According to Pastor You of Ji'an, the Dahua Miao Church in Yongxin County was first established by a group of Christians who fled the famine from Liupanshui in Guizhou in 1998. They settled in Shayueping in Yongxin County, also called Wuyi Farm. "The environment was very harsh in their hometown in the Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Plateaus. They learned that there was farmland in Jiangxi and children could go to a school nearby, so they moved with their families."
Four households moved there. Elder Wang Xiaoguang led some Miao people and settled by the mountains in Shayueping in 2001. They built two-story thatched Houses with people living on the upper level and livestock below. Wind could blow in from both ends, making it difficult. They started weekly meetings in a small temple at the foot of the mountain, and on Sundays, they would go to Gospel Church in the county or to a Miao gathering by the river for services.
They moved to a single adobe house on a hill for Sunday services in 2012. The house was about 60 square meters. In 2007, Brother Zhang Zhiwei from Yunnan came to Yongxin and organized the Miao children who didn't want to attend school to study theology. He taught them the Miao language, the Bible, and other seminary classes. It was a two-year program and the maximum number of students was 64. Zhang led the students in farming in order to meet living costs.
Pastor Zhou Zhihua and other fellow workers from the Baptist Convention of Hong Kong came to Ji'an in 2008 to visit the Miao churches. When they learned that the location of the meeting place was dangerous, they went back to Hong Kong and raised funds to build a new Miao church for Shayueping. The Grace Foundation of Hong Kong donated a lot, and construction began in 2010. The church, covering an area of 103 square meters, was finished by August 3, 2011 and was named Grace Qingxin Church.
Theology classes started in Ji'an in 2010. In 2011, two members of Shayueping Miao Church received a three-month seminary training.
Shayueping Church has over 30 households with 167 people. There are more than 40 children and 2 college students among them. Members of the Baptist Convention have come to visit ever year since 2008.
In addition to regular Sunday services, the church also values Thanksgiving Day. There is a large scale meeting for the event every year. Over 200 people attended the Thanksgiving service in 2016.
Paster You mentioned that, in order to improve living conditions, Zhang hired an excavator in 2015 to smooth out the area in front of the church. They were going to build a better brick house; but, the local villagers unfortunately knocked over the incomplete structure due to a lack of communication.
"It has been 20 years since the Miao people fled to Jiangxi. They have not yet been able to register their permanent residence, so how they can live peacefully with the locals remains a problem. There may be feelings of inferiority for the Miao people from hundreds of years, and the language barrier also makes it difficult to communicate with the Han people. It is expected that the government cannot truly pay attention to disadvantaged groups.
Translated by: Grace Hubl
