Even before the Beijing Olympics captured the world's attention in early August, some Virginia Baptists were experiencing China “up close and personal.” In early July, Lorrie Brooks of Westhampton Baptist Church in Richmond and Amy Abshire a recent graduate of Bluefield College, traveled to China to participate in a month-long, Virginia Baptist Mission Board-sponsored program to teach oral English to Chinese teachers of English.
One of five Christian churches in GuanNan, China.
Many of these teachers had never before had the opportunity to study with a native speaker of English. For the past several years, Lynn Yarborough (Virginia Baptists' Kingdom Advance ambassador in China) has facilitated the participation of VBMB teams in Chinese Christians' Amity Foundation's Summer English Program. This year, Lynn rounded out the four-person Virginia team with Don and Karen Barnes of Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, who were returning to the United States after having completed a six-year stay in China as affiliates of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
After spending three weeks teaching a group of 85 Chinese teachers in a town of 700,000 people, the team was asked to summarize in one word what they had given to the Chinese and in one word what they had received from the experience This was a difficult task, because the team had developed many good relationships with various Chinese both inside and outside the classroom, engaged in many conversations on a wide variety of topics, and introduced the Chinese to some fundamental Christian concepts; e.g., the meaning of Christmas and Christian weddings.
But in the end, the team decided that they had provided “encouragement” to the Chinese whom they had encountered — personal encouragement, professional encouragement and spiritual encouragement. In return, the VBMB team had received “insight” — insight into the Chinese people and culture, insight into the Chinese church, insight into America, insight into the world beyond our shores and spiritual insight into themselves.
Now, that's really up close and personal.
It's not too early to begin exploring your own personal experience with China through the VBMB-Amity Foundation Summer English Program for 2009. Contact Nichole Bulls (nichole.bulls@vbmb.org) or Craig Waddell (craig.waddell@vbmb.org) at the VBMB for more information.