Dear friends around the world,

Your mission coworkers in Korea were privileged to join a group of eight PC(USA) church leaders for an official visit to China Christian Council churches and in six cities and college level regional seminaries in China from November 8 to 20 to find out about leadership training and the spread of Christianity there. A highlight of the trip for Art and Sue came at the new Heilongjiang Provincial Seminary outside Harbin City where the group had worship and dialogue with over 80 students of the Chinese and Korean language sections and the Kinslers met several students they have been helping. We quietly left funds for books and a piano. When asked what was their greatest challenge the students in this province—which has 140,000 Christians and seven ordained pastors—replied "lack of books and adequate facilities," and our team was shown the less than 1,000 books in the library and the dilapidated old farm buildings used for the seminary.

WHO The other personnel involved in this church to church exchange were Insik Kim and Bill Young of the PC(USA) Worldwide Ministries Division, Harold Kurtz of Frontier Fellowship and Jeff Ritchie of the Outreach Foundation, and Judi Young and Paula Kurtz, and David Bridgman and Paul Brooks from the Eastminster Church in Wichita, Kansas, which will help with the construction of the Harbin Central Church where we were privileged to join thousands of Chinese Christians in the snow for their groundbreaking. On the Chinese side of the exchange were pastors and elders, seminary teachers and students, zealous members of China's rapidly growing rural and city churches, and officials concerned with religious affairs.

WHY Art and Sue Kinsler are assigned to work in Korea but since 1996 they have been trying to help with the training of church leaders for the house churches and a program for the handicapped in Northeast China where many Korean-speaking persons live. The Kinslers' main work still is in South Korea, but gifts from supporting churches have enabled small but meaningful support for China where dollars go further. Sue was the first contact to get PC(USA) help for the area around Harbin in the cold, remote Northeast. She is also involved in getting tuberculosis medicine for North Korea, with help from Korean churches in Seoul and California.

WHERE Our group visited Shenyang in Manchuria, Harbin, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Huangyan as we traveled mostly by plane south from Manchuria. In each city, we met leaders of the China Christian Council for discussions and dinners, and we visited 12 churches, often hearing of the difficulties the older pastors had endured during the Cultural Revolution along with the exciting growth which brings overflowing crowds into the churches in China. Even on Wednesday afternoon, when Art preached in the Nan Gang Church in Harbin, the sanctuary seating 450 needed to be supplemented with three overflow rooms for this regular worship time. We visited 12 churches, five seminaries, and two lay training centers, and at each place we were introduced and then either someone from our group spoke at worship or we had discussions.

Christians around the world help China through the Amity Foundation, which was started by Chinese Christians. The visibly impressive project is the printing plant in Nanjing that has published 18 million Bibles and made them available for two dollars or less, with paper donated from Bible societies worldwide. English teachers for China's universities are the best way to be an international Christian presence there—several hundred more qualified English teachers could be placed. A relatively unpublicized area of the Amity Foundation's medical work is training 10,000 midwives as well as village health workers; the goal is to train 15,000 "barefoot doctors" for the remote, rural areas of China.

Our group was most impressed that God has opened a wide door for Chinese Christians to reach out with the love of Christ. This calls for mighty prayer efforts of Christian friends worldwide and careful projects to supplement church building and leadership training being done by God's people in this Middle Kingdom. Not just the Korean minority but other ethnic minorities can be led to respond to Christ's call to discipleship. Many meeting points under organized churches have hundreds of believers led by lay leaders with a minimum of Bible and leadership training.

Please join us in prayer for Chinese Christians and outreach there!

Yours for Christ in Asia.

Art and Sue Kinsler