In 2002, I wrote in my diary, “I have a tremendous sense of anticipation that I am on the edge of something new, big and different.” Within a few weeks I was leaving the church where I had been comfortably settled for 17 years, and I knew I was also being called to give up my job as a social worker. I stepped out onto scary water and embarked on the biggest adventure of my life.

A marvellous book I am reading at the moment is about finding your sweet spot, your right place in God’s plan. It says that to find your destiny you need to look at your past and at the things that excited you. I had two missionary aunts who went to far away India and spoke of the Himalayas as if they were just down the road. At 10 years of age I responded at a Billy Graham rally and tried to convert the children in the school playground! In thirty years away from God the only books that interested me were those about people living on the edge, striving against the odds and climbing huge mountains both literally and figuratively. He was moulding me for my sweet spot.

The year on the Antioch School of Missions was an essential part of the preparation. In 2004, newly 60 years-old, I was not the obvious candidate to join six young people aged between 18 and 27 in hot Thailand with communal living and rigorous study. It was the most stretching and challenging year of my life. I shared a small room with a vivacious American 18 year-old (we loved each other and laughed a lot!), braved the mosquito-ridden internet cafes, and in one super spiritual moment prayed profusely for the loudly moaning Buddhist monks I could hear outside, who turned out to be frogs!

God used ASM to mighty effect in my life, bringing profound healing to one area. Release from cumbersome baggage  frees us to move on to where He wants us to be effective for Him. Me? Teaching in China?

How has that been possible? I was the person who followed a geography degree with a PGCE teaching qualification, but was terrified of the classroom and pupils! I had never taught, but with the strong call to China came an awareness that teaching was my only avenue. I was terrified at the thought, but God does not make mistakes. When He calls, He equips. As I walked into that first classroom with 14 students, I experienced that deep peace that passes understanding and a real affection for the students.

My unused 1966 PGCE has been the key to my present position in a very poor Chinese university. There are 6000 students, the majority of whom are the only son or daughter of a subsistence-level farming family. Visiting their homes has been a revelation. Dire poverty is not romantic in any way. I thought I was on one of my big adventures when I travelled with one of my students on an overnight train crammed with the millions going home for the Spring Festival. However, when I arrived at his home, I was profoundly shocked at the harshness of the family’s life, his sick mother (who is a believer and was glad of prayer), and his father overwhelmed by the hard labour in the fields but reaping too little to be able to reduce the debts incurred by medical expenses and educational charges.

Their lives seemed utterly comfortless and almost medieval with a brick oven fed by twigs, a tap in the yard and ducks quacking amongst the debris. Lying heavy over that area and much of the rest of China is the dark deadening grip of Buddhism.
Superficially, the students look like  any other young adults from anywhere around the world. They wear jeans and trainers, and do weird and wonderful things with their hair, at least until the end of term when hairstyles suddenly revert to conventionally smooth and neat as, “My father is very strict.” They are, however, also the new generation of Chinese people, exposed to a flood of changes in their country and, via the internet, in the whole world. They breathe a very different air from that of their parents. They are open to new ideas, hungry for discussion, and behind the always smiling façade they are seeking for answers to the universal questions of life, of suffering, of meaning.

‘G’ is passionate about basketball, interested in philosophy, and now curious about the Bible. ‘A’, if his eyesight were better, would be in the army, become a general and “win back Taiwan.” He is also small, very funny and intrigued by the light in Christians. ‘M’ desperately seeks love and affirmation to heal the wounds of being a fifth daughter who was meant to “be given away.” She is still held by her “Chinese god”, but gravitates to the care of Christians who are her “sunshine”. ‘B’ helps me learn some basic Chinese, and I am able to channel to him gifts from generous believers in the West to relieve his distress following his father’s sudden death and his family’s resulting precarious situation.
I am fulfilled in an exhilarating way that I never thought possible in the dark days of my life. Do not let your dark days define you. Come into the light of His desires for your life. It is a thrilling place to be.