27

“This is China’s most expensive drink,” Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs said, as he prepared to make a toast. “And it just happens to also come from my hometown.”

Deborah watched as the clear alcohol, Maotai, was poured into her little glass, and braced herself. Maotai, which dates back to the Qing Dynasty, is an enormous part of Chinese history. Ever since Mao and his Long March comrades used it to cleanse their war wounds, it’s been a part of Chinese lore and a staple at state banquets. Mao famously offered it to Richard Nixon in 1972, who—against the advice of his aids—freely imbibed.

Deborah had made a special trip to Beijing in January 2008 so she could speak face-to-face with the world leaders. As a member of the famed Midland Ministerial Alliance, she was escorted to meet Minister Ye, who was responsible for implementing all of China’s religious policy—good or bad. He treated her with much dignity and prepared a lavish feast in her honor.

That’s when she was faced with a glass of 106 proof alcohol. She knew she shouldn’t drink much of it, but she put her lips on the glass and tried not to choke. Dan Rather famously described the drink as “liquid razor blades,” but Deborah knew this was one of the highest demonstrations of respect. Distilled from fermented sorghum, the alcohol has a lingering aroma of soy sauce. The cheapest bottle costs over three hundred dollars, and a 1980 bottle sold last year for $1.3 million.

After she had successfully managed Minister Ye’s toast, he made another. And another. Deborah, however, couldn’t drink as much as was expected of her. When Minister Ye noticed that she was merely sipping her drink, he took her glass and poured most of it into his own cup. Culturally, only very close friends—or a subordinate for his supervisor—would do that in China.

The feast was elaborate and festive, as the Chinese government spared no expense. Deborah assumed this was all done to impress the “housewife” from the “tribe of the President.” However, between courses, Minister Ye turned to Deborah and said, very innocently, “Do you happen to know a man named Bob Fu?” Suddenly, all of the attention and luxurious food made sense. He was trying to buy Deborah’s influence over me.

“Yes,” she said. “We’re very close.”

“Really?” He acted shocked that she’d associate with such a man. “I wish I could have a close friendship with you like Bob Fu.”

“His children call me Grandma,” she added.

“Well, he’s reporting ugly things about China.”

“I know Bob’s heart,” Deborah said. “He doesn’t want to misrepresent China. He loves his motherland.” This “Texas housewife” was not going to yield an inch. “In fact, Bob Fu wants all of these persecution cases to disappear so he’ll have nothing left to report. Only you can make that happen.”

At the end of the banquet, Minister Ye and Deborah had developed a strong trust. Right before she left, with much flourish, he presented Deborah with two bottles of Maotai. In China, officials aren’t supposed to give bribes, so Maotai is a well-known substitute. “This is for you to take back to America.”

She accepted the lavish gift, and said, “Let’s build a protocol on how to handle those ‘ugly things’ Bob reports about you. In the next few months, there will be some cases. A house church leader might be sent to labor camp or a new believer to prison. When that happens, we won’t go to the media. Instead, we’ll come straight to you.”

In exchange for our moratorium on media exposure, the director promised to handle the human rights violations. And so, Deborah became ChinaAid’s diplomatic go-between, privately communicating with China’s Bureau of Religious Affairs when the inevitable violations occurred. And they definitely happened. In the two months of our good faith effort, however, we never got a positive result. In fact, Minister Ye never even followed up.

Later, when Minister Ye came to the United States for a visit, Deborah hosted a lavish dinner for him at a very nice restaurant in a five-star hotel in Washington, DC. Since he had given her such an extravagant gift of Maotai, she wanted to present him with something even more valuable. She bought a bilingual Bible and had me highlight all of the Scriptures about loving each other. When he came to the table, he saw the gift and flipped through the pages. Suddenly, his face contorted with rage.

“Love is not proud,” he read from one of the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians. “It does not dishonor others . . . it is not self-seeking? Bob Fu doesn’t follow these writings!”

Suddenly, everyone in the room got quiet as he went on a political diatribe against me. The Chinese embassy diplomats were shocked that he was expressing such disgust with Deborah’s gift. When his anger subsided, he looked around the room and was immediately embarrassed. “You are the host and here I am doing a political speech,” he said, his face splotchy from his diminishing anger. “I’m so sorry.”

Deborah also handed him a letter I’d written him, inviting him to come to Midland to talk about the issues with me face-to-face. Needless to say, he didn’t accept the invitation.

However, I still lived in Ye’s mind. This became evident when John Hanford, who led the Office of International Religious Freedom in the State Department, held a private, friendly dinner for Minister Ye. During the dinner, John turned to him and said, “Let’s talk about persecution in your country. Last year alone . . .” Then, John proceeded to list the names of many persecuted Christians.

As soon as Minister Ye heard this, he exclaimed, “This is from Bob Fu!”

I’m sure he was thinking, I can’t even get into the White House, yet this poor guy from Shiziyuan Village feeds them all this terrible information. And certainly, as Minister Ye undoubtedly knew, this was not the first time I had made President Bush aware of such “terrible information.”

In 2004, my old friend Zhuohua Cai—who set up the illegal training center in the China countryside and ran the illegal printing press—had gotten in trouble. By this time, he was a prominent Beijing house church leader, still printing Bibles and giving them away free of charge. He kept a stash of Christian literature in a warehouse, far from the eyes of the Public Security Bureau. However, on September 11, he was waiting at a bus stop when state security agents drove up in a van, arrested him, and charged him with “illegal business practices.” He was fined 150,000 yuan ($18,500) and sentenced to three years in prison. Apparently, the police had discovered his warehouse, which had over two hundred thousand pieces of printed Christian literature and Bibles—the largest “foreign religious infiltration” in the history of the People’s Republic of China. While Pastor Cai was in jail, along with his wife and brother-in-law, he was tortured with electric cattle prods. I immediately hired Zhang Xingshui, a prominent attorney at Beijing’s Jingding Law Firm, to defend my old friend.

In April 2005, I had an amazing opportunity to bring up Pastor Cai’s case in an internationally significant way. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights invited me to deliver a formal speech during the General Assembly on Religious Intolerance. I was very honored, because the UNCHR was the highest authority on this earth with the stated mission to protect and promote human rights for all. I traveled to Geneva with a team of people, including Deborah Fikes, my assistant Melissa Rasmussen, and our first underground railroad survivor, Sarah Liu. The non-governmental organization (NGO) A Woman’s Voice International was kind enough to sponsor me at the conference, a requirement for all of the guest speakers. They also set up a special briefing in one of the UN’s smaller conference rooms, where Sarah gave her testimony about how she was sentenced to death as a member of the South China Church, tortured viciously in prison, and escaped.

Later that week, it was time for me to deliver my remarks. As I sat at my desk, I was a little nervous watching people filter in. Gradually the semicircle of desks—in one of the largest conference rooms at the Palais des Nations in Geneva—filled with delegates. I’d spoken at the UN before, but this time the atmosphere was particularly lively. There were many NGO representatives, government delegates, and more than sixty UNCHR elected members lined up to speak during that two weeks. Each NGO rep was only allotted about eight minutes, so I made sure to pack as much information into my speech as possible.

“Mr. Chairman, A Woman’s Voice International would like to draw to the attention of this commission the plight of three leaders of the Chinese house church movement who have experienced persecution at the hands of state authorities in the People’s Republic of China,” I began. It felt a little awkward to be detailing the abuses of the Chinese government right in front of their delegation; however, they refused to meet with me personally in advance. I plunged ahead, describing several cases of abuse and torture of Christians in China, beginning with my friend Cai.

The room was filled with hundreds of people, who all spoke in different languages and were arranged by country. While I talked, there was a lot of action in the room, people milling around, looking at notes, making connections with old friends, laughing, preparing for their own speeches. No one was really paying attention to my speech.

“Though China has amended its constitution to protect human rights,” I continued, leaning close to the microphone to allow my voice to carry, “these cases exemplify both the arbitrary nature of what passes for justice in the People’s Republic of China and the sad state of religious freedom there.”

Still, no one was listening.

“Mr. Chairman, I’d now like for you to pay special attention. I’m holding an electric shock baton identical to those used to torture Christians, including Pastor Cai.”

Then I pulled out the electric shock baton, about the size of a flashlight, that I’d smuggled out of China. I didn’t smuggle it into the UN, however. Deborah and I had gotten permission from the Secretariat’s office before my speech. Also, I’d brought the baton through several layers of security. In other words, the UN had already approved of my electric baton demonstration.

Nonetheless, when I held the baton above my head and pressed the button, the cacophony of elbow rubbing and mingling suddenly stopped. For six seconds, people heard the staticky, unmistakable sound of an electric current. No one said a word. Were they wondering what that current might feel like against their own skin? Were they angry with the Chinese for employing this against the innocent? Were they remembering the previous testimony of Sarah, about how the agents put a similar baton into her mouth and private parts? I’m not sure. However, I was remembering the times I saw this device used against prisoners in my own jail cell so many years ago. The whole room was frozen. Stunned. And I felt something significant was happening for my suffering brothers and sisters.

As soon as I turned off the current, the room erupted again in conversation, but this time the chattering was anxious. All eyes were on me as UN Security surrounded me and grabbed the shock baton off the desk while I continued speaking.

“We feel threatened!” a delegate from the Chinese government yelled out. I’m not sure how she made the claim with a straight face. The Chinese delegation immediately pressured the Secretariat of the Human Rights Commission to expel me and all of the Woman’s Voice International delegates. Although he refused to expel the others, the security guards standing next to the angry Chinese delegation grabbed me.

I was escorted to the security room, where a female Chinese diplomat was standing next to me to register their complaint. “We feel threatened by this man.”

At that very moment those torture devices were being widely used against hundreds of thousands of victims of conscience in their country—especially women. Even the manufacturer described its product as “an ideal tool for the Chinese law enforcement officials.”

“How can you be threatened by just six seconds of demonstration when your government shoves that into the mouths of people like Sarah Liu?” I said.

Without any sort of investigation or hearing, they yanked my UN badge off my neck, forced me out of the room, and threw me into a UN police car.

China, of course, had manipulated the whole procedure. After I left, their delegation virtually ground the Commission proceedings to a halt for nearly an hour by making excessive demands upon the Secretariat’s time and immobilizing the regular proceedings of the Commission.

Later, I was asked to testify before Congress about this incident, and I summed up my UN experience by saying, “About nine years ago, I was forced into a police car and taken from my home to prison by the Chinese Public Security Bureau in Beijing for alleged illegal religious activities. Sadly, this is the second time I have been put into a police car, and the UN security guards did it. The only reason I was treated like that was because of a complaint filed by representatives of torturers.”

Sadly, my testimony at the United Nations ended up getting A Woman’s Voice International suspended for one year and did nothing to help save Pastor Cai. In fact, he and his attorney had been informed that the government told the court to prepare to sentence him for fifteen years, which was five times the original sentence.

Meanwhile, in China, far away from the false outrage of the well-heeled UN delegates, a PSB agent apprehended the attorney we’d hired to defend Pastor Cai. President Bush was coming to Beijing to discuss the upcoming Olympics, and China was doing everything it could to make sure their human rights violations wouldn’t factor into their talks. Our attorney was forced to temporarily relocate to a town a hundred miles from Beijing. Even though Pastor Cai was in jail and his attorney was forced into hiding, they were still in the heart and on the mind of the leader of the free world.

“What I say to the Chinese is . . . a free society is in your interests,” President Bush said during his speech with Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi. He said that China should let people “worship without state control and to print Bibles and other sacred texts without fear of punishment.” In fact, the theme of his Asian tour was religious freedom. When he went to China, he visited Gangwashi Church, my former church whose seventy-year-old pastor had been yanked from the pulpit during that near-riot. After listening to a translation of the sermon through a headset, President Bush and the First Lady stood on the steps of the church and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is very strong inside your church. It wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society. My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly.”

It didn’t take long for the media of the Chinese government to connect Bush’s comments about religious freedom and Bible printing to Pastor Cai. He was released after serving only three years.

President Bush proved time and time again that he had a heart for religious freedom.

In April 2006, I invited seven Chinese human rights activists to Washington, DC, for the Freedom in China Summit 2006 conference. Four were able to attend the conference: attorney Guo Feixiong, known as a “barefoot lawyer” from the Guangdong province, because of his efforts on behalf of marginalized groups; legal scholar Li Baiguang, who had taught house church leaders about their legal rights and demanded the government comply with its own religious policies; law professor and blogger Wang Yi; and one of China’s most prominent essayists, Yu Jie. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng, constitutional law scholar Dr. Fan Yafeng, and lawyer Zhang Xingshui were unable to accept the invitation, as Chinese security forces blocked their travel. After the conference, the four dissidents traveled with me back to Midland to spend some time at ChinaAid. That’s when I received a very important telephone call from the White House.

“President Bush would like to meet you and your fellow dissidents in the Oval Office to discuss religious freedom,” I was told.

I was elated. Although I’d formally requested to meet with the president before the conference and had several high-level meetings in the White House, I didn’t receive any indication that a meeting with President Bush would actually occur.

I was asked to provide a list of the names of the people I would like included in the meeting, and when I hung up the phone I immediately began formulating my list. I couldn’t suppress a smile as I wrote down the names of my four guests, knowing their lives would be forever changed by this official White House invitation.

The three Christian dissidents were having a Bible study with my staff in our ChinaAid office. The fourth, Mr. Guo, was not a believer and had chosen to skip the Bible study session. When I got back to the office, I excitedly told Wang Yi, Yu Jie, and Li Baiguang the news.

“Who’s going?” Yu Jie and Wang Yi asked.

“All of you and Guo,” I said happily.  When I said Guo’s name, however, Yu Jie’s and Wang Yi’s faces fell. During our trip to DC, I had noticed some tension between the dissidents—namely, Yu and Wang didn’t seem to like Guo, but I couldn’t tell exactly why. I was bothered and puzzled by their reaction, but the extent of their disapproval wasn’t apparent until Yu and Wang pulled me aside before lunchtime, ushering me out for a walk and a more private conversation.

“If Guo goes,” they told me, “we won’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked anxiously. I was very confused and even felt a little threatened.

“We’ll boycott the meeting at the White House if Guo remains on the guest list.”

Apparently, I had unwittingly waded into a schism. Christian activists Yu and Wang had a more modest approach of working within the government system, whereas nonChristian Guo was a human rights defender who fought to reform the system. In fact, Guo, along with Gao Zhisheng, was a pioneer of the lawyers’ human rights movement in China.

Later I learned from the other dissident, Dr. Li Baiguang, that Yu and Wang had lobbied him to join their boycott if Guo was included, but Dr. Li had declined. He said he wanted to respect my decision as host.

I returned to my office and agonized over what to do next. This wonderful opportunity was being marred by squabbles and turf wars. On one hand, it would’ve been very offensive to disinvite Guo. On the other hand, it would be even more awkward to show up at the White House and have to explain a boycott.

Yu Jie, Wang Yi, and Taiwanese pastor and lawyer David Cheng, who also happened to be visiting Midland, entered the room, and I suggested that we pray over the decision.

After the prayer, Wang Yi and I went to Guo, who was in another room in the ChinaAid office. It was the most awkward moment in my whole life. Wang seriously told him that after our prayer, we felt he should not go to the meeting with President Bush. This might sound very holy—bringing concern over a decision to God for his guidance—but it actually was pretty cowardly. In a sense, we used this prayer to cover a decision I didn’t feel comfortable making. Guo was furious and even called Dr. Fan, lawyer Gao Zhisheng, and Zhang Xingshui to help persuade us to change our minds.

I hesitantly spoke directly to Guo.

“Feixiong,” I said. “I have something to tell you.” With great reluctance and a heavy heart, I began explaining I was no longer inviting him to meet with President Bush.

This was a decision I’d come to regret.

The next day, before I sent Guo to a previously scheduled New York appointment, I explained to him the true circumstances around my decision. Though he seriously disagreed, he respectfully didn’t mar the event with any sort of protest. He simply handed me a letter after I resubmitted a new invitation list to the White House.   

And so, after our dispute, the three dissidents, Deborah Fikes, and I traveled to DC to experience an unprecedented historical moment for the Chinese house church movement. I tried to push the squabble out of my mind, and to focus on the real significance of the event at hand. The leader of the free world was sending an unambiguous message to China: he was aware of the crackdown on the religious groups, but America valued freedom.

“The president isn’t quite ready to see you,” said Pat Davis, an official from the National Security Council. She was the one who had originally notified me about the Oval Office meeting, and she seemed a little anxious. “My apologies.”

We were sitting outside the Oval Office, uncomfortable in our best suits, and the meeting had been delayed several times. Apparently, there was a faction of advisors in the State Department who passionately opposed our visit. They argued if we were welcomed into the Oval Office—the inner sanctum of power—it would unnecessarily inflame America’s carefully cultivated relationship with China. For several days prior to our arrival, they’d been going back and forth about how to best handle us. National Security Advisor Steve Hadley finally put his foot down and we received our invitation. However, there now seemed to be a last-minute complication.

“Would you like some coffee or tea while you wait?” an aide asked.

Earlier that morning, the White House had received a confidential, urgent memo from US Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt: if these dissidents were honored by an Oval Office meeting with the president, Chinese senior officials had threatened that they could not guarantee the dissidents’ safety upon their return to China. The White House took this to mean they’d be arrested or executed, and knew that they were perhaps placing these men in grave danger.

Michael Gerson, Senior Advisor to the President, who met with our delegation in his office in the West Wing of the White House during our time in DC, later recounted the behind-the-scenes activity in his book Heroic Conservatism:

This development raised ethical questions. Should we cancel the meeting and prevent these dissidents from risking their lives? I considered some analogies. In a previous time, would I have advised Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov to lower their risky profile? Of course not. On a battlefield, would I prevent a soldier from taking on a heroic but risky mission to save others? Not if the soldier knew the odds of failure. A deep reverence for human life does not require us to oppose life-risking heroism.[1]

Instead of making the decision for us, an official entered our waiting area and told us what had been going on behind the scenes. He left the decision up to us. “Do you still want to meet with the president?”

It wasn’t even a question in our minds. We knew the tactics of the Chinese government more than anyone; all of us had already either been imprisoned or under constant surveillance. We decided long ago that we would not bend our knee to China. “Of course,” we all said. “We’re already here.”

When President Bush heard our response, he immediately sent for us. I was so humbled by the opportunities God had given me as we walked through the hallowed halls of the White House. Born in such humble beginnings, I was teasingly called “Prime Minister Fu” by my classmates who believed I could only rise so far into the social strata. Yet, here I was, about to meet the leader of the free world.

“Wait right here,” a woman said, putting her hand gently on my shoulder. I was quite sure we were only a few steps away from the Oval Office, and my heart was racing. I’d read so much about this very place, even when I was a child in my peasant village, and here I stood.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me, very quietly. “You won’t be allowed in.” Evidently, part of the last-minute negotiations included two concessions. First, the meeting would not take place in the Oval Office, but in a room called the “Yellow Oval,” located in the president’s personal residence. Second, one member of our group would not be allowed to meet with the president in the White House: troublemaker and whistleblower Bob Fu.

I was incredibly disappointed, but stepped aside as my friends went in to meet with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the National Security Advisor, Gerson, and other staff. After all, I hadn’t done any of this to elevate myself, and it was clear that the Chinese government still had me in their crosshairs. After the meeting, my friends gave me a complete rundown of all that happened. They said President Bush had welcomed them by saying, “I’ve been told you all love freedom as house church movement members.” After they told him about their struggles, they shared a very poignant moment. Gerson describes the scene from his perspective best:

Near the end of the meeting, the president was told the dissidents wanted to pray with him. Everyone stood, and the president asked people to join hands—the vice president looking momentarily stricken with awkwardness. (Clearly, where Vice President Cheney comes from, prayerful hand holding isn’t so common.) After a short prayer for mercy, blessing, and protection, the president asked the dissidents to join him in a picture. As they were leaving, the president told them: “Now I’ve seen your faces and know your names. From now on, whenever I talk about human rights in China, I’ll be thinking about you.”[2]

Afterward, the White House took precautions to protect these dissidents. According to a senior Bush official, the president sent a back channel message to the Chinese government: “I, President Bush, am personally invested in the welfare of these three dissidents, and if anything happens to them, then this would cause a severe disruption in US-China relations.” When they arrived home at the Beijing airport, American diplomats met them and kept in close contact with them. In fact, a Chinese agent later approached Dr. Li Baiguang and said, “Now that you are called a friend by the President of the United States, we won’t hurt you physically anymore. But you still need to be careful as a Chinese citizen.”

Though the meeting went wonderfully, Guo was still angry at them for his mistreatment. Eight days after the event, he published the letter he’d written protesting his exclusion on a Chinese website. Understandably, it caused quite an uproar in the Chinese human rights activist community. Right after his statement went public, I issued an apology, but nothing could undo the damage I’d inflicted on this man. After all, my decision meant Guo didn’t experience the elevated status of having “friends in high places.”

Within just a few months of being disinvited from the Bush event, he was arrested.

In God’s good timing, I did eventually get to meet the president. On July 29, 2008, just before noon, I met with President Bush and four other human rights leaders to discuss human rights in advance of the 2008 Olympic Games. They were beginning in Beijing the following week, and the president’s meeting sent a very strong message to China about American priorities. In our visit, he said he wanted to talk to President Hu Jintao about human rights violations, to explain that Christians in his country are peace-loving and caring people, and to urge China not to be afraid of us. He also planned on speaking with the Chinese people about the importance of religious liberty. I gave him some gray wristbands with “Pray for China” printed in black letters in both English and Chinese, which ChinaAid had made in conjunction with the Voice of the Martyrs. The bracelets were made to remind people that Chinese believers were still being punished for their faith through beatings, imprisonment, and even death—even as the eyes of the world were fixed on the super-fast athletes, the new Olympic arena, and all the expensive advertisements.

It was touching that President Bush cared so much about religious freedom, a passion he demonstrated all the way to the last hours of his term. During roughly the same time frame, the two attorneys with remarkably similar names, Gao and Guo, were persecuted, and their families were forced to escape China and seek asylum in the United States.

Guo Feixiong worked with Gao Zhishen, who was one of the most successful Chinese human rights lawyers. He was part of the legal defense team for a house church network in Beijing and had advocated for the freedom of nonChristian religious sects, including the much maligned and persecuted Falun Gong, and had helped in Pastor Cai’s defense. Because of his activities, Gao’s law license had been revoked and his firm shut down. When he continued to give legal advice to the persecuted, agents began living in their home, leaving the lights on at all times for sleep deprivation, and even starving their young son to extract information out of the parents. Agents followed their daughter to school, where they beat her in front of her classmates.

Through ChinaAid’s encouragement, Congress passed a resolution demanding the Chinese government stop harassing Gao’s family. Gao was arrested, interrogated, tortured mentally, stripped naked, and shocked with electric batons on his private parts before he was released. After his release—knowing his time of freedom would be short—he hatched a plan to enable his family to cross the mountainous border, with the help of many believers in the underground railroad for the religiously persecuted.

About that time, Guo Feixiong was also arrested in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and was falsely charged with “running an illegal business,” a retaliation against him for his work in publicizing the arrest of his co-worker Gao to the outside world.

One morning, I learned through a friend with Radio Free Asia that Gao’s family had arrived in Bangkok. I got assurance from the White House and the State Department, then bought a ticket to Bangkok that afternoon. It was the most expensive ticket I’d ever purchased, but time was of the essence. When I arrived, I went to the small home where Gao’s family was hiding out; a Falun Gong family had offered shelter to Gao’s family because of his advocacy for religious freedom. The tiny house was a one-bedroom with no mattresses, and everyone slept on the floor. I spent the Chinese New Year with the Gao family there.

Through our underground church efforts, Guo’s son had also been rescued, and he arrived in Bangkok as well. While I was in Thailand, I met with the little boy and arranged for him to stay with the Gao family.

Because these were such high-profile cases, the Chinese government was probably already in hot pursuit. Consequently, I moved the family from the Falun Gong home to a hotel, then to another hotel. We made sure they were Western hotel chains to avoid being compromised. Finally, I rented an apartment in an international community full of Westerners. None of us had very much sleep, and they were frazzled at having to relocate every few days.

One day, my phone rang. It was Gao!

He was attending a relative’s wedding in the Shanxi province, which was his hometown, and could tell he was being followed. He borrowed a phone, went to a toilet room, and called his family from the stall. It was the last conversation they would have with him before he disappeared.

“I want to see you guys in heaven,” he said.

I had brought the Jesus movie with me and showed it to his family. The children were young and full of pure faith. As they watched the movie and saw Jesus crucified and resurrected, tears ran down their faces and they believed. After the movie, the little boy came to me and placed some Thai coins in my hands.

“This is for Jesus,” he said. Even though he’d only been a Christian for a few minutes, he already made an offering to his Lord.

Gao’s wife, however, was not so sure about Christianity. “My kids can believe in Jesus,” she told me, “but the Falun Gong has helped me so much. I can believe in that religion.”

But during her last conversation with Gao, he had said, “I don’t want to be forever separated from you. If the Communists take me from you now, I at least want to be reunited with you after my death.”

It was a heartwrenching conversation. At the end of it, Gao spoke to me. “I entrust my family to you,” he said.

“Don’t you want us to rescue you too?” I asked. I could tell that he was torn. However, he felt his calling was to stay in China and continue the fight for religious freedom. On January 16, 2009, I called the White House and the State Department to try to get his family out of the country. “We need to get Gao’s family political asylum in the United States.”

“Don’t you realize that today is the last working day before Barack Obama’s inauguration?” the person said. “We’re in the middle of a transition of power.”

“Can’t you help them anyway?”

The person on the other end of the phone paused.

“All right,” he said. “But if you’d called just a few hours later, all of our computers would’ve been shut down and we’d no longer have access to them.”

Once again, the religious dissidents got the full cooperation of the White House, which set the process in motion and accepted his family directly as refugees without going through the UN. They were processed as political refugees in the most urgent manner because of the potential threat and danger they could face in Thailand.

This allowed their immigration paperwork to be completed in eleven days. In the realm of government bureaucracy, this was a total miracle.

However, even though they had the go-ahead from the American government, Thailand refused to give the Gao family exit privileges because they didn’t have passports. With the Chinese government hot on our trail, I had to fly back to Washington, DC, to pressure the Thai government to issue exit permits for Gao’s family. While I was there, I also tried to persuade the State Department to process the Guo family in the same urgent way the Gao family was processed. However, the White House had already transitioned over to the new administration, and things became much more difficult for China’s persecuted.

After I left Bangkok, Guo’s wife and daughter were also rescued and made it to Thailand. The State Department, however, refused to accept the Guo family directly. Instead, they insisted that they go through the UN, an entity under such influence of the Chinese government. While I was in Texas, I prepared their application and emailed it to them. Then they went to the UN to file their application. It didn’t work, just as we’d predicted. The UN denied their application for refugee protection, and even urged them to go back to China.

I learned of this when I was traveling with my family back from Oklahoma, where we’d been visiting friends. We were heading down the interstate, listening to music and chatting while the kids dozed in the back. Heidi and I had been talking about errands that needed to be run. Specifically, she was reminding me that when we got back to Texas, I needed to apply for visas for her and the children because they wanted to make a trip to Hong Kong.

“I put everyone’s passports in your suitcase,” she said, gently nudging me, “in case you want to take care of that when we get back to Texas.”

I smiled. No matter how much I was fighting for the persecuted church, I was still a husband with a “honey-do” list. I also needed to mow the lawn. Just then, my cell phone rang.

“The United Nations rejected refugee protection for the Guo family,” I was told.

When I got off the phone, I looked at my family. They were all tucked safely in our blue van, thankfully oblivious to the terrible circumstances of believers on the other side of the world. However, they’d paid a price for my advocacy. For my children’s entire lives, I’d been fighting for human rights, traveling to rescue the persecuted, and speaking out on behalf of the voiceless. In other words, I’d been busy. In America, this was parental taboo. “It’s both quality and quantity,” I heard pastors say from the pulpit to an auditorium full of parents trying to make the most of their family life. In fact, Pastor Kevin York became a wonderful counselor to Heidi and me once we moved to Midland. At first, he correctly encouraged me to find a good work/family balance. In Philadelphia especially, I didn’t say no to even the most obscure speaking engagement. This left Heidi alone with the children weekend after weekend, an unsustainable situation for everyone.

“Pastor Kevin,” I remember saying, “imagine this scenario. I’m sleeping, when one of my seven phones rings in the middle of the night because of the time difference from China. It’s a woman screaming, because agents are in her house beating her children. She needs legal help, so she calls me. What do I do?” I asked. It was a real question. In American Christianity, a “good parent” is the one who attends every violin recital and volleyball practice. “Her phone call means that I need to get out of bed and make sure she gets a lawyer immediately. I need to find out the details of the case and write a press release—in English and in Chinese—to send to the senators and the congressmen who care about human rights. And that’s just the beginning.”

Kevin had looked at me with tears in his eyes. He’d been a pastor for several years and had encouraged men to be more “available” to their families. “Put career second,” he had told them. “Just turn the phone off.”

“Or recently,” I added, “a pastor in Guangxi Province called me, right after his wife had been dragged to the hospital by agents to be forced to have an abortion. She was seven months pregnant. When they got there, they found eighty mothers being forced to abort within the next forty-eight hours. So I called NPR and other reporters, trying to shed light on this incident. But by the time the reporters got there, the agents had already poisoned her and the baby was dead.” I held up my phone. “It’s no exaggeration to say every time this thing rings, it could be a matter of life and death.”

Kevin looked at me. “I don’t know what to advise,” he said. “I’ve used up all of my American put-your-family-before-work counseling techniques, and I’ve got nothing left. But the one thing I know is that you simply can’t turn off your phone, and we’ll try to make sure you get the help you need to make it as easy as possible on your family.”

I remember that conversation well, because my family has had to eat many meals alone, celebrate birthdays without me, and frequently fear for my safety. God asks us to pick up our cross and follow Him . . . even parents. That means one father might follow Him to the school Christmas play and another might follow Him into a war zone, making him miss all the soccer games. Following God looks different for every family, and there was no easy answer to how I could enjoy my family as much as I wanted while also fighting for the persecuted. Midland made it easier, but there were some moments—like when we were driving home from a family vacation—when it hurt to do the right thing.

“Guo’s family needs help,” I sighed. Heidi knew Guo, since we had hosted him in Midland in May 2006 and attended meetings with him at the Hudson Institute and in Washington.

Heidi smiled a weary smile. The kids were still sleeping. “What happened?”

“The United Nations told them to go back to China. They said Guo’s political activity was his problem, not the family’s. They said China might sentence them to a few years in prison, anyway,” I said, incredulous. “Not because they’re political prisoners, but because they illegally crossed the border.”

Heidi looked at me. “I assume you have to get there?”

We drove straight to the airport in Dallas, where Heidi dropped me off and continued home without me. As I walked through the airport, lugging my suitcase to the international departure gate, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was at least partially responsible for Guo’s arrest. Had I not disinvited him from the White House event, surely China would not have brazenly trumped up false charges and imprisoned him. I resolved to do all I could to help his family.

Little did I know this promise would lead me to commit a felony.

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[1]Michael J. Gerson, Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 97.

[2]Ibid., 98.