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"Pioneering scholarship coordinator is not an oxymoron"

Honestly speaking, I’m a little unnerved. The driver, who is the also the village Bimo, is controlling the car as if he is in a Shamanistic state. He might believe that the spirits he perceives are benevolent, but I believe that as little as I trust his road awareness!

The chickens and dogs scatter ahead of the oncoming jeep. The chilli peppers laid out by the side of the road provide a colourful tapestry with the mountainous backdrop there are elements if divine beauty here. The shrines in the wooden houses by the side of the road remind me that there are sinister powers at work as well. Nonetheless, I do know that a power much greater than any of the Yi spirits is in control, and that my Heavenly Father has brought me here for a reason.

As little as three years ago, I was graduating in Durham, UK. A degree in Physics had little prepared me for my current adventure. After a satisfactory but uninspiring year in a local power station, I left for China, two years of language study, and was then appointed, alongside my English teaching duties to be the Scholarship Coordinator in this region.

Through generous gifts, largely from Singapore and Canada, OMF has been able to pay tuition fees for three bright students to go to high school and then to college when otherwise their education would have ended at the age of fourteen. Last June, their college course finished, and two of them have returned (as Christians PTL) to work in their home town schools.

My job now is to interview a new candidate who is about to graduate from Junior School. It’s his uncle (the Bimo) who is driving. This could be the beginning of a long relationship. We don’t simply pay for education – we provide pastoral and education support by colleagues in the big town, and we visit the families back home to support them as well.

This is my first time in the village by myself. My Chinese is OK, but the family don’t speak much Putonghua, apart from the boy himself, and Uncle “Bimo”. I’ll be relying on them to keep the conversation flowing. I’ve contacted my friends and family back home. I know they are praying and that God is in control. I am excited to think, in seven years time, where this young man could be, and what the Spiritual State of this family could be.

This story is fictional, although based on truth. Ccould the true version star you?

To be a ‘scholarship coordinator’ may sound dull. But in fact, it is a strategic pioneering people-centred position which often takes you into villages and situations where Spiritual battles are quite intense. If you want to explore the possibility of this kind of service, please contact china@omf.org.uk .

*A ‘Bimo’ is a witch doctor in certain people groups in China. Villages are in awe of them, and they are often opposed to the Christian religion.