Divine Appointment in Hangzhou

Tonight was a divine appointment. Some people reading this may not be familiar with that term so I’ll try to explain. Earlier this week, at the beginning of our trip in China, I prayed for divine appointments- people that God would divinely bring into our path that we could share His love with. That’s essentially what a divine appointment is- it might be an inspirational word, a prayer, the Gospel message, or a variety of things. I forgot I had prayed for that until the bike ride back to our hostel this evening.

Today we traveled by bike around the city of Hangzhou, China. We rode along the West Lake for several miles until we came to the National China Tea Museum. This city is known for the best green tea in all of China! More on that here.

I wish I could bring some tea lovers like my mom and grandma here with me. After the long bike ride into town, we ate dinner at Papa John’s Pizza. We’ve had some good Chinese food since being in China but when we saw Papa John’s, we really wanted to have some.

Did you know that Papa Johns delivers by bike? In China they do. If we were coming to China from America, we’d probably want to experience all the Chinese food we could while we were here. But because we are coming from Korea, where Western food is scarce, we jumped at the opportunity for some good pizza.Yes, they had the garlic dipping sauce! Next door was a frozen yogurt place (I love those stores!). We decided to get some frozen yogurt for dessert and walk alongside the lake at sunset and eat it. God interrupted our plans and I almost missed it.

Over the past few days in China ( this sometimes happens in Korea too), we have been gawked at, stared at, people have done double, no, triple takes of us and just stared, sometimes even pointing directly at us and talking about us. It’s become quite the annoyance. So we’ve started saying “Hello. Hi. Yes, I’m a foreigner. Yes I speak English.” Probably not the best reaction, but it has become rather frustrating to be constantly stared at! Anyway…Taylor and I were making our way to walk alongside the lake at sunset when a lady said hello. We said hi back and kept walking. She said hello again. We turned around. As Taylor began a conversation with her, I thought to myself, “Oh great.” Like I said, I almost missed this divine appointment. Initially I just wanted to keep walking and not spend time talking to this woman in the middle of a busy walkway. We were literally in the middle of crowds of people. I would see people walk past us and stop and stare, some would come right up and “listen” to our conversation,even though they didn’t speak or understand any English. I even saw an older man taking pictures of us talking with this woman.

We talked about many things…the recession and job situation in America, the price of college tuition, Kimchi, Korea, China, Colorado, our families, our jobs. Then the opportunity came…I swung it to the spiritual. I asked about her religion. She said she was an atheist; she believes in herself. We talked about the beauty of God’s creation and how it declares Him as a creator- the trees, mountains, and oceans did not create themselves. She was very open to everything I was saying. I told her that God is alive and still doing miracles today. She was surprised to hear that we don’t have to go into a temple or church building to bow and pray for God to hear us. I encouraged her to get a Bible and start reading the book of John. She said, “But doesn’t ‘john’ mean toilet?” Ha! I shared the scripture with her that says, “Draw near to Me and I will draw near to you,” and explained that even if she isn’t sure about whether God exists or not, as she begins to start praying to Him and reading the scripture and as she seeks him out, He will come to her. I wanted to pray for her right then but there was a guard suspiciously close by. He had already walked around and near us a few times so I didn’t want to draw any exra attention to us. I told her I would be praying for her. Pray for her if you can…her English name is Mary.