10,000 Kilometers

I met Pastor Mark Geppert in March 1998. When we met, for some reason, Pastor Mark mentioned the Greek text of Ephesians 6:10-18 showed the four evil spiritual forces could be individual demons because the names were preceded by definite articles. I reached for my Greek Bible. As I read the passage, I said, “No one ever mentioned that, and I’ve never noticed it.” 

“No one ever got out a Greek Bible to check me on it,” he said with a laugh. Our friendship began at that moment. Mark invited me to join him on a “Prayer Walking Mission” to China in July of 1998. I’d never heard of prayer walking and it made little sense to me. As a doer by nature, walking and praying didn’t seem like something to DO for two weeks. Nevertheless, I became part of a twenty-four member team of prayer walkers.

We landed in Beijing, and my first prayer walking experience took place in Tiananmen Square. When we arrived at the square, I stood and prayed. After about fifteen minutes, a young woman walked up to me and said, “Hello.”  She spoke English. We started a conversation. She asked, “Why have you come here?”

I said, “We came 10,000 kilometers to tell you about Jesus.”  She told me she had heard about Jesus at the university. Eventually, another member of the team joined me. We talked with the young woman for a couple of hours and she prayed to receive Jesus as her Savior and Lord. I decided right then prayer walking was, indeed, doing something!

Our next stop was Chengdu. We visited a Buddhist temple because we were heading to Lhasa, Tibet the next day, and many of us had never been to a Buddhist temple. Right outside the temple sat a lame beggar. The Holy Spirit prompted me to pray for his healing. I said, “No.” That would have been bad enough, but the impulse came again as we left the temple, and once again I resisted. The next morning, we were to fly to Lhasa, but our flight was canceled due to bad weather. One of our team members from my church, Kim, asked me if we could go back to the Buddhist temple because she had a difficult time there the day before. She wanted to be sure she was ready for what we would experience in Tibet, the center of Buddhism on the planet. 

As we came close to the temple, the lame beggar was still there. I had just been telling Kim how we need to listen to the Holy Spirit’s prompting and obey Him. The prompting came a third time. I almost said, “No,” but realized the absurdity of that with what I had just told Kim. The man didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak Chinese. I told him, “I’m going to pray for Jesus to heal you.” I prayed in English, then tongues. He listened. When I finished, He was smiling broadly, but he wasn’t walking. 

Hubert Chan and Jeffrey Yuen were on the trip. When we went back to the hotel, I told them the story. They ran to the temple. The lame beggar told them an American man and teenaged girl had prayed for him and he had trusted Jesus as his Savior. Now I was all in for prayer walking! Jeff and Hubert encountered a deaf woman there, and when Jeff prayed for her, she was healed.

We went to Tibet the next day, and prayer walked the Potala Palace and the Jokhang Temple. Pastor Mark met a Chinese government official who saw our concern for the Chinese people. He asked Pastor Mark if he would help with the problem of congenital heart disease in children. Pastor Mark said, “Yes.” That ended up leading to the Touching Hearts ministry that impacted the entire Tibetan Autonomous region. 

Pastor Mark invited me to return to China the following year to be part of a team that provided a week-long leader training for house church leaders. As part of that team, I experienced the profound commitment of those Chinese believers. It has had a lasting impact on me. When I think of it being “hard” to pastor here in America, I remember what those folks experience daily to share the good news of Jesus. 

As we pray for China, for the people there, for the church and their leaders, and for all the ministries SEAPC is part of in China, including the nationwide autism ministry, let us give thanks to God that praying and walking changes the world! It starts with the people who invest the time to walk and pray and then ripples out to individuals, families, communities, and nations.