intense relationship building and learning one another’s’ culture. Recently, the Chinese Government said no, IV can’t come – even though iV had been coming for years. The vice president of the university had had an impactful time with a group of Canadian Christians back in the 80s – and it had always been in his mind and he had benefited from it. In the late 90s – a guy from IV had found this university and wanted to do a partnership here – and he was the guide to lead us through the front door. He thought – How can I get IV back – if you come back, you have to change your name – and he opened the back-door for us and helped us fly under the radar. Instead of being paired at the hip like former projects, our goal was to through social activities to build friendships. We were pulling off big events to have excuses to talk with Chinese students. Steve had no clue how many to expect. We did a kickoff event – 60-70 students showed up – and that is what we did – created opportunities to have conversations with Chinese students.
As we built relationships with the Chinese students, we could really only talk about religion if they first “opened the door”, so to speak. So the best way to getting there was to just throw parties and socials so our students could have excuses to talk with Chinese students
Like our first night on campus, when we threw a huge party for about 60 Chinese students
Or culture class, where we learned about each other’s cultures – Corrie – sharing about ‘small talk’ – one thing we talked about was GRADES – in America, we don’t talk about grades – probably because of curve-killers! – But in China – they talk about grades – “We are proud when we score well!”
Or like when we threw a Christmas party in July, not only to talk about Christmas, but do a gift exchange.
You get the picture; we just did stuff to meet Chinese students.
If I had the luxury of time, we’d probably spend at least an hour going through stories and pictures of what God did, but for now, I want to share just three stories of what God did this summer
I had about 3000 pictures that I had narrowed down to 800.
This was my small group (from L to R): Gordon, Heather, Elisabeth, me, Aaron, and Rachel
Enter Gordon, Heather, and Aaron, who became friends with a girl named Minnie while going to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Our students were stripped of some of their basic means of communication. We have a common language – and we have texting, Facebook, cell phones. We were stripped of what we were used to. When we talk about sharing the gospel here in the states, we say if you can share with an 8 year old – you are golden. Now imagine talking to someone who can speak only about as well as an 8 year old – but can speak eloquently in their own language about politics and all kinds of things.
Students had to face being stripped of most ways of relating with Chinese students
Language
Culture
Interests
Technology
The challenge was to rely even more on God to make that change, and what better way to communicate our desire for that than through prayer? We prayed that God would open doors for us – put a small group together like mine – 10 o’clock at night – and we would pray – a lot. Some of the fruits of that.
Put a small group of students who knew these barriers, and that prayer works, and you got a small group that started to pray and ask God to do some big things on campus.
Minnie – here she is leading some of us Americans in Tai Chi.
Minnie had been hanging out with her friend Bella, a Christian Chinese student at KFC with Gordon/Heather/Aaron when she started asking about religious beliefs. “I’m interested in knowing what you think!” Unless the student opens the door – you can’t just share with them. We could ask questions that might provoke deeper conversations.
This was in the first week, so Gordon/Heather/Aaron were all excited to talk and have this open door, but as they talked more, it became apparent that Minnie was having trouble opening her heart because of a relationship with an Army man. If you are in the Army, you are not supposed to have any beliefs.
As this happened, Gordon sensed that he should pray that a storm would rock Minnie’s life. As they walked out the door of KFC, a thunderstorm started rumbling in the distance. To this, Gordon was super excited and ran to tell our small group. “I knew something big was going to happen in Minnie’s life sometime soon”
A few days later, the American team met together to pray for Chinese students right before a movie night. During that time, Aaron prayed specifically that God would break down the barrier between Minnie and Jesus, through any means possible.
30 minutes later, when the Chinese students started to arrive, Minnie arrived, and the first thing she did was going up to Aaron and tell him that she had a disagreement with her boyfriend that day on the phone, and that they broke up right then and there, and she was ready to talk about religion again! Aaron was in shock – is this really happening to me? As the summer actually went on, Minnie decided to give her life to Jesus as Lord and Savior, praise God! That was exciting to see the reaping of the harvest that had been planted beforehand.
Coco and Rabbit – Aaron and Izzy
At that same prayer meeting before Minnie broke up with her boyfriend, Aaron also prayed for Coco, a girl that Aaron and Izzy were both spending time with. While Aaron was just getting to know Coco, he prayed specifically that Coco would open the door for them to talk about spiritual things. Coco walks in right after Minnie and goes over to Aaron – “I was just thinking about the Afterlife today – can we talk about that?” Aaron grew up in a Christian household – as he shared with me – he never really – or struggled with the aspect of prayer – for him to experience the power of God working through prayer.
Coco never made a decision to follow Christ throughout our time in China, but she ended up getting a Bible and got plugged in with long-term missionaries who were more than willing to follow up with her!
We continue to pray for Coco and Rabbit – that picture is her default mode.
Something God showed me – the testimony of the long-term missionaries.
Softening/Tilling/Sowing/Reaping – hearing testimony from the long-termers (Moyers/Steve/Gideon)
Speaking of long-term missionaries, we were encouraged to get to know of the long term work that had been going on in China and locally at our university.
Gideon – IFES Associate General Secretary for Global Issues – Vice president of IFES. He is in charge of East Asia and is interested in Islamic countries and helping them to know God.
Came and shared with us to get to know us, welcome us to IFES East Asia, and also cast vision for long-term work.
Shared history of the Global Projects
Steve would have never gotten there had it not been for Gideon. And they would have never gotten there without the local churches there. “We want people to come and share on campuses – because they will be the leaders.” In China – the best of the best apply and only about 30% get in.
Part of it is the philosophy – we might do short-term work in conjunction with long-term work, but never short term for the sake of short term.
The Far East project is the fruit of that. I appreciated what Gideon shared with us. It was encouraging to hear the partnership between Gideon and the house-churches.
Esther – the girl on the right – was a lawyer in China – but felt led to OSU to get her Masters and PHD – she became a Christian there – and is now replacing Steve. Steve is going to Vancouver for a couple years to Regent College.
Steve – ex-stateside IVCF staff (Baldwin Wallace), now doing long-term work in China. He went on a couple global projects, and after the second one was called to do long-term work there.
At our university for 7 years, doing follow up and receiving short-term teams for the summer. He does a lot of follow-up – we understood that some would be in different phases of soil softening to reaping a harvest.
Rhinehard is a long-term missionary teaching English at the University. It was encouraging to hear from him and his wife Cindy – and they don’t have children of their own, but these students have become like their adopted children. They have been praying for a long time that some would come to help them. He shared with us how we had been such an answer to prayer – there are people on the campus that they don’t know if they would have had the opportunity to meet, were it not for our team. It was encouraging for him and for us! Integral in long-term follow up of the work that happens
Shared about how we’ve been an answer to prayer, both in softening the earth, tilling, sowing, and reaping the harvest!
It used to be, 20 students paired with 20 students – but now, we had 14 students – and we listed all the students we had a good conversation with and where they are spiritually – we had 42 names on our board –and that would have never happened in previous projects.
If there is anything that I would walk away with – the power of prayer that went into our work – the prayers of this church and others, Steve and Rhinehard, and us while we were there, God showed Himself to us through prayer. The challenge – we talked about reintegrating into American culture – we have this same common language and technologies that connect us – as we interact through all of that, will we lose the understanding of how God is the one who has to work through prayer? We have to choose to walk in this. That is China