In 1992 I traveled with a group of Christians to China’s westernmost province, Xinjiang. Our journey began in Hong Kong from where we flew four hours to Beijing, where we started a 72-hour train ride to Xinjiang. I remember how our train loosely followed the line of the Great Wall along the edge of the Gobi Desert. And there, just outside my train window, I witnessed the Great Wall of China disappear into the desert sands like a fallen warrior.
Our destination as a group was Urumqi, the provincial capital of Xinjiang, a metropolis rising like Oz from the desert floor. Beyond the city to the west lay the great Tian Shan – The Heavenly Mountains in Mandarin. A God’s-eye view reveals a vast V-shaped mountain range, rising as high as the Himalaya discounting Everest and K2. The Ili Valley, formed within this mountainous V, opens west and stretches across the Chinese border toward the boundless Central Asian steppes.
The group would spend several days in worship and intercession in Urumqi, a city in China that until a few years before had been closed to foreigners. But I would travel alone another two hours by plane into the Ili Valley. I carried in my bags letters and a ‘care package’ for a married couple I was acquainted with in Hong Kong who worked in the Ili region. These were the days when telephones, much less mobile phones, were uncommon in China, but word had somehow been sent to them of my arrival.
The Soviet-built propeller plane took me up and over the snow-laden Tian Shan. Below me stretched a part of the world that few know of, and many would have mistaken for Switzerland – deep green alpine valleys nestled between some of the tallest peaks in the world. Grasslands and then desert stretched in every direction from the base of the mountains. When I saw all this, it felt as though I were coming home.
Yet the plane would not land in Ili. Fog rolled onto the tarmac of an airport without any sort of radar, and the plane had to return to Urumqi. Some bureaucratic inconsistency in the area’s aviation regulations kept all of the passenger luggage from being removed from the plane. I had no luggage, no Chinese language ability, no way of getting in touch with my friends currently in Urumqi or the couple I was to visit in the Ili Valley. Besides this my old asthma problems were returning deep inside my lungs. What was I to do?
Three Chinese people came up to me, obviously concerned about my predicament. Two men and one woman, all in their fifties and with no English between them (why would they?), they gestured to me to follow them. First they took me out to eat, and then found a room where the four of us spent the night. I was very touched by their kindness, generosity and hospitality.
The next day the plane took off toward Ili, and this time it was allowed to land. Again, the three Chinese people gestured to me to follow them. We walked through the tiny terminal. There at the entrance stood a black limousine whose chauffeur quickly opened the door for my three acquaintances. I found myself climbing into the limousine with them. They drove me to the only contact I had in that city, people who would help me find my friends in the countryside. One of the men who had befriended me, obviously a high-ranking regional official of the Chinese Communist Party, carried my suitcase up the five flights of stairs for me.
It sounded to me that my wheezing was echoing through the dark stairwell. I knocked on the door which tentatively opened to me. Whoever it was behind the door had no idea I was coming – or who I was, for that matter. Yet that initial eye contact has turned into a lifelong friendship with the couple living behind the door. They welcomed this complete stranger, fed me, nursed me. They gave me a tour of the city the next day, an ancient center of Uighur and Kazakh culture, birch-lined streets traversed by donkey carts, homes hidden behind walls protecting private inner courtyards, architecture uniquely central Asian yet tinged with Russian and Chinese undertones. The aroma of roast lamb and peppers and garlic filled the streets, stalls of freshly-made noodles and nan bread baked in clay ovens dotted the scenery. The muslim call to prayer hung in the air.
The new couple helped me find the bus to the village where the married couple I knew lived. An hour outside the city I was greeted by my lanky Texas friend and his new wife. I was fascinated by the sight of them devouring letters from home, while preciously conserving the Western treats I brought with me. My visit with them was unfortunately brief: I only received permission from the village authorities to stay just the day. I traveled all that way only to be with my friends for a handful of hours! Yet here I was, in a Uighur village inside China, near the border with Kazakhstan, in a valley stretching toward the vast central steppes, surrounded by the peaks and grasslands of the Tian Shan, isolated from the rest of Asia by the Gobi, the Taklamakan and the Himalayas. This place was so far removed from everything I knew from my Midwestern upbringing; yet here, even here, I sensed the presence and protection of Jesus. Had I any inkling, any vision of this moment, the evening I gave my heart to Jesus when I was sixteen? That evening in the basement of my Catholic high school in St. Louis, when I truly met the living and present Jesus, who surrounded me with his tangible love like the most exquisite angora blanket – did I know then the adventures he would take me on for his kingdom? My friends waved goodbye to me after putting me on the bus for the journey back to Ili City.
My asthma worsened. Somehow I had to find my way back to Urumqi in order to make my flight back to Hong Kong on a certain day. Flying was out of the question: there was only one flight a week. Since there were no rail lines I was left with one option: a 19-hour bus ride up and over a mountain pass through the Tian Shan. Jesus, can I handle this, can my lungs handle the dust, the constant jolting of the bus for so many hours? Again his angora-love touched my heart. I am his, he is mine, his banner over me is love.
I made myself ready for the long journey, armed with food and enough bottles of drink to last a week. My seat was on top of the wheel well in the back of the bus. I quickly discovered that the seat wasn’t bolted to the bus floor! Before I could try to find a way to switch seats, stools were placed in the aisle for extra passengers, and I was stuck. A mound of bundles and carpets and chickens in wicker baskets were tied to the top of the bus. Waving a slightly reluctant goodbye to my new friends who took such good care of me in Ili, the bus began its climb through the Tian Shan.
It wasn’t long before I realized my terrible mistake. I began fidgeting in my seat because I was in need of a toilet break. Surely the bus driver stopped at regular intervals? Yet hour after hour the bus trudged up the side of the mountain, dangling over sheer cliffs, and no break was given us poor souls stuck on the bus. With each passing hour my prayers for grace to endure my discomfort turned into pleas, then worship, then all-out spiritual warfare. I bound the demons over the driver in Jesus’ name, I stormed the gates of heaven and hell for the sake of my bladder. My attempts to communicate my desperate need to the Chinese man next to me only resulted in uncomprehending smiles on his part. To make matters worse, every time the bus lurched forward my seat did the same, reducing my leg space to nearly nil. I spent hours wheezing from asthma and folded up like origami with no way of getting the attention of the driver to stop.
And then I heard Him speak.
The crimson setting sun illuminated the vast Central steppes stretched vast and endless beneath me – the battleground of khans.
“Worship Me here.”
I sensed his deep, impassioned voice within my spirit, deep calling to deep.
“Please, worship Me.”
As the bus continued its relentless climb over the mountain pass, I began worshipping Jesus. I lifted him up in His rightful place, there on the mountain side. I declared that he alone is worthy to be worshipped in that place, as Redeemer, Creator and King. That he alone died for the people who dwell there, whether they knew of him or not.
The urgency in the Spirit to worship subsided. I knew I did what he asked me to do, and I sensed his pleasure. Not long after that the driver stopped the bus – a full seven hours after our departure from Ili City – and the entire bus breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Was I on that dreadful bus specifically to worship Jesus on that mountainside? In my reduced, desperate state, it felt so. I may never know why it was so important to Him – what wrong that needed to be righted, what ground that needed to be prepared for His work. The only thought that came to me was from the book of Romans:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed (Romans 8:19).
We continued our journey through the mountains by night. Somewhere on the rocky heights the bus broke down. My choice thoughts toward the bus driver changed when I saw how hard he worked to repair the motor. For two hours he worked intensely by flashlight, surrounded by a circle of passengers who had nothing else to do on that cold mountain than to watch the driver work. The engine suddenly started churning and everyone quickly jumped on the bus so we could continue our journey.
The next morning we were out of the mountains and driving across flat sandy wasteland. In the light of the day I was able to look more closely at my fellow passengers. There was a mixture of Chinese, Kazakh and Uighur men and women, nearly all were farmers or peasants; a few were soldiers. We traveled in silence as most of the passengers slept the many hours of our journey. There was a tangible weariness worn on their faces. Though I was so very different to everyone else – or because I was so different – no one approached me to speak with me. I had heard that there were restrictions placed on the people from talking to foreigners, and each bus carried a soldier to ensure that rules were kept. The Chinese government is particularly concerned about possible insurrection from the thirteen minority groups living in Xinjiang, doing whatever it can to keep control in the province.
I must have dozed off. I woke up to the bus pulling into a cold concrete structure early in the morning somewhere in Urumqi. Urumqi is one of the most polluted cities in the entire world; a penetrating layer of coal dust hung in the frigid air. Things looked hazy – where were my glasses? I remembered taking them off and putting them on my lap while I rested. They must have slipped off my lap, for I found them on the floor of the bus behind the driver’s seat, stepped-on, crushed and useless. I remembered my prescription sunglasses and, though I looked like a druggy wearing dark glasses early in the morning, I was at least able to see where I was going.
I had to meet a friend at a certain hotel in Urumqi by a certain time so we could catch our flight to Hong Kong that day. I knew the name of the hotel in English -- the Tian Shan Hotel – but I had no map. No map, no knowledge of the city, no Chinese language ability, no normal glasses and nearly no breath in my lungs. “Father, what should I do?”
I sensed the Spirit say, “Get on that bus, go two stops and then get off.” What did I have to lose, really? So I got on the specified bus, waited for the second stop to come and then got off. Right in front of me, exactly where I stumbled off the bus, were two British tourists with a street map unfolded before them. They happened to be looking for the Tian Shan Hotel, and when they found out I was looking for the very same we set out together to find it, which we did, in plenty of time for me to meet up with my friend to catch our flight back to Hong Kong.
Our destination as a group was Urumqi, the provincial capital of Xinjiang, a metropolis rising like Oz from the desert floor. Beyond the city to the west lay the great Tian Shan – The Heavenly Mountains in Mandarin. A God’s-eye view reveals a vast V-shaped mountain range, rising as high as the Himalaya discounting Everest and K2. The Ili Valley, formed within this mountainous V, opens west and stretches across the Chinese border toward the boundless Central Asian steppes.
The group would spend several days in worship and intercession in Urumqi, a city in China that until a few years before had been closed to foreigners. But I would travel alone another two hours by plane into the Ili Valley. I carried in my bags letters and a ‘care package’ for a married couple I was acquainted with in Hong Kong who worked in the Ili region. These were the days when telephones, much less mobile phones, were uncommon in China, but word had somehow been sent to them of my arrival.
The Soviet-built propeller plane took me up and over the snow-laden Tian Shan. Below me stretched a part of the world that few know of, and many would have mistaken for Switzerland – deep green alpine valleys nestled between some of the tallest peaks in the world. Grasslands and then desert stretched in every direction from the base of the mountains. When I saw all this, it felt as though I were coming home.
Yet the plane would not land in Ili. Fog rolled onto the tarmac of an airport without any sort of radar, and the plane had to return to Urumqi. Some bureaucratic inconsistency in the area’s aviation regulations kept all of the passenger luggage from being removed from the plane. I had no luggage, no Chinese language ability, no way of getting in touch with my friends currently in Urumqi or the couple I was to visit in the Ili Valley. Besides this my old asthma problems were returning deep inside my lungs. What was I to do?
Three Chinese people came up to me, obviously concerned about my predicament. Two men and one woman, all in their fifties and with no English between them (why would they?), they gestured to me to follow them. First they took me out to eat, and then found a room where the four of us spent the night. I was very touched by their kindness, generosity and hospitality.
The next day the plane took off toward Ili, and this time it was allowed to land. Again, the three Chinese people gestured to me to follow them. We walked through the tiny terminal. There at the entrance stood a black limousine whose chauffeur quickly opened the door for my three acquaintances. I found myself climbing into the limousine with them. They drove me to the only contact I had in that city, people who would help me find my friends in the countryside. One of the men who had befriended me, obviously a high-ranking regional official of the Chinese Communist Party, carried my suitcase up the five flights of stairs for me.
It sounded to me that my wheezing was echoing through the dark stairwell. I knocked on the door which tentatively opened to me. Whoever it was behind the door had no idea I was coming – or who I was, for that matter. Yet that initial eye contact has turned into a lifelong friendship with the couple living behind the door. They welcomed this complete stranger, fed me, nursed me. They gave me a tour of the city the next day, an ancient center of Uighur and Kazakh culture, birch-lined streets traversed by donkey carts, homes hidden behind walls protecting private inner courtyards, architecture uniquely central Asian yet tinged with Russian and Chinese undertones. The aroma of roast lamb and peppers and garlic filled the streets, stalls of freshly-made noodles and nan bread baked in clay ovens dotted the scenery. The muslim call to prayer hung in the air.
The new couple helped me find the bus to the village where the married couple I knew lived. An hour outside the city I was greeted by my lanky Texas friend and his new wife. I was fascinated by the sight of them devouring letters from home, while preciously conserving the Western treats I brought with me. My visit with them was unfortunately brief: I only received permission from the village authorities to stay just the day. I traveled all that way only to be with my friends for a handful of hours! Yet here I was, in a Uighur village inside China, near the border with Kazakhstan, in a valley stretching toward the vast central steppes, surrounded by the peaks and grasslands of the Tian Shan, isolated from the rest of Asia by the Gobi, the Taklamakan and the Himalayas. This place was so far removed from everything I knew from my Midwestern upbringing; yet here, even here, I sensed the presence and protection of Jesus. Had I any inkling, any vision of this moment, the evening I gave my heart to Jesus when I was sixteen? That evening in the basement of my Catholic high school in St. Louis, when I truly met the living and present Jesus, who surrounded me with his tangible love like the most exquisite angora blanket – did I know then the adventures he would take me on for his kingdom? My friends waved goodbye to me after putting me on the bus for the journey back to Ili City.
My asthma worsened. Somehow I had to find my way back to Urumqi in order to make my flight back to Hong Kong on a certain day. Flying was out of the question: there was only one flight a week. Since there were no rail lines I was left with one option: a 19-hour bus ride up and over a mountain pass through the Tian Shan. Jesus, can I handle this, can my lungs handle the dust, the constant jolting of the bus for so many hours? Again his angora-love touched my heart. I am his, he is mine, his banner over me is love.
I made myself ready for the long journey, armed with food and enough bottles of drink to last a week. My seat was on top of the wheel well in the back of the bus. I quickly discovered that the seat wasn’t bolted to the bus floor! Before I could try to find a way to switch seats, stools were placed in the aisle for extra passengers, and I was stuck. A mound of bundles and carpets and chickens in wicker baskets were tied to the top of the bus. Waving a slightly reluctant goodbye to my new friends who took such good care of me in Ili, the bus began its climb through the Tian Shan.
It wasn’t long before I realized my terrible mistake. I began fidgeting in my seat because I was in need of a toilet break. Surely the bus driver stopped at regular intervals? Yet hour after hour the bus trudged up the side of the mountain, dangling over sheer cliffs, and no break was given us poor souls stuck on the bus. With each passing hour my prayers for grace to endure my discomfort turned into pleas, then worship, then all-out spiritual warfare. I bound the demons over the driver in Jesus’ name, I stormed the gates of heaven and hell for the sake of my bladder. My attempts to communicate my desperate need to the Chinese man next to me only resulted in uncomprehending smiles on his part. To make matters worse, every time the bus lurched forward my seat did the same, reducing my leg space to nearly nil. I spent hours wheezing from asthma and folded up like origami with no way of getting the attention of the driver to stop.
And then I heard Him speak.
The crimson setting sun illuminated the vast Central steppes stretched vast and endless beneath me – the battleground of khans.
“Worship Me here.”
I sensed his deep, impassioned voice within my spirit, deep calling to deep.
“Please, worship Me.”
As the bus continued its relentless climb over the mountain pass, I began worshipping Jesus. I lifted him up in His rightful place, there on the mountain side. I declared that he alone is worthy to be worshipped in that place, as Redeemer, Creator and King. That he alone died for the people who dwell there, whether they knew of him or not.
The urgency in the Spirit to worship subsided. I knew I did what he asked me to do, and I sensed his pleasure. Not long after that the driver stopped the bus – a full seven hours after our departure from Ili City – and the entire bus breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Was I on that dreadful bus specifically to worship Jesus on that mountainside? In my reduced, desperate state, it felt so. I may never know why it was so important to Him – what wrong that needed to be righted, what ground that needed to be prepared for His work. The only thought that came to me was from the book of Romans:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed (Romans 8:19).
We continued our journey through the mountains by night. Somewhere on the rocky heights the bus broke down. My choice thoughts toward the bus driver changed when I saw how hard he worked to repair the motor. For two hours he worked intensely by flashlight, surrounded by a circle of passengers who had nothing else to do on that cold mountain than to watch the driver work. The engine suddenly started churning and everyone quickly jumped on the bus so we could continue our journey.
The next morning we were out of the mountains and driving across flat sandy wasteland. In the light of the day I was able to look more closely at my fellow passengers. There was a mixture of Chinese, Kazakh and Uighur men and women, nearly all were farmers or peasants; a few were soldiers. We traveled in silence as most of the passengers slept the many hours of our journey. There was a tangible weariness worn on their faces. Though I was so very different to everyone else – or because I was so different – no one approached me to speak with me. I had heard that there were restrictions placed on the people from talking to foreigners, and each bus carried a soldier to ensure that rules were kept. The Chinese government is particularly concerned about possible insurrection from the thirteen minority groups living in Xinjiang, doing whatever it can to keep control in the province.
I must have dozed off. I woke up to the bus pulling into a cold concrete structure early in the morning somewhere in Urumqi. Urumqi is one of the most polluted cities in the entire world; a penetrating layer of coal dust hung in the frigid air. Things looked hazy – where were my glasses? I remembered taking them off and putting them on my lap while I rested. They must have slipped off my lap, for I found them on the floor of the bus behind the driver’s seat, stepped-on, crushed and useless. I remembered my prescription sunglasses and, though I looked like a druggy wearing dark glasses early in the morning, I was at least able to see where I was going.
I had to meet a friend at a certain hotel in Urumqi by a certain time so we could catch our flight to Hong Kong that day. I knew the name of the hotel in English -- the Tian Shan Hotel – but I had no map. No map, no knowledge of the city, no Chinese language ability, no normal glasses and nearly no breath in my lungs. “Father, what should I do?”
I sensed the Spirit say, “Get on that bus, go two stops and then get off.” What did I have to lose, really? So I got on the specified bus, waited for the second stop to come and then got off. Right in front of me, exactly where I stumbled off the bus, were two British tourists with a street map unfolded before them. They happened to be looking for the Tian Shan Hotel, and when they found out I was looking for the very same we set out together to find it, which we did, in plenty of time for me to meet up with my friend to catch our flight back to Hong Kong.
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That was in 1992, nearly 25 years ago.
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At 58, twenty-five years after that trip to the Ili Valley, am I still ‘living the adventure’ with Jesus?
In those 25 years, I moved to Ili, learned street-level Mandarin and failed at Uighur. I met my future Norwegian wife one day in Hong Kong, a set-up by my Norwegian neighbors in Ili. Our first child came a year later, and a year after that we moved back to Xinjiang, to Urumqi. Two more children and five years later it was time to move the family back to Norway, at the end of 2004. We bought our first house and I watched my children become Norwegians. I went back to school and finished my post graduate work. Our children are suddenly teenagers. I’m an elder in a Lutheran church (imagine that) work with teenagers in crisis and do some translation work and academic advising on the side.
Where am I now?
Am I still living the adventure with Jesus? Is it even possible with a house mortgage?
A good number of you reading this are just like me, hovering somewhere before or after the 60 mark. 30 or 40 years ago we were completely sold out to Jesus, bringing the gospel to unreached people groups, doing street evangelism all over Asia, dreaming of setting up Christian farms or communities or bands or homeless shelters, serving Him completely in our hometown, homes and churches. We were idealists! We were going to win the world for Jesus! I know that some of you are leading missions bases, pastoring churches, still flying off somewhere to go where no (wo)man has gone before with the Gospel. Some of us are tired. A number of us are carrying disappointments around. Some of us are really, really angry at Jesus and are giving him a very cold shoulder.
Most of us still hold a passion for Jesus – or at least want to.
Yet something unforeseeable happened to us: we aged. Is this the result of the fall or a process designed by a loving God, to prepare us for eternity while journeying through a fallen world? It is hard for me to imagine (most days) that this beautiful unfolding of my daughters into womanhood is devil-devised. Aging is not sin, though our youth-fixated society would like us to think so. Yet I think it must be strange to God, watching his children age before his eyes, holding our dimpled hands at the beginning and then taking us by the same hands, translucent and labor-worn, into eternity.
Through the years we have been burned and bruised and battle-worn, and we’ve learned from these pains. We’ve become wiser, more careful. We’ve born children, or have worked through the disappointment of not being able to do so. Though many of us still have our health, not all of us do, and we’ve learned that good health is not a given. Some of us have deeply sinned. Some of us have turned to Jesus for his bottomless mercy, while others feel there is no more mercy to receive (there is).
We should not condemn ourselves if our adventures in Jesus look different now than they did three decades ago. If we hold onto a nostalgic view of what it means to follow Jesus, we could easily miss the adventures he has for us now simply because we may not recognize them when they come.
I believe Jesus continues to take us from glory to glory as he leads us through the process of sanctification to become more and more like him. This means that no matter what happens to our bodies, no matter how society views us as we age, the best is always yet to come in the kingdom of God, even on this side of eternity.
Sometime soon I may write on what adventures in Jesus can look like in this season of our lives, so that we can recognize them when he brings them our way.
Don’t blink.
Thomas.
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