Surprise Visits

In my speech preparation class I had a surprise visit from the vice president of our university at 8:00 a.m. The students had their speech outlines and PPT ready to use for examples. The students were active and responsive to my questions. It was the best class of the semester. After an hour the vice president shook my hand, said he enjoyed the class, and returned to vice president duty. My next class and different group of students was the worst class of the semester. Not one student had prepared their speech outline or PPT. When I called on students to answer questions they would just say “I don’t know” with tired, hungry for lunch body language. About a week later in my listening class I had a surprise visit from Julia, Dean of the Foreign Language Department. Back in November 2010 the following email from Julia sent chills through my body: “I was told that you attended the get-together and preached the religion to our students at Hanmuxianglin. Now the Bureau of Public Security has looked into this. So I hope you will not be invovled in this case. It will violate our Chinese law. Please don't preach your religion to our students in public and in class. Please go to the church if you want to preach. Best regards to you and your families!” In listening class the students also give short speeches. One student named May stood in front of the class and announced “Today I will talk about religion and having a faith.” With Julia sitting in the back of the room the same chills shot through my body. May had not prepared a PPT like the others, but she chose to speak from her heart even restating the main ideas in Chinese. “We need to believe in something so we can face problems in life. Our teacher Mr. Joshua has a faith in God so he has a hope. Maybe we cannot trust our society and what we learn in school. I don’t have a religion now but I want to look for the truth.” I responded to May’s speech, “I do believe in God. My parents taught me to believe in Jesus and go to church since I was a baby. I think it is a great blessing that I can live in China and look for the truth. I am away from my family and outside of my Christian culture, so I can test if my belief in God is true. Next speaker …” After class Julia had some teaching suggestions for me about using the listening book and audio. I said, “Julia I didn’t know that student was going to speak about religion in class. Is it OK?” Julia has this great personality and face that changes instantly from stern seriousness to a giggling young girl smile, “It’s OK if you don’t talk about the details of your religion.” OK straight from the horse’s mouth. If Julia had heard the details of that class second hand I would probably receive another scolding email. Praise God for the message heard by all the students and Julia. We need hope and we must look for the truth.