By Jerry Dykstra

“People suddenly became aware of the importance of death and people are more willing to listen. At the same time, Christians can go to witness to them. We also went to hospitals and were quite surprised—things are quite open. The leaders wanted people to visit, not only to identify their own family members, but to encourage and comfort those traumatized patients.”

(Santa Ana, CA)—The following is [a portion of] an interview with Open Doors Director of China Training (his name is not given due to security issues). He talks about the devastating earthquake which hit China on May 12, and how Christians are making an impact physically and spiritually during relief efforts. (The earthquake left 69,000 dead, 18,000 missing and 5 million homeless.)

After your trip to Chengdu, China, can you describe what you saw when you were there?

As many of you have already seen on the news, the devastation and total disaster happening to these innocent people is extremely difficult to witness. Although we really do not know how many Christians died, the Christian ratio in Sichuan province is one of the lowest in the country (1 to 2 percent of the population.) Reports indicate that many Christians survived the earthquake.

For example, one group of Believers were praying in a rather old building on that day. Logically, when the earthquake hit the area, this building should have gone down. But the old building survived with all the Christians safe inside while other seemingly stronger buildings collapsed all around them. One Believer did not attend prayer meeting that day but went to sell vegetables at the market. She was crushed to death when the market building collapsed.

The buildings of three churches we work with are damaged so badly that they can no longer hold meetings inside and they need to be rebuilt in the future. However, we also saw the strong hand of God among the believers from the first day—Christians were driving their own cars and purchasing medicine, water and food to go to the areas which were missed by the government trucks and cars. And, without exception, before distributing those goods, Christians are telling survivors about eternal hope and eternal salvation. People are extremely touched by the fact that others would come and provide for their needs. Many of them are saying for the first time, “Thank God, thank Jesus,” and they are hearing the Gospel. These churches will continue to follow up and continue to evangelize for many weeks and months to come. These churches will be busy meeting the needs of the survivors and also telling them about eternal life.

So there are more possibilities to evangelize today than there were before?

Yes, Sichuan is a poor province and churches are not very strong. One church we visited, a small church with about 40 households, lost half of their members because the Eastern Lightning (a Chinese cult) attack caused them to discontinue believing. Pastors struggle with poor surroundings and hilly roads when they make their rounds.

But the earthquake may have changed all that. People suddenly became aware of the importance of death and people are more willing to listen. At the same time, Christians can go to witness to them. We also went to hospitals and were quite surprised—things are quite open. The leaders wanted people to visit, not only to identify their own family members, but to encourage and comfort those traumatized patients.

Christians from elsewhere in China, then, are going to help in the devastated area?

This is another “all things working together for good.” Traveling would have been prohibited because of the Olympics coming in August, but groups we work with in other cities are forming groups of volunteer helpers. One group has 17, another has 30, including nurses and doctors, who are raising funds for their own transportation and also bringing extremely generous donations. They are not only going for a few days or a few weeks, they are going to stay there long-term so they can truly express the love of God to these people who are suffering so much.