26

“I don’t know what percentage of me is Midland,” George W. Bush said during the presidential campaign of 2000. “But I would say if people want to understand me, they need to understand Midland.”

Suddenly, reporters from all over the world descended on this oil-rich town in West Texas halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso. No longer was it best-known as the home of “Baby Jessica,” who was rescued from a narrow well in 1987. Suddenly it was the cradle of a possible president, and the world wanted to understand his roots.

It wasn’t your typical town. Sitting on America’s second largest oil reservoir, residents make—and lose—phenomenal amounts of money there. Almost everyone’s been both fabulously wealthy and barely able to survive. Whether it’s boom or bust, however, their entrepreneurial spirit keeps them going back into the fields to try, one more time, to get every last drop of oil out of the otherwise dry land. Dipping up and down, the perpetually moving pump jacks are the heartbeat of the town.

As rich as the town is in oil, it is poor in vegetation. Shrubby mesquite crawls along the ground and few scraggly trees impede the view of the “tall skies.” In fact, the town’s motto is “The sky’s the limit,” a phrase Bush used during his speech to the GOP convention that year. With hard work and perseverance, Midlanders believe, nothing’s out of reach. The churches believed this too, and decided to leverage their location’s newfound cache to make some impact on the world. This prompted Deborah Fikes, a self-described “Midland housewife,” to present an idea to the Midland Ministerial Alliance, a network of more than two hundred churches in the city.

“I want to encourage you to use your platform on international religious freedom issues,” she said. “Let’s see if we can help people suffering for their beliefs in other countries.”

Of course, Midland didn’t know any members of the persecuted church. But the Alliance listened to Deborah and began to pray. After Bush was elected, Sudan was on the front page of every newspaper. And so, the Alliance sent a letter to the leaders of Sudan on stationery that read, “Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas: Hometown of President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.” It definitely got the attention of the Sudanese government. Sudan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Osman, instructed their ambassador to talk with the Alliance. Deborah was invited to have dinner at the Sudanese ambassador’s residence, and she was the only evangelical Christian who had the trust of the Muslim government. Over the course of several months, the Ministerial Alliance of Midland had access to and influence on all four parties key to the peace negotiations: the Sudanese government, the People’s Liberation Army, the Kenyan mediator, and the United States.

Minister Osman at one point contacted the Sudanese ambassador and asked, “What do these people from the tribe of George Bush think?”

Suddenly, this alliance of Christian churches in Texas became a major player on the global stage, and our paths were about to cross.

One day Deborah Fikes led a delegation of Ministerial Alliance pastors and priests from different Midland churches to lobby for the Sudanese persecuted. Pastor Kevin York, a friend and associate of Pastor Ronny Lewis, was one of Deborah’s delegation. Their meeting was just a few weeks after 9/11, and Washington, DC, was in the throes of an anthrax panic. In fact, on that day there was another anthrax scare that caused all of the senate buildings to be shut down. Senator Brownback cancelled all of his other meetings, but combined the Midland Ministerial Alliance’s meeting with one he’d scheduled with me and other house church leaders. We all met in an underground bunker in one of the senate buildings.

“You’re the man we’ve heard so much about?” Deborah said, shaking my hand. She had heard about our escapades in China through Kevin and Ronny.

“You were expecting someone taller?” I asked.

“You’ve been through so much, I just thought you’d be . . . older.” She laughed. As I told them of my advocacy work on behalf of the persecuted Christians in China, Deborah leaned in closer so she wouldn’t miss any of the details.

I’d brought some underground house church leaders to meet with Congressman Frank Wolf as well, and the Midland Alliance decided to join our meeting after the Brownback event. Our time together went very smoothly, and Congressman Wolf was interested in learning more about the specific cases of persecution.

“I’ll definitely send them to you,” I told him, “but it will take me a while to get to it.”

“Why don’t you just ask your secretary to do it?” he asked.

“Secretary?” I laughed. “I’m the only one.”

Later, Kevin and Deborah pulled me aside.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Kevin asked. “I couldn’t help but overhear you saying you didn’t have a secretary.”

“Your organization has been all over the media lately,” Deborah said. “How are you doing all this without help?”

Unbeknownst to me, their Alliance had been praying for opportunities to help Christians in other countries. Unbeknownst to them, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My seminary work was as challenging as ever, the eyes of the world were on me after releasing the top-secret Chinese documents, my kids still were not sleeping through the night, and my father had died. I must’ve looked haggard and disheveled, because I could see the concern in the eyes of my new friends.

“I do need help,” I said to them, in a moment of complete transparency.

“What is your most pressing need?” Kevin asked. He was probably expecting a request for money or connections to government officials.

“I need help answering emails.”

“Emails?” He looked at me incredulously.

“Ever since we got on the national stage, my inbox has been flooded.” I almost couldn’t contain my emotion. I’d been using every ounce of energy to advocate for—and protect—the persecuted church. I had no energy to pretend things were easy. “I do everything out of the attic of my house in Philly, and I’ve gotten a little behind.”

“Don’t you have a wife and children?” Deborah asked. As a mother and a wife of a busy oilman, her mind instantly went to my family. “Let us help you.”

Suddenly I had two new advocates. First, Kevin contacted his church secretary back in Midland, and said, “You have a new job. From now on, you will be responsible for sorting through Bob’s emails.” I gave her my log-on information and password, and she immediately called us back.

“Pastor Kevin,” she exclaimed, “he has over seven thousand unread emails!”

Kevin looked at me, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“I told you!”

For months, she did no work for the church. She answered emails from journalists whose deadlines had long passed and to Christian leaders who’d offered speaking opportunities that had come and gone. Meanwhile Deborah reached out to her amazing network of high-profile friends that included think-tank members, activists, non-government organization leaders, congressmen, senators, and human rights advocates. She not only told them about ChinaAid, she set up meetings between us and encouraged them to help me in my work. It was touching to have these amazing people come alongside me.

“You ought to visit Midland,” Kevin said to me one day.

And so that summer, Heidi, Daniel, Tracy, and I drove to Midland from Oklahoma after a visit with the Voice of the Martyrs. Heidi was pregnant with our third child, an unimaginable blessing since we’d met and married under China’s draconian child laws. When we told Deborah we were expecting, she laughed and said, “Well, I’m going to prophesy that this baby will be born in Texas.”

They had floated the idea that our family might move to Midland, which I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around. A Chinese human rights organization based in Texas? However, our spirits soared at the thought of it. Though we loved being in Philadelphia, we never quite felt safe. Moving would give us more space, more freedom, and more peace of mind.

There was one complication.

After discovering Heidi was pregnant—and we already had many people tucked into our little home—Charlie surprised us with a four-bedroom house even closer to Westminster. His amazing generosity humbled us, but it also made me hesitant to pack up and leave it all behind.

“Charlie,” I said to him during our next weekly breakfast. I’d waited to tell him the news until his second cup of coffee was dry. For years, we’d met every week for a time of prayer and encouragement, and I hated seeing that end. “We’re moving,” I finally spit out.

Instead of being bitter or upset, Charlie and his family held a farewell dinner at their home. Before we left, Charlie handed me a check for thirteen thousand dollars . . . the down payment for a house in Midland.

Even though we were relocating our family to a city two thousand miles away, I never lost sight of the fact that there were five pastors in China on death row whose execution date was drawing near. We continued to take up donations for their legal defense and provided much-needed context to the media. For example, we explained that the pastor accused of collecting tens of thousands of dollars for a “Bank of Heaven” was actually just collecting tithes during church. We also explained that the leader accused of making messianic claims by saying, “Christ is I, and I am Christ” was really quoting the apostle Paul in Galatians when he wrote, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

Public outcry grew louder as we furiously advocated on the church members’ behalf. As the execution date grew closer, however, the South China Church prepared for the inevitable. They sent me a photo of five identical coffins, ready to bestow at least a little dignity to their pastors’ martyred bodies. With even more fervor, we called out to God on their behalf.

Then, on October 10, 2002, a miracle happened. In a turnaround the New York Times described as “rare,” the Supreme Court in the province of Hubei overturned the death sentences. Claiming the convictions weren’t based on enough evidence, all of the sentences were commuted. Not coincidentally, this happened just a few weeks before Jiang Zemin visited President Bush at his ranch near Midland. Reporters called this a “gift” to Bush, who’d pressed for religious freedom during their last summit, but the South China Church refers to this incident as their “Festival of Purim.” (In 2006, we regrettably learned after extensive investigation that Gong Shengliang did commit sexually immoral behavior with some congregants, and had taught some things that were contrary to Scripture. Although his behavior never justified the severe torture against him and other members of South China Church by the Chinese government, we were devastated by this news.)

In 2012, I received a letter from Ms. Li Ying, one of the five South China Church leaders whose death sentence had been commuted in 2002. After spending a total of thirteen years in jail, she wrote me a letter that pierced my soul.

“I’m sister Li. I heard your name just when the church-persecuting authority was going to execute the five of us. At that time, I decided if I was ever released the first thing I would do is ask my family how you had helped me, my teacher, and my church. On December 25, 2011, I was released and went home, and my brothers and sisters had endless things to say about you. Every time they talked to you on the phone, they felt deeply connected with you, as if you were a family member connected with a blood tie that could never be severed.”

She explained many of the ways they were tortured: beatings, cigarette burns, torture positions, electric shock batons, bricks on their backs, alcohol poured into their mouths, forced drug ingestion, starvation, seared flesh, and much more.

“My teacher was put in the shackles for death row prisoners from the moment he was arrested. His persecutors exhausted all methods and ways available during his interrogation, which caused him to stop breathing many times, and they dumped water on him to wake him up. He was hospitalized for over a month for emergency care. It is not an overstatement that he endured all forms of torture and suffering.”

Then one day, she heard about ChinaAid’s efforts.

“As I was praying, I heard someone call the name of one of our sisters and say, ‘You’ll be saved!’ In a miraculous way, God let us know that you had made our experiences known to the whole world. Now the whole world is watching Huanan Church. We also learned that the US President Bush was a pious Christian who loved the Lord and cared about our church greatly. And we learned that our family had found us a lawyer.”

Not long after the October 2002 retrial, I also became aware of thirty-three-year-old Liu Xianzhi (her English name is Sarah Liu), who was one of four women declared innocent in the retrial verdict. However, she and the other women were sent to “reeducation through labor” camp, a fate worse than prison. They stripped her, used three electric shock batons on her simultaneously, torturing her on all parts of her body. When she cried out, they put the flesh-searing shock baton in her mouth. It burned her mouth so that she couldn’t eat for several days. They also used this baton on her genitals, which caused so much pain that she eventually was sent to the hospital unconscious. The doctors and nurses asked her torturers, “How could you treat a girl like this?”

After Sarah was released from labor camp, we rescued her through an underground railroad system stretching from China through Southeast Asia. We arranged for local Christians to cover her with leaves in the back of a truck, where she stayed for hours, completely still. Then they drove that truck, with her in the back under the wet, heavy leaves, across the border to Burma. There, local people created fake identification for her, which identified her as a member of a minority tribal group. To make her appearance match that story, they fixed her hair, put makeup on her face, and sent her into an underground railroad of believers who were willing to risk their lives to save hers. Then, after successfully navigating that maze, she swam across a river to make it into Thailand.

Still, she wasn’t free. Once she was in a remote area of Thailand, she was in more danger than ever. She needed to get to Bangkok, but the windy roads were dotted with police checkpoints. Without a passport, she’d certainly be sent back to China and put right back into jail. I sent a friend of mine from Hong Kong to help her. After exhausting every other option, they realized the only option was to go to the nearest airport and fly. Even though she didn’t have a passport or valid identification, they did just that. Miraculously, none of the airport officials asked her to show any identification.

After Sarah had managed an escape worthy of a James Bond movie, she had yet to face the mountains of bureaucracy the United Nations would throw at her. They presented so much red tape that we wondered if she’d ever be allowed to leave. The US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, John Hanford, who was appointed by President Bush, personally took our phone calls, called the UN, and demanded they speed up the process to grant her refugee protection. Sarah got her approval within a month because of his direct and decisive intervention, and she finally arrived in America in 2005.

When she was safely in America, Sarah Liu and two other refugees from the South China Church all resettled in Midland. The Midland community helped provide support for their living expenses under ChinaAid. We invited them over to our home during the Christmas season. We watched as Sarah walked ever so slowly up to our Christmas tree and stared at the lights twinkling on and off, absolutely mesmerized.

“Those are just decorations,” I explained. “They’re on a string.”

I pulled out a package and handed them to her, so she could see what they looked like before being draped over the tree.

She took the string of lights out of the package faster than I could blink, her hands untangling them like she was knitting a blanket. Within seconds, she had completely unwrapped and disassembled the lights. Then she looked up at me with the various parts in her hands.

“I assembled these in my labor camp for sixteen hours a day,” she explained. “We made Christmas lights and put them in packages that look just like this one.”

She then reassembled them just as quickly. The whole process took only seconds.

Sarah was the first person to make it through our underground railroad, and through the many months it took to get her to Texas, ChinaAid grew into a much more formidable effort for religious freedom. Not only did Pastor Kevin give me his secretary for several months, he even allowed ChinaAid to operate out of their church offices. They made sure we were set up properly, helped organize our tax information, and created a board of amazingly generous Midlanders. I was hired as a part-time pastor at Mid-Cities Community Church, where I brought Chinese dissidents to tell their stories of persecution and torture to the local Midland congregations. Immediately, the churches were captured by their stories, and the dissidents won everybody’s hearts. Midland was in a “boom,” with oil prices above a hundred dollars a barrel, and their residents opened their hearts and wallets to help fight for freedom.

A community of believers had embraced us, and moving to Midland was like coming home to a family I’d never met.

“Hurry up,” Deborah had said to Heidi, whose belly had been growing bigger as the end of 2004 approached. “I want you to have a real Texas cowgirl!”

When we moved to Midland, Deborah’s main focus had been to make Heidi’s life more comfortable, and she’d really stepped into a role of mother-in-law. She’d made sure Heidi adjusted to West Texas, helped provide childcare, and even bought little birthday gifts for the children, who soon were calling her “Grandma.”

On Christmas Eve, 2004, Heidi went into labor. This time we left the other two children with Christian neighbors, and I was free to be by my wife’s side as she delivered a beautiful baby girl, whom we named Yining, which means “beautiful peace.” Her English name would be Melissa. Once we brought her home, we received endless casseroles and babysitting offers from our new Texas friends.

I don’t know what percentage of ChinaAid’s success is due to Midland. But I know that the generosity of their churches helped prepare us to fight for the plight of the persecuted on an even grander scale.

Sadly, we’d have many more opportunities.