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the NEWSLETTER YU, XIAOYU
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HOW DID I COME TO KNOW JESUS?
Who am I? My name is Yu, Xiaoyu, but in England people call me Connie. I am from Qingdao, on the east coast of China. I grew up as an only child of loving parents.
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Brought up in communist China, I was taught there is no god. When I went to university, I took English as my major. Every summer, there would be a team from the US teaching English to local children and they based their camp at our university. One summer I was helping on that camp as a teaching assistant for the American team. Through living and working with them, I saw, for the first time, that life could be so different. It wasn’t about their American lifestyle, but the way they lived their lives, their attitude towards people and the world around them. Although I had lived a happy life and tried to be a kind person, there seemed to be something more in the lives I saw in them. I shared this with the American teacher I was helping, and she said it was all because of Jesus, but she didn’t say much more. Those of us who were helping on the camp had been warned by the university authorities to be wary of religious issues when working with ‘foreigners’. Perhaps the American team had also been warned of this, and were therefore careful not to say too much. However, each day as I worked with them, my heart was touched by interacting with them. At the end of that summer, this American teacher gave me a bilingual New Testament, saying, ‘You can find the answers to all the questions you asked about life and this Jesus in this book. E-
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mail me if you have any questions after reading this.’ And that is what I did! Although I didn’t understand all of what that book says, I was drawn to it, and wished this Jesus was real so that I could belong to him. However, because of my atheist background, it was very difficult for me to believe in anything spiritual. Even though I would have loved this Jesus to be God, I found it hard to believe. Still, I read it every day. One night I read Matthew 11:28: ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.’ At that very moment, it felt like God was speaking directly to my heart and, strangely, I didn’t need any evidence of God’s existence anymore because he had just spoken to me! The next day, I went to tell my Christian friend who had also helped on that camp and she was so excited, saying, ‘We have been praying for you ever since the English camp!’ After that, I joined the student fellowship on campus, which had to keep a low profile. From time to time we received threats from the university authorities and opposition from friends, but God used that fellowship to guide my first baby steps in my Christian walk and I am so grateful for the love and growth I experienced in that group of lovely brothers and sisters.
Reaching the Chinese to Reach Europe