BEIJING (BP)–A wrong telephone number, a substitute translator, and a total stranger turned out to be God’s provision for a couple who traveled to China to share Christ in an unreached megacity.
Despite the extensive preparations that had preceded their visit, the couple realized upon arrival at their destination that they had the wrong phone number for their primary contact at one of the city’s universities. Thus they set out on their own and arrived unannounced at the gate of a university just as its president was departing for a banquet. Upon encountering the foreign visitors, he insisted that they join him. The invitation resulted in many other opportunities, including meeting many professors and university department heads. The couple realized the timing of their arrival was not a coincidence.
One of those department heads ended up being a college classmate of the couple’s translator, who traveled from the U.S. with the couple as a last minute “substitute.” The translator and the department chairman, who had not seen each other for fifteen years, greeted each other as old friends. The couple sensed that this too was a special evidence of God’s design on the trip.
They marveled as God’s purposes continued to unfold: On one of the last days of the journey the couple, their translator, and some local teachers were hiking toward a tourist attraction when they were approached by a stranger. The lady boldly told them that she had received a message from God on the previous night — that a foreigner would visit on that day and bring her some very important news.
Sensing that this too was a Divine appointment, the couple welcomed the opportunity to share. As the group sat around a table and sipped tea, they told their new friends about God’s love for them. Every member of the group listened intently, and several of them later sought out the couple to discreetly learn more about faith in Christ.
As the couple departed from the city, it was with the intent of returning for an extended time of ministry. So certain were they that God had opened doors of opportunity that they have committed to partner with the Father to bring that city of more than one million people unto Himself.
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(BP) file photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: DIVINE APPOINTMENTS WILL TRANSFORM THE WORLD.
