Editor’s note: In the final part of this interview with “Preacher Du,” he and his wife share how fellowship carried them through years of suffering. They talk about what it was like for his family when he spent several years in jail. Imprisonment can be even harder on family outside than on the one inside. It can be isolating, discouraging, and scary. But Preacher Du’s wife was not alone during her husband’s years in prison, because other churches sent women to care for her, love her, and pray with her.
Please join us this year as we pray for the church in China!
How to Pray in Suffering
China Partnership: Sister Du – you’ve just come through a season where your husband was detained. How can we pray for family members of those detained?
Sister Du: I hope they can receive care, visits, and financial support from nearby churches. If possibly, pray with them regularly. When we were going through it, a sister helped us with care and support.
Preache Du: In some ways, it can be even harder to be a family member on the outside than someone in prison. Inside, once you adapt, you can manage. But family outside may struggle more. They need Christ’s body to help, support, and accompany them. This is very important.
In some ways, it can be even harder to be a family member on the outside than someone in prison… They need Christ’s body to help, support, and accompany them. This is very important.
“Thanksgiving and More Thanksgiving”
CP: In the midst of persecution, how can we pray for you, your family, and your church?
Preacher Du: Thanks be to God. Our family has experienced abundant grace, so our main prayer request is thanksgiving, thanksgiving, and more thanksgiving.
Our church family has been through persecution and refining, so we need God to lead us into a new revival this year. We pray that brothers and sisters who remain would be united with one heart, so that we can together seek the flourishing of the gospel in this city.
We also hope to connect with, support, and help other churches. We’ve received so much grace; so many people blessed and helped us in hardship. We want to respond to God’s love and grace, and go out and serve.
Pray for our ministry of Christian education, which faces major challenges. Right now, we can teach through elementary school. But we have several children who will enter junior high next year, and we lack trained teachers who can teach at that level. We use an American homeschool curriculum, and this can create financial pressure for many families. Please pray for God’s provision.
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Given today’s economic situation in China, it’s hard. Yet these families are willing to persist, even in such difficult situations with the risk of persecution. That’s encouraging, and we should support them. Public school is free, but you have to pay a real cost for Christian education. And, families in our church tend to have many children – some have three, even four or five. But if you have two or three children, you simply can’t afford [Christian education]. The church keeps subsidizing [teacher salaries and other shared costs], but this becomes a burden on the church. And then you add in curriculum! In a typical couple both are working, but they may also need to care for elderly parents. With two or three kids, that’s too much.
Pray for our ministry of Christian education, which faces major challenges… It’s hard. Yet these families are willing to persist, even in such difficult situations with the risk of persecution.
We also can’t have too many people in one place, or we will get raided. Right now, we are dispersed in several locations. Pray that God would sustain these teaching locations. Besides government pressure, also pray that neighbors won’t actively report us. We need watchful intercession to uphold us.
Serving Other Families
CP: How can we pray for you and your family?
Preacher Du: We’ve noticed that, when we speak to our teenager, we often carry anger. We are easily provoked. Pray God would help us to guide a teenager well. Pray God would help me learn to speak with gentleness.
Sister Du: We are serving in a marriage-and-family ministry right now, so we go to different churches and do couples’ retreats, and help local churches establish a system of caring for marriages and families. Pray for us in this ministry.
We also hope to do this work in the community, through civil affairs channels, so non-believers can participate. We also do premarital counseling, dating guidance, and marriage counseling. We enjoy the sweetness that serving brings to our relationship, and we find it meaningful to help others.
One more thing – when the lawyers told us that my husband wasn’t being physically mistreated, that he was safe inside, then, as family members, we felt much more at ease and could give thanks. This was especially true for my mother-in-law, who cried almost every day, worried about her son. When she learned he was even serving as a “cell manager,” like Joseph, she cried and worried less. She was really thankful.
In that hardest time, thanks be to God for sending sisters to help and meet with us regularly. We had support and companionship. We weren’t alone.
Fellowship in Pain
CP: Sister, what was your biggest challenge when your husband was in detention?
Sister Du: The father role was missing. I was like a barrel of gunpowder; my inner tension was huge during those two years. When dad came back, it was better. For those years it was just me and our younger child at home, and that was really hard.
In that hardest time, thanks be to God for sending sisters to help and meet with us regularly. We had support and companionship. We weren’t alone.
Du Liang is a pseudonym for a house church pastor in southern China.
Pray for Chinese churches who are not being severely persecuted to intentionally fellowship with those who are.
