Chinese Mormon Missionary in Indiana

[Okrahomer]

This is an interesting article about an LDS missionary from China.  It was published in the student newspaper at the University of Indiana.  I feel for this sister, struggling as she is with a foreign language.  It would be interesting to know more about her history--especially how she came to be a member of the LDS Church even though she is from the Mainland.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Okrahomer

[halconero]

There is more going on than people realize, and that's all I'll say about that.

My parents live in mainland China and I don't want to step on any legal or ecclesiastical toes. What I will say is that everything in China is above board, beyond reproach, but also don't quietly and without fanfare.

[thesometimesaint]

We had a Missionary in our Ward from mainland China.

[Robert F. Smith]

The People's Republic of China seems to like and tolerate Mormons, perhaps because they do not cause trouble (Article of Faith #12).  Mormons are not permitted to proselyte in mainland China, but are allowed to baptize family members.  Mormons are allowed to hold church meetings, as are many other Christian churches.  When mainland Chinese Mormons decide to marry, they simply go to the Hong Kong Temple for their sealing.  Hong Kong is part of mainland China.  There are tens of thousands of mainland Chinese students attending universities in the West (Europe, USA, and Canada) and a very large middle class now exists in mainland China.

[Okrahomer]

7 hours ago, halconero said:

There is more going on than people realize, and that's all I'll say about that.

My parents live in mainland China and I don't want to step on any legal or ecclesiastical toes. What I will say is that everything in China is above board, beyond reproach, but also don't quietly and without fanfare.

Thanks for this!  Without knowing anything personally, this certainly "feels" very positive.

[jana at jade house]

However, as a traveler it is very frustrating to attend in mainland China. We walked and walked in hot humid weather for more than an hour trying to find the foreigners meeting place in Beijing. (No one spoke English.) The nationals are not allowed to gather with the foreigners. So you would think a gathering of non-Chinese would be apparent... Some years ago I called a Bishop in Shanghai, and although polite, he was very cagey about giving directions to the branch.  We ended up not going for other flight reasons but really.... I hope things have loosened up some.  I can't imagine what it is to live there for a long time. I probably will go on sabbatical in Lanzhou with Himself within a year or two.  I wonder if I will have better luck finding  church there.

I wish the church find a church website worked better.  Even when you have the address, the entries are hidden, or it is an office building, or the taxi has no idea where it is....

 

[Anijen]

1 hour ago, jana at jade house said:

The nationals are not allowed to gather with the foreigners. So you would think a gathering of non-Chinese would be apparent...

This is not quite true, unless the law has been changed since 2015. I was in Chongqing studying law, at the University of Political Science and Law (the Harvard of China). I took the bullet train from there to Chengdu (4 hr trip) and went to church. There were about 80 of us and approximately 20 of them were Chinese nationals. But some (not all) of them were married to US citizens. A wonderful trip.

[Okrahomer]

1 hour ago, jana at jade house said:

However, as a traveler it is very frustrating to attend in mainland China. We walked and walked in hot humid weather for more than an hour trying to find the foreigners meeting place in Beijing. (No one spoke English.) The nationals are not allowed to gather with the foreigners. So you would think a gathering of non-Chinese would be apparent... Some years ago I called a Bishop in Shanghai, and although polite, he was very cagey about giving directions to the branch.  We ended up not going for other flight reasons but really.... I hope things have loosened up some.  I can't imagine what it is to live there for a long time. I probably will go on sabbatical in Lanzhou with Himself within a year or two.  I wonder if I will have better luck finding  church there.

I wish the church find a church website worked better.  Even when you have the address, the entries are hidden, or it is an office building, or the taxi has no idea where it is....

 

I envy your extensive travels!  I used to travel a lot more for work than I do now, and I miss how exposure to other cultures expands vision and refreshes perspectives.  I agree that the meetinghouse locator works better for some countries than for others.  (Were you also once a participant over on Nauvoo.com?)

[jana at jade house]

Anijen, that is great news. The prevailing sense is that this is not very common. But maybe with the loosening of strict protocols, more combined meetings can happen.  Proselytizing is still frowned on in a big way.

 

The last Iknew is that you cannot bring in more materials than one would use personally, so a load of Chinese language BOMs would get confiscated....and I am very careful in Land not to talk about church unless I am in a group with other non-resident folk. I do not want to get in trouble nor cause trouble for my wonderful hosts.

Edited November 2, 2016 by jana at jade house
added a thought

[jana at jade house]

Yes Okrahomer, I still am associated with the Nauvoo Forum. Travel is the best of times the worst of times around here. I was away from home more than a third of this year. One of the things "getting to know the place" activities we do on our travels is visit LDS units and other churches. I have seen High Mass in the Pantheon in Rome, and Orthodox service in St Petersburg. Plus many temples and meetinghouses ( of varying shape) all over the world. My athiest hubby is very supportive...although last weekend he turned down a request to go to a German church Sunday morning---I guess the hot springs sounded like a better thing  

 

[Okrahomer]

1 hour ago, jana at jade house said:

Yes Okrahomer, I still am associated with the Nauvoo Forum. Travel is the best of times the worst of times around here. I was away from home more than a third of this year. One of the things "getting to know the place" activities we do on our travels is visit LDS units and other churches. I have seen High Mass in the Pantheon in Rome, and Orthodox service in St Petersburg. Plus many temples and meetinghouses ( of varying shape) all over the world. My athiest hubby is very supportive...although last weekend he turned down a request to go to a German church Sunday morning---I guess the hot springs sounded like a better thing  

 

I haven't checked in at Nauvoo.com for quite some time.  I always appreciated your clear-eyed and kind-hearted posts there.  Good to see you here now too!

[jana at jade house]

Sadly, the Nauvoo you knew is gone. There is a new Nauvoo Forum with a pretty large group of diehards....What tickles me is that I know many in real life now because I couchsurf (sort of) while in the States.   It still is a nice place to visit.

[Anijen]

On 11/2/2016 at 10:04 AM, jana at jade house said:

Anijen, that is great news. The prevailing sense is that this is not very common. But maybe with the loosening of strict protocols, more combined meetings can happen.  Proselytizing is still frowned on in a big way.

 

The last Iknew is that you cannot bring in more materials than one would use personally, so a load of Chinese language BOMs would get confiscated....and I am very careful in Land not to talk about church unless I am in a group with other non-resident folk. I do not want to get in trouble nor cause trouble for my wonderful hosts.

You are correct here, I could bring in enough church materials that I could use, but not more. As far as I know proseltyzing is still a no no. Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China right now with an estimated 50K converts a year. The people whom I was in contact with were wonderful people.

[Stargazer]

On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2016 at 6:16 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

The People's Republic of China seems to like and tolerate Mormons, perhaps because they do not cause trouble (Article of Faith #12).  Mormons are not permitted to proselyte in mainland China, but are allowed to baptize family members.  Mormons are allowed to hold church meetings, as are many other Christian churches.  When mainland Chinese Mormons decide to marry, they simply go to the Hong Kong Temple for their sealing.  Hong Kong is part of mainland China.  There are tens of thousands of mainland Chinese students attending universities in the West (Europe, USA, and Canada) and a very large middle class now exists in mainland China.

This is kind of odd, given that the Church is US-based.  PRC is actively persecuting Falun Gong, which is native Chinese and was initially favorably regarded by officialdom.  I guess Falun Gong began to be seen as a threat to the State because it had grown quite large (70 million practitioners by 1999). 

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

This is kind of odd, given that the Church is US-based.  PRC is actively persecuting Falun Gong, which is native Chinese and was initially favorably regarded by officialdom.  I guess Falun Gong began to be seen as a threat to the State because it had grown quite large (70 million practitioners by 1999). 

Trouble is that there is no real similarity between Falun Gong and the LDS Church.  As observed in the Los Angeles Daily News, July 14, 2014, online at http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140714/why-china-fears-the-falun-gong , the key is  

Quote

. . . comparison between Falun Gong and Maoism, writing that “like Mao, Li has activated millions of people with his rhetoric. His ideology is similarly characterized by moral superiority, defining others as absolute evil, dehumanizing enemies by labeling them snake spirits and possessed by ghosts, extolling the virtues of selflessness and sacrifice, emphasizing the necessity of enduring physical hardship, harassing critics, and denigrating science in favor of his purportedly infallible truths.”

Falun Gong was founded in May 1992. Though the government initially praised Li for “promoting rectitude in society,” the tide was turning against the qigong movements, some of which had attracted tens of millions of followers. In the mid-’90s state media published a raft of articles attacking qigong, including Falun Gong, as dangerous “feudal superstition.”

Falun Gong practitioners were incensed by the criticism and began staging protests and writing to newspapers to complain. When a Beijing TV talk show guest attacked Falun Gong on air, the group was successful in getting the station to sack the producer responsible for the segment and air a pro-Falun Gong film several days later.

This relative tolerance did not last long, however. When Falun Gong practitioners protested outside the offices of a Tianjin newspaper in April 1999, 300 riot police arrived to break up the demonstration and 45 people were arrested.

It was at this point that the group made perhaps the most ill-judged move in the history of peaceful protest.

On April 25, more than 10,000 practitioners gathered near the Zhongnanhai government compound in Beijing to demand an end to official harassment.

Then-party general secretary Jiang Zemin was reportedly enraged by the audacity and scale of the protest — the largest since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989 — and demanded the movement be “defeated.”

 

Edited November 9, 2016 by Robert F. Smith