12

By the time Heidi and I graduated in 1991, I’d managed to dodge many pitfalls. In spite of the university’s efforts to thwart my educational goals, I was accepted into a program to get my bachelor’s degree in law. And even after they attempted to silence me about my newfound faith, I’d managed to worship peacefully below their radar. The fears that I wouldn’t be able to provide for a spouse and take Heidi as my wife were gone. I was so grateful at how things were working out for us, but I couldn’t deny the issues in our relationship.

We fought. A lot. She didn’t like the way I walked, she didn’t like the way I chewed my food, and it sometimes felt like she just didn’t like me. Of course, I sometimes did things to deserve her anger. Once, a group of us took a long-distance bus ride to tour the hometown of Confucius. The girls were taking too long to come down from their dorms, so my group of guy friends went on without them. Heidi was furious when she discovered she’d been left, and she and her friend went on a mission by themselves. Eventually, when she found me, I was eating lunch with an old friend from high school—a female friend—who happened to live in that city. Though there was nothing secret going on between us, Heidi was livid. She didn’t say a word, but then again, she didn’t have to. Her eyes spoke volumes from across the room and I knew I was in deep trouble.

Other times I didn’t do anything to deserve her irritation, but we were cross with each other regardless. One time, it got so bad that I took a bus to the capital city of the province, got a hotel, and stayed there for a few days. As vice president of the student union, I was supposed to oversee the awards ceremony for Chinese Youth Day. Because of our fight and my need for space, I missed it. All was forgiven when I came back to my dorm and found my clothes were washed and neatly folded. I took the stacks of clothes to be an apology. Though the fighting never ceased, we never even considered breaking up.

After college, we reluctantly parted ways. She went back to her hometown to teach English in her local high school—at a salary of less than one dollar a day. I was headed to Beijing, the city I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. On the train to my new city, however, I prayed that the fighting between us would stop. Heidi had a temper, and I felt like I was walking on eggshells most of the time.

As the country rolled by outside just beyond the glass of my window, I opened up my Bible and smiled. It was a new one, a Chinese translation, which Lao Wu had smuggled in from Hong Kong. Even though I’d been a Christian an entire year, I’d never been able to read God’s Word in my own language. This made it harder for me to communicate the gospel to other Chinese people, because it was hard to find the right words to express the Christian ideas easily. Though the Chinese version was not as elegantly translated as the English one, I noticed some of the phrasing was very familiar.

Where have I seen this language? I wondered as I turned the pages in my seat on the train.

I opened up my journal—the one I’d kept since reading the biography of the Chinese intellectual in the back of the English department—and flipped to the first few pages. I remembered that the biography contained some of the most beautiful sentences I’d ever heard, which I had copied into my little book so I’d never forget.

I put my finger on one of the Scriptures that jumped out at me while I was reading, and flipped the pages in my journal. When I saw the similarity, I almost laughed out loud.

Almost all of those “beautiful sentences” from the biography were actually Scriptures. God’s Word had resonated so thoroughly in my heart before I’d even heard His truth!

I shut both my Bible and my journal, gazed out the window, and felt a profound sense of peace. God was in control of my soul, my education, and my relationship with Heidi. When the train pulled into the station, I was about to officially begin life as a post-grad student at the People’s University of China, and I couldn’t wait.

The first order of business was to meet my roommates. I looked down at the documents the university sent to me upon acceptance. It looked like our dorm was located right in the middle of campus, so I headed in that direction. I hoped we would all get along. Though roommates didn’t have to be my best friends, it helped if they were considerate of space and belongings . . . and didn’t snore.

“Hello,” I said, walking in with a suitcase in each hand. There were five of them, and they were also in the process of moving in. Empty cardboard boxes sat around the room, and they were already dividing up space.

“I’m Xiqiu,” I said.

One by one, they introduced each other and gave me the lay of the land. I had three drawers in the chest of drawers—the bottom three—and the top bunk to sleep on. The bathroom and showers, which we shared with the whole floor, were down the hall, to the left. “What about this?” I asked, pointing to a rather small bookcase near the door. “May I have a shelf?”

One of the roommates, named Timothy, looked up from organizing one of his drawers. “That’s fine with me. What is that?”

I was holding my Bible, which was not a regular sight for Chinese people. During the Cultural Revolution, the government destroyed any Bibles they could find, and imprisoned, tortured, or even killed the owners. Even after Mao died in 1976, Bibles were hard to find. And that was still true when I was in college and graduate school. Though it was legal to own one, Bibles couldn’t be purchased. Most Bibles and religious materials were smuggled over the border in suitcases by courageous Americans and Brits, and then passed secretly to house church leaders, who distributed them sparingly.

“Oh, do you believe in the Jesus religion?” Timothy asked, as I slid the Bible on the shelf.

“Yes, I heard about Him when I was in college,” I began. By the end of the story, they’d all heard the gospel message. Immediately, I was dubbed “the missionary,” an affectionately derogatory nickname that, truth be told, was pretty accurate. Even though I was a very new Christian, I loved to tell everyone I met about the gospel. My new college campus in Beijing was full of people who hadn’t met Christ. Yet. That night, I took a smaller Chinese language Bible and wrote a note to Timothy on the first blank page. “Dear Timothy, I hope this book blesses you. It is the Word of the Lord.”

When I handed it to him, he flipped through a few of the pages and then put it in his desk drawer. This quiet roommate, who was intelligent and much taller than I was, instantly became my close friend because he loved to talk about current affairs and international relations. I was always thankful to meet someone who wanted to share their views on issues like elections in foreign countries. Even though he was raised in the countryside, where people generally don’t bother too much with international politics, he was a well-informed conversationalist.

Though I appreciated my roommates, I couldn’t wait to find other believers on campus. I didn’t know who they were or where they were, but I was going to find them. When Sunday came around, I knew many believers across the city would be meeting in either government-sanctioned churches or house churches. I imagined them in their groups, raising their hands to the Lord, singing songs, and listening to the Word.

When my alarm went off, I quietly climbed out of bed, careful not to cause the bunk bed to creak, and dressed. I slipped on my shoes and cautiously turned the doorknob until I heard it click open. After I went out into the hallway, I managed to shut the door without waking anyone, and was thrilled at the fact that I was finally about to find other believers!

I wasn’t sure where to go, so I meandered along the sidewalks through a leafy area of campus, past racks full of bicycles waiting for the day. A few early risers jogged around a large sports center and track in the middle of the campus. I walked by an empty basketball court, some flowering trees, and a statue of Confucius. The entire time I walked, I strained to hear singing emanating from any of the buildings. At first, I wanted to find a student group, but I would’ve settled for finding even a government-sanctioned church after walking for an hour. Though I didn’t quite understand how a Christian church could operate under the thumb of the Chinese government, I was hungry enough for the fellowship of believers that I would’ve tried it. When I got to the wall surrounding the campus, I walked through a gate leading out into the city of Beijing.

Should I turn left or right? I thought, pausing at the intersection. I turned right, walked along the sidewalk, and read all of the signs on the buildings. My mind went back to my first visit to Beijing, when we protested in Tiananmen Square. I shuddered when I thought of the tragedy, of the innocent lives lost, but then shoved it from my mind. I walked for miles, taking in the scenery. Bicyclists wove in and out of traffic with baskets full of groceries. Apartment buildings with laundry hanging out of the windows towered over the city. Supermarkets teemed with people. Though I got to see much of the city, my feet hurt and my heart was heavy by the end of the day. I never saw one church.

“Oh, the missionary is back,” my new roommate said as I opened the door and dropped my red backpack on the floor. The other roommates dramatically shushed each other, stopped talking, and then broke out into laughter. “No more talk about women!”

“I don’t mind if you talk about girls.” I smiled. “As long as you don’t mind when I talk about Jesus.”

“No, no, no,” Timothy said from the top of a bunk, tossing a small pillow at me. “We know our joking offends your ‘Christian sensibilities.’” He spoke of my faith like it was a milk allergy. “So we’ll keep the coarse joking to a minimum and you keep the Christ stuff to yourself.”

I picked up the pillow from the floor and threw it back up at him. “Yeah, that’s improbable on both counts.”

“A letter came for you,” another roommate said, handing me a letter with Heidi’s beautiful handwriting on it. I tore it open and began reading it.

“Let me see,” Timothy said, trying to grab it.

I yanked the letter away at the last second, pulling it closer to my eyes.

“It must be from someone . . . important,” another said, laughing at how I was protecting the letter.

“Dear Xiqiu,” I read silently, while my new friends were trying to snatch it. “I really don’t think this is working out. The distance is too great for our relationship to overcome.”

“What’s wrong,” Timothy asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Devastated, I grabbed my backpack and headed to the library. If I was going to employ all of my rhetoric skills to convince Heidi she was my destiny, I was going to need some peace and quiet. “Distance shouldn’t affect one’s fate,” I pleaded once I got settled at a library desk. I poured out my heart to her. The next morning, I went to the post office and prayed she would receive my message with an open heart.

Because this was before the instant communication of email and texts, I would have to wait days or maybe even weeks for her reply. After I dropped my letter into the mail, however, I tried to focus on my academic life. Also, I needed a spiritual family more than ever.

One day, I came back to my dorm and noticed that I wasn’t the only person with relationship drama. Timothy was lying on the bed with his head buried under a pillow.

“Want to go for a walk?” I said, nudging him. “What’s wrong? I know you too well for you to pretend that you’re okay.”

He opened up to me on our walk, explaining that his girlfriend broke up with him even though they had dated since college. He planned on marrying her, but she’d written him and broke the agonizing news that she had another man in her life. When I heard his heartbreak, I started talking to him about the gospel, using a little red book of the four spiritual laws that was in my pocket. Then I shared the good news about God’s love.

He immediately broke down into tears, so we sat down on a stone wall in front of the main administration building. He had heard about the gospel before graduate school, but only in his heartbreak did it resonate in his soul.

“Are you ready to make a decision?” I asked.

“You know, I’d read about ‘Christian people’ before.” When he said “Christian people,” he used the English words instead of the Chinese words, which indicated that the only way to really find out about Christianity back then was through the missionary materials. “But the first time I really came into contact with any Christians was when I saw you and your college friends. I do find it’s very true that you are a peculiar group.”

I was crestfallen, believing this was an insult, a way to distance himself from the gospel because of my inadequacies.

“But,” he added, “I want to join.”

I was thrilled to have a believing friend in my graduate school, and even in my own dorm. However, I still ached for the fellowship of an actual church. “Where do you go to church?” I asked my American teacher after class one day. I assumed most American teachers were Christians and could give me some tips on how to connect with other believers.

“Well, there’s a government-sanctioned church just two miles off campus,” he said, rolling out a map on his desk. He pointed to a spot that indicated our university. “Look, we’re here, and the church is . . . here.” He drew a circle around the intersection. There it was, so close to where I had looked before. When I left the campus, I’d simply walked in the wrong direction.

The next Sunday, however, I knew exactly where to go. I walked to the edge of the campus and took a left. When I got to the next intersection, I took Xisinan Street and eventually saw a building that had a cross.

The Hadian Church was part of the “Three Self Patriotic Movement.” Because the Communists feared pro-American sentiment growing alongside Christianity, they wanted their churches to have “self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation.” This was abbreviated to Three Self Patriotic Movement, but it basically meant the government was keeping track of exactly what happened in the church. Mostly, I assumed, they wanted to prevent any subversive political messages from being taught from the pulpit, and to ensure churches would be loyal to the Communist Party.

When I walked in, I felt like I was home. There were people sitting in the congregation, many of them students, with Bibles opened in their laps, praying. I wanted to walk up to all of them and introduce myself, but I sat in a pew to focus on worship. I almost cried when the music began, and I listened intently to the sermon.

The preacher, Pastor Li, was around seventy years old, and the congregation listened to his every word. It was rare to see older Christians in China, and in the countryside churches believers are considered “elders” when they’re in their twenties. But in the government-sanctioned churches, the Communists always selected the most elderly ministers to make sure the churches didn’t attract young people. That method apparently didn’t work here, because the church had a healthy number of students in the congregation. The following Sunday I traipsed to the service again, and sat near the middle so I could both hear the sermon as well as check out all the people.

That’s when I overheard some students around me talking about a Bible study on Thursday night. My ears perked up at the thought of fellowship with other Christian students. All week, I prayed that I would meet some good friends so I wouldn’t feel so lonely at grad school. When Thursday finally came, I walked to church, hoping that there’d be a good turnout. How surprised I was to open the door and see a few hundred students gathered together to worship God!

Most of the students were Chinese, with a few international students scattered around. People mingled, introduced themselves, and found their seats as the service was about to begin. A younger preacher named Pastor Feng approached the lectern, and I soon discovered he was an independent preacher the church had designated solely for the college students. He was full of passion, and spoke powerfully about the Scriptures.

Even though the church was government-sanctioned, I could tell that it taught the Bible and was obviously full of faithful believers. I began attending these Bible studies every week and soon was meeting other young people.

“I go to the People’s University of China,” I overheard someone say to another.

“Me too!” I interjected, perhaps too quickly. A few others in our circle also attended the same university, so we made introductions and began talking about our hometowns and our current areas of study.

“Maybe we should have our own fellowship on campus,” I suggested. “We could meet in different dorms, which would be a nice way to stay connected throughout the week.”

Everyone readily agreed, and I got the feeling that many of the other students longed for Christian friendships too. Immediately, I set up fellowship groups in different dorms. As word got out, our numbers grew. That summer we received training from Campus Crusade to learn how to use the four spiritual laws and to learn how to pray with people if they wanted to believe in Jesus. It might sound rudimentary, but we were very new to Christianity and these tips for evangelism were wonderfully helpful. In fact, in August while I was visiting Heidi’s hometown, I led her brother in the prayer to accept Christ to be his Savior and Lord. Then, in September, I shared the spiritual laws with another student who accepted Jesus.

I wrote down everything that happened in a small contact book, as a documentation of my new brothers and sisters in Christ. Though it was somewhat dangerous to record their names, I wanted to make sure I could stay in contact with other believers. And so I wrote in tiny letters and kept the book hidden in my apartment at all times. By Christmas, my book had many more names in it, and we had a very strong fellowship. We met to pray, sing songs, study the Bible, and discuss how to evangelize the campus.

“Okay, everyone,” I said, early one December evening in our dorm fellowship. “Our fellow students will be interested in Christianity, if only briefly, in a couple of weeks. We should use Christmas as a reason to tell other people about Jesus.”

Since Chinese people were interested in foreign and exotic experiences, they sometimes went to Christmas services as a cultural curiosity and to be in a spiritual atmosphere, even if they weren’t interested in the faith. Consequently, the government-sanctioned church always planned a very nice Christmas Eve service and invited everyone to come with a sign on the outside that said—in English—“Merry Christmas.”

“We should invite everyone we know to the Christmas Eve service,” a friend named Andrew said.

“And once they get there, we can hand out pamphlets in case they want to learn more,” I added.

“But where can we find religious tracts around here?”

“Let me see if I can work on it.” I knew of an elderly Christian couple who lived near campus. Because they had many connections with international students, they were a hub of information, news, and materials that they freely provided. Everyone was excited about the possibilities, and we ended the night with a prayer.

“God,” Andrew prayed. “Please help us shine your light on this campus.”

The next day, I went to visit the elderly couple, who welcomed me into their home for dinner and served me a delicious, home-cooked meal. While I was there, they told me stories about persecution. The wife had gotten in trouble for following a famous preacher in Beijing who’d refused to join the government church and was imprisoned for eighteen years. Because they’d been in school in America, they had contact with many international Christians. Their house was always full of believers from all over the world, so the couple collected and distributed religious materials. Their house was a virtual library of the underground Chinese church.

“Do you have anything we could hand out at the Christmas Eve service?” I asked.

“I think I’ve got just the thing,” she said. “Let me go check.”

The next day, I rushed into our dorm meeting holding a box of tracts. “You won’t believe what I have!” I said, putting the box on the coffee table. Andrew rubbed his hands together, carefully unfolded a pamphlet, and began reading as the others sat down in chairs to listen.

“You are created by God,” he read. “But you are a sinner, and you need salvation through Jesus Christ. And the good news is that He wants to forgive you.”

After reading the entire tract, which was a very simple presentation of the gospel, he said, “At the end, it leaves room for anyone to do follow-up. Should we put our name there?”

“Sure,” several people said, nodding.

“Well, we’d need a contact person,” he said. Everyone looked at me and smiled. I was the one who’d organized the dorm fellowships as well as the one who’d obtained the tracts. We opened the box, passed out pens, and dumped several hundred tracts on the table. For the entire night, we made sure that every tract had my name, my dorm’s phone number, and my address. By the end of the night, our hands were cramped but our hearts were hopeful. We ended like we always did, with a prayer.

“Dear God,” I prayed. “Please cause the people who casually attend Christmas Eve service to want to know more about You.”

When Christmas Eve finally came, we were smiling from ear to ear. The church building was packed, and the crowd included students we’d seen around campus and friends we’d invited. We divided into four groups and sat strategically near the four corners of the building. The service was beautiful, and the pastor spoke eloquently of Christ’s birth. When the last hymn was sung, we activated. Each of our four groups got up, positioned ourselves near the four exits, and handed out the pamphlets.

“If you’d like to know more about Jesus,” Andrew said, “here’s the rest of the story.”

“Join our university dorm fellowship,” I said to a student I had invited from the cafeteria at school.

Generally, people smiled as they took the pamphlets and stuck them in their backpacks or purses. After the last person left the building, we gathered outside on the steps.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“We had great success!” Andrew said. “And the people seemed actually interested.” People from other groups told stories about how some asked about the dorm fellowship. Others expressed that they wanted to know more. Some, as expected, politely refused.

“Are there any left over?” Because they were so hard to come by, we made sure we collected all of the remaining pamphlets. There were about fifty extras, and I tried to place them in my backpack in such a way that the corners wouldn’t be folded or torn.

As we walked back to the campus that evening, we happily chatted about the people we met and the inroads we’d made. It really seemed that God was moving mightily in Beijing, and we were happy to play a small part in His plan.

“Merry Christmas,” we wished each other, laughing, as we departed. Chinese people don’t grow up participating in foreign holidays, and even though we were Christians, “Merry Christmas” still felt novel rolling off our tongues.

The next day was Christmas, which—of course—meant nothing. When the alarm sounded, we all jumped out of our bunk beds and headed to class. I had trouble paying attention to the professor that day. While I didn’t have “visions of sugarplums” dancing in my head, I did daydream about the lives that could’ve been touched by the little tracts we’d handed out. My academic life was challenging and fun, but I was much more interested in sharing the gospel with my classmates than discussing the political intricacies of Thailand. When the class ended, I grabbed my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and headed out the door. My next class was all the way across campus, so I needed to rush to get there in time. To my surprise, however, a university police guard was standing at the door.

He was wearing a dark uniform, white gloves, and a crisp hat that covered a very short haircut and shaded his eyes. “The Beijing police want to talk to you,” he said.

I turned around to make sure there was no one else behind me. “Me?”

Without another word, he grabbed my arm and ushered me off campus. I felt a little ridiculous being shoved through the idyllic campus by a Beijing police officer. More than being embarrassed, however, I was perplexed. What could I have possibly done to merit this?

We walked up the stairs to the station, which had a blue sign on the front of the building marked “Police,” and into an interrogation room. It had a bright light hanging over a table with two vinyl chairs shoved up to either side of it. A folding chair sat near another smaller table in the corner. The walls were windowless and stark, except for marks and scuffs from what looked like previous altercations.

“Sit,” the officer said to me, which was hardly necessary since he practically shoved me down into one of the chairs. I dropped my red backpack on the floor, but the officer grabbed it and placed it on the corner table. He told me to wait, which I did for what seemed to be a long time. Finally, the door opened and another man, wearing a white button-up short-sleeved shirt and suit trousers, walked in.

“Where is the illegal literature you were handing out?”

“I didn’t hand out anything illegal,” I protested.

“We have reports that you were handing out these pamphlets at the church.” He slammed a copy of the pamphlet down on the table.

“That’s against the law?”

“So you’re admitting you handed them out?”

“Yes,” I said, calmly. I knew I was in trouble, but I didn’t want to lie. Not that it could’ve helped me. I’d handed out at least a hundred, in plain sight. “There was a Christmas Eve service last night, and we handed those out to the people who attended.”

“We?”

“I did.”

He laughed, mocking me by picking up the paper by a corner like it was poisonous.

“All alone?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll ask you again,” he said. “Where is your stash of those pamphlets?”

I forced myself not to look at my red backpack that sat on the table in the corner. After the service, I had gone to my dorm and fallen asleep. When I got up to go to class, I didn’t take the time to unpack my bag. The materials the police were looking for were right there in the room, almost under their noses. I didn’t breathe and stared right into the interrogator’s face. It was pudgy like a baby’s, even though he was at least fifty years old. When he talked, any trace of innocence disappeared into crevices created by years of scowling. Right there, while the interrogator stood over me, I said a silent prayer.

Please don’t let them find the pamphlets in my backpack, Lord. Just blind his eyes from seeing them.

“What are the names of the people you gave them to?”

“I didn’t ask their names,” I said.

“No, that’s right,” he said. “You gave them your name on the back of each pamphlet. Very clever.”

“It’s not ‘clever,’ it just shows that I had no idea I was doing something wrong.”

“I’m not complaining. In fact, you made it easy on my comrades. They already saw you. They were at the church. The only reason they didn’t grab you then was because they didn’t want to disrupt the worshipers to arrest a criminal.”

“I’m no criminal.”

“Funny, that’s what everyone who sits in that chair says . . . at least at first.”

“What crimes have I committed?”

“Oh, do you want me to limit it to last night, or do you want to go all the way back to 1989?” There was a folder on the wooden table between us, which he slowly opened. There were pages and pages of documents, which he carefully turned over one at a time. He lifted up each page with almost delicate hands, pretending to read each one. When he said 1989, of course, he was referring to the Tiananmen Square protests. “Hmm . . .” he said, pretending to familiarize himself with me. “You’ve been a troublemaker for a long time, haven’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Well, let me give you some time to think about that,” he said, carefully shutting the folder, standing up, and sticking it under his arm. He shoved his chair back under the table and left the room.

It was quiet except for the occasional muted conversation as people walked by the door. Is it locked? I wondered, but I knew it didn’t matter. On the other side of that door was a bustling office of uniformed Communist police officers. There’d be no way to escape.

“Why are you so careless?” I quietly reprimanded myself, putting my head in my hands. “Why do you think the Communist government will let you operate like a free agent? You’re indiscreet. It’s one thing to get yourself in trouble, but it’s another to pull your friends down with you.”

I kept talking to myself, to avoid looking at my backpack. I didn’t know if I were being watched somehow, so I didn’t want to draw attention to it even if I was alone. My stomach growled. My mouth was dry. I needed to go to the bathroom. When will he come back?

When the door finally opened again, I jumped and the interrogator smirked. “Am I interrupting something? I can come back later,” he said.

I didn’t respond. “May I have some water?” I asked, weakly.

“No,” he said, unscrewing the top of the water bottle he carried and taking a long drink.

“May I at least go to the bathroom?”

“Guard,” he snarled.

The same officer who’d apprehended me earlier appeared at the door and grabbed me by the arm. He led me into a small bathroom, and then followed me inside. “Go,” he demanded, pointing to the toilet. It was less than dignified.

When we walked back down the hall, I could see the rest of the station going on with its business. Phones rang. People walked around with coffee mugs. We walked by another interrogation room, this one with a window, which I glanced into as we passed. I stopped in my tracks, causing the officer to tug on me before he followed my gaze. There, sitting behind a big wooden table, were all of my roommates. A large, tall officer stood above them, lecturing them. They didn’t notice me gawking at them before the policeman yanked me back to my own room.

“Why are my roommates here?” I asked the interrogator, trying to keep the panic from my voice. He looked at me sternly.

“You refused to tell us where you were keeping your illegal materials,” he said. “So we decided to go look for ourselves. You might want to start keeping your room a little more tidy.”

“What do you mean?”

“When we got there, the beds were turned over and all of your drawers were dumped out. It looked like you’d been robbed or something.” I swallowed hard and tried not to cry. Oddly, I felt more violated about them going through my belongings and talking to my friends than I did about being detained in the police station. “But we are having a nice chat with your roommates. They said they didn’t know where you kept your illegal Christian material, but that you keep a backpack with you all the time.”

At the word backpack, a chill ran all over my body. It was sitting not ten feet from me, and it was bright red. Had he turned around and opened it, he would’ve found the whole stash. Those tracts had been smuggled in from Hong Kong. Plus, if they found the tracts, they might charge me with possession and keep me for days.

“Where’s your backpack with your illegal literature?”

While I was being interrogated, the urge to lie was so strong that I had to force my mouth to remain shut while I considered my options. I didn’t want to be put into prison, but I also knew God could protect me without me having to use deception. In the Bible, He broke Peter out of jail. I shrugged my shoulders, and decided to be honest.

“I use that bag.” I pointed over to the small table, where my backpack had been sitting the entire day. I made sure not to say, “This is the bag holding the illegal literature.” Instead, I just shrugged my shoulders and pretended like it was nothing.

The interrogator turned around, saw the backpack, and smiled.