Team charts new missions territory in rural China_60203

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Posted: 5/30/03

Team charts new missions territory in rural China

Editor's note: The names of the Baptist mission workers in this story have been changed for security reasons.

RURAL CHINA (BP)–Wearing the same pair of socks for a week, dining on soupy Chinese noodles and veggies for breakfast, shampooing in a creek and snacking on energy bars are only a few of the many unique aspects of hiking through China's countryside.

Doug McTavish and Stephen Faulkner know this first-hand.

McTavish, 24, and Faulkner, 30, are not on an expedition but a two-year assignment to share the gospel of Christ. They are part of a team of six backpackers who trek cattle paths looking for the isolated villages of the people group among whom they work.

Baptist mission workers in China hike a trail in the nation's interior.BP photo

The team pinpoints locations on handheld global positioning systems, takes pictures, counts houses and draws maps of communities. All the information eventually gets coordinated into trekking routes and compiled into notebooks for use by future prayerwalking, evangelism and ministry teams.

“What they do is so important,” says the worker who supervises them and coordinates strategy. “I feel it is my responsibility that these people have a chance to hear the gospel in a way they can understand it. I thought, 'How are we going to do that?' The people are so spread out. The task appears overwhelming, but we decided that if we knew where they were, we could reach them with the gospel.”

The process of locating villages often provides humorous antidotes to strenuous travel. For instance, McTavish recalled the time they were invited to eat with one family.

“Dude, she pulled out a hog's head–everything from the ears forward–and put it on the fire, turned to us and asked, 'Can you stay for supper?' We figured a way to gracefully get out of that one.”

The people they encounter are traditionally animistic–worshipping trees, rivers and mountains–but openness to the gospel continues to grow.

When they enter a community, McTavish and Faulkner regularly have their own followers as children gather in their wakes. Spontaneous games of soccer or basketball often endear the two to villagers. Both are mildly conversant in the Mandarin language.

“We take very seriously the idea of being salt and light wherever we go,” Faulkner said. “We know others will be coming behind us with the gospel.”

Faulkner felt compelled to build God's kingdom instead of his own by anonymously preparing the way for the gospel. He felt that God said, “You don't need Mountain Dew and Papa John's to survive.”

Circumstances during their travels have forced these young men to lean on God for guidance. Once, they literally asked God for direction when they were faced with a fork on their trail.

“Out of nowhere these guys came out of the fields and told us which direction the village was and that we were almost there,” Faulkner said.

“All this changes your perspective,” McTavish said. “When we come to an isolated village and I pray for some guy who is 80 years old, and then I know that I am probably the first Christian to ever pray for him, that is a pretty awesome thought.”

A byproduct of surviving the smell of five-day-old socks also has been an immense friendship.

“We are with each other 24/7,” Faulkner said. “We even hang out together when we don't have to. Our interests are so similar that–from the very start–we got along well.”

McTavish and Faulkner recount the story of how God might be preparing a man to profess faith in Christ.

“This guy on a tractor was pulling a trailer with a bunch of logs on it, but they'd all fallen off down a slope,” McTavish recalled. “We dropped our packs and helped him load them all back on his trailer.

“He went on ahead, but later we caught up to him. He was trying to get up a muddy slope but couldn't because of the weight of the logs. We unloaded all the logs, carried them up the hill, then loaded them back on the trailer.”

The grunt work garnered an invitation to dinner and a place to stay that night.

“That guy's wife hooked us up with some serious good food that night,” McTavish continued. “He also told us we had a place to stay any time we came back.”

McTavish and Faulkner only hope the next time they go back that dinner will precede a worship service with that family.

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