It has been over ten years since I came abroad to study and work. The city we live in has around one million in population; it has close to one thousand churches scattered in major streets as well as suburban areas. All of these church buildings are over 50 years old; some are over 100 years. Therefore it is not hard to imagine that at the time when the city population was around 100, 000 there was one big church for every one hundred people. Everybody went to church on Sunday back then!

I believe that the counselor has some wise observations. I feel sorry, though, because I still owe him an article. I would very much like to tell him that he was absolutely right. Many a famous scientists such as Newton, Einstein or some of the Nobel prize winners are all Christians who believe in God.

It must be God's will that so many scholars from China voluntarily, as opposed to involuntarily, come to western countries to adopt western culture including Christian culture.

When I was baptized in Sweden over ten years ago, the pastor said: "If such a young scholar Christian ever goes back to China, he will be more valuable than foreign missionaries."

A few years ago a visiting scholar here believed. For the sake of all his relatives in China who had not accepted Jesus, he abandoned the opportunity of permanent residency here but went back to China and became a college teacher. To everybody's surprise, he brought out a copy of the Bible in front of over a hundred students in the classroom and began introducing to them the "greatest book in the world". When he was finished and began covering his teaching materials, students all shouted: "Continue! Talk about the Bible!" The Good News was thus spread across the entire campus. Of course, he was often called upon by the officials who began to conduct investigations against him. The Lord, however, continued to protect him and use him.

A brother in our fellowship came abroad after graduating from the Department of Physics in Beijing University. He believed in the Lord and was baptized. When he went back to his hometown in China to visit his family, he saw with his own eyes the prosperity of the Gospel. He was also invited to numerous small family gatherings of about a dozen people and to churches of thousands of people. Seventeen times was he invited to share God's grace publicly and to talk about his experience of salvation. People in his hometown used to take it that those who believed in Jesus had to be ignorant, ailing or poor. It was quite a shock for everybody to find out that he who had achieved the highest scores in the college entrance examination in the entire province and he who had further studied abroad was a believer.

In recent years, I have had a number of opportunities to make business trips to China and visit the place where I grew up. Last year when I was in China I took the train for a whole night and arrived at my hometown at six o'clock on a Sunday morning. I was told that the local church started their Sunday service at seven, so I asked my relatives who met me at the train station to bring me to the church directly even though I thought we might be a bit early. To my great surprise, however, as we arrived at church more than half an hour before the service started, the one-thousand-seat congregation was completely packed. Even central aisle was filled with standing people. The usher wanted to bring us to social hall to listen to service broadcast. I refused to go there because I wanted to see the main sanctuary, the speaker and the service procedures with my own eyes. So I fought my way into the main sanctuary and ended up standing in the central aisle.

I stood there for over an hour when an old sister who sat next to me discovered that I was extremely tired. She stood up and offered her seat to me. But how could I, a young man, take the seat of an old lady? The old lady, however, insisted and stubbornly pushed me into the seat. As I was sitting there, I raised my head and saw many old people standing next to me. I was extremely embarrassed. I closed my eyes and prayed: "Oh Lord, may you richly bless these people who live in hardship but who love you nevertheless. May you forgive those who live in excellent conditions overseas and who become lazy and are late for Sunday services." Long after the service was over, there were still a number of people kneeling in the front praying. The door was wide open and chilly wind flew in with the temperature of ten degrees below zero. People were still reluctant to leave. They were still waiting for God's words; they were still waiting for spiritual books and tapes to arrive, like deer longing for streams of water. An old man nearly 80 years of age had heart problems, but he still rode his bicycle to visit other brothers and sisters after the service. Young people and intellectuals read Overseas Campus and other spiritual magazines with great eagerness as if there were never enough for them to read. The work of God had indeed prospered in my hometown.

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