ARE YOU THAT KIND OF CHRISTIAN?

Mrs. Huang was the first chubby Chinese I’d ever met. She had a little cherub face with a pixie haircut. I loved her at first sight. She was jolly and earnest. It was 1998. I had left China more than ten years earlier never dreaming that I’d return. But here I was, this time in the south, working on a research project for my PhD.

Mrs. Huang was assigned to me by the university to help with my research project. I was researching exam-driven education in China for a curriculum reform project the national government was funding. China, for the first time since 1949, was rewriting its curriculum. The timing was perfect as I was done with all my coursework and setting off to write my dissertation. I was truly in the right place at the right time. I was fully funded with a project I truly believed in.

My first morning on campus, Mrs. Huang came bright and early to my apartment eager to get started on the project. She had found 20 students who were willing to participate. We were asking them to stop studying for the national exams, and to just gain knowledge alongside us—from reading books, reading current articles, researching, and taking a much more organic approach to learning. We called it “lifelong learning.” These brave students were more than up to the task.

I loved working with Mrs. Huang. She was bright and funny, and her English was perfect. She had studied for two years in England. She had a very inquisitive mind. Mrs. Huang and I had two things in common: we both loved teaching and we both loved food. It was a partnership made in heaven.

My first month on the southern campus went really well. February was cold, but March was freakishly colder. South of the Yangtze River, there’s no heat in the buildings, and Mrs. Huang worried about me. She brought me extra blankets and a small space heater that blew all the building’s fuses every time I plugged it in.

I got a bad case of bronchitis, and Mrs. Huang brought me homemade chicken soup. I took the lid off the tureen and the whole chicken was in there: head, beak, feet—the only thing missing was its feathers.

As I got to know Mrs. Huang better, I had an intense desire to share my faith with her. Many nights we’d be up late looking at test results or reading an article, and my heart would just cry out to tell her of God’s love and His goodness. But this was still Communist China and I needed to be careful. I wanted Mrs. Huang to know that my research was sincere, that I was truly an academic and not just wanting a relationship with her to share my religion. I hate that “Amway salesman” approach to evangelism where a Christian befriends someone just to win them to Christ. It seems so inauthentic and manipulative. I didn’t want to do that with Mrs. Huang. I wanted our conversation about God to come out of a true place of love for her and a desire to share something of my life with her. But no matter what I tried, she would not engage with that topic. February. Nothing. March. Nothing. April. Nothing. By May I was pretty discouraged because I was heading home and had never had the opportunity to tell Mrs. Huang about my love for Jesus and His love for her.

My husband, Daryl, suggested that I invite Mrs. Huang to ride the six-hour train with me back to Shanghai and have some fun time together before I left China and returned home. I asked her if she could join me for a long weekend and she gladly accepted. I made reservations at a brand-new Holiday Inn in Shanghai, which was clean and pretty, but not terribly expensive. We’d have a few days together to shop, sightsee, and of course, sample all of Shanghai’s amazing cuisine.

I’d secretly hoped and prayed that on the long six-hour train ride to Shanghai, Mrs. Huang and I could talk about Jesus. But a French woman tourist, traveling alone, decided to sit with us in our compartment, and she talked the whole six hours! She honestly didn’t take a breath!

We arrived at our hotel, and everything was perfect. We got our stuff stowed and headed to the shopping area of old Shanghai. We negotiated deals. We bought the most beautiful baskets. We had so much fun. We ate all kinds of things. Mrs. Huang, being from Shanghai, knew all the great food stalls and menu items. Still, there was no opportunity to share with Mrs. Huang the most important thing in my life—Jesus.

Finally, the last night came. I was packing and repacking and trying to fit in all the stuff I had bought in Shanghai. I needed to get to bed early because my flight left at 6 the next morning. That meant I had to be at the airport by 4 AM, up by 3.

As I was stuffing the last cloisonné egg into the suitcase, desperately needing a shower and some sleep, Mrs. Huang knocked on my door. “May I come in?” she asked. “Sure!” I said.

She looked very serious, and I thought she was sad because I was leaving. She sat on the edge of the bed and asked, “Teri, are you a Christian?”

I stopped in mid-motion, mouth wide open and stunned. We had spent every day and most evenings together for the past three months and now, at eight o’clock at night right before a four AM trip to the airport, Mrs. Huang wanted to know if I was a Christian.

“Uh, well, yes, Mrs. Huang. I am a Christian.” I think I may have looked confused. Why now? Why after all this time was she asking me the most important question of life?

“What kind of Christian are you?” she asked.

“Sorry. What?” I responded.

“What kind of Christian are you? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe Jesus will come back to earth someday? Are you that kind of Christian?” She looked so sincere and earnest.

 I was completely blown away. What on earth did Mrs. Huang, a full-fledged member of the Communist Party, know about Christianity?

“Yes, Mrs. Huang. I am that kind of Christian.” I still couldn’t figure out what was happening.

“How can you be that kind of Christian? You’re an intellectual. You’re getting a PhD. How can someone like you, a person getting a PhD, believe in Jesus?” It was not an antagonistic question; there was no guile. She seriously could not reconcile the fact that an educated person could or would believe in Jesus Christ and in the Second Coming.

“Let me put it this way, Mrs. Huang. I believe more in Jesus Christ than you and me sitting here. I believe He is the Son of God, a beautiful Savior, the Redeemer of all mankind, but most importantly, Jesus Christ is my very best friend and I love Him more than anything in the world. He is more real to me than you, or this chair, or anything in life. And that’s what kind of Christian I am.” I couldn’t keep the tears back.

Then I asked her, “Mrs. Huang, how do you know these things? How do you know about Jesus and the Bible and Christ coming back again?”

Her story was incredible.

Mrs. Huang’s parents were the top Communist Party leaders of Zhejiang Province. Her father was the top Party chief and her mother a poster child for the entire communist movement in the south. Her mother was an illiterate peasant raised out of poverty to represent the Party’s propaganda for the communist movement in China. Her parents had power and privilege. They had the best apartment in Shanghai, a car and a driver, and a country home. And all five of their children were university educated and had positions of importance and influence throughout the entire province.

Mrs. Huang’s father became very ill with liver disease. The doctors sent him home to die. There was nothing they could do. The children rushed to his bedside to wait for his passing. During that time, a young pastor from the underground church was on his knees praying. This pastor had suffered greatly at the hands of Mrs. Huang’s father. Her father had worked furiously to purge the countryside of superstitions and vain religious beliefs. The young pastor had often been a target of Old Man Huang and he had learned to fear the Communist Party leader.

As the pastor was praying, the Lord spoke to him, “Go and pray for old Mr. Huang. He is dying and I want you to go and pray for him.” The young pastor was frightened, but knew he must obey. He took the train into the city and finally arrived at the Huangs’ luxurious apartment.

The young pastor knocked on the Huangs’ door and old Mrs. Huang answered. She recognized him. He said to her, “Mrs. Huang, I have heard from God that your husband is dying and God has sent me to pray for him. May I come in and pray for your husband?”

Old Mrs. Huang, who had been exposed to Christianity as a child, welcomed the pastor in. The Huangs’ grown children stepped outside the bedroom when the pastor came in, but old Mrs. Huang stayed by her husband’s side. The young pastor laid hands on him and prayed for healing.

God completely healed Old Mr. Huang.

Right there, by his bedside, the young pastor led the old couple to Christ and they asked Jesus into their hearts. Weeks later, they followed in public water baptism.

“They are so crazy!” Mrs. Huang’s eyes were wide and she was almost shouting. “I can’t take my mother anywhere. She wants to preach Jesus in the market, on the bus, everywhere we go. She always says ‘He’s coming again! He's coming again.’ I worry that she and my father have lost their minds!” Mrs. Huang was crying.

The older couple lost everything when Communist Party officials heard of their profession of faith. The kids distanced themselves from their parents because all they had in life depended on their status with the ruling Party and political powers. Mrs. Huang was the only one of the five children who still came and checked on the aging parents, who now lived like paupers.

“They’re so happy. They’re so peaceful. They believe in the Bible. And you won’t believe this, but my mother could never read. She was completely illiterate, but you put a Bible in front of her and she can read every word. It’s a miracle, but I don’t believe in it, but it is a miracle. And my father was totally healed! All that liver disease is gone.” She paused for a moment, then asked, her head tilted a little, “Are you that kind of Christian, Teri?”

“Yes, Mrs. Huang. I’m that kind of Christian. I believe God heals and that He is good and loving. I believe in miracles and that Jesus is coming again one day,” I answered.

“How can you believe that?” she asked.

I looked her square in the eye and said, “I do! With all my heart.”

Then, Mrs. Huang held out her chubby little brown hands and, much like a child, asked me, “Please help me believe.” Tears were rolling down her plump cheeks. I took her hands in mine and I prayed the only way I know how, “Jesus, please help Mrs. Huang believe.”

We were silent for a while. Then Mrs. Huang looked up. “My mother will be very happy about this conversation,” she said.

“She’s probably been praying for you for a very long time,” I answered.

That fall, Dr. Cliff and Mary Schimmels went to live on the campus and worked very closely with Mrs. Huang. They loved her, discipled her, and made arrangements for her to get a master’s degree at Lee University in the US. She came to the United States the following year, and through the Schimmels’ love and care, she made a profession of faith in Christ. Cliff baptized her. We have often commented that we have never seen a person so transformed by faith as Mrs. Huang.

Mrs. Huang returned to her home in southern China and to her university. With her new degree from the US, she was made head of her department. A pastor from the States visited her soon after her return home and said she had ignited the entire campus with her faith in Jesus. She wrote me and told me how young teachers, students, and even colleagues are coming to Christ in great numbers. She is busy with on-campus Bible studies and discipleship training. She has great faith and passion. She is a tremendous gift to her campus and she is a great gift to me, proving once again that with God all things are possible and miracles still happen. I’ve seen one, and her name is Mrs. Huang. Peace.

— Teri

Teri with Mrs. Huang in Zhejiang Province, China, in 1998.