CHI-NA 2011 - En Route to Thailand

Bay-jing, Chi-na

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

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En Route To Thailand
It didn't look so great for me at first as I was dropped off at the airport in Portland, Oregon. My passport was scanned at the self-check-in line in order to get my boarding pass to San Francisco and then on to Chi-na and Thailand. Then right at the beginning of the check-in process, the machine prompted me to place my visa for Chi-na into the scanner. The potential problem was that I never got a visa for Chi-na because their embassy stated that I would not need one in transit if I was only in Chi-na for a period of 24 hours or less. So the people at United Airlines asked me to stand in another line and wait for their assistance. They were very close to not giving me my boarding pass as they stared at their computer screen, saying that the Chi-nese embassy page was giving conflicting information on whether I needed a visa or not. I assured them of what I had researched about it. Finally, after two of the United Airline employees went back and forth, they gave me my boarding pass to San Francisco only and told me I may have problems with Air Chi-na once I arrived. I wasn't too shaken as I knew the Lord had called me to make this journey, but texted people to pray nonetheless. I got a chance to chat with a guy named Ryan from Portland who sat next to me on the flight from Portland to San Francisco. Ends up he grew up in a baptist church and was heading to South Korea to teach English for a year.
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After getting to San Francisco, I went to the Air Chi-na counter and they gave me my boarding passes to Bay-jing AND to Bangkok with no hassles. It was a long 11+ hour flight. These days I have trouble sleeping on airplanes so I just studied up on my Thai language aand read more about the history of Thailand. I sat next to a lovely Chi-nese couple; Mr. Xu and his wife. They had very broken English, but they proceeded to teach me some Chi-nese. Another Chi-nese couple and their two year old son sat in front of us. I was able to share some about God with them. It was a great opportunity to shine the light of Christ with the Chi-nese.

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We finally arrived in Bay-jing. I nearly teared up as I set foot on Chi-nese soil. I thought about the work done in years past by my grandparents and great grandparents who ministered in Chi-na as full-time missionaries. I thanked God for them, for the mighty work of God among the underground Chi-nese church and prayed for the nation as a whole.

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Made it through their customs and to the gate where my flight to Bangkok was boarding. It was only a 4+ hour flight to Bangkok. I sat next to a man from Thailand named Chamnan. He spoke broken English and I practiced my conversational Thai with him. By the end of the flight I was dead tired, but had gained a new friend who gave me his phone number and address in hopes to connect with me once I get a Thai SIM card for my Blackberry.

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Jesse, Lonnie, Katherine and the taxi driver were waiting for me as I made it through customs and picked up my baggage. We then proceeded to the YWAM base in Bangkok.

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Christian Young