God's Double Agent (34 page)

However, they paid for our groceries happily and, over the course of the next few weeks, showed their generosity in ever-increasing ways.

“This is yours,” Charlie said, tossing me the keys to a brown Ford station wagon.

“I’ve never even driven before!” I protested.

“Why do you think it’s fully insured?”

Tim Conkling, the American missionary responsible for introducing me to Charlie while we were in Hong Kong, was in Philadelphia that summer. I made sure to thank him for the introduction.

“It’s made a huge difference in our lives,” I said. “He even gave us this car!” I pointed to the station wagon.

“Do you know how to drive it?”

“I don’t even know how to pump gas,” I admitted. Tim kindly took me to a station and conducted a short tutorial on how to get fuel from the pump to the tank.

A few months later, Charlie bought us a two-bedroom house in north Philadelphia that was near the grocery store, near Westminster’s campus, and within walking distance of an elementary school.

“As long as you are staying at Westminster and doing China ministry, this is yours. No insurances, no taxes,” he said.

We were overjoyed.

However, there was one more person integral to our escape whom we couldn’t find to thank. She’d come to our illegal printing press on the referral of our mutual friend Craig. After placing an order, she never came to collect the books. Since she hadn’t even left her name, we couldn’t track her down. When it came down to the wire, we had ended up using her deposit money to flee China.

“Please give us her address so we can write a letter to thank her,” I said to Craig, after he came in from Australia to visit with us. We had been so eager to tell him that story, and he listened with rapt attention.

“My mind’s been racing,” he said, “but I never told a woman about you.”

A hushed silence fell over us. To this day, we’ve never heard from this woman or discovered her identity. Billy Graham referred to angels as “God’s secret agents.” Had God employed one of his divine secret agents to help us escape communist China?

All of these blessings intimidated us.

“You know the Scripture that says, ‘To whom much is given, much is required’?” Heidi asked. “Do you think this is all some sort of test?”

Very recently, I had eaten wormy cornbread and slept on a concrete slab. Now I attended seminary and had a beautiful son, a house in Philadelphia, and a vehicle with a tank full of gas. We couldn’t help but wonder what God was about to ask us to do and, more importantly, if we could meet the challenge.

Life was hard without even considering ministry. Westminster was a new world of opportunities and challenges. Hebrew, a more oriental language, seemed beautiful and rhythmic, but Greek perplexed me. Plus, I struggled with English. Though Heidi and I both had learned the language in China—and even taught it—the classroom was much different than north Philly.

In the meantime, Heidi was thrown fully into the world of domesticity. Daniel, who wasn’t an easy baby, grew into an energetic toddler. When Heidi got pregnant again, we discovered her mom and dad were coming to live with us because her mother needed open-heart surgery. This was good, since we missed our friends and family in China. In fact, I’d had no direct contact with my family for so long. About one month after we arrived in Philadelphia, I was finally able to make calls without being monitored. In fact, I didn’t understand AT&T’s various calling plans, so my international calls drove my first phone bill up to six hundred dollars! In spite of the cost, however, I was thankful to be able to connect with some of my friends from school.

“Please tell my father we arrived safely in the United States,” I said to one friend from my family’s village.

“Xiqiu,” my friend whispered. “I’m glad you finally called. The PSB officers have been here. They treated your father very harshly.”

I hung up the phone with a heavy heart, wondering how my disabled father fared under their abuse. Another family member told me the details. Two Public Security Bureau officers interrogated my father after we left Beijing in September, demanding he tell them how I fled China and who helped me escape. In August, a few weeks after we had left Hong Kong, they came back for more interrogation.

My ministry friends had more dire news. “Sister Wang got arrested and was tortured,” one friend told me. “Brother Li was sent to labor camp,” another one said. With every conversation, I learned more about my old friends who were tortured
or suffering for the sake of the gospel. As I sat in my comfortable house, memorizing Greek and Hebrew vocabularies, China was on the other side of the world. But I carried it—and its people—in my heart.

Heidi went into labor with our second child, and we were so thankful to be living in America. This time, I could accompany her into the labor and delivery room. But we had one complication. Heidi’s parents had just arrived from China and offered to babysit, but they weren’t familiar with our toddler. Since we didn’t feel comfortable leaving him, I ended up toting Daniel to the hospital and taking care of him in the delivery room while Heidi labored. Even though it was a less than ideal situation, Heidi gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom we named Yaning, or “elegant peace.” Her English name was Tracy. Of course, she made our lives much more interesting. But even as Heidi recovered from her pregnancy and struggled to adapt to the rigors of having a second child, I began receiving speaking requests from church groups and organizations.

“Should you really go speak again this weekend?” Heidi asked, holding a baby in one arm and a toddler in the other. While my life had gotten so much larger, hers centered on diapers, acid reflux, laundry, and potty training.

“We’re in America,” I said, motioning around the house. “The least we should do is speak out on behalf of our brothers and sisters.” Heidi nodded, but her bloodshot eyes indicated she wasn’t ready to accept the heavy burden that came with freedom. I wasn’t either. At night, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, and my mind raced with terrible scenarios. If I brought too much attention to China’s treatment of Christians, the PSB would retaliate. “Do I stand up for truth to protect the millions of people in the Chinese church?” I asked God as I wrestled with my dilemma. “Or do I remain silent to protect my dad and siblings?”

Of course, I really had no choice. So when God gave me speaking opportunities, I took them. I made a speech at the National Presbyterian Church, where I met with John Shattuck. Afterward, he asked me for a list of people I knew being persecuted for their beliefs, which he promised to pass along to President Clinton before his visit to China. Also, I testified before Congress in several hearings, including one hosted by Senator Arlen Specter and Congressman Bill Goodling. I also testified in Los Angeles in front of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and spoke in Atlanta for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted.

Though I was sleep-deprived, stressed out about seminary, and distressing Heidi by my frequent trips, I told anyone who’d listen about the situation in China. Very few people understood that the underground Catholic and Protestant churches vastly outnumbered the government-sanctioned churches, and that millions of Christians would rather gather illegally than submit to the theological manipulation and retaliation of the Three Self Patriotic churches. Some didn’t even know persecution was still going on in these modern days. And so I told them story after story of how the communists used Maoist-style propaganda, Cultural Revolution–levels of surveillance, and torture techniques that led to death. Even though I’d seen it with my own eyes, it was hard for me to prove these things happened. If I spoke out too aggressively, I might further endanger the victims of brutality. Plus, without documentation, how could I really prove that China—which had long boasted of religious freedom—was crushing the church?

The ache in my heart for my family back in China grew unbearable. In 2001, when I found out my sister Qinghua had installed a phone in her home, I could no longer resist the temptation to call.

“Qinghua?” I said. I strained to hear the familiar sounds of my old peasant village, but a fire truck barreled down the street outside my window. “This is Xiqiu! How are you?”

“We are fine,” she said, in a very serious tone. I waited for more details, or for her voice to soften toward me. But, after a silence, she said, “There are many new bridge construction projects around here, and the economy is doing very well.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Her stilted conversation was at odds with the loving sister I remembered. “Okay,” I said. “May I speak to Father?” My heart was so full of expectation and longing for home that I could barely get the words out. When I heard his voice, it took me a second to collect myself.

“Hello, Dad!” I said. “How are you?”

“I am fine,” he said.

I decided not to mention any of my public activity in America, but I did tell him about my studies at Westminster and my ever-growing family. When I hung up the phone, I felt worse than before. Something seemed wrong. Later, I learned the PSB was monitoring their calls and had forced them to brag about the government construction programs. They wanted me, and the whole world, to believe China was a land of freedom and prosperity. And without any real documentation, who was I to say otherwise?

That year, however, China overplayed their hand. Underground Christianity was becoming increasingly popular. For example, the South China Church, a loose network of illegal house churches, had over fifty thousand members. To clamp down on its growth, the Communist Party labeled it an “evil cult” and arrested hundreds of church leaders, confiscated more than five hundred homes and properties, and fined, beat, and harassed thousands of the members. In a secret trial, five pastors—founding and senior Pastor Gong Shengliang, Xu Fuming, Hu Yong, Gong Bangkun, and Li Ying—were sentenced to death for “using an evil cult to undermine the enforcement of the law.” Gong Shengliang was also convicted of rape and twelve others were also convicted of “using an evil cult to undermine enforcement of the law.”

On New Year’s Day 2002, Xiong Yan and I held a retreat. Xiong had been labeled one of the “twenty-one most wanted national student leaders” during the 1989 student movement. He went into hiding, but he was caught and served several years in prison. After his release, a house church Christian gave him a book called
Streams in the Desert
, and he became a believer before escaping to the United States. He and his wife both joined the United States Army and served two tours in Iraq. He even became a high-ranking Army chaplain. In 2000, after being transferred to Westminster, he asked me to be the executive director of the God Bless China Foundation, which was co-founded by Jonathan Chao. I immediately said yes, and through this organization hosted a retreat at the US Congressional retreat center in Maryland. It was called, a “Symposium on Christian Culture and the Future of China.” Many Chinese pro-democracy leaders attended, including Dr. Wang Bingzhang and Peng Ming, as well as many American leaders from academia, churches, and the media, like Os Guinness, who let us use the retreat center at a discounted rate. Former Congressman Beau Boulter, whom I knew through his son Matt, a classmate at Westminster, spoke at our retreat.