It all began innocently enough. I received an email from a young man in China who wanted to attend Calvary. When I was in China in 2014, I left promotional material for our school in four different major cities, and occasionally I do receive random inquiries that bypass any agency, making it difficult to proceed. In this case, however, the student mentioned a Chinese friend of mine as a reference. Many readers here know this influential person because he spoke at our fall banquet in 2015. Upon checking out the details with my friend, I reply to the young man. It was the beginning of a long conversation that lasted for months. Here is that first email:
Dear Headmaster [____]:
Hello!
I am Enoch who is from G*****u
Province,China.I am a seventeen-year-old boy who grows in a Christian family.
At present,I am a grade ten student,and I will be a grade eleven student this
September. My hobby is drawing,and my specialty is singing,what is more,my
English is average according to [a mutual pastor friend of ours in the US] I
want to study in this school very much,but I don't know how to do that.Can you
reply me details to teach me how to study in this school? I am looking
forward to your reply. Thanks!
Yours,
Enoch.
I cannot share all the emails that followed, but the
following paragraph is a paraphrased summation that I shared with our high
school students in September, 2018, at the campfire on High School
Retreat. There was a lull in the testimonies being shared by students so I
stood in the firelight and spoke to dimly lit faces and shadows around
me.
I told them that there was a young man, a junior, who wanted very much to be with them this school year, but we were having difficulty getting him to Calvary. I explained that the first obstacle was distance. He lives more than 12,000 miles away. The second obstacle was resistance from forces beyond our control. You see, he lives in a country that does not let places like Calvary Christian Schools exist. In fact, they would not let the various churches and youth groups represented in our school exist. (In his country, students under the age of 18 are not allowed to attend church.) In fact, this young man’s father is a pastor of a church that had over 600 members, but this was not approved by the authorities and his father just finished serving a 2.5 year prison term after their Christian church had been raided by authorities.
"This young man who wishes he were here with
you right now lives in China. Had our plan worked to get him here, he would be
in the Junior Class. His name means “walks with God.” It comes from the verse
is Genesis 5:24, 'And Enoch walked with God and was no more because God took
him.'”
Ours was a modern-day Enoch, but he too desires the
path God has for him. I told the students: “We will try again to get him to
Calvary, but it is going to take a miracle. Please pray for him there in China,
and I’ll keep you updated on our efforts.”
Our first attempt to get Enoch the needed legal
paperwork had been rejected. We sent all new paperwork again in October, but
that paperwork was intercepted. It never arrived.
In December, CCS made its third and final attempt to
get the necessary documents to Enoch (though this time we sent it to a
different address). The sequence of events was a nail-biter. Enoch said more
than once in his emails, “God is in control of tomorrow.” In that spirit, we
kept praying, but I confess, it felt very unlikely that we would ever meet.
Then on the day before New Year’s Eve, 2018, I
received an email from Enoch. His contact had gotten the packet; he had gone to
the consulate alone AND THIS TIME HE HAD GOTTEN HIS VISA. Pause…
There are many other details I cannot share, but upon returning after Christmas
Break, I went to the Junior Bible Class with the following update: “I know
we’ve been praying since September for Enoch in China, and he is not ‘out of
the woods yet. But Lord willing, Enoch may be here Wednesday night.” Their
faces beamed.
Enoch’s plane did arrive as prayed for, his daily
presence continues to be cause for celebration at Calvary, for his parents, and
for a small band of “guardian angels” who helped make his journey and time at
Calvary possible.
[On to Chapter 17]
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