This is voice from Northwest of China.
The Helan county, in the north of Yinchuan, is only 8 kilometers far away from the capital city of Ningxia Province -- center of China and Arab(China-Arab economic belt), which is called the "Back Garden" of Yinchuan city. There are 5 main religions' peaceful coexistence.
There were only several Christians in 1993 and has already add up to about a thousand Christian now, most of them was immigrants.
But for some reasons, the Helan county never had a church yet. For 20 years, the Christians don't have a fixed place to worship, they had already got used to church's move and change places.
Till 2003, noticing the need of a building to worship, one sister devoted her whole life savings and bought a 156 square meters' house with a yard and a kitchen. After that, the church finally had a stable home although it was not big.
In recent years, there are a large amount of people from surrounding cities and provinces crowing into Helan county, the number of Christians increased rapidly. Because of the limited space, many brothers and sisters had to worship along the roads. Even the cold weather couldn't stop their footstep because of the spiritual fervor in their heart.
Every Christmas there were a large amount of people came to the church, so the church rent a hotel to celebrate the festival. Once half of the congregation were blocked out of the hotel and had to leave there because of potential safety problem. The Helan church recognized the importance to have a safe, quiet, spacious and bright worship place for Christians. After brothers and sisters' continuous trying, striving and praying all night, they finally got the attention from the local government, and their request to build a church was finally approved.
It is such a grateful thing to build church. But the Christians in Helan church don't have too much joy-They already have the land, they just planned to do according to their own need and capability, to build a church to worship. But the real situation is not easy as they expected. In this high-speed economic developed county, the building should follow the urban planning, or they can't be confirmed by the local related departments. The fire engine access, fire pool, stairs, elevators, heat addition, water supply, building height, material quality, greenbelt and even the toilets need to be built according to the rule. The design budget estimate is about 15million RMB, what's more, it has a time limit to build or the government will withdraw the land.
But the church only has 3million RMB, lacking too much money according the budge, the Helan church call on more prayer for them to build the church.
The church also need help from brother and sister from every places to raise money so that they can build the church before the limit time.
