Family in Action 16,     Safely Through the Storm! -- My Life as a Disciple of Jesus in Communist China! -- Part One      DFO
By Becky

November 1997

Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family

Table of Contents
         My Childhood -- Alone at Home!   3
         Learning English and Meeting the Family  5
         The Cultural Revolution  5
         New Life!        7
         A New Job and Meeting My Husband         8
         Michael's Story  8
         Becoming of "No Reputation"      9
         Shunned by the Unit!     10
         What Is a Unit?  10
         A Friend Punished for My Sake    12
         Threatened, Beaten and Bruised!  12
         Real Love and a Real Home        13
         Forgiveness for Michael's Stepfather     14
         Tragic Confrontation!    15
         The Lord Brings a Victory from Calamity!         16
         Married Life Begins      17
         The Lord's Blessings!    17
         The Neighborhood Committee!      18
         Abortion!        18
         My Husband Arrested      19
         Our Child Is Kidnapped   19
         Comfort from Heaven!     20
         A Gamaliel for Michael!  20
         A Soul Saved in Prison   21
         The Promise of Rainbow!  22
         Our First Child -- a Miracle Birth!      22
         Pregnant Again -- and in Hiding!         23
         Another Miracle Delivery!        25
         Family Haven     26
         The Lord Prepares Me for Prison  27
         Raided!  28

         Becky, who was born and raised in Communist China, first met the Family in October 1980. After practicing her faith for 12 years in Communist China in spite of many obstacles, in 1992 she was finally able to travel to Japan to live in a Family Home there. Becky endured many forms of persecution, including well, we'll let her tell you herself. The following is Becky's heartfelt account of her life, as she related it to us, telling how Jesus loved her and kept her and brought her

         Before I begin my story, I want to say that I am only a small, lowly one in God's hands. I have made many mistakes, and feel unworthy of all the good things that have been said about me.
         Yes, I have had to fight the Enemy, but without the Lord's power, I would have had no strength to fight with, and would have surely been beaten down by my enemies. I have also been weakened by many illnesses through the years, so that now I feel I am no more than a tiny grain of sand.
         What I hope for you to see through the story of my life is how Jesus gave me His love, mercy, forgiveness, healing, and power. I pray that if you are in similar situations you will be encouraged to know how angels and God Himself have been taking care of me and my children. I want you to read in this account what God has done, His work, and not mine, because without Him I can do nothing. I'm just a puppet or a piece of the puzzle in His hand.
         So as you read this story, please don't think about me, but put your attention and your eyes on Him. See how God has planned every step of my life and how He has taught me, protected me and taken care of me in such a very dark place.
         I love you so much, my dear Family, and want to thank you all for your love, and all your prayers and help. Thank you and God bless you!

My Childhood - Alone at Home!
         I was born in China in January 1957, into a military family with a good position and good living conditions (by Chinese standards). My father is a naval officer and my mother a scientist. Both of them were well educated at a good university, and so I was also taught to be obedient, study hard, and work hard. My parents were trained to put their work before their family, so I hardly saw them when I was a child, because they were very busy at their jobs most of the time. My parents only have two children. I have a brother who is five years younger than me.
         Before I reached school age, I was sent to a boarding school kindergarten from age one and a half to seven, and only came home on the weekends. Although this was supposedly to help the parents, it was also a good way for the government to shape the minds of young children.
         When I finally started going to regular school at age seven, I was very happy to be able to live at home. Since my father served in the military and was always away on his missions, I still couldn't see him very often, but at least I could spend more time with my mother. (At that time, my brother stayed with my grandma.) Every morning my mother and I would eat a simple breakfast, such as rice porridge or steamed bread. I don't remember eating eggs or drinking milk; it seemed that those things were only for sick persons. [Editor's note: Eggs and milk for breakfast is common mostly just in North America and some West European countries.] Then my mother would leave for work and off I would go to school. At lunch time we would meet in the communal dining hall of my mother's office at the science institute, since my school was run by her state-owned company.
         Because my mother had to continue working in the afternoon, I had to go home alone around 5:00 p.m., after my afternoon classes. She gave me a key on a string around my neck so I could let myself in the house. When she came home, we would have a quick dinner together and then she would have to leave again to work or attend meetings. As a research scientist, her work had no set hours or days, and she would often not return until the middle of the night. Before she left, she would always remind me to finish my schoolwork and go to sleep by 8:30 p.m. Then she would make sure the door was safely locked from the outside, so she wouldn't have to wake me up to let her in when she got home.
         I didn't mind doing my schoolwork by myself, but the hardest part was to go to sleep by myself in a dark and lonely house. I was really afraid of the darkness, so I told myself that if I closed my eyes before I turned the lights off, then I would not see the darkness. I made a long string from the ceiling lights to my bed, so that I could turn off the lights when I was in bed. If I accidentally opened my eyes so that I would see the darkness, I could quickly turn on the lights.
         In the wintertime back then we didn't have central heating, just a little coal stove with a pipe sticking out the window. My mother explained to me how to add coals to the fire and to make sure it would still be going by the time she came home. She told me to make sure the exhaust pipe was not blocked or I would die from the fumes. Later she told me she felt very bad about leaving me in such danger. What if she had come home and found that I had died from the fumes? Or that there had been a fire and I could not get out of the house because the door was locked from the outside? Later she apologized to me many times for how she gave priority to her job and did not take good care of me when I was young.
         Being on my own at a very young age helped me to learn a lot about housework, sweeping and mopping, washing dishes, cleaning the vegetables, etc. We didn't have running water then, so I had to carry all the laundry, dishes and vegetables to a public sink. I remember one time when I was seven, I carried a tray of dishes to wash after dinner and I tripped over a stone and all the chinaware broke into pieces.
         When I was eight, for about a year my parents happened to travel to different parts of the country at the same time because of their work. So they had to let me stay with an old lady whose husband was also a military officer. She was very sweet and had children of her own. I didn't really mind staying with her, because at least I didn't have to live and go to sleep by myself as I did in my own home.
         When I was nine years old, my parents had to leave again for a long trip. This time they decided that I should live on my own during the day and stay at a neighbor's house at night. So at age nine I had to learn to take care of myself, go to school, and wash all my own clothes. I learned to do other things such as knitting, simple sewing, and shopping. Thinking back now, I feel that this lonely life forced me to learn to do many things in order to survive. Maybe this was the Lord's preparation for my later life.
         I did try my best to keep out of trouble and be a good child, both at home and at school. I ended up receiving lots of praise, rewards, and honor from school. I never wanted to fail; I wanted to be successful and perfect. Of course, now I know we'll never be perfect; only God can be perfect. But I didn't know any of this before, so all my success taught me to be proud and self-righteous. That was one of the main reasons the Lord allowed me to go through many breakings later on in my life.

Learning English and Meeting the Family
         Just before graduating from high school, I got a very bad fever which didn't go away, but stayed at around 38C or so (100.4F) for about one year. My parents took me to many top hospitals to try to find out the reason for this fever, but nobody could understand it. This unknown long-term fever destroyed my health and, in fact, I was never restored to full strength after that.
         At that time in China, if you graduated from school, you were sent to the countryside to work, to do manual labor. It was called "labor education," and we called it "re-education by the farmers." You would have to stay in the countryside for two or three years or even longer. If you really worked hard, maybe you could come back to the city where you had previously lived to try to find other work, but you had to go to the countryside first, before anything else.
         When I was 17, I graduated from high school. Because I had this fever and was in poor health, the head of a top hospital signed a medical certificate, saying that I didn't have to go to the countryside, which was very unusual. At that time I didn't know that I would live with different infirmities the rest of my life. Now I can see that my long-term afflictions did a lot for my spiritual growth, as through them I have learned so many precious lessons. The Lord has used this cross He's asked me to bear, to teach me how to live more humbly and walk with Him more closely.
         So I stayed at home, but I still didn't have any work. I spent almost five years waiting for work. (In China, if you don't have a job, they don't call it being unemployed, but "waiting for work.") During that time, I wanted to try to learn something. After the Cultural Revolution* all the universities were closed; we couldn't continue our studies that way, so I stayed at home and tried to find books to read. I didn't go out much, but buried myself in well-known literature from around the world. Books were the only things that I was fond of at that time.

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*THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
         In 1966, Mao Zedong gave his support to the radicals in the Communist Party, thus beginning what Mao called the Cultural Revolution. The radicals accused many top party and government officials of failing to follow communist principles and removed them from their positions. Students and other young people formed semi-military organizations called the Red Guard. They demonstrated in the major cities against those whom they called counter-revolutionaries and anti-Maoists. The universities were closed, and the entire educational system was disrupted. Radicals seized control of many provincial and city governments. Violence frequently broke out as competing radical groups struggled for power. Mao's attempt to put China back on a revolutionary path brought such severe chaos to the government and the economy that he had to call out the army in 1967 to restore order. In 1969, the Communist Party, the government, and the educational system gradually began to resume their normal activities, but it took years before the university system was functioning normally again. The conflict between radicals and moderates within the party continued until 1976, when Mao died and the leading radicals -- Mao's widow and her companions, known as the "Gang of Four" -- were arrested.

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         I was thinking about my life, but I didn't know what was waiting for me or what would happen, so I lived all my dreams and wishes through books. I started to write down famous sayings by famous people, and keep them. The more I read, the more I became an idealist.
         On the other hand, when I looked at the world, I was very disappointed. All my friends were in the countryside. Some worked hard; others got bitter because they had no hope. Some of my classmates became criminals and were sent to prison.
         In 1978, an English course began to be broadcast on the radio, and I began to learn English by myself. I had never learned any English before, because my foreign language subject at middle school and high school was Russian. At first many of my friends just laughed at me and said that I was stupid to try to learn English by myself at home, without any teachers. They would say, "Even some people who've studied English for so many years at university still can't find a job. Why do you want to learn?"
         I didn't know either; it seemed as though I was drawn to it somehow. At that time, doors in China had not yet been opened for modernization. Some people had money, but they could not get the things they wanted. For example, my parents had very good positions and made good money. Our living standard had always been upper-level, but there were many things we could not buy. We didn't have a TV and we didn't have a tape recorder -- just a radio. So if I wanted to learn English, I had to follow the radio schedule, half an hour each day. I tried my best to keep on going, and kept it up even though it was hard.
         In 1980, one of my mother's colleagues, a man who was going to America and learning English from an American lady, wanted to introduce me to his teacher. Because he felt so sorry for me, he told me, "I don't know if she's going to say yes, but at least we can try. If you are a lucky girl, you'll have a teacher."
         That was the turning point in my life. Little did I know that the Lord had something special up His sleeve!
         It was October 1980. That night the weather was very cold, and the wind blew fiercely. When we got to the American lady's house, she wasn't there. The man said that at least we had tried, and he asked me to leave with him. I felt that if I did that, I was going to miss the last chance I had. I begged him to wait a little longer. I said, "I don't want to go all the way back. If we wait here a little bit, maybe she will come back."
         We had come a long way to see her and so he said, "OK, maybe we can wait." We were standing in the fierce wind and it was so cold. Suddenly he remembered the lady's neighbor, who lived downstairs.
         He said, "I met this man once at my teacher's party. He is a very kind man. I think he would not mind if we wait in his house."
         So we went to the neighbor's place and knocked on the door and Abe (who was on the first Family team in China) greeted us and welcomed us in! So the first foreigner I met was not the American lady, but the Lord's emissary -- Abe! He had just arrived in China two months before I met him!
         Abe was very sweet and kind. I could hardly believe it, because we had been told that foreigners were terrible, but my first impression of him was totally different. My English was very poor, so we could not communicate very well. But Abe liked to meet people and find a way to win souls, so God brought us together. In a moment, I became the student and he became the teacher.
         I started to write a diary type of thing to him. I wrote what I thought, how I felt and many kinds of feelings that I had. I think he started to know me from this diary. I usually went to visit him once a week.
         That's how I met the Family. As the Bible says, I didn't choose God first, but God chose me first (John 15:16). Because Abe didn't yet know how to speak Chinese, I had to try very hard to learn English so that I could understand him and read the Letters, books, and listen to the tapes he had! Sometimes I had to work very hard and spend lots of time reading just one Letter, or listening to just one tape, but I liked it and I was very hungry for it. Whatever I read and heard from the Word seemed to be exactly what I was looking for!
         I remember the first Letter I read was "Sounds in the Night." It just felt so nice, and the words from Grandpa were so sweet. I'm a quiet type of person, and didn't talk much. Maybe because I had been living a lonely life since I was young, quietness was important to me; that's why the Letter "Sounds in the Night" moved me so much. I had read many novels and I liked literature, but I could feel that this Letter was very different from any of the other things I had read. It seemed to me that I felt a certain power from these writings. I didn't know God very much at that time, but I thought I could feel something drawing me.
         I also started to learn more about the Bible and Jesus. It was all very new for me. I had heard something about church, religion, and all kinds of things from films and novels, but they didn't give me a very nice feeling, because a lot of books talked about the church and church people in a negative way. Maybe some churches are really like that, but what I heard from Abe was just totally different.

New Life!
         I really liked reading the Daily Might and I still do. Whenever I read in it now, it reminds me of how I started to follow Jesus, and about the people I met at the very beginning. In the beginning the Bible was very difficult for me to understand, especially in English, but the Daily Might was really helpful. The words are simple, sweet, and spiritual.
         Two months later, at the end of that year, on Christmas Eve, I wanted to see Abe and give him Christmas greetings. I knew foreigners liked Christmas, so I phoned and asked him if I could see him on Christmas Eve. He invited me to come over and said he had something very special to show me. I thought it would be a very noisy party or some kind of loud celebration, but when I went into the house it was quiet and cozy, with a beautiful candle burning.
         Abe showed me the story of how Jesus was born and what Christmas is. Then he asked me if I wanted to receive Jesus in my heart. In the beginning I was very surprised. "Me?" I could not imagine that I would receive Jesus, because I had communist ideas and had been taught that way as a child. As I grew up I had questioned things, I had wanted to search for something else, but I never thought that I would receive Jesus.
         Abe was looking at me and waiting for my answer. I could feel something warm inside of me, so I agreed and I prayed with him. It felt so nice, so quiet, and I felt that I was lifted up somewhere else. After we prayed, Abe said "Now we are brothers and sisters -- equal, the same, because we all love God and love Jesus and we love each other."
         I believed what he said and I wanted to know if it was true, but at first I thought that God was too far away and too high for me. Just as David Berg ("Dad") says, a sample is better than a sermon, and what made me really decide eventually to serve Jesus and to follow Him was not only Abe's sermon and what he said, but what he had done for me.
         I'd never thought that people could really love each other and care about each other like he did. I knew if I asked him something, he would give me the right &&&answer and he would have the patience to tell me things that would help me. Or if I got in trouble, or was unhappy, I liked to tell him, because in those early days, I could not feel God. But I could feel what Abe showed me; I could feel God through him. Whatever he told me, or whatever he gave me to read, I felt that that was the thing that I really needed to know.
         In school we had been told that there was no Savior and that we don't need any Savior -- that we can save ourselves and we are our own masters. I believed this theory for so many years. But after I received Jesus and found the Savior, my life was changed. Like the Bible says, I was born again! With my new life, I got a new start. That didn't mean that I was going to be singing a happy song all day long. All along the way, I've had many tests, trials and tribulations, but at the same time I got so much love, help, support, encouragement and many, many miracles from God, too.

A New Job and Meeting My Husband
         That same year, before I turned 24, I got a very nice job in a publishing house. I was happy and I tried my best to be good and work hard for the company. Although I had received Jesus and had studied the Gospel and some other Bible verses, I didn't realize what was going to happen to me later. I didn't really understand what it meant to serve God. Anyway, my company liked me and they gave me good work and good conditions. They even planned to send me abroad to study.
         Just when everything was going well for me, something happened. Now I understand why. God wasn't happy with how things were going for me. It seemed like He didn't like me devoting myself completely to the System and getting so totally involved in it, so He let something happen to me to pull me out.
         One of the people in my company was someone I was going to end up getting very close to and with whom my life was going to change -- Michael, my future husband. He was four and a half years older than me and had gotten married a year before I went to work at the publishing house, so I never thought that anything would happen between us.
         Michael was so sad and disappointed with this world. He wanted to find someone to talk to, but couldn't find anybody who understood him. He liked to hear what I had to say, because as I learned things from Abe, I would tell other people. Actually I didn't really understand all I had read and heard about the Lord, but I liked to talk about it!
         So Michael thought I was different from the others and he liked to come to my office and talk to me. After some time, we became very close friends. We could share our thoughts and he told me the sad story of his life.

Michael's Story
         Michael's father had been a high-ranking official and he had had a happy childhood. Because of his father's position, their living standard was much better than other people's. However in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution started, Michael's father became a target for criticism, along with many other longtime Communist leaders. His father couldn't understand how the cause that he had given his life to for so many years was now being turned against him. Even his own wife, Michael's mother, joined the ranks of his accusers, apparently to save her own neck.
         Michael remembers how his father called him to his room one night and talked to him for a long time, admonishing him how to live and what kind of person he should be. Michael was only in his early teens at that time. In the morning there was a lot of noise and commotion in the house, and it turned out that Michael's father had committed suicide that night, after talking with his son.
         Michael's father was an orphan, so the only close family he had were his wife and his two children -- Michael and his sister who is two years older than he is. So his wife's behavior was the last straw and he took his life. When Michael discovered later that his own mother had been among his father's persecutors, he became full of hatred and bitterness toward her, no matter how hard she tried to win him back.
         After that, Michael didn't believe in love any more. He felt that if a wife could betray her husband, then where could real love be found?
         When Michael was only 15 years old, he was sent to a very distant province for his "labor education," because his family was now in disgrace. One year later, a friend of his father who was still in a high position worked it out for Michael to join the army so he could leave the countryside.
         In the army, Michael was chosen to be in a group trained similar to the Special Forces or Green Berets in the U.S. He learned to survive in difficult conditions, became an expert in martial arts to quickly defeat his opponent in hand-to-hand combat, to go on missions into enemy territory, and many other things. He was a top marksman, trained in the use of the newest modern weapons. Men with his type of training are called professional "scouts" in China.
         However, an old injury to his spine that happened while he was being "re-educated" in the countryside, caused him to have to be retired from the army after only three years. He returned home for a major spinal operation to repair the damage. His mother had re-married and his new stepfather was the president of the company where I was working.
         Michael had tried everything he could to get away from his mother, but in China you cannot just rent a house or a room by yourself. Most of the housing is owned by companies and by government offices, and you can only get an apartment if you are married. So Michael thought the only way to get away from his mother was to marry and that's what he did. He didn't care who he married, because he thought that real love didn't exist anyway. He always thought, "Look what my mother did to my father!" He was ready to do anything to get out of his mother's reach.
         So he married a girl he hardly knew and even told her why he did it. They had an agreement about it: The marriage was to make it possible for her to move up in the world, but Michael would have the right to divorce whenever he wanted to. She didn't mind Michael not loving her, because her position in society at the time was quite low. She came from a big family; her father was a factory worker and her mother a housewife. She saw their marriage only as a good opportunity to move into the upper class, and there was no love or communication between her and Michael. Because of Michael's stepfather's position, they did get a good apartment from our company after they got married.
         One day Michael told me that for a while he had wanted to divorce his wife. The reason he hadn't done it was because he had thought that even if he did, he wouldn't find anyone any different from her. But now he really wanted to divorce this girl and marry me, because he thought that I was different. That was a big surprise to me and I was so scared when I heard him say that. You will soon find out why!

Becoming of "No Reputation"
         What Michael was suggesting was quite serious, because at that time in China, divorce was considered a very bad thing. To be honest, although I could understand him, I didn't have even the faintest inclination to marry him, because I was not in love with him at all! Of course, I didn't want to be involved in the problems with his marriage, either. I knew how serious that could be; it would mean that I would become a very bad person in the eyes of others. I would be considered the guilty third party in his marriage problem, the one guilty of breaking the other two apart.
         Actually I didn't like seeing him divorce his wife, but on the other hand, I felt so sorry for him. I knew the sad story of his parents and understood that his marriage had been only to get away from his mother. I knew his disappointments, his feelings of being lost, and why he could not forgive his mother. At that time, he didn't believe in anything. He was disappointed in everything, he needed love but could not find it, and he did not even believe that real love existed. He was trapped.
         Michael worked in the library of our publishing house. He had tried his best to study philosophy, but he could not find love there either. It was hard at first for him to believe what I believed. He thought my beliefs were all very good ideas, but it was hard for him to believe that they were really true. He always asked me to prove it. I felt that if I said no to him, if I said that I didn't want to get involved in his marriage problem, it would be like telling him there was no love, no God, and no sacrifice. He even told me that if I would turn my back on him and take away his last hope for love, he'd rather commit suicide, as his father did, than continue living.
         I didn't know what to do. I didn't want him to lose all hope in life, or even to die. And most of all I didn't want him to come to the conclusion that there is no God and there is no love! It seemed like there was something pushing me. I didn't know what it was, but I couldn't stop myself, because I had to be there to prove what I believed. So we got closer and closer and I got more and more deeply involved.
         Somehow, one day people found out that he wanted to divorce his wife because he wanted to marry another girl -- me. It was like a bomb dropped in our unit*.

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*WHAT IS A UNIT?
         In China everybody belongs to a unit. A unit can be a company, a government office, or a factory; usually it is your place of work. But it is much more than a place where you work. The unit will assign you housing; arrange for your children's kindergarten, school, or university; assign you a hospital when you are sick; issue food-rationing coupons for you and your family. If you travel to different parts of the country, wherever you go you will be asked for a letter of introduction from your unit, stating your business, and without it nobody will help you. You need the unit's permission to marry, to divorce, to change your job, to move to a different part of the country, etc., etc. In exchange for all this, the unit offers lifelong job security and provides your basic needs for living.

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Shunned by the Unit!
         The unit is a power in itself, with the authority to issue disciplinary measures and punishment without interference from the courts. If the unit decides to give you some kind of severe punishment, then it can even mean that you have died as far as society goes, because once you get discharged from a unit, you cannot find another job because no other unit will accept you. So everyone tries his best to avoid problems with his unit.
         I knew if I chose to go ahead with Michael, I would be totally unacceptable to society. Many of the leaders from my unit talked with me, as they could not understand why I was getting involved in his problems. They didn't care what was happening to Michael. They thought if I stopped our relationship, then he would stop, because he had a family anyway.
         Also his stepfather was the president of my publishing house, the top leader of my unit and he wanted to try his best to save his own face and his son's marriage, because he would lose his place in society if his son divorced.
         Because my company tried to stop the divorce, it was very hard for Michael to find a willing judge, because no judge would help if the unit said no.
         I felt that I was falling into a very deep hole. All the people around me now thought that I was a very bad person and that I was breaking up someone's marriage. Nobody would believe that their divorce was part of the prior agreement about their marriage, but not because of me! I had never faced a situation like this, as suddenly I became the enemy of society.
         I tried to stop seeing Michael and I tried to say goodbye to him, because the situation was too hard to bear. I tried my best to hide from him, but he could always find me. He could even get into my home without my parents knowing it. It was unbelievable! My room was in the very end of the hallway, and he had to pass my parents' room first, then my brother's room, before reaching my room! Well, he was a professional scout after all. I just could not get away from him!
         But even though I tried, I couldn't stop being with him, because whenever he found me, I would feel sorry for him and have mercy on him. Then one summer day, I saw that he had some bruises on his arms and legs. I was so surprised, and asked him what had happened. He told me that his wife became so angry with him that she hit him and beat him very badly. I could not understand. I said, "Why didn't you stop her? Why did you just let her do it?"
         He said, "I am afraid of what my hands will do." He said that because as a scout he had been trained to fight, he could do serious harm to a person in just a few seconds even without realizing it.
         "I can't control my hands, once I have lifted them to fight!" He said that he could put her to death so easily, so he'd rather suffer her striking him than hit back. Because his wife knew very well that he was afraid of what he might do if he defended himself, she would take advantage of him and hurt him like that! It broke my heart to hear this and to see the bruises all over him.
         I couldn't bear to think of him going back to his old situation, so lonely and sad. I wasn't in love with him in the beginning, but felt that I was sacrificing myself to prove God's love. But as time passed, his persistence touched my heart, and I began to love him.
         All of my friends and even my parents did not understand me, so after a while I had to leave my family and stay somewhere else by myself. At that time I had to hide from Michael's wife and his mother, because they wanted to harm me. I had nowhere to go, so I tried to stay in my office at night. But my unit would not allow that.
         I couldn't find a house, not even just a little room, so I kept moving from place to place, drifting as the wind, a few nights here and a few nights there, for more than a year. As I think back on it now, maybe the Lord wanted me to learn living by faith, trusting Him day by day for where I would stay.
         I tried my best to let Michael know about God and to help him believe in Him, but maybe what I said wasn't so powerful. He could understand, and he knew it was good, but it was very hard for him to make his own decision to believe. Later he did change his mind. He began to believe in the Lord and to do better, and it was a big change for him! I remember Dad said some people seem to be cold and cold-hearted, but he said that maybe it's just because they're sad. That's so true.
         During the time before Michael received Jesus, I learned a lot. I tried to give him love, to help him change his mind, but maybe I was just doing it the wrong way, in my own strength. I tried my best to spend time with him, but in some ways, the more I stayed with him, the less I stayed with God. Somehow I couldn't keep the proper balance between him and God in my life. Sometimes I went too far in trying to show him love, with the result that I forsook my Bible classes with the Family and forgot God, which was bad. I felt that's why I didn't have the power to help him to believe, because I didn't know the Lord well enough myself.
         The leaders in my unit tried their best to separate Michael and me. They didn't want me to talk to him and they told many people to keep their eyes on us and report anything they saw. One day my boss called me to his office and said that I had to move to the proofreading department, which was the busiest department in our unit. Everyone in it had to finish a certain amount of pages each day. More than ten people worked together in one big room, so whatever you said or did would be seen and heard.
         Someone told me later that the leaders warned everyone in that section that I might give them strange ideas or be a bad influence. They said to them that I had done something bad to ruin someone's family, therefore they didn't want people to talk to me much. Maybe they were afraid that one day people would find out the truth.

A Friend Punished for My Sake
         So when I went to my new section, most people were afraid to talk to me. Some young people were quite friendly, though, but they had to talk to me secretly because they didn't want to get in trouble. I knew that, so I tried to keep quiet. I didn't want to bother anyone.
         My boss was a very nosy woman. She sat at the desk beside me so that she could watch me very carefully, and she tried her best to give me a hard time. Because Michael's stepfather was the top leader, this woman thought that if she did a very good job watching me, she would get promoted. She watched others too, because she wanted me to feel lonely and she didn't want me to talk to anyone else.
         One of my new colleagues was a very kind young man. He was not afraid of the nosy boss, so sometimes he talked with me. If I was in a difficult situation, he would come to help me. He told me, "I don't believe what they say. I can understand you." He liked to talk with me because he had some Christian friends himself. We talked about faith and God and he could understand everything.
         He kept on being friendly towards me, but one morning when I came to work I found that someone had taken his place! We have a very old saying that says you have to kill a chicken to scare the monkey. In a circus the monkeys are sometimes disobedient, so the tamer has to kill a chicken to scare the monkeys as a warning about what would to happen to them if they don't obey. I knew they moved the young man to another place in order to frighten the others and warn them of what would happen if they continued doing something the leaders didn't like.

Threatened, Beaten and Bruised!
         One day I was called to the leader's office and Michael's mother was there. She said that she wanted to talk to me and she said, "Don't spread your strange ideas to my son. I heard you believe in God. Why do you believe in that? You will make him become a dreamer! You have been a very bad influence! You had better stop! Don't talk to my son again!"
         She also said, "You'd better not spread your beliefs to anyone else, and don't you believe those things yourself either! We're a communist country and he's from communist parents and so are you. So we don't believe in God! There is no God!" She warned me that if I continued as I was, I would get into more serious trouble.
         So as you can see, many people tried their best to give me a hard time. Sometimes I really thought that I could not take it any more, and at night I cried and cried. I listened to the songs from the tape "Peace in the Midst of the Storm" again and again and again. It touched my heart. Also I read the Letter "Beauty for Ashes," and it really comforted me.
         During that time, I also got threats from people who said some very frightening things -- that they would kill me or beat me up. I knew these things were coming from Michael's wife or his mother.
         Before Michael got married, he didn't know his wife very well, and they had made an agreement that they wouldn't have a child, in case they decided to divorce. His wife had agreed and said that this was no problem. Later, his wife got pregnant, but she didn't tell Michael until she was six months along. She had hidden the fact by telling him that because she had arthritis, she needed her mother's care, and she went to stay in her mother's house for a few months. After six months, she came back and told him, "Now we're going to have a child, so you can't divorce me any more, because of the child!"
         Before that, she had had to keep quiet about the divorce because it was part of her contract with Michael, to allow her into the upper class. But after she learned about me, she had a target and a means to lie to the public. She made people think that it was I who had destroyed her marriage. Things were getting more complicated.
         As time went on, there was one hot day when the nosy boss told me that somebody was waiting to see me at the gate. Actually she knew who it was, but she played a trick on me and didn't say who it was. It was Michael's wife.
         When I went outside to meet her, she said, "I have many spies. I know everything you have ever done. You're a prostitute!" She said, "I will kill you today!" She jumped on me and started scratching, pinching and beating me. She tried to push me to the ground and cursed me very loudly.
         A lot of people began to come out to see what was happening. She shouted and yanked me around very forcefully. She knew that she had many supporters, but I had none. I had some mercy on her in my heart, though, as I knew she must be having a hard time, so I tried my best to bear it. I didn't curse her back, and I didn't do anything to her. I just tried very hard to stand up and not fall to the ground.
         Because she saw many people coming, she got bolder and bolder. She shouted, hit me very hard, and scratched me until my arms were bleeding. Some people in the crowd couldn't bear it any longer and they said, "Stop! If you have something against her, you can talk! You don't need to scratch her like that!" They pulled her away and then took me to the office.
         My heart was broken, not because I was bleeding and bruised, but because I didn't know what to say to her. She had tried very hard to get a higher position through her marriage. If she got divorced, she would have to go back to her previous low place in society. She would be poor and low and she would lose too much in the System way of thinking. She thought that the reason Michael wanted to marry me was because I was from a military family and my background matched his. So the saddest thing was that there was no way I could communicate with her and help her understand.
         On that day, after seeing how angry and violent she was, many in my office said, "If I was her husband, I would have divorced her a long time ago!" After that, she still kept coming, but people would stop her at the office door, because they couldn't take her violence and screaming.

Real Love and a Real Home
         During that time I received a very low salary, the equivalent of $10 U.S. a month. I really wanted to buy a tape recorder so I could listen to Word and Family music tapes, but even a simple one cost a lot. So I bought one on monthly payments. Most of my salary every month went for the tape recorder and I had very little left, maybe about two or three dollars. Since I had left my parents, I had lost my home and help. I ate very simple food and sometimes didn't eat, because I didn't have enough money.
         My health had always been poor, and with this poor diet I became weaker and weaker. Once I got a very high fever and my blood pressure became very low. It dropped to below 40, so I fainted and I almost died from this. After that the &&&Family asked me, "You're always sick. Do you need any help?"
         I said, "No, no, I don't."
         Abe said, "Please don't be proud. If you need something or any help, just tell us and we can help you."
         I said, "No, I don't."
         But Abe said, "How did your health get so poor? Do you get enough food to eat?" He asked me about my situation and then he said, "Oh, we can help you! We have God! God will supply all your needs."
         He showed me the verse that says that (Philippians 4:19) and he explained, "If you receive help from others, that means you give those that helped a blessing too. If they give, God will supply them with more."
         I was very surprised, as I've never heard it that way. I thought it was not good to ask people for something and I never knew that if you let people help you, it was their chance to get a blessing too. That was very new for me.
         Abe told me, "If you really need some help, don't refuse it. That's a kind of pride. You don't have to be like that. One lesson you need to learn is to be humble. What we give you maybe isn't very much for us, but for you, it can help you survive. We will not give you more than you need, just what you really need. OK?"
         What he said really touched me and I cried. I felt like I had lost my home, but I had found another one with someone who I could trust. Because Abe knew I wasn't humble, he always helped me without me knowing it. Every month after that, I always found little envelopes in my bag with some money inside. He helped to pay for the tape recorder every month, too. God bless him!
         I received help from the Family many times like this. Once in the winter, one of them had a dream that I was very cold, and soon after they shared some of their clothes with me. They knew that I had no money to buy them. I was so moved; I felt warm inside. I knew that I had found a real home!

Forgiveness for Michael's Stepfather
         By now Michael's stepfather, the president of our company, had been persecuting me for more than two years. But one day at work, a lady who was quite friendly came to me and said that she had found out something very strange. She saw Michael's stepfather walking back and forth in front of her office. Normally the president never goes to other people's offices. If he wants someone, he will call for them. She said he walked back and forth and poked his head into the room and it looked like he was looking for something.
         The lady said, "Hello, sir. Do you need any help or anything?"
         He said, "No, no," and went away. But after a few minutes, he came back again and said to the lady, "I just want to tell you something." The lady was very surprised, because normally the president never talked to office people like that.
         She invited him in and he said that he just wanted to ask the lady to tell me that he felt very sorry about what he had done to me. The lady was very surprised and said "Why?"
         He said, "I know that she's a good child and I shouldn't persecute her like I have. But I had to do it, because of my position, my wife, and the demands of others. But I know that I shouldn't do it. If my son hadn't gotten married, then there wouldn't be any problem. I would have liked to let my son marry her, but now it's all too late. I'd always liked her. I just want to ask you to tell her what I said. And tell her that I'm sorry about everything and I want her to forgive me."
         A few days later, he died of heart trouble. Then I understood that all of this was from God. This man wanted to get forgiveness before he died. Of course, I've forgiven him.
         In China if a top boss dies, then the whole company goes to the funeral. In our company everyone thought that I hated him and if he died, I would be very happy and wouldn't attend his funeral. But I went. I just wanted to let him know that I had forgiven him and I knew that he was sorry.
         People said, "You don't hate him? He's done so much evil to you!"
         I said, "No. To be honest, I hated him before, but now I can see the power of God. If he felt sorry, that means God had worked on him and made him feel sorry. If he's sorry, then I should forgive him, and now I don't hate him anymore. Also, I hope that he will find forgiveness and go to Heaven."
         I could see that he had felt God's presence before he died. I prayed for him, that he could get saved after he died. That's the reason why I attended the funeral.

Tragic Confrontation!
         Neither Michael nor his wife were at the funeral, but I was there. People thought it would be the other way around. Afterwards, Michael's wife got so angry because I went to the funeral and she didn't. She felt that she had lost face, so she started making trouble again.
         This time it was more serious. She bothered people at my father's military headquarters and my mother's science institute and made so many threatening phone calls on their special hot lines that their phone lines got clogged up!
         My parents had always had very good reputations in their units, so they felt that they had lost face. They couldn't bear it, and they got angry with me. My brother was working at the same institute where my mother works. So he felt that he lost face too. It made him get very upset and blame everything on me. Because he was angry, he pushed me and I knocked my head against the wall.
         I ran away, but later Michael saw that I had a bruise on my head and he asked me about it. If I had known then what was going to happen, I would never have told him the truth. After he heard what had happened to me, he said that he wanted to talk to my brother. I thought that he might just want to explain our relationship, so I took him home that evening. Unfortunately, he and my brother got into a fight!
         From outside his room, I heard my brother say that he didn't want to talk with Michael. Before I realized what was going on, I heard a noise which sounded like something had fallen to the floor. Everything had happened so fast. I went into his bedroom and there was my brother, lying on the floor with blood on his face! It looked like he had lost consciousness. Oh, no! What had Michael done?
         I suddenly remembered his scout training, and how he was taught to defeat his enemy in just a few seconds. He had told me that if he was involved in any fight, it could have a very serious ending! So that was what had happened with my brother.
         My parents ran into my brother's room, crying with grief, for they thought that he was dead. I was shocked! I ran to Michael, who was in my room by then, and I said, "What have you done to him?!"
         He said, "I'm really sorry! I don't know! He asked me to leave the room. I didn't want to. I think he tried to force me to leave. I lost control and I didn't even realize what I was doing, and then I saw him fall to the floor. I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!"
         I knew him, and I believed what he said, but how could I explain this to my parents? What if my brother was really dead? I left Michael in my room and went see my brother. There my parents were crying and trying to wake my brother up. When they saw me, they cried bitterly and said, "What have you done?"
         My mind went blank. I had no words to say. I was staring at my brother, trying to figure out if he was dead. Suddenly he woke up. When he saw me right there in front of him, he said, "It's just because of you! Whatever happened was all because of you!"
         I understood him -- his heart was broken! I thought, "Thank the Lord! He is not dead!" But before everyone could begin to think straight again, my brother struggled to stand up. We were trying to figure out what he was going to do, when he suddenly ran towards me. I guess he didn't want to see me, and he tried to push me out of his room.
         When he pushed me, my head knocked against the edge of the door. I felt dizzy, but before anything else happened, my brother once more fell to the floor and lost consciousness again! Very shortly, I felt the room start to spin around me and I, too, fell to the floor.
         It was like the end of the world for my parents. They called an ambulance and sent both of us to the military hospital. Both of us were sent to the emergency room. My condition was not so bad, and it didn't take too long for me to wake up. But my brother's condition was very serious. He was in a coma for quite a long time!

The Lord Brings a Victory from Calamity!
                  How sad it was to fight like this! At that time, I was very young in the Lord and Michael wasn't saved yet. If we had known the Lord more, the fight might have been avoided. That was our mistake. But the Lord even used our mistake to resolve Michael's long-term marriage problem, as you will see. And after a few years, the forgiveness of the Lord melted the bitterness within my family, and my parents and my brother all got saved. They are very favorable to our work now.
         To return to the story, after Michael left our house, he felt that he had lost his last hope to be with me. He thought that my parents would never forgive him for what he had done to my brother. Also if my brother had suffered severe harm, Michael knew he might be sent to prison.
         He went back to his own home, hopeless, and found his wife was not there. He knew that she might hide herself after she had caused so much trouble with my parents. It was the middle of the night and there were no buses any more, so Michael walked two hours to her parents' house and found her there.
         Seeing Michael with blood on his shirt, she asked him what had happened. Michael told her the truth. She knew that the trouble which she had caused had to be serious, to make Michael fight. So when she heard that Michael had broken his own pledge to avoid fighting, she knew that he would mean business this time with her.
         Michael told her, "Please don't ever do such things to bother Becky's parents again. If you really don't want to divorce, come back home with me. I don't need a divorce any more. I don't think her parents will ever forgive me."
         When Michael's wife realized she'd caused all this trouble, she was very afraid. She was afraid that my brother would die and she herself might be in trouble. Also she was not so sure that Michael would not take revenge on her, because she could see that he had totally lost hope. So immediately she said, "I don't want to go back with you. I will see you tomorrow morning in court." Michael was shocked!
         Michael met her in the court the next morning, while both my brother and I were in the hospital. In front of the judge and Michael, she said that she wanted the house, the money which they both had in the bank, and everything in the house except for the child. The baby girl was only five months old at the time. She said that if Michael agreed to this, she would divorce him.
         Because they both were in agreement, the divorce didn't take a long time but was done in only one day. When I got out of the hospital, Michael told me, "I'm divorced!" I was so shocked!
         "How is that?" I asked.
         He said, "I just asked her to come back with me and told her that I didn't need a divorce any more. But she thought I was going to take revenge on her, so she said she wanted to divorce. She knew she had caused big trouble!"

Married Life Begins
         After Michael's stepfather died, his mother lived in a big apartment by herself. Even though she was lonely, Michael never wanted to visit her. But that day Michael took me to his mother's home, and on the way we picked up the child Michael had with his former wife. That was the first time I had seen the child. She was very small, weak and skinny, because Michael's wife never really took care of her, but just gave her to a maid.
         That was 1982. I was 25, Michael was almost 30 and the baby was only five months old. So the three of us got together as a new family. Because we had nowhere to go, we were living at his mother's apartment with his mother. For Michael's mother, it was better to accept me and live with me than to lose her son again, so she shared one of her three rooms with us.
         At that time everybody needed permission from their units to get a marriage paper from the court. Because of our situation, the unit would not give us permission, so we lived together without a legal marriage. Of course, people didn't like that.
         At the very beginning, we hardly knew how to get by. I had no experience raising children and the child was in very poor health. We prayed and tried our best to feed her. Our neighbors were very nosy and stared at us as though we were very strange people!
         I was also very sick at that time, so I got permission from the hospital to stay at home rather than go to work. Because of that, I was able to look after the child and we didn't have to send her to kindergarten. That was very unusual too, because normally in China a young couple sends their child to kindergarten or to the nursery, even when they're very young. Or they would ask a grandmother or a maid to look after the child, so both parents could go to work.

The Lord's Blessings!
         In the beginning things were very hard, as Michael's wife had kept everything, even both Michael's and the baby's clothes! We had no possessions and no money. We had a very low salary that we used to feed the child.
         On the other hand, we had gotten together, we had the child and we were happy. The baby began to get better. She learned to sit up, to walk, and she started talking. She called us Mommy and Daddy and we were so happy!
         I gave lots of love to this baby and she loved me and didn't want to leave me. She didn't know about her natural mother and it was not very hard for me to get close to her, as she needed so much love. It was a real comfort for me to be able to be close to her.
         At that time, Michael received Jesus. We often went to see the Family and have fellowship with them. Things seemed to be getting better and better.
         Our unit continued to persecute us, though, but that wasn't important to us, because we were together and we did have people behind us. Like the Bible says, "Two are better than one, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow" (Ecclesiastes 4:9,10). So we prayed together, helped and encouraged each other, and were united in fighting the obstacles we faced.

The Neighborhood Committee!
         Before we got our marriage paper, we heard that Michael's former wife had married again, this time to a military man. In her present position and having the house and everything she and Michael had owned, it was very easy for her to get married again. Even though she had all of that, though, she often still bothered me. She continued her threats and sometimes came to our house after Michael went to work and stood on the street cursing me very loudly.
         She would call all the neighbors out and lie to them, telling them how bad I was, that I slept with many foreigners, and that I had a black child. She even said that she had even seen the black child with her own eyes!
         So at first the neighbors didn't talk to me and were very afraid of me. I had arrived there very suddenly, and was living with a divorced man and his child without any marriage papers. On top of that, the ex-wife of this man was always at the door, cursing. So I can understand how they felt. In that area, they had never seen people live together without a marriage paper. So the "neighborhood committee" was very strict with us. They would come and ask a lot of questions.
         The neighborhood committees are special organizations that operate everywhere in China. They are organized by retired people and housewives who are supposed to keep an eye on things happening in their area for the local police. Sometimes they are overzealous and stick their nose into other people's business, as they have nothing else to do all day.
         One thing we remembered was what we'd read in the Word: "If you give love, you will receive love." Of course, in the very beginning people didn't understand us, but we tried our best and did what we could. We tried to give them a smile, to respect them, and little things like that. So after a few years, all the neighbors became very kind to us.
         Sometimes the police in the neighborhood would give us a hard time, but our neighbors would stand up for us and say good things about us to persuade the police or the government not to bother us. We often had fellowship with our brethren in our house and a lot of people would visit us. Sometimes the police would say, "We noticed that so many people go in and out of their home. We can see a lot of bicycles around the house every day!"
         But our neighbors would defend us, and say "Maybe most of those bicycles are ours, because we go to see them." Because most of the neighbors in our big compound had held high positions in the past, the police respected whatever they said.
         Once one of the neighbors was talking to me and she said, "You know, when you first came, Michael's wife and some people said that you were very bad, and we thought that way too. But now after several years, we see what you're doing. We can feel that you are just different, because you believe in God. Now we know that those people were just lying. We understand that you're a Christian and that you have your own beliefs and we think that you're very kind." That really encouraged me.
         So God used our neighbors to protect us. We were very thankful for this. We saw the result of our prayers in God's miracles and how He kept us in many ways.

Abortion!
         After a while, I felt like I was pregnant, but I didn't really pray or think much about it, as I had many System ideas. I didn't really know what the Word says about children.
         In China the policy of "Only One Child" is enforced. The government passed birth control laws stating that no one could have more than one child. If anyone dared to break the birth control law, they would receive both "Public Punishment" and "Economic Punishment." If you already have a child in your family, even if it is not your own biological child, you are not allowed to have a second one, a child of your own biologically.
         Abortion is very normal and common in China. We had Michael's daughter then, so I thought that I would not be allowed to have my own child. Plus we didn't have a marriage paper yet.
         I had a check-up and when it was confirmed that I was pregnant -- maybe a little over a month -- I had an abortion very soon. The day after the abortion, I got a call from the Family. They asked me how I was, and I said, "Oh, I'm not so well. I just came back from the hospital because I had an abortion."
         When they heard that, they were really shocked. So the Family tried to teach me about children. After that I started to understand that all children and babies are from God and that it is not right to kill them. The Family showed me many verses about it, and I learned that babies are God's gifts to us.
         I really felt sorry and I wanted to repent, pray, and have another chance to have a child, with or without a marriage paper. I decided that if I got pregnant again, I would stand up by faith and go ahead and have the child.

My Husband Arrested
         Soon after we began to live together, we understood why we had not been given permission to have the marriage paper. The new president of the unit (the lady who had replaced Michael's stepfather) was planning something very evil.
         Michael's mother was not happy with the new president, because she found out that this new leader had done something bad to Michael's stepfather before he died. So Michael's mother started to complain to the higher authorities about the new president. The new president then wanted to threaten Michael's mother. She thought she could use Michael's fight with my brother to get him put in prison, and that was what she did! It was quite complicated and sad, but as you will see, in the end God used all these events for good.
         A few months after we began to live together, I got a phone call after Michael had gone to work, telling me that Michael had been arrested at the unit and the accusation was assault.
         Michael was thrown in prison and I felt totally lost. I didn't know if he was going to be able to come out again or not or what would happen. If Michael wasn't at home, I didn't know what his ex-wife would do to me and the child, with me all alone.

Our Child Is Kidnapped
         My health had never been restored from the time I was weakened by the difficult living conditions before Michael and I moved in together. I was sick most of the time, and very thin and weak. People often said that even the wind could blow me away! One day I had a very bad fever and couldn't get out of bed. Suddenly, Michael's ex-wife and her mother ran into the house. Both of them pulled me out of bed and beat me badly. They ripped my clothes and shouted and grabbed the child. The poor little girl, who was about one year old, didn't know what was happening. She didn't know her biological mother at all.
         When they took her away, she was so frightened. She cried and cried for Mommy and stretched her little arms out towards me! That tore at my heart, and I almost forgot that she was not my own child. I was devastated and tried to take her back, but Michael's mother pushed me very hard and said, "Just let them take the child. If you don't let them have her, they will come back later!"
         When the neighbors heard noises, they all came down and crowded around the apartment, asking what was happening. Michael's ex-wife and her mother stood at the gate shouting, "We want to take our child back, because we don't want this prostitute to raise our child, to teach her to become one too!" While they were shouting, the little girl was terribly frightened and she started to scream.
         Michael's mother locked me inside the apartment so that I couldn't get out, but I didn't have any strength to get out anyway, because I was very sick, broken, and beat up. Hearing the child screaming outside broke my heart into pieces. I felt like I had lost my own child.
         In a way, she was my child. I had cared for her for so many months. I was the very first person whom she called Mommy. I helped her learn to walk the very first step in her little life. I even had an abortion because I had her first. Her biological mother didn't even nurse her after she was born, but gave her to a maid to look after. So I counted her as my own dear child.
         My tears were falling like a flood. My heart was totally broken. That day was the last day I was with her, because I've never seen her again. I have prayed for her and asked God to keep and protect her no matter where she might be. I know that He will not fail me!
         I tried my best to get this little girl back, but the court gave custody to the mother. Michael even tried again after he was released from prison, but his ex-wife said that I didn't have the good character needed to train her child. Since Michael's ex-wife had re-married, her new husband wanted his own child. As I explained earlier, if she kept that little girl, the government would not allow a second one. So they didn't keep the child to be with them, but gave her to her grandmother. Later, Michael's former wife had her new husband's child.

Comfort from Heaven!
         So Michael was in prison and the child was gone. I felt so lost! My health became worse and worse because my heart was torn apart. I went to see the Family and we prayed together and they gave me a lot of comfort.
         One night as I was sleeping, I don't know whether I had a dream or a vision, but whatever it was, I felt it was real. I saw a bright blue sky with three very bright lights shooting down at me! In the middle was a huge cross with somebody in the middle of it, sitting on a throne. It was so bright and dazzling that I couldn't see the shining face so clearly.
         The cross was made by the lights, not material or stones, just lights. It was coming down close to me. There was no sound, just the sight of it. I thought I could feel it, so I stretched out my arms to try to touch the lights. -- Then suddenly I woke up. I felt that it must be from God as a kind of encouragement, and I felt like He was sending His strength down to me.
         I got the verse, "When I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10). I really felt that way, because at the time I was so weak, too weak to fight all the power of the communist system. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't get either Michael or the child back, and I was very weak physically as well. But I believed that God would do something about it, and later He did!

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A Soul Saved in Prison
By Michael
         Before I came to know Jesus, I worshipped writers and musicians like Jack London, Hemingway, and Beethoven for their strong character. My idea was that man was his own god. Even after I got saved, I was still full of pride and self-righteousness and did not understand that the greatest people were the humblest ones. Because of that I failed to grasp the real meaning of Jesus' love.
         Still thinking that I could solve my own problems I really made a mess of things when I heard that the family of my girlfriend (Becky) did not agree to our marriage and that they even beat her up. I got so angry and hurt in pride that I couldn't control myself. Without praying or even thinking about it I went to their home and got into a fight, totally forgetting that I was a child of God and breaking His law of love.
         So God had to send me to prison for three months to teach me a good lesson and wake me up from my pride. I was put into a small damp cell with many others. It was really crowded and everyone was afraid of the policemen and their electric rods. But as soon as the police disappeared, people started talking, bragging about their crimes, etc. I could really see how nothing man was without God. It was the most horrible place I had ever been. I kept quiet, praying and thinking about my life, slowly understanding more about Jesus and what I had done wrong.
         My heart was full of gratitude towards the Family, because now I could see how they kept loving and forgiving me even when I was so proud and stubborn, how they had so much patience with me. God bless them!
         I asked Jesus to forgive me and to help me follow His law of love. I felt like I had thrown off such a heavy load of pride and self-righteousness. I felt like a new man, made by His loving hand, and just wanted to be a small person, a tool for Him!
         While praying about all these things, I felt somebody staring at me. When I looked up, there was a young man, who was somehow different from the rest. I felt like God wanted me to witness to him. After praying about it, I slowly moved in his direction and we introduced ourselves in a low voice.
         He told me about his love for literature and his hatred of the System. That's why he became a troublemaker and was put in jail. As I talked with him, he seemed so hungry for my words. The next day we talked some more, and he finally turned to God. He said, "I'd like to believe in God. It seems the spirit world would be much better and more beautiful than this world, but I guess it's just a dream."
         I said, "I believe in God. It is the truth; it's not a dream.
         He then said, "According to the Ten Commandments I committed a sin. I stole. I'm afraid God cannot forgive me."
         After I explained to him about forgiveness and salvation through Jesus, I asked him if he would like to pray, to which he eagerly replied, "Yes!" So we held hands in the cell and prayed. Afterwards he was so happy! He said, "I wasted so many years in the System and came to Jesus so late, so now I want to serve Him for the rest of my life!" He cried like a small boy.
         Just before I was released, I explained to him about God's protection and prayer power and said that I would do all I could to come and visit him, no matter how far away they sent him. (People like him are usually sent to labor camps in the frontier regions.) His last words to me were, "I'll give all my life to the Lord and serve Him forever!"

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A Gamaliel for Michael!
         After Michael was arrested and before the child was taken away, I found out that I was two months pregnant. But because so many things were happening and because there must have been things that the Lord still wanted me to learn, suddenly one night I had a miscarriage and lost this baby at about three months. Needless to say, I was heartbroken.
         Meanwhile, the new president of our unit tried to persuade the court to send Michael to a faraway prison. She even asked my parents to be present at court to make an accusation against Michael, but my parents refused to do so. It was a situation in which only God could help. We prayed and waited. I asked the Lord to heal my brother, to forgive all our stupid mistakes, and to deliver us out of trouble.
         Our prayers were answered! Nearly three months after Michael was arrested, somebody introduced us to a famous lawyer, a professor in a top university's law department! I talked with him and he said, "Of course Michael made a terrible mistake, but it has been used by your unit. He needs to take the consequences for the fight, but not in this way. The way he is being handled is wrong and your unit shouldn't be able to do that."
         He had a lot of influence, as many judges, prosecutors and lawyers had studied under him. In fact, the prosecutor in Michael's case had been one of his students, and he was very surprised to see this well-known man, his former professor, come to Michael's defense. It became clear that the unit was just blowing the whole matter out of proportion as an excuse to get Michael into trouble. The professor won the case!
         So the case was closed and Michael was released after three months in prison, thank You Jesus! When the new president of our unit heard Michael had been released, she was shocked. The professor also gave the unit a stern rebuke for their actions. It all happened according to God's plan, as no one had thought Michael could ever possibly be set free. Praise the Lord!

The Promise of Rainbow!
         As I mentioned before, in China you are only allowed to have one child and the government is very strict about it. A married couple even has to ask permission to have their first and only child. If you don't have permission, even if it is your first child, you have to get an abortion whether you like it or not! To have a child before marriage is considered very bad, and your unit will punish you for it. It is considered a very serious problem.
         After Michael came back home, I told him the news about his child being taken away and also about the miscarriage. We prayed together and asked the Lord for His help! I thought that maybe the Lord didn't trust me to have a child because of the abortion I'd had.
         One day, Michael had a dream. In his dream there was a beautiful rainbow across the sky! He said that if the rainbow was the promise from God in the old days that He wouldn't send a flood again, then this rainbow must mean that we would not lose a child again. We prayed and thanked the Lord for His promise and His forgiveness. We decided that if we would have a child in His time, we would name her "Rainbow," to remind us of His grace toward us.
         I didn't get pregnant right away; the Lord had His plan for us. During the time we were waiting for a child, the Lord made a way for us to get the marriage paper! Then our situation totally changed, and we were legally married. The Lord created the perfect circumstances for His new disciple to be born!
         That was 1983. On Christmas Eve, we got together with the Family, and one of our prayers was for me to get pregnant again. We knew God had forgiven us for the abortion I'd had. We felt He just wanted to teach us how precious children are, and that He wanted to see if we would really be thankful to have children.

Our First Child -- a Miracle Birth!
         A few months later I got pregnant, and Rainbow was born on October 27th, 1984. She was a wonderful gift from God! I didn't know that the Lord would use Rainbow's birth to teach me a lesson of faith and make her a testimony to others.
         I had the delivery at a military hospital. Because Rainbow was in the head down position, the midwife said that everything would be fine. But when her head started to come out, they found that she was in the face down position instead. The baby could not come out that way, so she was pushed back in again and I was asked to stay in a certain position to wait for her to turn over.
         I could not describe how painful that was! Every minute was too long for me. I prayed for God's mercy and hoped that she would turn over right away. I didn't know how long the wait lasted, until once more Rainbow started to come out. But she hadn't turned over! The midwife had to do the same thing all over again.
         I felt very discouraged. The worst thing was that Rainbow was pushed back in three times, till both she and I almost lost our heartbeat. Then the midwife told me that if the baby would not turn over in a few minutes, they would have to give me a cesarean. Since both of us were in a very critical state, they thought that we could not wait any longer.
         Michael was not with me, as in China the husbands are not allowed to be with their wives during deliveries. The doctor came and told me that my husband needed to come right away and sign for the operation, and if he couldn't, they might have to do the cesarean without his signature.
         They were getting ready to transfer me from the delivery room to an operating room, and I felt I was fainting with pain. I had already suffered so long with the contractions, why did I have to suffer the cesarean on top of it?
         I prayed wholeheartedly with my last bit of strength and asked the Lord for His mercy and for a miracle. I claimed the promise of the rainbow He had given us. It strengthened my faith and I prayed that He would keep us. Before the doctor finished the preparations for surgery, Rainbow tried to come out again and I started to faint. The doctor had to put a mask on my face to give me extra oxygen and save my life!
         I cried out to the Lord with my faintest breath: "Please do a miracle and turn the baby over! You can do anything, Lord!" A few minutes later, Rainbow turned over! What a miracle! The midwives and doctor were very surprised. They told me that it was a miracle! What a witness of His love!

Pregnant Again -- and in Hiding!
         When Rainbow was about four months old, I felt something funny in my tummy. I told my husband and he said maybe I hadn't eaten properly. Because I have a serious gallstone problem and have always had pain or discomfort in my tummy, I thought maybe he was right. We would have never thought that I would be pregnant again, because we had read in a book that as long as you keep nursing, you won't get pregnant.
         One month later, when Rainbow was five months old, I felt something move inside of me and I suddenly realized I was pregnant again! Honestly, I must say that I was a bit nervous in the beginning, because I didn't know if I had enough faith to go through this ordeal or not.
         Under the very strict birth control law, hardly anyone dares to have a second child. In the city, if you don't go to the hospital and abort your second child, you will lose your job. In the countryside people sometimes have a second child, because the farmers need male laborers to do the work. If they only have one child who is a daughter, they want to try again so they will have a boy to do the work in the fields.
         People who want to have another baby often go into hiding or run to their relatives. But sometimes they get caught by the birth control office or the local government and they are sent to the hospital to have an abortion. If you still refuse, they can demolish your house and take away everything, so that often relatives get frightened and hand over the person who is pregnant.
         Even if you can somehow get away with having a second child, you could never get away from the two kinds of punishments: The "Public Punishment" is a statement to the public that you have done something bad. It is also used to threaten others, so that they will not do the same thing. The "Economic Punishment" makes it difficult for you to survive. You will not get any government benefits for this child, such as health insurance, food rations, a place in school or university, prospects of a decent job, etc. On top of that, you have to pay a huge fine!
         I knew I would never go to the hospital to have an abortion this time. I decided to ask God to give me the strength to keep this child and to fight, even though I didn't know what would happen to me. We prayed with the other brethren there about my situation and the Lord showed us that the Family would help me with this baby. We would try to keep it a secret and wouldn't let anybody know. After the baby was born, a Family couple wanted to adopt the baby to save its life.
         We were able to keep my pregnancy a secret for about six months. I hid myself at home. If I had to go out, I wore loose clothes. Nobody could see it at first, but after six months, the baby grew very fast. It was impossible for me to keep it a secret any longer! We didn't know what to do, because we had nowhere to go!
         We had lived with Michael's mother for about two years by now. In a way she was happy that her son was living with her. We tried to take care of her and she became a lot milder than before. When I was about seven months pregnant, though, she suddenly changed her behavior. She became very noisy around the house and used every excuse to make trouble. She put notes around the house telling us to clean up her mess, save water, save electricity, save gas, etc. She would scream and shout around the house. It was as if the Lord wanted to show us what kind of person Michael's mother really was.
         We felt a very strong warning from the Lord that we needed to move out of her house, but we couldn't find a place. Soon after that I was able to discuss the situation with the Family and they agreed I should move out as soon as possible. So we told one of our very close friends that I was pregnant and that I had to move out before anyone found out. Thank the Lord, this friend agreed to let me stay with her for awhile. (We couldn't stay with the Family, as Chinese were not allowed to stay in the hotel where the Family was living.)
         We took Rainbow and moved to this girl's home. I hid there for a few months and never went outside. Meanwhile I quit my job. That meant that we had to live on Michael's salary. How did we live? The Family supported us every month, God bless them!
         Because I was hiding and didn't get any checkups or tests, no hospital would accept me for the delivery. I also couldn't go to the hospital and tell them that this was my second baby, as I was afraid they would try to get rid of the baby at the last moment and tell me it was an accident. So I considered having the baby at home by myself.
         As the date got closer, the Family suggested we try to find a way to get a checkup. We prayed and asked God to do a miracle, and send someone to help us.
         During my last month, a friend of the girl I stayed with came to visit her one day. When he saw me, he was very surprised.
         "Oh, is that your child?"
         I said yes.
         "But you're pregnant again!" He asked why, and I said because I believed in God and I didn't want to kill this baby. He asked if I knew what I was doing.
         He said, "How can you live? You will be punished severely by the government!" I told him that I knew that, but that God would help me. When he heard that the baby was due within a month, he asked me if I had found a hospital. I told him no, that I didn't trust the doctors. But I also told him I wouldn't mind having a checkup, and he offered to help me.
         "I can understand Christians, and I feel for you. I will introduce you to a midwife who is a very good friend of mine, and you can trust her. I will take you there."
         This midwife was very kind and gave me a checkup. The baby was fine and we just had to wait until it was due. At the same time, a Family couple was preparing to adopt this baby. When they prayed, the Lord had shown them that if the baby was a boy, his name would be Isaac; if the baby was a girl, her name would be Maria Clara.

Another Miracle Delivery!
         On November the 15th, 1985, I felt that the baby was coming and I went to the hospital. By the afternoon the contractions were coming closer, but the friendly midwife had something to do, so she had to leave. That meant I had to stay there by myself with people I didn't know and who didn't understand my situation.
         I prayed and asked God to protect me. It seemed another test of faith was coming. I realized later that the Lord had a purpose in this, because if the friendly midwife had been there, I might have put too much trust in her instead of in the Lord. I might have not been that desperate to seek His help, and I might have been more grateful to the midwife than to the Lord.
         A different midwife came and she was a bit rude in the beginning. She said, "Is this your second baby?"
         I said yes. I prayed and tried to talk to her. She looked very serious.
         She said, "Do you know you can't have a second baby?"
         I said, "Oh, yes, I know."
         She asked "Why are you having this baby then. Do you want a boy?"
         I said "No, not really. I just don't want to kill this baby." She was very surprised and asked what that meant. I told her that I believed in God and that I didn't want to kill this baby. "It's alive," I said.
         She said, "Yes, I know it's alive, but if everybody made an excuse like this, our country would be out of control! You know what will happen if you have this second baby?"
         I told her, "Yes, but God will take care of me!"
         She was astonished, but she said, "Okay, now we're going to move you to the delivery room, and we'll talk about this later." I prayed that they wouldn't do any harm to the baby.
         The midwife talked to some nurses about my situation and they were all shocked. Then they called more doctors and nurses and they were all asking what they should do with me, as I was having my second baby. Many of them asked me questions. I didn't have a lot of strength to answer them one by one, as my contractions were getting stronger and stronger, so I just tried to repeat that I believed in God and didn't want to kill this baby. I tried to stay calm when talking with them, no matter how angry they got.
         After a while they all left and were talking somewhere else. They left me there with no one to take care of me. I felt the contractions getting very close together, so I prayed for the Lord to help me and that they would be kind and not kill my baby on purpose.
         At that moment, to be honest, I started to get nervous. They were treating me like dirt. They acted as if they had finally caught someone who rebelled against the government and it would be a good opportunity to get promoted if they turned me in. When they were whispering in the other room, I almost had the feeling that they were planning something evil to harm us.
         I wished I had never come to this place, and if I had had any strength, I would have left right away. But there I was, in pain and almost naked on the delivery table -- I was just like a bird that had fallen hopelessly into the snare. I was in a very desperate situation.
         I cried out to the Lord, alone in the delivery room, my heart reaching out to Him for help. Then a Voice spoke to me: "Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the Earth" (Psalm 46:10). He showed me that He was going to give His witness to the "Gentiles."
         I pleaded: "Oh, Lord! Please make a way for me! Please change their heart! Please protect us, the baby and me! I will give You all the glory!" I repeated these prayers in my heart again and again.
         The moment came! -- I felt that the baby was coming! I used all my strength to call the nurses, and some of them ran into the room. One was a new face. She started to ask me the same questions, but to my surprise some of the other nurses tried to answer her questions for me.
         They told her that I was a Christian and I didn't want to kill the baby. The atmosphere in the room started to change. I could see smiles on their faces. Later, some of them became much sweeter. God touched their hearts and made a way for me and the baby to escape. Like the Bible says, God will not give us temptation greater than we can bear, but will make a way of escape. (See 1 Corinthians 10:13.)
         The baby came out quickly, thank the Lord! It was a baby girl, Maria Clara. Then they waited and waited for the placenta, but nothing came. When the midwife checked me, she was shocked because the placenta had not separated from my womb and as the contractions continued, my womb was closing. I was in a very critical situation again!
         She called the nurses to get some equipment and she tried to get the placenta out as soon as possible, before my womb closed. The unexpected thing was that she had to stretch her hand inside the womb to tear the placenta off. Because of the emergency, they didn't even give me a shot for the pain, or maybe they forgot to.
         All in all, I could do nothing but pray. The pain was too much to bear. My hand was holding a bar on the delivery table, as if I was grasping the Lord's hand. The midwife and the nurses were very sweet at that time, and I was so thankful that the Lord had changed their hearts. As a witness to me, I heard the following from the Lord: "Be still and know that I am God. I am with you and I will keep you. As I have changed them, I will deliver you."
         The placenta was taken out, but there was another complication: I was bleeding very much, like a flood. The midwife asked a nurse to get a shot. She said, "She's going to die if we don't stop the bleeding." While they were nervous, I had such a peaceful feeling. I knew that I was not going to die, because the Lord would not let that happen to me. He just wanted to teach me how to pray and make me a witness for Him. -- And He didn't fail me!
         On the second day after Maria was born, a Family couple came to the hospital and took Maria home. So when I got out of the hospital, nobody knew I had had another baby. It had been done very secretly. Praise the Lord!

Family Haven
         On the third day after Maria was born, I left the hospital and went back to my friend's place, but for some reason our little family had to move out. We didn't have any place to go and I was very weak and we needed a place where I could recover. When we prayed about it with the local Family, they decided to invite us to move to the hotel where they lived. That was a very big decision, because the place where they lived was only for foreigners; no Chinese were allowed to live there.
         At this hotel there were guards at the main gate and at every building who would check your ID when you came in. They would ask who you were visiting and for how long, etc. If the police or the government were to find out that we were living there, we would be arrested. But God protected us. No one really thought we would be so daring as to move to a place like that. We stayed there for almost three months.
         The Home we stayed with at that time had three couples and four children. There were more brethren who often came to fellowship with us, who lived elsewhere in our city, or in other cities. That was my very first experience of living with the Family! If God hadn't planned that, I would never have known what it's like to stay with the Family. I was so thankful for those days, because I learned a lot. It seemed like it was preparation for days to come, when the Family would have to leave and we'd be on our own.
         Rainbow was one year old at the time and she was able to be with other Family children. I was able to learn how the teachers taught the children. Everything I saw and experienced left a deep impression in my mind. It was a wonderful time!

The Lord Prepares Me for Prison
         Shortly after we moved into the hotel with the Family, I had my birthday, January 1st, 1986. On that day, I got the verse Revelation 2:10: "Fear none of these things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the Devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life."
         I was wondering why God was showing me this verse on my birthday and the first day of the New Year. I guessed that this year would be a special year, and that probably we would be tested somehow. Though I had learned a lot over the past years and had suffered some persecution, it had not been to the point of being put in prison or being "faithful unto death." So that verse was a preparation for my heart.
         During our time living with the Family, the first signs of persecution started to appear. Some Chinese friends of the Family in other cities were being harassed by the police and things seemed to get tighter. Meanwhile, Michael's mother was asking us to move back with her. So we felt that for security reasons we should move back to her place. At the same time, I found out that I was pregnant again and expecting my third child!
         During that time, going in and out of the hotel was the most dangerous part, as everybody had to hand in their visitor's IDs. Because I'm a local Chinese, there was no doubt that the guards might question me. We all prayed for wisdom. The Lord showed us that if I acted as if I couldn't understand them, they might think that I was visiting from overseas.
         Once I went out for witnessing but I had to come back alone. The gatekeeper was standing there, looking at me and asking me many questions, but I kept speaking English with him, so he was puzzled. He was finally convinced that I was a &&&Chinese from Hong Kong or overseas, and he made a way for me to get through. I was so thankful for the Lord's protection.
         The time came when we had to move out of the hotel. We gathered together with the brethren and prayed desperately. This was what the Lord showed us to do: We went out in two teams: Michael with a sister, and me with a brother who carried Rainbow in his arms. When we had to pass the guards, we spoke in English to each other, so they thought that we were married couples. Under the Lord's wings, we were able to move out safely. Thank God for His mercy!
         At this time our second child, Maria, was with the Family couple who had taken her home from the hospital right after she was born. They were planning to adopt her, in order to prevent serious problems for us with the authorities for having two children.
         After we moved back with Michael's mother, we heard more news about the persecution. Some Chinese brethren had disappeared from their homes, so we guessed they were probably in prison. The Family told us that we needed to burn our Family literature. That was very hard for us to do, but we had to obey. We only kept some of the very basic Letters and children's books.

Raided!
         One morning, I got a phone call from a friend of Michael's. She told me that he had been arrested at work, that his office had been searched and that policemen had taken him away in handcuffs. I remembered the verse that I had gotten for the New Year. Quickly I searched my room and started to burn some little notes and letters I found, in the sink with the water running, so that the water could wash away the ashes and remove the smell of burning.
         Before I finished, I heard someone pounding on the door. I could not open the door with the fire still burning, so I waited. The pounding was harder and harder. When I opened the door, a few policemen rushed into the house. While some of them ran into different rooms, one of them said, "OK, we would like to talk to you." They asked me, "Where's Michael?"
         I wanted to say, "You just arrested him! Why are you asking me!" But I didn't; I felt like I needed to be wise with them. So I said, "He's at his office."
         Then more police came and brought many video cameras and other equipment, arriving and parking many police cars and buses outside. Many neighbors came and crowded around the house. It was a big thing for them. Without showing any warrant, they started searching my room, opening my suitcases and dumping everything out, turning the place upside down.
         Then the police chief came and said to me, "We know exactly where your things are. If we hadn't expected to find something, we wouldn't have come."
         They found the suitcase with the children's books, childcare books and a few tapes. They videoed them, as well as recording the whole search on tape, showing Rainbow and myself as well.
         Rainbow was nearly two years old. She was a bit frightened. I prayed and tried to be calm. I didn't know if they were going to take me away or not, because I had a child.
         I was really concerned about the foreign Family and the other brothers and sisters. So I prayed and asked the Lord to be with them and give me peace. They searched every corner of the house for the whole morning. In the afternoon one old top policeman took out a paper and told me to sign it. He said, "You're under arrest!"
         I felt that this would happen, but I wasn't sure what to do with Rainbow. He said, "You can send her somewhere." I told them that I didn't have a place to send her, so they said they would take me to my husband's sister's home, and I could leave her there.
         When I heard this, I really prayed, because it was very hard for me to leave her with people I didn't trust.
         I didn't know when I would be out of prison. I had lost my freedom!

(To be continued!)


Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family