After graduation, I returned my hometown in July 1997 and my wife was pregnant at that time. I was recommended by Qinghai CCCTSPM to serve in Longyangxia Church located in Gonghe County until September that same year.
When Rev. Tong Ping'an, Deacon Xue Zhifeng from Jiaochangjie Church of Xi'ning and I were overlooking the whole Longyangxia on the mountain, we thought that the sparsely populated area was beautiful but desolate. All kinds of feelings swelled up in my heart.
I was told that the church on the mountain, which had more than 200 members at most, lost the majority of believers since the Longyangxia Dam's completion and a water sinohydro engineering company started to move. There used to be a service attendance of several to a dozen in some days. I was paid 150 CNY per month and my family moved to the church after the birth of our child. We needed to pay the monthly medical fee of 100 CNY because my wife suffered from cholecystitis, so we actually had only 50 CNY to maintain a living.
Three to four months later, attendance grew to 74 and the churchyard was enlarged. More than 30 pear trees were planted. The number increased so much that the small place could not hold anymore during the Christmas season.
When we were planning for the preparation of the church expansion project, families of the staff of the sinohydro company and the half of the employees moved to Xi'ning unexpectedly and the local farm laborers migrated to another town. The church was empty!
I could only ask God in prayer. We fasted, prayed overnight for three days and insisted on praying, rain or shine.
One day, I went downhill to visit Sister Li and my arthritis recurred. But I was touched to know the population of Gonghe County and climbed sixteen mountains with the sister. About halfway, we realized that the surrounding areas were depopulated. We had to move forward while my legs trembled. Then we went to the nearest village where Li's younger sister lives and due to my weak knees, I lied down on the couch as we entered the house.
In the second day, we took an agricultural vehicle to return to the church. Amazingly, since then, I recovered from arthritis, and even Li's third son, who was lame on his feet, could even walk. Then the whole family of Li converted to Christianity.
From that day on, I went to Gonghe every week and returned to church the same day for the accommodation was more expensive than transportation. The first time I asked if there were any Christian there, nobody responded. The second time I knocked on the door of a household, an old lady with poor eyesight replied while opening the door, "I am."
After a short conversation, I knew that her family name was Huang. She took me to another sister's home situated in the backyard of the prefecture's government. When we were about to pray, Huang ran away. She told me that she couldn't pray because there was something that could speak in her stomach. That thing forbade her to sing hymns, read the Bible or pray. Otherwise, it would hurt her and her four daughters. We held her and prayed together. It turned out to be well.
But the third time I came here, Huang asked me not to go, for the bad thing returned again. For this, we decided to build a church here as soon as possible.
Then a church co-worker named Zhao Yuying, whose hometown lies in the west of the county, approached and said her family moved here and the believers began to gather in her house. We mainly preached the Gospel to Zhao's relatives and friends and there were converts in two villages --- Sha Zhuyu and Tamai, near the county in two years.
On May 8, 2002, Longyangxia Church purchased a house with ten rooms whose total construction area was about 174 m2 in the county. Meanwhile, we bought 20 quilts for the winter training for co-workers and established two gathering places in the two villages above. The statistics of 2003 showed that there were more than 120 believers in these areas scattered in a wide area. But no more than 30 members attended the regular services. As a result, the church hardly supported itself.
I had to work as a coolie in a chemical plant and earned 500 CNY a month for pulling over 20 carts of ore weighing 200 or 250 kilos and shouldering more than 55-kilo bags of chemicals a day. It took half a half for my body to recover from the toil. Later, I gained a stocker certificate and became a fireman to support my family and the church.
In 2007 and 2008, I came to Xi'ning and taught courses in Qinghai Christian Training Center. After that, I moved to serve in a gathering site of Xi'ning Church, which was named "Donghu Church" later, and constructed the first simple bungalow as the church and got unpaid for the nine-month effort. In August 2009, I received the monthly payment of 600 CNY from Donghu Church and donated it to the construction.
At that time, my first son was about to enter the middle school. My salary could not support my family and the rented apartment where I lived.
In June 2013, I was sent to serve in Dongchuan Church, the most disordered church in Xi'ning, where nobody could stay for a long time.
Thanks for the Lord's grace! After more than one-year work, the church stayed in harmony, which has never happened before. Awarded an advanced collective and received a renovation fund of 100,000 CNY by the local authority in 2014, it got a good name. Currently, the usual Sunday attendance reaches around 300 believers.
(The author is the pastor of Dongchuan Church of Xi'ning, as well as the secretary of Qinghai CCCTSPM and the general secretary of Xi'ning CCCTSPM.)
