Here’s my first real post from China! I didn’t realize until I got here, but China has censored all blogs from the internet, so I couldn’t even access my blog to keep you updated. Then, within 24 hours of arriving, they shut down facebook. Youtube is blocked and many other websites. It’s like being caged in the open.
Thanks to Paul and Mitch, I now have a workaround for blog posts. Its setup now so I can send an email to a specific email address and it will automatically post to my blog. Hopefully this works and you can all read this!
I left late Sunday morning from Denver. During my layover in San Fran, I found my flight to Beijing was delayed three hours. Sitting on a 747 for 12 hours next to vegan Indians complaining about the food who smelled of curry and garlic in a window seat during bright sunshine when I needed to sleep without adjustable headrests and with no air vent was not super great. :0
Once in Beijing (9pm local time), all of us who missed connecting flights due to the delay were carted off in old buses to a sketchy hotel 30 minutes from the airport. I had to pay 150 Yuan/$22 for a room (rooms were only free if you slept two to a room, and I just didn’t want to deal with that at the time).
The bed was like sleeping on box springs and I was awoken at 4:30am to get ready to return to the airport for the morning flight to Yanji. Once at the airport, I figured out how to get an internet connection to let everyone in Yanji know what was happening. Then I waited for the security line to open, then for a coffee shop to open. Finally, at 7:40, I boarded my last flight. We touched down in Yanji around 10:00am Tuesday morning (8pm Monday in Denver). Sarah and Regina, two of the people I’m working with here, picked me up from the airport. We had a short lunch then came to the office to get to work.
I’m sharing my apartment with three other guys: two are 17, and one is 21. They’re each here for the ‘internship’ for Barnabas Trading. The apartment is tiny, with a galley kitchen, a living room (where we sleep), a bedroom (where we leave our stuff), and a bathroom. The shower in the bathroom is a hose between the toilet and sink. There’s no curtain or shower door. And there’s no hot water. When you shower, it’s the kind of cold that makes you catch your breath. Walking through the streets here you often smell sewage. The plumbing isn’t up to U.S. standards.
Today (Wednesday), I woke up at 5am due to jetlag (that’s 3pm in Denver), showered and headed to the office for coffee and to get a head-start on the day. We had guests today. Some people from a successful Chinese textiles company with similar goals came for all-day meetings. One of them is an ‘m’ worker in china who has had many ‘visits’ from the government and stayed at their ‘hotels’ many times. I hope you can figure out the code.
We had a short devotional and prayer time with them this morning, then spent the rest of the day until 3pm meeting with them about partnerships and bringing some of their expertise into our work and into NK. We will meet with them again tomorrow. Sarah and I (the marketing team) are presenting our national marketing strategy tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that goes.
God is good! Pray for the m workers and for details and miracles and money. And pray that God’s work will be done through me.
you stud
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