At a Buddhist temple in Xi’an, China, a heartbroken Lauren Dean watches a 10-year-old girl mimic her mother offering incense and prayers to a false god.
“Everyone I see has no idea who [Jesus] is,” said Dean, an entering freshman at Samford University in Birmingham. “It was a revelation.”
Today most of China’s 1.3 billion people are still without Christ and countless communities still have no gospel witness. Some Chinese people follow Buddhism or another traditional religion. Most, however, profess belief in nothing beyond themselves and trust in their own strength and wealth to save them. During a trip to China June 14–30, that reality of lostness was what gripped Dean’s heart.
“I believe we pass on the heart for nations one person at a time,” said Candace McIntosh, executive director of Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU). One person at a time — like Dean.
It’s for that reason that McIntosh cast a vision several years ago to take students from Alabama to China to see and experience the history of the work of Southern Baptists there, as well as to catch a vision for their role in its future. Seven college students, including Dean, were nominated to join the 2008 Emerging Leaders Tour, accompanied by more “seasoned” leaders from churches across the state.
Traveling through more than 10 cities, participants learned firsthand about work started by missionaries like Lottie Moon.
“We’ve seen the road they’ve paved for us so we can pave the road for others,” said Caitlin Kirby, a sophomore at the University of Alabama.
The trip was spearheaded by Alabama WMU President Rosalie Hunt, who grew up as a child of missionaries in China and then served with her husband for many years in several Asian countries.
As an expert on missions history across Asia, Hunt’s many relationships with local pastors and believers brought a unique perspective for the group.
“I think the girls were surprised at some of the impressions they got,” Hunt said, noting that she believes those impressions will lead them to touch the lives of others.
Several indicated that they feel led toward missions involvement; others noted that they felt compelled to do something purposeful with their lives, Hunt said.
Trip participants visited many churches, schools and hospitals that were started with the help of missionaries in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
One such landmark was a hospital named after Kathleen Mallory, an Alabamian who served 36 years as executive secretary of national WMU. Mallory felt called to missions involvement after reading a letter from a missionary in China and devoted her life to the cause.
“In 1913, some Baptist women in Alabama raised funds for the hospital in north China and sent money for it to be built with a chapel attached and named after Kathleen Mallory,” Hunt said.
The hospital had since been bombed during World War II and rebuilt, but the site was still precious, she said. “A group of Chinese people met us there with a gift and explained that no one had been to visit them in 50 years. It meant so much for them there to know that there were believers in Alabama who still loved them.”
In Penglai, China, trip participants attended a Sunday morning service in Moon’s former church. With its overhead projector and modern building, the church might not appear similar to the one she knew, but the congregation’s heart for Christ and for reaching its community still beats strong.
Moon was a college student herself when she decided to follow Christ. More than a century ago, she landed in China as an unseasoned missionary, skeptical of the welcome she would get from the Chinese and unsure of how her work would unfold.
While the climate and visual surroundings of her first years in China have changed, many of the first impressions of the Alabama women carry echoes of Moon’s first impressions. “It is a great mistake to say that the Chinese are not hospitable. A more graceful, hearty hospitality than that of the Chinese I have met in no land,” Moon said in Pingdu, China, in 1890.
More than 100 years later, the girls sat around a dinner table in a Pingdu restaurant having similar reflections of their day.
“We didn’t expect to be welcomed, but the Chinese are so welcoming, so hospitable,” said Hillary Beard, a student at Birmingham-Southern College.
McIntosh said the Chinese Christians were fascinated with the young women and asked them to come back to China to share the gospel with their people.
“I believe they found hope in knowing a future generation of leaders cared enough to come and hear their story,” she said. “My prayer is as the days pass that each young woman will ponder deep within their heart all that they encountered and that they would allow these experiences to mold their future. One young woman wrote to me, ‘After my return to the States, I realized just how much God taught me. I hope to return to the place and the people I have come to love soon.’”
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