Bluefield College in China

Here they are, ready to depart from Nanjing to Beijing. They had had five full days of adventure and fun, eating all kinds of Chinese food, and exploring many parts of the City of Nanjing.

Their main assignment was to dialogue with our college students. Each class was divided into groups of from five to seven students, each of whom had one American to host. The students were to take "their" American somewhere they could get a glimpse of Chinese life, or at least the parts of the city that students frequent, to have a good time talking and laughing, and then to experience a meal together. Each American went out with seven groups of students, and collectively, they had a wide variety of experiences.

The school hosted the group to a banquet to show their appreciation for the American college students and the service that they rendered to the Chinese college students. In fact, of course, the benefit went both ways, in that the American students gained great insight into Chinese society and discovered the incredible hospitality of Chinese people.

In addition to activities with the Chinese students, the Bluefield group had a tour of the Amity Printing Company where Bibles are printed for China. In addition to the more than 32 million Bibles that have been printed and distributed all over China, there is also the Jesus Film available in DVD in a bilingual booklet of the Book of Luke or as a stand-alone DVD. In the early years, there was mainly a standard black hard-cover Bible, but now, there are Bibles with hard, vinyl, and leather covers, in brown and navy as well as black, with Jesus' words in red, in seven minority languages, with thumb indexes, gilt edges, and one Bible that includes the whole Bible and the hymnal in one volume.

Friday morning, we went to one of the migrant schools that Amity helps. Migrants in China are not in the rural areas harvesting crops, as is usually true in the U.S.; they are rural workers who have come to the city to help with the construction projects that have produced, and are producing, hundreds of tall buildings, elevated roadways, subways, inter-city highways, and countless high-rise residential areas that have transformed urban China.

Their children are not entitled to go to school in these cities unless they pay a great deal of money, and even then, they may not be accepted or may be looked down upon and ridiculed by city children. Private schools for these children have cropped up in the large cities, including Nanjing. We had arranged through Amity for our group to visit one of these schools to bring some English activities and just general enrichment, excitement, and variety to the children, giving them a sense of self-worth and encouragement.

At the main school campus, at which I participated, we divided into three pairs and spent 30 minutes in each of the classes, grades 1 through 6. The children speak little, if any, English, but smiles and body language go a long way. Everyone had a good time and was very moved at the happy tone of the children and teachers in the face of very poor facilities. The Bluefield group left a generous donation to Amity to use in their migrant school projects.

Yet another special opportunity was to participate in the oral English activity held at the Nanjing seminary each Friday night. It was a bonanza for the Chinese seminary students, with nine American college students to talk with; they covered a wide variety of topics, with questions asked by both groups.

This group of eight college students, with their campus minister, were in Nanjing only five days, but in that time, touched 250 lives on a fairly in-depth basis, and provided enrichment, variety, entertainment, and increased self-esteem for many of the 700 children in the two migrant schools.