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On January 29th, 1999, Terry and I were married quietly in the Court House of Knoxville, Tennessee. News shocked all of his and my friends and family members. "How could these two get together?" People wondered and were amazed. It did appear to be a peculiar combination: I, Nancy, a 5' 2" small Chinese woman and mother of a 9-year-old boy, a recent graduate of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), with a doctoral degree in English as a Second Language, Chinese Instructor at The University of Tennessee, with Terry, a 5' 11" tall large-built man from East Tennessee, father of 3 grown-up children, an instructor at the Tennessee Institute of Electronics for the past 14 years. What an interesting marriage! No matter how other people might have felt about us and our marriage, we somehow knew that God's hand was in this arrangement. But why? Besides the deep love we had that bound us together, there had to be something else, we believed. Our marriage life for the first few weeks was sweet and near perfect, until one day I came back home after visiting my Chinese friend Crystal. I asked Terry, "Hubby, would you want to have a baby?" "A baby?" Terry's eyes were getting so big. "No way! I've got three kids already, and you've got one. No! No! No! No more babies! " "But, Hubby, " I argued, almost wanting to cry. "I am already 35 years old. Crystal said 36 is the last good age that a woman should have a baby. " Yet Terry was still upset. Anyway, the subject was dropped. Little did I even know that I was already pregnant! "Be careful when you ask for something; for you might just get it," Terry said to me. Though reluctantly, he accepted the reality right away. I was excited, but soon became deeply troubled. "What I am going to do after I have a baby?" I had just got my doctoral degree, and had been so anxiously and ambitiously expecting that God would want me to use my degree to serve Him. "But, God, how can I serve you now when I have a baby to take care of ?" I asked God, but I didn't get an answer from Him then. Encouraged by Terry, I finally quit my teaching job at UTK after Baby Lily was born. I became a full-time mom and wife since then. From time to time, as we were looking at Lily's beautiful face, a sweet sense of thankfulness would arise in our hearts. We just couldn't help wondering why God would allow us to have a baby at this time. Isn't Jesus about to come? Shouldn't we set aside everything "trivial" and devote ourselves completely to spreading the Gospel unto the world? In Oct. 2000, Terry resigned from his teaching job at TIE which he had loved so much, and I turned down a job offer from UT to teach Chinese. We moved to Dunlap, TN, to work with Samuel Wang for the Chinese Ministries International ( CMI ). How excited we were that we were finally able to work full time for God to serve the Chinese, my own people! We enjoyed our new life at Dunlap very much. God gave us everything we had prayed for: a four-bedroom house on a farm, surrounded by fruit trees, with a little river running by the house, a huge vegetable garden , plus an old-fashioned woodstove which was exactly the same type we had always wanted. The work at CMI was busy, but we were rather content with what we were doing there. I was able to stay home doing translation work on the computer and taking care of our daughter Lily and home-schooling my son Jonathan at the same time, while Terry was doing office chores in the office. We thought that it wouldn't be too bad if we could just stay on with a life like that until Jesus comes. After all, we were working full time there for God. What else could we expect? On Jan 16, 2001 (Nancy's birthday), after we were with CMI for 3 months, Terry got out of bed at 1 o'clock in the morning. Certain thoughts flooded his mind so forcefully that he just couldn't go to sleep. He got up, turned on the computer, and started typing everything that came to his mind. By the time I woke up at 6:30 am, he was printing something off the computer. "Hubby, what are you doing?" I asked. "I have something for you to read when you get a chance to," he replied, but didn't tell me what it was. I said I would look at it later. When he came back to our bedroom, I started, just as usual, telling him about my dreams that night. "I had dreams all night," I said. "Oh? " He seemed to be interested. "I don't know if I was dreaming or just sleep-thinking, but I was doing some kind of translations for the Chinese children all night, " I continued. His face suddenly lit up. To my surprise, he didn't say what he usually would say, "Honey, you always have weird dreams." Instead, he gave me a strange look, and said with some excitement: "You really need to go in there and read what I printed out for you." Out of curiosity, on my way to the kitchen, I glanced at the first page of the thick printouts he left on my desk. The first line immediately caught my eyes: " On this night, Jan 16, 2001, God has impressed me to establish a ministry to create Chinese children books for the purpose of teaching Biblical virtues to the children of China." I quickly read through the remaining pages. Now I understood what he looked excited about. "Do you think God wants us to do this?" I asked him at the breakfast table, pretending to be calm. "Oh, I know so," he said, and then left for work. On Jan. 29 (our anniversary), we sent out our official notice to CMI Board of Directors, simply telling them that we were leaving CMI to do some other things that God was calling us to do. As to where we were going, we didn't say. As a matter of fact, we ourselves didn't even know then until we received this e-mail message from our friends Randy and Julie in China: "......Our friend Gary is getting married, leaving our house unattended......" "Honey, I just have this feeling, that we might just go and stay at Randy and Julia's house after we leave CMI," Terry said after he read the message. "Why?" I asked. "Remember the property we have in Pioneer, Tennessee, that we just haven't felt like selling? Randy's house is only 30 miles from there. God has impressed me that we would build our office and house on that property. So I prayed and asked God to give us a trailer house so we could live there while doing the building. It seems that God has given us a better deal now." And yes indeed, Randy and Julia's house is a trailer house. "Yeh, let's call Randy," I suggested. Actually we had tried to call Randy many times since they went to China, but our calls had never been through. Somehow, their line was always busy. "I am just hoping, "I murmured to myself while dialing Randy's number. Before I heard the phone ring on the other end, I heard an American man's voice, "Hello, this is Randy." I was just holding the phone there speechless. Then, realizing it was Randy's voice, I called out loud to Terry, "Hey, Hubby, it's Randy! My goodness, how come it didn't even ring..." We were both on the phone with Randy. After all the excitement of finally being able to hear each other's voice and then about Gary's leaving, Terry asked Randy what he would do with his house and property. Randy said he had been praying for a solution to that. They might just have to come back to the States to sell the property and then go back to China, if there were no other options, but he said both he and Julia had the feeling that they should not come back to the States until the end of their semester. After hearing this, Terry ventured to ask, "Randy, how do you like this idea? Suppose, Nancy and I moved into your house and fixed up your property and then put it up on the market to sell it for you. " "Oh, that would be wonderful! That would be absolutely wonderful! " Randy said. "But why? What are you guys going to do? Just to do us a favor?" Then Terry told him about how God had impressed us to translate and design children Bible books for the Chinese children. "Wow!" we heard Randy almost shouting through the phone: "You are an answer to Sue's prayer." "Who is Sue?" we asked, having no idea about what he was talking about. "Oh, Sue is our Chinese tutor. We've been going to Sue's church. She has been praying hard about getting Chinese children Bible books that would help her to teach the Bible to her church children. She said it's just so hard to get any. " Randy told us. Imagine how excited we were! What better encouragement could we get than hearing this! We were now 100 percent and absolutely sure that God had indeed placed this responsibility on our shoulder. What a privilege! What a wonderful God!
What else can we say now, other than "Yes, Lord, here we are, send
us!" We thank God for His leading in our lives. We pray that He will continue to lead and guide us in this new mission field for the Chinese children. Maybe God is impressing YOU to help minister to the Chinese children! I want to get ready for Jesus Christ! |
