Two Busy Weeks in China

We arrived at the John Connor Brown Christian Care Center about noon on Sunday, June 26th. The Directors’ seminar began the afternoon session at 2 p.m. About 5 p.m. we broke for dinner and then the worship service (family meeting) was held afterwards. We began again at 8:10 Monday morning. The seminar ended about noon on Tuesday. A few of us met the Department of Education officials for lunch on Tuesday. We want to bring additional children to this care center but the school is reluctant to accept more children. We asked the Department of Education officials to look into it and consider the problem.

All of us took a bus to Nanning in the afternoon and connected with trains heading in various directions. Our train left at 8:30 p.m. heading to Shaoyang (on our way to Longhui to visit the North Canton Christian Care Center).

While waiting for the train, Lily, our translator, told us she saw a prisoner being led by a police officer. When we boarded our train, Lily came to our cabin and told us that the prisoner was in the cabin between us. She was a little nervous about it until one of the police officers took one of the beds in her cabin. She learned that the man had murdered someone and escaped. They caught the man in Nanning and were transporting him back to Beijing.

There is often family violence when murder is involved. Wives are usually the victims. Sometimes, someone gets violent under the influence of alcohol but if that had been the case this time, I seriously doubt he would have been able to escape and make it to Nanning, a very long distance from Beijing. A person who murders will probably be shot in a few days or weeks. They probably had someone identify him as the right person and then he would be imprisoned for a short time. They make the family pay for the bullet that is used to execute him, and they harvest all of the organs for transplant to patients. This may be upsetting to us who are used to a more complex justice system, but it is certainly a deterrent to crime. We might do well to make a condemned person’s time short rather than taxpayers supporting a prisoner for almost a lifetime while going through appeals.

Government officials met us in Shaoyang and took us to lunch and then drove us to visit the care center (NCCC). We need to do repairs to the roof and paint the buildings but we requested more cooperation from the government before we do all of the improvements that need to be done. A younger group of government men are now in charge and we are hopeful they will be more cooperative than the last group of officials. We could not stay long because they were driving us back to Shaoyang (an hours’ drive) for us to take a train to Wuhan. Most of the children were in school. There were a few first graders there because they did not have final exams. A few teenagers had completed their exams and were in their rooms.

From Shaoyang, we took a three-hour bus ride to Changsha and then a high speed train to Wuhan. The high speed train was only for 1 hour and 45 minutes, traveling at 335 km per hour. It was not much more expensive than the slow trains. It was air-conditioned and had comfortable seats. The ride was very smooth.

The next day we have lunch with Jerry Hua (director at Jackson Family Christian Care Center) and his wife. Wuhan is actually their hometown and they were visiting there a few days before going back to the orphanage at Zigong, Sichuan. They had planned a dinner meeting that night for us to meet a very wealthy man they know. They expected that he would fund an orphanage for us in Wuhan but our meeting did to turn out that way. The man was very supportive of our work and offered assistance with government connections should we decide to build an orphanage there, but there was no offer of funds.

We had breakfast the next morning with Michael O’Brien. Michael, a missionary from the U.S., has lived in Wuhan for about 13 years. He agreed to help us out in Beijing with the transition of new ministers. David Langley wants to leave the work there at the end of July. We will be in search of a new minister for the Beijing congregation. We are also hopeful that Michael can help us with new employees for the care centers in the future.

Sadly, we said goodbye to Ronald after breakfast that morning. He went back to his hotel for a train ride back to Nanning the next day. We took an afternoon high speed train to Shanghai. Ron had meetings with several people on Saturday. We were finished with our business and there were seats available on the return flight from Shanghai to Detroit the next day. We left Shanghai early Sunday morning and arrived back in Dallas about noon on Monday.

We had some excellent meals. I skipped some of the meats but the vegetables are always wonderful. Although we did a lot of walking to catch trains, subways and planes, I am sure I did not lose any weight.

We are tired but it is good to be home so we can rest. The trip went very well. We feel that it was successful in every way as we intended. We will be in Lewisville, TX for about two weeks and then we will begin our travels again.

Our car and RV were damaged by hail two nights before we left for China. We have never experienced such a storm. We had severe winds, lightening and heavy rain for more than an hour with hailstones about the size of golf balls. When we went to bed that night, bad weather was not predicted in our county. An insurance adjuster just estimated about $1,000 worth of damage to the RV. The car has dimples all over it from the constant beating of the hailstones and the mirror was broken on one side. The chrome is also damaged.