RICHMOND, Va. — When Tiffany Robertson spent several weeks in 2005 leading English conversational classes for middle school teachers in Qingyang, a city in north central China, she never expected to see her pupils again once she returned to the United States.
So it came as a surprise to the member of Westhampton Baptist Church in Richmond a year later when a professor at Qingyang’s Longdong University — who had served as Robertson’s liason there — e-mailed her to say he’d be making a visit to Virginia. He had received a grant to study at a university in Colorado and wanted to see more of the country.
Lynn Yarbrough (second from left) points out previous SEP sites with former teachers (from left) Kim Rose of Richmond, Lynn Lanzillotti of Richmond and Penny Jenkins of Goochland.
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“It made an impact him and he wanted to keep in touch,” said Robertson about her time in China. “I think it made an impact on students as well. It certainly made an impact on me.”
Robertson’s experience was echoed by dozens of other volunteers who gathered Feb. 5 to celebrate 11 years of Virginia Baptists’ participation in the Amity Foundation’s summer English program — a partnership that has emerged as one of the key ways Virginia Baptists engage with Chinese Christians.
The Amity Foundation is a volunteer organization created at the initiative of Chinese Christians to contribute to their country’s social development through a “Christian ideal and ethos,” according to its web site. Amity’s summer English program is one of many projects designed to promote education in China and to foster cross-cultural dialogue by inviting volunteers from around the world to serve as teachers.
Since 1999, when Virginia Baptists first began partnering with Amity, more than 50 Baptists in the state have participated in the summer English program, which aims to improve the English proficiency of Chinese teachers. Many others have engaged in additional Amity projects scattered from the country’s urban east cost to its rural interior.
Coordinating much of this activity for Virginia Baptists has been Lynn Yarbrough, a native Texan who has lived in China since 1992, teaching in Nanjing for much of the time.
“Every Chinese child must learn English beginning in the third grade,” said Yarbrough. “And now the government is stressing skills not only as a written language but as a spoken one. Chinese teachers who are English instructors have studied the language but don’t have many opportunities to speak it and keep it up. You can’t teach a language without speaking it.”
To better equip teachers, the Amity Foundation developed the summer English program and staffed it with native English speakers.
“The philosophy is that if teachers speak it well, the students will learn it better,” said Yarbrough. “So our teams don’t actually teach English — they provide conversational opportunities.”
Several people attending the Feb. 5 anniversary celebration said their China experiences had changed their view of the country.
“The first time I went I thought I was going to change the world,” said John Close of Chesapeake, Va., who made trips in both 2000 and 2007. “But after I went I realized it was as much about changing your own heart to understand what God intended for people and how much he loves them.”
Michal and Sara Small, also of Chesapeake, provided English activities in 2005 for children of migrant workers, many of whom had come to Nanjing to do construction work. Michal Small said he was surprised to discover how easy it is for the Chinese to obtain a Bible. For the past three years, the Amity Printing Company has printed 10 million Bibles annually and last fall printed its 80 millionth Bible.
Small, a member of Jackson Memorial Baptist Church in Chesapeake, was also struck by the population’s familiarity with English.
“Standing in front of a museum, we saw a little girl — maybe about 4 years old — and we said hello. She responded in perfect English and we talked for about 10 minutes. It’s revealing that whenever we had a chance to meet people, they were very open and friendly.”
In another encounter, Small – who is tall — was riding a bus, standing in the aisle and stooping to keep his head from hitting the roof. A young woman offered him her seat, and he declined, thanking her. But she insisted and said, “It hurts me to see you standing so tall in this bus. Please take my seat.”
Yarbrough said a team is being gathered to return to China this summer, though the location is not yet determined. She said the dates will be July 4-Aug.1 and that additional information is available on the Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s website.
But she’s confident this summer’s trip won’t be the last.
“We’re celebrating 11 years of the summer English program, but we want to go on,” she said. “This isn’t a funeral. We’re going to have a 20-year reunion celebration.”