God's Double Agent (23 page)

“Thank you,” I said, trying not to calculate how much money I’d now have per month. “I accept.”

I walked home singing a tune. After so many trials and so much trouble, I’d finally overcome my humble beginnings. But when I got back to the silence of my home, I didn’t have the peace I figured would come with this new job. That’s when the Lord reminded me of my pledge.

I tried to shove it out of my mind. After all, I’d scrimped by on almost nothing my entire life. Now that I had a wife, couldn’t I simply make a little extra? Or even a great deal extra?

“I think I might be going to Kenya,” I told James during the next men’s prayer meeting.

“To Kenya? Won’t that complicate your plan to spread the gospel in China?”

I knew God wasn’t going to let me get away from His will for my life. I broke down and told James all about my occupational decisions and struggles. I wanted to make money, but I’d pledged to God I’d take a job that would allow me to do ministry as well. While I discussed my options with my friend, it became undeniably clear.

“I should be about the kingdom’s work,” I said at last. “The Lord will honor my commitment and show me what job is best for my circumstances.”

There was one job option that would give me flexibility during the evenings and enough money to make ends meet . . . barely. Neither of us said the word
teacher
, because we both knew I’d been rebelling against that job my entire life, but that was the only option that would allow me to keep my promise.

“Yes,” my friend said. “There’s got to be some sort of job.” His voice trailed off ambiguously. “God will make it clear.”

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be a teacher. Many educated Chinese graduates also shunned the job. The
Communist Party School was the training ground for those on their way to becoming high-ranking Communist leaders. Since party members had elite educational backgrounds, they turned down such low-paying jobs in favor of more prestigious ones. Consequently, the Communist Party School couldn’t find enough English teachers within the party to teach their budding officials. The school began hiring non-communist members.

“We still need one more teacher,” a woman who’d graduated from the same university program told me. She’d taught English at the Communist Party School for a few years and seemed quite content.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not a communist.”

“I was the first non-communist they hired,” she said. “Believe me, they’d prefer I were a member, but it came down to a teacher shortage. They needed me. If you’re interested in a job, I think you’d be perfect.”

The next morning, I shuffled into the heavily guarded, unmarked campus far from Tiananmen Square. This time, when I met my interviewer, I was neither nervous nor excited. If I got the job, I knew it was because God wanted me there. So, right away I told him, “I’m not a party member.”

“That’s not a disqualification,” he assured me.

I didn’t disclose my Christianity, however, which would’ve been a deal breaker. An hour later, I walked out of that school with a job offer and a smile.

“You won’t believe what job I just got,” I told James after the interview. “God let me keep my promise to Him by giving me a job training high-ranking Communist officials.”

The irony of it all made us both break into laughter.

Heidi was living in her province, finishing her school year and studying to pass the graduate entrance exam to the People’s University of Beijing. She realized teaching was too much work
for too little pay, so she hoped she could get into a program to study aesthetics and philosophy. In the meantime, I moved into the Communist Party School compound, where I was assigned a dorm with another married man whose wife was also living in another city.

When Heidi passed the exam, she wrote me excitedly. Not only was her future opening up, she could move to Beijing and we could finally live together as man and wife.

“The only problem is that tuition costs 24,000 yuen,” she wrote. At that time, that amount was about three thousand American dollars. It was such an unobtainable amount of money there was no way she’d be able to attend without divine intervention. Thankfully, as Christians, we believed in miracles. Every day for weeks, I prayed for her education. Then, during one of my prayer meetings, I shared my financial need with the other men. As the deadline for the money drew close, I was already mentally composing Heidi’s family a letter explaining why their daughter would not be able to pursue her dreams. But on the day before the deadline, James came up to me and shoved a small bag into my hands.

“What is this?” I asked, peeking into the bag and shutting it immediately once I saw it was full of money.

“Don’t get too excited.” He smiled. “It’s not for you; it’s for Heidi.”

I glanced at my watch, and noticed it was almost time for the financial office of the university to close. I thanked James profusely and practically ran through the campus, holding the bag of money like I’d robbed a bank. When I finally got to the office, I walked in and dumped all of the cash onto the counter.

“This is the tuition for my wife,” I said proudly. The clerk’s jaw dropped.

As she hurriedly put the money into stacks, I realized exactly how generous James had been. It was enough for an entire year of graduate studies.

Finally, after many months of separation, Heidi moved to Beijing that summer. As my living situation with the other married man certainly didn’t fit our needs, we began searching for another place to live. Soon, I found there was a huge shower room in the administration building near my office that was not being used. A “shower room” had both a shower and a toilet, a luxury usually reserved for the highest-ranking officials. While most people lived in dorms with a common bath down the hall, only a select few had their own private baths.

“What do you think?” I said to Heidi, opening the door with a borrowed key. “Would you like to live here?”

“In the bathroom?” she asked. It was actually a pretty big room, with high ceilings and tile floors. It was separated into two areas, with one side dominated by a gigantic monstrosity of a bathtub and the other with a smaller, more reasonable sink.

“This shower room was used by Chairman Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing,” I said. “She stayed in this building after China was liberated. This was her private bath.”

Heidi laughed as she walked around the dusty bathtub, which hadn’t been used for years. “Is that supposed to be a selling point?”

I knocked on the gigantic tub, causing a cloud of dust to rise up and encircle me. “This was imported from the Soviet Union,” I said, coughing. “They just don’t make them like this anymore.”

“Wow,” Heidi winked at me. “I think God prepared a newlywed bedroom for us. Let’s clean it up and make it our bedroom—our home.”

The next day, our friends from the student fellowship came to help us transform the shower room into our first residence. The young men spent a whole day tearing out the bathtub and helped us move in a bed donated by an older Christian man. By the time we were finished, we had a lovely place to call home.

Heidi was a very hospitable woman, but one day when I told her about an upcoming guest, she was less than enthused.

“
Who’s
coming here?” she asked.

“Heidi,” I said, trying to calm her down. “Joseph was a good friend of mine.”

“Right, he
was
a good friend, until he turned on you,” she snapped.

“That’s not exactly true.”

“Well, what would you call it when he wrote in the newspaper that student protestors like you should be killed?”

“Maybe he’s changed.”

“Also, he took your job as the class monitor and made sure no one talked to you for months. In fact, he’s the main person who drove you into a depression, which almost drove you to suicide. Why is he coming here?”

“He said he was in the area,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ve said this ever since he betrayed you. He’s an opportunist, a bad guy, and I hope I never see him again!”

“Well, you won’t. He’s coming by in the evening. Perhaps it would be best if you were gone.”

A few days later, we were sitting in our little room when someone knocked on the door. It was midday, right before I was to leave for class, so we were a little surprised.

“Xiqiu!” I heard when I opened the door. There, four hours early, stood Joseph.

“Welcome,” I said, ushering him into our room. “Heidi,” I said, very slowly, hoping to give her a little time to collect herself. “Remember Joseph?”

“How could I forget?” she said.

“I’m so sorry, Joseph, I was expecting you later,” I said, glancing at my watch. “I was just leaving to teach my class.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I can wait. In the meantime, I can just talk to Heidi.”

I looked at my wife—my lovely, beautiful wife—who simply smiled and said, “That would be great. It will give us a chance to relive our old college days.”

Even though I knew she was furious, I had no choice but to teach my class. When I closed the door behind me, I wondered what kind of scene I would find when I’d return a couple hours later. I couldn’t focus on the class as my mind wandered to what could be happening back at my home. When the class was over, I scurried over to our place, hoping that they hadn’t eviscerated each other.

When I opened the door, I was astonished at what I found. Heidi and Joseph were sitting at our tiny table with a Bible between them. Both of them were grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

Joseph jumped up from his chair and exclaimed words I never thought I’d hear him say.

“Xiqiu,” he exclaimed. “Your wife led me to Christ!”

16

One Sunday morning, Heidi and I walked into the courtyard of our church. For the past several months, we had been going to the Gangwashi Church, a congregation closer to my work. But on that day we stopped just beyond the gate. Something was wrong.

Signs were posted everywhere, and my friends from the youth group were gathered in a circle, holding hands in the middle of the courtyard, heads bowed. As I walked toward them, I read the signs. “Pastor Yang Yudong is no longer fit to preach the gospel, and has retired as of today.”

Dread filled my heart. Pastor Yudong, the seventy-year-old patriarch of the church, was a man of truth. He loved God and even covertly baptized people of any age who wanted to be Christians. Under his leadership, our church grew so quickly it went from one service, to two, to three. Eventually, we had multiple services per day—even a Korean language service. Perhaps it grew too quickly, because the government definitely noticed.

“What happened?” I asked. “Is the pastor okay?”

“Last night, the Communists went to his house and forced him to retire,” an obviously bereft congregant explained. “They’ve kicked him out.”

“Is he speaking today to say goodbye?” I asked. I’d grown quite attached to him.

“No,” she responded in a whisper. “Supposedly, they told him he was done. They put a guard outside his house and forbade him from showing up today.”

I’d attended the Gangwashi Church every Sunday and could tell that it was filled with many Bible-believing Christians, but I wasn’t sure how true a church could be under the authority of an atheist organization. Heidi and I joined hands with our friends outside the church building and cried out to the Lord.

“God, is this Your church?” we prayed. “Is this a real sanctified church? Are You the head of it?”

When it was time for the service to begin, we went inside the sanctuary, where there were hundreds of people I’d never seen before. Instead of our loving pastor sitting on stage as he’d done for years, a line of religious affairs bureau officials stood on the stage. They were wearing dark suits and somber faces. It was odd, even a little funny, to see those proud atheists up on stage at the church.

“At this time, we’d like to invite the president of the Beijing Three Self Patriotic Movement to deliver a word to us,” one official spoke into a microphone.

The man, who himself was around eighty years old, made his way to the microphone.

Heads turned as we looked at him and wondered if this was the new government-selected pastor. Pastor Yudong’s wife sat in the congregation alone, her head bowed in prayer. The eighty-year-old pastor who was the head of all the Three Self Patriotic Churches in Beijing walked slowly up the stairs, and everyone wondered what he’d say on such a day.