China Trip Day 6 - Bakery and Special School

After a great night of sleep (almost 10 hours), I was excited that we were headed to the bakery and special school here in town. I was still sore from the work at the ranch yesterday, so I was hoping for something a little easier today. Actually, it may have been harder work.

(You can see all of today's pictures here.)

For my devotions this morning, the book talked about the "butterfly effect" and how something small that we do can make a large difference (both good or bad). I was determined today to do something small that made a large difference in someone's life and I had several opportunities to do that.

I had 15 minutes to wait before we left for the school, so I decided to walk through the market right behind our hotel. I took a few pictures and some video of the food they had for sale there.

From China Trip Day 6

So we took several taxis and found ourselves in a completely different part of town. The compound has several buildings on it, and the first one we went to was the bakery.

Taking our shoes off as we went in, we all put on sandals and went to the kitchen. There we met Cook-Kim, who is a Korean. He runs this bakery and regularly sends bread made here into North Korea to feed poor Christians there. They train handicapped young adults from their special school and employ some of them. The Good News Bakery provides vocational training for 20-25 students three times a week. The bread is eaten by students, staff, and local authorities and 3500 sweet red bean rolls are taken to North Korea monthly for the needy.

I had hurt my finger yesterday working at the ranch, and with a bandage on it, I didn't think it was a good idea for me to be playing in the dough. So I took pictures while everyone else worked. After taking some time to roll the dough into balls and then into sticks, we took a break and sang some songs together and did some skits. Even though the workers didn't understand much English, they were filled with joy as they heard us sing old and new songs to Him. Then three of the ladies in the bakery worked together and sang a song for us.

You can watch some of the video from the bakery trip here:


We appreciated their hospitality and willingness to let us watch and help them work.

At lunch, we climbed to the upper room of the special school, which is also where Dr. Kim and Patricia stay. In the upper room, we ate lunch together, and then Patricia shared her testimony of how she and her husband ended up in China, why they chose that location, and what they hope to accomplish. I recorded her talk, but for security reasons, I will not be posting the link on this blog. If you would like to hear her powerful testimony, please email me at drfincher@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you a link to either the video or the audio.

After Patricia's testimony, Janet (one of the special school teachers) came to talk to us about what we would be doing with the students. She was assisted by Grace, who is a new teacher/translator at the language school.


She also had Matt, one of the new teachers, along to help as well. They also told us about the situation with the students there and Christianity. Children are not allowed to go to church and every week they are asked by the authorities if they have or not. No one who is a teacher of children can publicly profess to be a Christian. If they do, they will lose their job.

Janet says that they pray for their students privately, plant seeds, and find that those seeds grow. After 18 years of age, the students will come back and talk to them about how they knew those teachers were different. Janet says that she has baptized four students and desires to disciple them.

You can watch video footage of the special school here:


50 students at the school live in the dorm during the week. The rest of the students come in for the day. Several of the students go home for the weekends with their parents. Some don't have families, though. She had been praying that we would have joy and would bring the children joy. She said that God doesn't make mistakes so that whichever children we were matched up with was not a mistake, but was God's will.

Our first form of helping was in one of their elective classes. I chose computer lab, and we walked in to see 20 boys working on old computers running Windows XP. They were learning to type, mostly in English. Some were playing games. I taught one kid how to turn up the volume on his speakers. Another boy who was typing in English watched me type very fast. He started clapping for me. Well, I brought joy to at least one kid that way.

Next, we went out on the playground, where they were playing soccer. I wasn't feeling great, with a few injuries, but I played anyway for awhile. Then I decided to quit and talked to Janet some more. She and Lisa were blowing up balloons, tying them to popsicle sticks, and giving them to kids. They had to leave to help a child who was hurt, so I took over that job. Next thing I know, I was swarmed by kids and did that task for about the next hour. They thought it was funny how big I could blow them up and they would say POP real loud to try and scare me. Then I would say it to them and they would laugh about it. It was great fun to see them have so much fun with something so simple. Score one for bringing joy to me.


Some of the kids weren't so joyful. One picked up a box cutter and acted like he was going to stab me. Others would try to take multiple balloons and were using them as sort of a substitute currency in the yard. But I kept on blowing, tying, and stringing the balloons until they were all gone. Then it was free time with the children. Some kids played frisbee, jump rope, and soccer.

I noticed one little boy off to himself crying. So I asked Janet what was happening with him. She said he was very depressed, and maybe I could walk him around the property, bless him with prayer and sing to him to try and calm him down. So I did that and it actually worked. Then I sat down and let him ply my iPhone for a little while. He enjoyed a drawing game on it, as did several other children who came up to play. So I guess God found the right kid for me to spend that time with.

In a little while after that, we were planning a program for the kids. We ended up singing some good Christian camp songs (although they didn't know the meaning of the words). The kids got into some of the action songs and we enjoyed seeing them try.

Far more things happened today than I could share, but I got this out of it. Seeing how God could have already ordained for us to show up and do some of the little things necessary was amazing. It made me confident that I had done a little thing anyone else could have done, but God had appointed me to do.

I could write more, but I'm falling asleep right now. I still have to talk about eating with our translator and what it is teaching me about China. But it will have to wait.

(Don't forget that all of today's pictures are here.)


Tomorrow: Back to the ranch