God's Double Agent (18 page)

The dean laughed out loud. “Listen,” he said quietly, after he collected himself. “I know you’ve gotten a raw deal here, but that doesn’t mean you can expect a miracle. Students across the country have been studying for years to take this test, and they only select a few.”

“But if I did . . .” I smiled, prompting him to relent.

“All right, sure,” he said, tossing his hands up in the air. “Don’t forget I warned you.”

Few things clear the mind like desperation. As soon as the dean gave me this sliver of hope, I ran back up to my dorm room, packed my bags, and headed to Beijing. I had a friend there, who offered me a bunk and a quiet dorm room. Though my chances of succeeding were certainly improbable, at least I had a small window of opportunity. All I had to do to score well on the exam was to master English, Chinese literature, international relations, and political science. In four weeks.

No matter
, I told myself. Education wasn’t the most important aspect of my life anymore, and I trusted that God could help me get through this. If I was successful, I would get my bachelor’s degree in law, which would be a nice continuation of my years of self-study and would give me the chance to do something to help change China’s policies in some way. It would also help me make enough money to support my family back home. Though time was of the essence, I rolled out of bed every morning, got on my knees, and prayed for a couple of hours. I spoke openly and freely, laying my fears at God’s feet, praising Him for revealing Himself to me through that booklet, and asking Him to show me mercy for my future goals and dreams.

Only then would I turn my attention to studying. Since I was already pretty strong on the other three subjects, I decided to focus on Chinese literature. Of course, this was no small task since China’s prose, poetry, philosophy, and history spans over three thousand years. However, there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “One step at a time is good walking.” So every day I took steps, memorizing until my head was so full of facts I thought it might explode.

One afternoon, I squinted my eyes and shut the book I’d been looking at for hours. The lines on the pages were running together. I got up, stretched my legs, and cracked the window open just a bit. I needed some air, a chance to breathe.
How can I compete with people who’ve been studying this stuff for years?
I wondered. No one regarded me as the student with the highest IQ. I was the troublemaker and the naïve idealist, not the scholar. “God, help me,” I muttered under my breath as I walked to the mailbox for a distraction.

I got a stack of mail from the box and laid the letters on my friend’s desk. But there, on the top, was the familiar handwriting of my father. That tiny piece of home caused tears to fill my eyes. I wiped them with my sleeve and opened the envelope.

“Dear Xiqiu,” I began reading as I sunk down into a
comfortable chair away from all of my books. “Much has been going on here in our area.” He told me of the weather, the local gossip, and any local construction. Then he added, “Also, I met with Zhou, and we’ve been having some interesting conversations.”

Zhou was a legendary elder Chinese individual, about eighty or ninety years old, who had always been perceived as a wise and mysterious practitioner of feng shui and Chinese fortune-telling. As I sat there in that chair, however, it dawned on me why he was so famous. He was using parts of Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and other parts of the Old Testament to tell people things about construction and how to live. Since no one was familiar with the Bible, they believed he had access to age-old truths of which they’d never even heard.

Which, in a very real way, was true.

Was my father telling me he was now my brother in Christ? I folded the letter and placed it into one of my textbooks.
I’ll get this out when I’m feeling down
, I thought as I got back to studying. Instead of feeling sorrow and stress as I had just minutes ago, I felt peace and joy.

When the day of the test finally arrived, my mind seemed to be completely blank. After so many weeks of cramming, would any of the information be there when I needed it? I got out my pencil, turned over the paper, read the first question, and breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the answer. I wrote out my response as neatly as I could before moving on to the next question. Thankfully, I knew the answer to it too. And the next. My pencil flew over the papers, one by one. It felt very supernatural, almost surreal, because I knew how to best answer every single question. It was almost like I had a photographic memory, because I could easily retrieve the necessary information from pages I’d read about Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism. Plus, I already knew all
the international studies answers because I’d prepared for that portion of the test since childhood. I tried not to laugh in delight or cry in relief as I wrote. And when my results came back, I knew God had delivered me.

“I was accepted,” I said to the dean, after bursting into his office. “The college only accepted eighteen students, and I was number three!”

He leaned back in his chair and threw his head back in disbelief. “How did you manage this?”

“It was the Lord’s grace,” I said. That had to be the only explanation.

“Well, I’m sorry I doubted you, but no one else in our college got accepted,” he said. “And they’d been studying for years!”

As news spread across the campus that I’d been accepted into this prestigious program, people marveled and said it was a miracle.

I was thrilled to tell the news to Heidi. She’d been so patient with me through my trials. Even when I worried I couldn’t get my degree, she was right there by my side. Even when all of my other friends betrayed me, she remained loyal and true.

“I did it!” I yelled when I saw her across the cafeteria. I couldn’t wait until we were actually next to each other. Plus, I wanted everyone to know. “I was accepted.”

When she turned to face me, I saw her eyes narrow a bit in disbelief. “Really?” she asked as she walked closer to me. “You’ve already gotten the results?”

“Yes, I’m going to Beijing!”

She was thrilled that I no longer had to go back and teach. “That’ll show Joseph and the others,” she said. “Success is the ultimate revenge!”

I smiled. Heidi resented my friends’ betrayal even more than I did.

But in spite of all that we’d been through, I just hoped our relationship could survive the distance.

12

By the time Heidi and I graduated in 1991, I’d managed to dodge many pitfalls. In spite of the university’s efforts to thwart my educational goals, I was accepted into a program to get my bachelor’s degree in law. And even after they attempted to silence me about my newfound faith, I’d managed to worship peacefully below their radar. The fears that I wouldn’t be able to provide for a spouse and take Heidi as my wife were gone. I was so grateful at how things were working out for us, but I couldn’t deny the issues in our relationship.

We fought. A lot. She didn’t like the way I walked, she didn’t like the way I chewed my food, and it sometimes felt like she just didn’t like me. Of course, I sometimes did things to deserve her anger. Once, a group of us took a long-distance bus ride to tour the hometown of Confucius. The girls were taking too long to come down from their dorms, so my group of guy friends went on without them. Heidi was furious when she discovered she’d been left, and she and her friend went on a mission by themselves. Eventually, when she found me, I was eating lunch with an old friend from high school—a female friend—who happened to live in that city. Though there was nothing secret going on between us, Heidi was livid. She didn’t say a word,
but then again, she didn’t have to. Her eyes spoke volumes from across the room and I knew I was in deep trouble.

Other times I didn’t do anything to deserve her irritation, but we were cross with each other regardless. One time, it got so bad that I took a bus to the capital city of the province, got a hotel, and stayed there for a few days. As vice president of the student union, I was supposed to oversee the awards ceremony for Chinese Youth Day. Because of our fight and my need for space, I missed it. All was forgiven when I came back to my dorm and found my clothes were washed and neatly folded. I took the stacks of clothes to be an apology. Though the fighting never ceased, we never even considered breaking up.

After college, we reluctantly parted ways. She went back to her hometown to teach English in her local high school—at a salary of less than one dollar a day. I was headed to Beijing, the city I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. On the train to my new city, however, I prayed that the fighting between us would stop. Heidi had a temper, and I felt like I was walking on eggshells most of the time.

As the country rolled by outside just beyond the glass of my window, I opened up my Bible and smiled. It was a new one, a Chinese translation, which Lao Wu had smuggled in from Hong Kong. Even though I’d been a Christian an entire year, I’d never been able to read God’s Word in my own language. This made it harder for me to communicate the gospel to other Chinese people, because it was hard to find the right words to express the Christian ideas easily. Though the Chinese version was not as elegantly translated as the English one, I noticed some of the phrasing was very familiar.

Where have I seen this language?
I wondered as I turned the pages in my seat on the train.

I opened up my journal—the one I’d kept since reading the
biography of the Chinese intellectual in the back of the English department—and flipped to the first few pages. I remembered that the biography contained some of the most beautiful sentences I’d ever heard, which I had copied into my little book so I’d never forget.

I put my finger on one of the Scriptures that jumped out at me while I was reading, and flipped the pages in my journal. When I saw the similarity, I almost laughed out loud.

Almost all of those “beautiful sentences” from the biography were actually Scriptures. God’s Word had resonated so thoroughly in my heart before I’d even heard His truth!

I shut both my Bible and my journal, gazed out the window, and felt a profound sense of peace. God was in control of my soul, my education, and my relationship with Heidi. When the train pulled into the station, I was about to officially begin life as a post-grad student at the People’s University of China, and I couldn’t wait.

The first order of business was to meet my roommates. I looked down at the documents the university sent to me upon acceptance. It looked like our dorm was located right in the middle of campus, so I headed in that direction. I hoped we would all get along. Though roommates didn’t have to be my best friends, it helped if they were considerate of space and belongings . . . and didn’t snore.

“Hello,” I said, walking in with a suitcase in each hand. There were five of them, and they were also in the process of moving in. Empty cardboard boxes sat around the room, and they were already dividing up space.

“I’m Xiqiu,” I said.

One by one, they introduced each other and gave me the lay of the land. I had three drawers in the chest of drawers—the bottom three—and the top bunk to sleep on. The bathroom and showers, which we shared with the whole floor, were down the
hall, to the left. “What about this?” I asked, pointing to a rather small bookcase near the door. “May I have a shelf?”

One of the roommates, named Timothy, looked up from organizing one of his drawers. “That’s fine with me. What is that?”

I was holding my Bible, which was not a regular sight for Chinese people. During the Cultural Revolution, the government destroyed any Bibles they could find, and imprisoned, tortured, or even killed the owners. Even after Mao died in 1976, Bibles were hard to find. And that was still true when I was in college and graduate school. Though it was legal to own one, Bibles couldn’t be purchased. Most Bibles and religious materials were smuggled over the border in suitcases by courageous Americans and Brits, and then passed secretly to house church leaders, who distributed them sparingly.

“Oh, do you believe in the Jesus religion?” Timothy asked, as I slid the Bible on the shelf.