I had quite the long day today at church. So good, that it was very tiring. I learned my lesson from last week and wanted to get to church early so that I would have a seat. Today was welcome back Sunday for all the students so I knew the sanctuary would be jam-packed with students, parents and other visitors. I arrived about 5 minutes early and the place was still sparsely filled. Usually I just sit alone, but today I saw a familiar face sitting near the front and went up to sit with him. We talked about some stuff, and about a minute later I felt a tap on my back. I turned around and it was one of the new BME grad students, Zongxing Wang, that I was helping out earlier last week! I was really surprised to see him, since he was from China and had only been in the States for about 2 weeks. I had no idea how he found the church, let alone get here from his apartment. Turned out that there was a family at the church who had a passion for international students. They met him at some chinese students fellowship and invited him along. He saw me walk into the sanctuary and came and said hi to me. Pretty cool.

The crazy thing is that this family is caucasian, and yet they have a desire to reach out to Chinese students. In fact, their son Greg spent a year in China and actually speaks pretty good Mandarin. He definitely put me to shame; although, a rock would put me to shame. Anyways, we were all talking after the service and Zongxing shared that he had never been to church or participated in any religion before in his life. Yet he has been wanted to experience as much America tradition as possible since coming here. He thought that Christianity was an American religion, and therefore wanted to experience going to Church. Greg, in such kindness, shared with him that he has had many international friends who have become believers not because it was an "American experience", but because the Gospel was true...

Zongxing later came to ECHO with me. I introduced him to Amanda Mckinley who runs an international student bible study on campus. She was very eager to talk to him. I hope that he enjoyed church today. On top of that, I hope he comes back.