Preface: "Past is Prologue"

The masthead of this blog refers to a previous private journal written by a fictitious first-person narrator reflecting on young sojourner who came to live with him and his family. With that in mind, this preface includes clues that help explain how God's hand set the stage upon which these events have played out.

Speaking of "setting the stage," the title of this post is a quotations from Shakespeare. "What's Past is Prologue" comes from The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I. 

In that play, Shakespeare's meaning was quite literal. He was telling the audience, "What you just saw in the Act I is the context for what you're about to see in Act II."

To me, "Past is  Prologue" is a reminder that the sovereign God of eternity has forged the chain of time. Moments are not isolated points in our existence. They are numbered and ordered like the stars in  Orion's belt. We do not always see God's big picture, but sometimes He gives us a glimpse--enough to confirm that what some call random chance was actually planned from the beginning. In such moments, we stand amazed and humbled to be just one of the dots, just one willing spec in God's unfolding universe.

Below is a timeline of seemingly unconnected events, but in hindsight, they are the connected dots that serve as prologue to the story of  " And Enoch Was No More."

In the spring of 1965, our church had what they used to call a "missionary conference," during which parents were encouraged to read true biographies to their kids. At bedtime that week, my mother began reading aloud to my siblings and I the story of Hudson Taylor.

Taylor was a missionary to China for over 50 years. So immersed was he in the culture of the people he loved that, during his later years, he began to dress like the respected elders of the villages he served. (More about Hudson Taylor in a few paragraphs.) It is important to note that the name of Taylor's ministry was "China Inland Mission." It served the provinces of China far from the eastern seaboard, places like the province of Guizhou.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. I was in my school office talking to a missionary to Togo, West Africa, We were discussing ways to help a young lady from Togo attend our school. Our school did not yet have SEVIS approval, and our hands were somewhat tied. As we spoke, a school secretary knocked on the door and casually mentioned that a plane had just crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. It struck us as odd, but we assumed it was a small plane and went on with our conversation which ended abruptly when we learned of the second plane hitting the second tower. Both were large commercial jets; both were acts of terror.

That day is a milestone of the 21st  Century. For most, the date alone marks a "where were you when it happened?" moment. For me, far below the settled dust, there is also a subtle footnote in my mind marking the day CCS began its ongoing work with international students. Soon after that 9-11 conversation, our school gained SEVIS status, without which this story would not be possible. 

Seven years after 9-11, in late winter 2008, I was asked to join a team of doctors in Thailand to make a documentary about their medical mission work. They partnered with a church in Bangkok, and traveled north to the Hill Tribes up near the Chinese border. Here is a portion of that work.

That clip and many others at its host site mark the beginning of a sense and sensitivity God gave me for our Asian neighbors half-a-world away.

Fast forward another seven years to the fall of 2014, when quite out of the blue, I was invited to join a team of educators on a two-week tour of schools in China. In hindsight, the goals of the tour were somewhat ambitious. We entered into three different "contracts" declaring "sister school status" between Calvary Christian Schools in the U.S. and the schools we visited in China.

The contracts were non-binding, and as it turned out, not much came from the meetings at those schools. BUT... I did learn much about their culture, government, and  educational system, and how they each affect the other.

For instance, as we toured Tienanmen Square, I learned from our young Chinese interpreter that there was no "Tank Man." When I tried to describe the iconic image of the brave student willing to be run over by a military tank, she looked puzzled and kindly stated that, though she was not born until after 1989, she was sure there was no such student protest. Not ever."

"But the whole world saw the pictures," I insisted politely. I think it happened just a few months before the Berlin Wall came down," Still a blank look. It was then I realized that this charming college-educated new member of the Communist Party was not claiming that the photographs of "Tank Man" were fake or "photo-shopped" or American propaganda. She was certain the event never happened because she had never seen such an image or heard of the most famous student protest in history.

"I don't think that ever happened," she said with an earnest smile. Like a naive American, I said,

"Sure it did.. I think it was 1989. I'll Google it when we get back to the hotel and show you."  She smiled. She knew something I did not know.

When I logged on to Chinese internet, I learned there was no Google in China. As I used a Chinese search engine to find an image of Tank Man... it was clear no such image existed. No such event had ever happened. The government had expunged the past from an entire generations prologue. It was the most sobering moment of an otherwise wonderful trip.

Several months after returning to the U.S., through a series of Providentially connected dots, I met a man who had been in Tienanmen Square during those protests. He told me that Tank Man most assuredly was real. He had written about it in his book, which my mother-in-law had given to me for Christmas. The book tells the story of how he became a Christian around the same time as his time at the Tienanmen Square protest. How? He was taking an English Class at university, and his American professor gave him a book to practice reading in English. The book was about the life of Hudson Taylor, possibly the same book my mother had read to me some fifteen years before. Through that book and the subsequent meetings with his professor, the young student in great personal turmoil became a Christian soon before he was imprisoned for his involvement at Tienanmen Square.

You should read his book to enjoy the adventurous journey to the U.S.--it is an amazing page-turner of faith and action. It prompted me to write the author a letter, which my father-in-law delivered in person at a Voice of the Martyrs Conference. A few months later, in May of 2015, the recipient of that letter invited me to Wheaten, IL, to meet him and the English professor who led him to Christ those many years ago.

It was at that meeting with the author [whose name I do not use here out of caution], that we first discussed the discreet goal of serving the children of "house church" pastors in China by getting them to our school in the U.S..  In the fall of 2015, the author was the keynote speaker at Calvary's Fall Banquet. Our discussion continued, and through the months we met twice again and communicated frequently. Two different attempts to enroll the children of Chinese house church pastors failed.

Then in July, 2018, the author asked if I would be willing again to try to help a Chinese house church pastor who lived in one of the original missionary centers established by 19th Century HUDSON TAYLOR. This pastor had a son who wanted desperately to attend CCS. I agreed to help, and a roller coaster of hope and disappointment began. This ride lasted longer than the previous cases--six months to be exact. Due to this Chinese pastor's extraordinary circumstances, many obstacles interfered with what is already a complicated process. The first attempt in August was rejected after the second interview. Then we sent all the paperwork again in October, but that entire package was intercepted. Only an empty envelope was later found at the post office.

A third and final attempt was carefully executed in December, and just when it seemed doomed to fail again, at long last, God opened the door and a brave young man named Enoch was soon on his way to America.

What started as a temporary blog with a fictitious name is now, a year later, the story of how God was laying the groundwork for his story long before Hudson Taylor lived in Enoch's province and long before my friendship with a pastor who had been a student at Tienanmen Square and whose own troubled past seems prologue to what is yet to come in the life of young Enoch for the glory of  God.

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6 ESV

[On to Chapter 1]