The face of need

There's a picture on my desktop right now of a frail old woman in south China. She's squatting by a river washing clothing. Her eyes are cloudy, and her hair wisps in the breeze. She's looking off into the distance.

Each time I look at it I am reminded of the words of Romans, "How will they hear unless..." Unless we go, we share, we tell.

I will never have a conversation with a woman like the one on my screen. Even if I spoke Mandarin, she probably only speaks her home dialect. I can't touch her because she is outside of my reach. But the kind of young people I will touch over the next five weeks can touch her. They are her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some of our students, and particularly the professors we teach, come from rural areas and go home to family when they have a break. They are the ones who, if they come to understand who God is and what He has done for them, will tell Grandmother by the river.

There's only so much that we can do as foreigners. But teaching English with excellence is one of the best things we can do. English is a commodity that can be bartered for better jobs and upward movement in life. English is a ticket to reading books and articles that carry new ideas and interesting concepts. It's not that there's something special about my language, English, over other languages, but somehow the world right now is using English as the means of communication.

I heard recently that before long China will have the second largest population of English speakers in the world after the USA. Let's go teach those young people more than English.