Providence Pass
I had the privilege of helping a team of ‘Bible smugglers’ and evangelists, close friends of mine, minister in China this past November. In less than two weeks they were able to hand-deliver thousands of Bible portions door to door in six prefectures, eleven counties, and dozens of towns and villages throughout a broad (unevangelized) swath of northwest China. Each night was an adventure and many exciting (and exhausting, if you were one of those involved) stories could be told. However, I want to write about the one *night that seemed to be a complete and total failure.
*Bible distribution is done in the middle of the night, carefully and prayerfully, while the Communist police are (hopefully) asleep. The small village below is typical of rural northwest China.
I was very excited while preparing the specific route and satellite maps for what was supposed to be the team’s fourth night of outreach. I had them going to a spiritually dark, geographically remote, yet stunningly beautiful valley, with two snow-capped mountain ranges keeping guard to the North and South. The highest peak, reaching over 17,000 feet into the sky, was going to be clearly visible in the full moonlight of this cold northwest China night!
I have personally driven over the pass that brings you over the Southern range and down into the central valley numerous times. It is breathtaking to stop near the top and gaze at the higher peaks of the Northern range towering majestically over the long valley, checkered as far as the eye can see with the small land holdings of ten thousand Chinese Muslim farmers. Small hamlets, marked by reddish-brown brick homes, and a few planted trees, lay scattered here and there every half mile or so right up to the foot of the Northern mountains.
It was to a specific group of these unevangelized villages that I was sending the team! That night, as they snaked their way up the icy southern flank of the Southern range with steep cliffs on the side (and one headlight out), suddenly a large rock appeared in the path of the small vehicle that has been such a blessing to us for nearly ten years. The ‘mini SUV’, as the Chinese call it, has better clearance than an average car, but being weighed down with people and literature and bad suspension, it was no match for the jagged stone that had tumbled down onto the highway.
In the driver’s own words:
“with large trucks coming at frequent intervals…the last thing I wanted was
to slam on the breaks or swerve suddenly, and risk the vehicle going off the road.”
Thud! The rock hit home and immediately the busted oil pan began spewing oil all over the highway and they were forced to stop. It was cold, well below freezing, and the night’s journey had suddenly come to a screeching halt just a stone’s throw from the top of the 12,000 foot pass. Now their only thought was how to get back down the mountain to the city far away in the distance, where their hotel room and a mechanic awaited.
As this was happening, I was at a pastor’s retreat on the other side of the world in South America. It was a little after 10am (Peru time), instead of 11pm (China time). When they wrote and told me what was happening, I felt sick to my stomach. I knew that car! I knew that road! I knew those mountains! And I knew how difficult it was going to be to find help at that time of night. I wrote them back and told them what I would do if I was there: pull the car safely off the road, retrieve anything of value, and try to hitchhike back down the mountain to town as soon as possible. In other words, live to fight another day and come back for the car later!
However, I am glad they ignored most of my advice, and sought help at a nearby toll booth they had just passed a little ways back down the mountain. To make a long story short (hours of waiting and worrying were involved), not only were they able to get warm in the toll booth, but the worker they met also helped them call both a tow truck and a taxi to come and get them. They eventually made it back to their hotel around 5am, and the car was dropped off at a nearby mechanic’s shop (and was back on the streets by the following evening).
So the team made it back safe, but the night of ministry turned out to be a bust! Those villages will remain without God’s Word until another team can go again some day soon (currently delayed even longer due to the Virus Crisis).
However, as I was chatting with the team, one of them spoke about God’s unseen hand:
“Maybe the Lord was protecting us from greater harm on the other side of the mountains,
or from getting caught by the police in the villages. Maybe the Lord spared us from a
worse outcome, of careening off the cliff or some other misfortune?
I couldn’t help but agree, and for good reason. His comment wasn’t just hypothetical. It had already happened once nearly ten years earlier…and on that VERY SAME PASS!
Let’s just call it “Providence Pass” from here on out…
In early 2010, a young man we’ll call Kaleb spent a few months helping me teach English and share the Gospel in this same region of northwest China. At one point he embarked on a journey that was going to take him over the same two mountain ranges (the aforementioned Southern and Northern mountains) and on into a neighboring province, where he would meet up with another evangelist (Cory) who would be his teammate for a few days.
As Kaleb worked his way up through the foothills on the south slope of the Southern mountains, snow began to fall and road conditions deteriorated. After a while, trucks were stopping and there were cars left and right just parked along the highway to wait out what was fast becoming a blizzard. He put on the snow chains I had stashed in the back of the van (a slightly different vehicle than our current one) and continued as best he could, passing who knows how many stopped and stuck vehicles along the way. 
Eventually, as he snaked higher and higher, he lost control on an icy section and slid into a guardrail. Soon after that, he just couldn’t get the car to climb any more and had to stop. It was well below freezing and the only option was to wait out the night hunkered down in the car. In his own words, to stay alive Kaleb “started the car for ten minutes every half an hour to keep from dying and just shivered all night long”.
Its easy to skim over that last sentence, but can you imagine spending all night in those freezing conditions? Well, at some point the following morning, the frosty conditions had cleared enough that he was able to get going and make it over the pass, and eventually on into the next province.
However, because of the delay he never made it to the first town where he was supposed to meet up with Cory, so he went ahead on to the next town they were supposed to visit. But Cory never showed. Eventually, we learned that he had been captured and arrested by the Communist police on the night that Kaleb was supposed to arrive, the night of the blizzard on Providence Pass!
All of Cory’s literature was confiscated and he spent numerous days in custody. After a short investigation, the police began the process of deporting Cory. His Chinese visa was cancelled and he was eventually escorted to the provincial capital, and then to Beijing, and put on a plane back to America. He has not been able to obtain a Chinese visa since. Notably, however, during his time in custody he had multiple opportunities to testify to the authorities of his faith in Jesus and the reasons for his evangelistic “crimes” against the Communist regime.
The providence of God is boundless. He could just as easily have used a stubborn herd of yaks to slow Kaleb down 🙂
Kaleb would have likely suffered the same fate as Cory, deported with little hope to return again. But that’s not all. Since Kaleb was connected to me (driving my car, teaching at my school), our van would have also been impounded and my family’s residency in China would have been put at risk.
I remember talking with them later and feeling so grateful that God worked things out the way he did. Kaleb did suffer through a long, cold night in my van, but he avoided the trap the Communist police set for Cory and continued reaching out for many more weeks all throughout that region. He has also returned to China on other trips in recent years.
So it turns out that the blizzard was providential; a blessing even!
And if God did it once, He could do it again. We do not know what was happening “behind the scenes” on this most recent trip, but the busted oil pan could have helped the team avoid a similar situation. Even though the veil was not pulled back this time for us to know all the details, we do know that it was not merely an accident that kept our team off the streets of the beautiful mountain villages for one night. We trust that the goodness and wisdom and sovereignty of God was once again at work.
So we thank God for Providence Pass!
