Clarks: Hitchhiking with an Angel

We had a very interesting and providential encounter with a teacher at our school.

We needed transportation to a hotel. Our power was out (again) and wasn’t going to be fixed until late into the cold evening – and this with a sick baby to care for – so we decided we would just check into the Hyatt and make a grand vacation of it.

Heading outside into a foot of snow, carrying our bags and our baby - Phoebe with scarlet fever - I silently prayed that we would find a cab. In Xiao He Shan the chances of catching a cab anytime are slim, but this was just after school had ended for the semester and nearly everyone had gone home for the winter holiday; the whole area was abandoned - plus the bad weather. Finding a taxi out here today would require a minor miracle. So, earnestly I prayed. And sure enough, a minute later, we beheld in the distance an empty cab stopped at the light! We were still too far from the road, though, and he was way out ahead of us - apparently beyond shouting distance (believe me, we tried!) – and so, we missed getting his attention and, as the light changed, he sped away without us.

"OK, Lord, please at least let us get a bus soon," I silently pleaded. And on cue (though not quite) here came our bus! But, with us having finally reached the road but still nowhere near the stop, and unable to run on the ice - especially carrying ourselves, our stuff, and Phoebe - we soon realized we were doomed to wait at least another 15 minutes, in the cold, with a sick child, until the next one came along.

"Well, God, I sure don't know why You let that happen," I said, and we began to discuss aloud our disappointment and confusion. Why is it that sometimes something works out so perfectly and then other times, when you feel that you really, really need the help, your prayers seem to go unanswered? But anyway, there was little time for theology as a private minibus approached and offered to take us, but for a price that – even in these conditions – we were hesitant to pay. What were we going to do? We waved him off, but then hesitated, trotted ahead to catch him, hesitated again...

And just then, a black sedan pulls up beside us.
"Where are you going?" the driver asked, in English. And then, motioned for us to get in. "How much?" asked Cec. "No money," he said, "I'm a teacher." A teacher from our school it turned out. "Well, you're an angel to us," we said, as we settled in for a (free!) ride into town.

As we started making small talk - half in English, half in Chinese - we asked him, "Where are you going?" to which he replied simply, "To the church."
"Oh, really? Are you going there to worship?" [It was a Saturday morning.]
"No, worship is tomorrow. I'm going there for some activities," he said.
"Well, we're Christians, too," we said, and from there the conversation took shape.

He wanted to know where we attended church, so I decided to go ahead and tell him the whole story - how we were meeting with some students, actually, but then the school said we couldn't do it anymore...
"Oh yeah, I heard about that from a friend in the school's investigation department," he replied, and then made a disgusted sort of gesture to indicate his own frustration with the sometimes overbearing bureaucracy and regulations. "That's too bad," he concluded. Then, he began to share some of his own thoughts and experiences concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the local churches, the differences between officially recognized and unregistered congregations, how he came to faith and what he sees as crucial in reaching other Chinese people, and so on - a very insightful and revealing conversation that lasted nearly an hour in Hangzhou's notoriously bad (and now icy) traffic.

And well, for now at least, the story ends there. He gave us his name card, dropped us off near the hotel, and invited us to church the next day or to the weekly house studies (which take place somewhere on WenSan Road, believe it or not), and that was that. Just a simple, incredible, sovereign encounter.

[BTW: We slept late the next morning (for, like, the first time ever since having a baby - thanks to those super-dark hotel curtains!) and missed the Sunday morning service, but of course, we will plan to keep in touch and will hopefully have other chances to go there and maybe to the mid-week studies as well. We'll just have to wait and see what God has in mind for this relationship.]