Today’s testimony shared with us by Lee Wei, a pastor who risked everything for his faith, unveils the heart-wrenching reality of Christian persecution in China, a land where hundreds of thousands of believers face secret arrests, brutal imprisonment, and even death for daring to follow Christ.

From hidden house churches to the shadowed cells of re-education camps, Leewayi’s story is a piercing cry from the silenced.

A testament to the courage of countless Chinese Christians who worship in whispers, knowing each prayer could cost them their freedom, their families, or their lives.

This is not just one man’s journey. It’s the untold story of millions enduring a relentless storm of oppression, yet clinging to a hope that no chains can break.

Prepare to be moved, shaken, and held captive by a story so raw, so urgent, so radiant with faith that it will sear your heart and compel you to listen to the very end.

Listen and be blessed. I sit by the window of my small apartment in Soul, South Korea, watching the evening light fade over the city.

The streets below are busy with people heading home from work. Free to go wherever they please, free to believe whatever they want.

I have been here for almost 4 years now, but freedom still feels strange to me.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night expecting to hear the sound of boots in the hallway, the harsh commands of guards, the metallic clang of prison doors.

Then I remember where I am. I am safe now. My family is safe. But so many are not.

My name is Leeway. I was once a pastor of a house church in Changdu, China.

Today I live in exile and the church I spent 15 years building meets in secret, scattered across the city in groups of five or six, always watching, always afraid.

Some of my closest friends are in prison. Some have died there. Their families do not even know where they are buried.

I need to tell you what is happening in China. Not because I want your pity, but because the world needs to know.

While you read this, thousands of Chinese Christians are making an impossible choice. Bow to the government or bow to Christ.

You cannot do both. Many are choosing Christ and they are paying with their freedom, their families, and sometimes their lives.

This is my story, but it is also their story. I am only one voice among millions who cannot speak.

I was born in 1975 in Changdu, Sichuan province, 3 years before China began its economic reforms.

My childhood was ordinary in most ways. My father worked in a state-owned factory. My mother was a teacher.

We lived in a small apartment in a gray concrete building that looked exactly like every other building on our street.

Life was predictable, controlled, safe in the way that a cage is safe. But my grandmother was different.

She was old enough to remember China before the Communist Revolution. Old enough to remember when churches had stood openly in our city.

I was perhaps seven or eight when I first noticed her strange habit. Every night before bed, she would close the door to her tiny room and I would hear her whispering.

I thought she was talking to herself the way old people sometimes do. One night, curious, I pressed my ear against the door.

She was praying. I did not know what prayer was then. Religion was something from the past, something the revolution had swept away along with other old superstitions.

We learned in school that religion was the opium of the people, a tool used by foreign powers to control and exploit China.

But there was my grandmother night after night whispering to someone she called father, someone she called Lord Jesus.

When I was 12, she became very sick. The doctor said there was nothing they could do.

I remember sitting beside her bed, watching her thin chest rise and fall with each difficult breath.

My parents had gone to arrange things at the hospital. We were alone. She opened her eyes and looked at me with a clarity that startled me.

She reached under her pillow and pulled out a small book, worn and dirty, its pages thin as tissue paper.

She pressed it into my hands. It was warm from being held so close to her body for so many years.

She told me it was the most precious thing she owned. She told me it contained the words of eternal life.

She told me that when I was ready, I should read it and I would understand why she had risked everything to keep it hidden all these years.

It was a Bible. She died 3 days later. I hid the Bible in a hole I dug beneath a loose floorboard in my room.

And I did not think about it for 7 years. I was 19 years old, a university student studying engineering in Changdu when my life fell apart in the best possible way.

I had a girlfriend I planned to marry. I had good grades and a promising future.

I had everything a young Chinese man was supposed to want. But I felt empty in a way I could not explain.

There was a hollowess inside me that nothing seemed to fill. One evening, a classmate invited me to study at his apartment.

When I arrived, there were eight other students there sitting in a circle on the floor.

I realized immediately that this was not a study group. There was a tension in the room, an alertness, as if everyone was listening for footsteps in the hallway outside.

My classmate told me they met every week to study a different kind of material.

He asked if I wanted to stay. Something in me said yes. They were Christians.

For the next 2 hours, they talked about Jesus Christ as if he were not a historical figure from a foreign religion, but a living person they knew intimately.

They spoke about forgiveness, about grace, about a love that never ends. They spoke about a kingdom that is not of this world, a kingdom that the Communist Party could not touch.

I thought they were naive. I thought they were foolish, but I kept coming back for 3 months.

I attended that secret meeting every week. I argued with them. I challenged them. I told them they were wasting their lives on a fairy tale.

But slowly, something was changing inside me. The words they read from their Bibles seemed to be reading me, exposing parts of myself I had kept hidden even from myself.

I saw my pride, my selfishness, my desperate need for something beyond myself. It was during one of those meetings that I remembered my grandmother’s Bible.

I went home that night, pried up the floorboard, and pulled it out. The pages were yellowed and brittle, but the words were still clear.

I started reading in the Gospel of Matthew. I read all night. By morning, I had reached the crucifixion, and I was crying in a way I had not cried since I was a child.

I understood suddenly why my grandmother had risked everything for this book. I understood what she had been whispering about all those nights.

Jesus had died for me, for my sins, for my emptiness. And he had risen again, victorious over death, offering me a life that could not be taken away by any government, any authority, any power on earth.

2 weeks later, I was baptized in a river outside the city at 3:00 in the morning.

Six believers stood on the bank keeping watch while a pastor I had just met lowered me into the cold water.

When I came up gasping and shivering, I felt more alive than I had ever felt in my life.

Everything changed after that. My girlfriend left me when I told her about my faith.

She said I had joined a dangerous cult and she wanted nothing to do with me.

My grades suffered because I spent my free time at house church meetings instead of studying.

My parents noticed the change in me and grew worried. I could not tell them the truth.

It would have put them in danger. But I had found something worth losing everything for.

I had found Christ. It was at a house church meeting in 2001 that I first saw Mling.

She was sitting across the room, her head bowed in prayer, her lips moving silently.

There was a peace in her face that drew me. After the meeting, we talked.

She had become a Christian 2 years earlier through a co-orker who had given her a gospel tract.

She had lost her job when her boss discovered her faith. She was working in a small noodle shop now, earning barely enough to survive.

But she spoke about her life with a joy that made me ashamed of my own complaining.

We were married 8 months later in a ceremony that had no legal status because no pastor in China could legally perform marriages.

We did not care. We made our vows before God and 20 witnesses in a borrowed apartment.

And that was enough. The next few years were the happiest of my life. Despite the constant fear, I graduated from university and found work as an engineer.

Ming and I rented a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Chungdu. We attended house church meetings three times a week, always in different locations, always watching for police.

In 2003, our first daughter was born. We named her an which means peace. In 2006, our second daughter arrived.

We named her she, which means joy. I was 29 years old when I first felt called to pastoral ministry.

I was not qualified. I had no formal theological training. I had only been a Christian for 7 years.

But the church needed leaders. And the older pastors saw something in me that I did not see in myself.

They began to train me, teaching me how to study scripture, how to shepherd believers, how to stay faithful under pressure.

In 2005, eight of us began meeting regularly in our apartment for prayer and Bible study.

Within a year, we had grown to 25. Within two years, we had over 60 people trying to fit into our small living room.

We had to split into three groups meeting in different apartments on different nights. By 2010, we had over 200 believers connected to our network, meeting in small cells across the city.

Those were beautiful years. We shared meals together, celebrated weddings and births, mourned losses, supported each other through hardships.

We baptized new believers in rivers and lakes, always at night, always carefully. We trained young leaders, teaching them the scriptures, preparing them for the cost of following Christ.

We were a family bound together by something stronger than blood, but we were also criminals.

According to Chinese law, we did not exist. Religious activities are only legal in China if conducted through one of five state approved religious organizations.

For Christians, that meant the three self-patriotic movement and the China Christian council. These organizations operate under the Religious Affairs Bureau, which is controlled by the Communist Party.

Every sermon must be approved. Every activity must be reported. Every leader must pledge loyalty to the party above all else.

We could not do that. We could not serve two masters. Christ is the head of the church, not the communist party.

So we remained underground and we were always in danger. The first warnings came in 2012.

Pastor Chen, who led a house church network in another district of Chungdu, was invited for tea by the religious affairs bureau.

This was the euphemism they used for interrogations. He was gone for 3 days. When he came back, he told us they had shown him a thick file containing photographs of his church members, transcripts of his sermons, records of his financial transactions.

They knew everything. They told him his church was illegal and must either register with the three self church or disband.

He had 30 days to decide. Pastor Chen chose to continue meeting. His church was raided 2 months later during a Sunday morning service.

15 members were detained. Pastor Chen was sentenced to 18 months of re-education through labor.

Around the same time, new regulations were issued requiring all churches to register with the government.

The language was deceptively simple. Churches must submit to oversight by the Religious Affairs Bureau.

They must follow approved curriculums. They must display the national flag. They must promote patriotism and support the Communist Party.

Church leaders must undergo political training. All financial records must be submitted to the government.

Children under 18 were prohibited from attending services or receiving religious education. These regulations had existed before in various forms, but now they were being enforced more strictly.

We heard reports from other provinces of churches being raided, pastors being arrested, buildings being demolished.

The government was conducting what they called a cleanup of illegal religious activities. What they meant was the elimination of any faith that would not submit to state control.

Our church leadership met for 3 days of prayer and discussion. Some argued that we should register and work within the system, trusting God to protect our ministry even under government oversight.

Others insisted that registration would mean compromising the gospel itself, that we could not agree to let the Communist Party dictate what we could preach or teach.

In the end, we decided we could not register. We could not sign documents stating that the Communist Party had authority over the church.

We could not agree to remove certain passages from scripture because they contradicted Marxist ideology.

We could not promise to stop evangelizing or teaching children or training leaders. We could not display the national flag in our place of worship as if we were a department of the government.

We knew what this decision would cost us, but we believed Christ was worth it.

Between 2012 and 2016, the pressure increased gradually like water slowly coming to a boil.

Surveillance cameras appeared on every street corner in Changdu. Facial recognition technology was installed at major intersections, in subway stations, at the entrances to apartment buildings.

The government announced this was for public safety to reduce crime and catch fugitives. We knew it was also to monitor and control us.

Our church adapted. We stopped meeting in the same location twice. We used code words when communicating.

Church members would receive seemingly innocent text messages about dinner plans or study groups, which actually contained information about when and where to meet.

We appointed lookouts who would arrive early to make sure the location was safe. We taught everyone what to do if police raided a meeting.

Stay calm. Give only your name and identification number. Do not answer questions without a lawyer.

Do not sign anything. Do not inform on anyone. Despite the precautions, we all knew it was only a matter of time.

The net was tightening. In 2015, one of our cell group leaders was arrested for sharing the gospel online.

The charge was spreading subversive material. He had posted a Bible verse on social media.

He was detained for 45 days before being released with a warning. His social credit score was lowered, which meant he could not take high-speed trains, could not get certain jobs, could not send his children to good schools.

That same year, the government launched a campaign to remove crosses from church buildings across Jiang Province.

Over 1,500 crosses were torn down and several church buildings were completely demolished. Christians who protested were arrested.

Some were beaten. The message was clear. The cross cannot stand above the flag. Jesus cannot stand above the party.

In early 2016, I was called in for questioning by the Religious Affairs Bureau. Two officers showed me photographs of myself entering and leaving various apartments in the city.

They had been watching me for months. They knew I was a church leader. They knew I was organizing illegal religious activities.

They gave me a choice. Register my church with the three self movement and submit to government oversight or cease all activities immediately.

I told them I could not do either. The church belongs to Christ, not to me.

I could not shut it down and I could not hand it over to the government.

I left that office knowing that my freedom was temporary. Throughout 2016, we heard increasing reports of crackdowns across China.

House church pastors were being arrested in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangjo, Shenzhen. Some were charged with fraud or tax evasion.

Convenient accusations that were easier to prosecute than religious charges. Some simply disappeared. Their families would receive no information about where they were taken or when they would be released.

I had several conversations with Mailing during this time about whether we should flee China.

We had two young daughters to think about. Anne was 13. She was 10. If I was arrested, they would suffer.

They would be stigmatized, possibly expelled from school, certainly barred from university. They would carry the mark of being a criminal’s children for the rest of their lives.

But where would we go? And what about our church family? How could I abandon them when the storm was coming?

What kind of shepherd runs away when the wolves appear? I struggled with this question for months.

I prayed until I was exhausted. I searched the scriptures looking for clear guidance. I found none.

What I found instead were examples of faithfulness. Daniel refusing to stop praying even when it meant the lion’s den.

The apostles rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ’s name. Paul writing letters from prison that would inspire believers for thousands of years.

I decided to stay. Christmas of 2016 was the last peaceful celebration we had as a church.

We could not meet all together anymore. It was too dangerous. But each cell group held its own gathering.

My group met in an apartment on the 20th floor of a high-rise building on the edge of the city.

There were 18 of us crammed into a small living room, sitting on the floor, sharing a simple meal of dumplings and noodles.

After we ate, we sang Christmas hymns quietly, mindful of the neighbors. We read the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel.

I remember looking around at those faces flickering in the candle light and feeling such love for these people.

They were not there because it was culturally expected or socially advantageous. They were there because they loved Jesus, even though loving Jesus made them criminals.

Old Mrs. Wang was there, 73 years old, who had been a Christian since the 1980s and had been sent to labor camp for 3 years during an earlier crackdown.

Young brother Lee was there, 22 years old, who had been downed by his family when he was baptized.

Sister Jang was there with her teenage son, even though she knew that bringing a minor to a religious gathering was illegal.

They were all there risking everything because they had found something worth dying for. I spoke briefly that night about the incarnation, about how God had entered into human suffering, about how Jesus knew what it was like to live under an oppressive government, to be watched and suspected, to be arrested and falsely accused.

I told them that whatever was coming, Christ would be with us in it. He would not abandon us.

He had promised. We took communion together using store-bought bread and grape juice. As we passed the cup, I saw tears on many faces.

We all sensed that something was ending, that a harder season was beginning. We closed by praying for each other, for strength and courage, for our families, for wisdom, for the leadership, for our brothers and sisters in other house churches facing the same pressures.

We prayed for the government officials who were persecuting us that God would soften their hearts or remove them from power.

We prayed that the church in China would emerge from this trial more pure, more committed, more faithful.

The last person to leave did not go until after midnight. I stood at the door, hugging each person, speaking words of encouragement, trying to ignore the fear in my own heart.

When they were all gone, I cleaned up the apartment, erasing all evidence that we had been there.

Then I walked home through the cold December night, my breath misting in the air, watching the surveillance cameras track my movement through the empty streets.

I did not know it then, but I had just preached my last free sermon.

In 42 days, they would come for me. It was a Thursday evening, January 26th, 2017.

I had just returned home from work. Mailing was cooking dinner. Anne and she were doing homework at the table.

It was an ordinary evening, peaceful and domestic, the kind of evening I had once taken for granted.

Then came the knock on the door. Not a normal knock, a hard authoritative pounding that made the whole door shake.

I looked at me. Our eyes met. We both knew what that knock meant. I walked to the door.

I took a deep breath. I whispered a prayer. Then I opened it. Six police officers stood in the hallway.

They wore dark blue uniforms and expressions that showed they had done this many times before.

The one in front held up an identification card and told me I was being detained for questioning regarding illegal religious activities.

He spoke in the flat bureaucratic tone that Chinese officials use when exercising power. It was not a request.

They pushed past me into our apartment. Meing stepped in front of our daughters as if her body could shield them from what was happening.

Anne was crying silently, her hand covering her mouth. She looked confused, too young to fully understand.

I tried to tell them it would be okay, that I would be home soon, but the words caught in my throat because I did not know if they were true.

The officers searched our apartment with mechanical efficiency. They opened every drawer, every cabinet, every closet.

They photographed everything. They took my computer, my phone, my notebooks. They took my Bible, my sermon notes, my books.

They took the memory card from our camera. They questioned May about where I went, who I met with, what I did with my time.

She told them she did not know. They did not believe her. One officer found my personal journal hidden behind some boxes in the closet.

He flipped through it, reading passages aloud to the others. I had written about church members by name, about our struggles and prayers, about my own doubts and fears.

Every private thought was now evidence against me. They took 45 minutes to process our apartment.

When they were finished, they handcuffed my hands behind my back. The metal was cold and tight.

I looked at my family one last time. Mailing was holding both girls now, all three of them crying.

I wanted to say something profound, something that would comfort them and give them strength.

But all I could manage was to tell them I loved them. Then they led me down the stairs and out into the cold night.

Neighbors watched from doorways and windows. Some looked away. Some watched with a mixture of fear and relief.

Relief that it was happening to me and not to them. They put me in the back of a police van with no windows.

Another man was already there handcuffed like me, staring at the floor. I did not recognize him, but I suspected he was a Christian, too.

We did not speak. The van drove for a long time through the city. I tried to keep track of the turns to figure out where they were taking me, but I lost orientation after the first 10 minutes.

When the van finally stopped and they brought me out, I saw we were at a detention center on the outskirts of the city.

It was a gray concrete building surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire. Security cameras were everywhere.

Bright flood lights turned night into artificial day. They processed me like cargo. They took my photograph from multiple angles.

They fingerprinted me. They made me strip naked and searched me. They gave me a gray prison uniform that smelled like industrial detergent and old sweat.

They assigned me a number. I was no longer leeway. I was detainee 7342. The interrogation room was small and windowless.

A metal table bolted to the floor. Two chairs, one bright light overhead, no clock, no windows, no way to know what time it was or how long I’d been there.

Two interrogators worked in shifts. They asked the same questions over and over, circling back, looking for inconsistencies, trying to trap me in contradictions.

Where did your church meet? Who were the members? Who provided financial support? What foreign organizations were you connected to?

What anti-government activities did you engage in? I told them my church had no connection to foreign organizations.

I told them we met peacefully to worship and study the Bible. I told them we were not engaged in any political activities.

These were the truths, but they did not accept them. They told me that Christianity was a tool of Western imperialism designed to undermine Chinese society.

They told me that house churches were illegal organizations that threatened social stability. They told me that I had been deceived by foreign influences and that I needed to be re-educated to see the truth.

One interrogator was young, perhaps 30 years old, with a thin face and glasses. He seemed to take his job seriously, as if he genuinely believed he was helping me by breaking down my false beliefs.

The other was older, harder, a man who had spent decades in the security apparatus and had seen every trick and excuse.

He spoke less, but with more menace. They showed me photographs of my church members entering and leaving meeting locations.

They played me audio recordings of my sermons, somehow captured despite our precautions. They showed me my financial records, trying to prove I have been receiving money from foreign sources.

I had not, but they kept insisting there must be hidden accounts, secret transfers, proof of my connection to hostile foreign forces.

I do not know how long that first interrogation lasted. There was no natural light in the room, no way to measure time except by my growing exhaustion.

My eyes burned. My throat was dry. My wrists achd from the handcuffs. But I tried to stay focused, to answer carefully to give them nothing that would endanger anyone else.

Eventually, they took me to a cell. It was perhaps 3 m x 4 m with concrete walls, a concrete floor, a concrete bench that served as a bed, a squat toilet in the corner, and a single light bulb that never turned off.

There was no blanket, no pillow. The cell was cold. I could see my breath.

I lay down on the concrete bench and closed my eyes, but I could not sleep.

My mind kept returning to my family. What were they doing right now? Were they safe?

Had the police returned to question them again? What had I done by putting them in this position?

The light stayed on all night. I learned later that this was intentional. Sleep deprivation was part of the process.

They would keep me awake for days, break down my resistance, make me more willing to sign whatever they wanted.

On the second day, they brought me back to the interrogation room. The same questions, the same accusations, but with more intensity.

They told me that other church members had already confessed and given evidence against me.

They told me I was foolish to protect people who had betrayed me. They told me that if I cooperated, if I gave them the information they wanted, I could go home to my family.

I told them I had nothing to confess. I had broken no laws except laws that violated my conscience.

I had hurt no one. I had simply taught people about Jesus Christ. That answer made them angry.

The older interrogator stood up and shouted that I had no right to determine which laws to obey and which to ignore.

The law was the law. The party was the authority. I was a criminal who refused to acknowledge my crimes.

They showed me a document. It was a confession stating that I had organized illegal religious activities, received foreign funding, spread harmful superstition, and incited people to oppose the government.

At the bottom was a line for my signature. I refused to sign it. Not one word of it was true.

They kept me in that room for what felt like days, though it might have been only hours.

Time became meaningless. They would question me for hours, then leave me alone in the room for hours, then return and start again.

They would not let me sleep. Every time my eyes closed, someone would shout or bang on the table to wake me up.

On what I think was the third day, they changed tactics. They brought in a television and made me watch propaganda videos about the dangers of religion.

Video after video of interviews with former Christians who had renounced their faith and now testified to how they had been deceived and manipulated.

Videos of church leaders in other countries living in luxury while their followers lived in poverty.

Videos claiming that Christian missionaries had committed atrocities during China’s century of humiliation, that Christianity had always been a tool of foreign oppression.

Some of the videos were so poorly made that they were almost absurd. But after 3 days without sleep, sitting in that cold room, hungry and exhausted and alone, even absurd propaganda began to work its way into my mind.

I found myself having strange thoughts. Maybe I had been wrong. Maybe I had been deceived.

Maybe I had wasted my life on a lie and dragged others down with me.

But then I would remember the face of my grandmother as she pressed her Bible into my hands.

I would remember the peace I had felt when I first believed. I would remember the transformation I had seen in people’s lives.

The marriages restored, the addictions broken, the hope kindled in hopeless hearts. I would remember Jesus himself crucified and risen.

And I knew that no amount of propaganda could change what I had experienced as truth.

On the fourth day, or maybe it was the fifth, I had lost count. They brought me a different document.

This one was simpler. It just required me to promise to cease all religious activities and to report to the authorities regularly.

If I signed it, they said, I could go home. I could see my wife and daughters.

I could return to my normal life. I just had to agree to stop being a pastor, to stop meeting with believers, to stop spreading Christianity.

I stared at that document for a long time. My body achd. My mind was clouded with exhaustion.

I wanted desperately to see my family, to sleep in my own bed, to eat a warm meal.

The temptation to sign was overwhelming, but I could not do it. If I promised to stop following Christ, what message would that send to my church family?

That when pressure comes, faithfulness is optional. That Jesus is Lord only when it is convenient.

That we serve Christ only until the cost becomes too high. I pushed the document away and told them I could not sign it.

The younger interrogator looked at me with something like pity. The older one just looked disgusted.

They took me back to my cell. I was released after 9 days. No charges were filed, but they made clear this was just a warning.

I had to report to the police station every week. I had to inform them of my activities and whereabouts.

If I continued my illegal religious activities, the consequences would be severe. When I walked out of the detention center into the daylight, I was disoriented.

The sun was too bright. The sounds of traffic were too loud. My legs were unsteady.

Mailing was waiting for me outside. When I saw her, I broke down and wept.

She held me there on the sidewalk while I cried like a child. All the fear and exhaustion pouring out.

At home, my daughters were afraid of me. I had lost weight. I had not shaved or showered in 9 days.

There were dark circles under my eyes. I looked like a stranger. It took several days before they felt comfortable around me again.

During my detention, 15 other members of our church had also been arrested. Most were released after a few days, but three were held longer.

Brother Jang, one of our cell group leaders, was detained for three weeks. Sister Lee, who had been particularly active in evangelism, was held for a month.

They were both eventually released, but with criminal records that would follow them for life.

One member, Brother Wang, a 60-year-old man who had been a Christian for 30 years, was charged with organizing cult activities.

He was sentenced to 18 months in a labor camp. His wife was not allowed to visit him.

His children, both adults, lost their jobs because of their father’s criminal record. While I was adjusting to being home, trying to process what had happened, I began to learn about a nationwide crackdown that was intensifying.

The government had launched what they called a campaign to cynicize religion, to make it conform to Chinese characteristics and socialist values.

What this meant in practice was bringing all religious activity under strict state control. New regulations were being implemented across the country.

All churches, both registered and unregistered, were now required to display the national flag and pictures of President Xi Jinping.

Sermons had to promote patriotism and party loyalty. Any religious teaching that conflicted with communist ideology had to be removed or reframed.

Churches were being inspected to ensure compliance. For registered churches, this meant major changes. Pastors were required to attend political training sessions where they learned how to integrate Marxist thought into their sermons.

Some churches were instructed to remove certain passages from scripture during public readings. Passages about eternal kingdoms, about obeying God rather than men, about Jesus as the only way to salvation.

These teachings were deemed incompatible with socialist values. For unregistered churches like ours, the situation was even more dire.

We were now being treated not just as illegal, but as threats to national security.

The language changed from religious violations to subversion and sedition. The penalties became much more severe.

I also learned that children under 18 were now explicitly banned from all religious activities.

They could not attend church services, could not receive religious education, could not be baptized.

Schools were instructed to monitor students for signs of religious influence and to report it immediately.

In some provinces, children were required to sign documents declaring they did not believe in any religion.

Online evangelism and religious content were being systematically eliminated. Christian websites were being blocked. Social media accounts that posted Bible verses or Christian content were being deleted.

Chat groups discussing faith were being monitored and shut down. Even private messages between believers were subject to surveillance and could be used as evidence of illegal activity.

The government had created a vast digital surveillance system that monitored everything. Facial recognition cameras tracked people’s movements.

Algorithms scanned social media posts and messages for suspicious content. Big data analytics identified patterns that might indicate illegal religious activity.

It was becoming almost impossible to organize or communicate without being detected. Despite all this, or perhaps because of all this, our church decided to continue meeting.

We could not stop. To stop would be to deny Christ. We just had to be more careful.

For the next year and a half, we operated in a state of constant vigilance.

We met in groups no larger than six people. We changed locations frequently, never meeting in the same place twice in a row.

We used multiple layers of encrypted communication. We trained everyone in security protocols. But the paranoia was exhausting.

Every knock on the door made your heart race. Every police car made you nervous.

Every surveillance camera felt like an eye watching you specifically. You started to wonder if your neighbors were informants.

You wondered if new people at church were undercover police. You wondered if your phone was tapped, if your apartment was bugged, if you were being followed.

The psychological pressure was intense. Several church members decided to stop coming to meetings. They loved Jesus, but they could not live with the constant fear.

I did not blame them. Everyone has to count the cost for themselves. Others decided to leave China entirely.

Some moved to Southeast Asia. Some went to the United States or Canada or Australia, claiming asylum as religiously persecuted Christians.

Some made it out. Others were stopped at the border. Their applications for passports denied because they were on government watch lists.

Throughout 2018, the crackdown intensified across China. We heard reports of mass arrests in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangha.

The government was clearly implementing a coordinated national campaign. House churches were being raided simultaneously in multiple cities.

Pastors were being arrested in waves. Church properties were being confiscated in Henan Province. Hundreds of church buildings were demolished.

In Jang province, the government removed crosses from over a thousand church buildings. In Shinjang province, Christians were being sent to re-education camps alongside weaguer Muslims.

The camps were officially called vocational education and training centers. But everyone knew what they really were.

Prisons for people whose thoughts and beliefs did not align with communist ideology. We also heard about deaths, Christians who died in police custody under suspicious circumstances.

Official reports always said natural causes or suicide, but the families had their doubts. One pastor in Shanchshi province allegedly hanged himself in his cell even though he had a wife and children he loved and no history of mental illness.

A church elder in Guangdong province died of a heart attack during interrogation, though he was only 45 years old and had been healthy.

The stories accumulated whispered from church to church, creating a map of martyrdom across our nation.

In December 2018, something happened in Chungdu that shook our entire Christian community. Early Rain Covenant Church, one of the largest house churches in the city, was raided during a Sunday service.

More than 100 police officers stormed the building. Over a 100 church members were detained.

The pastor, Wong Yi, was arrested along with his wife and several church leaders. I knew Pastor Wang Yi.

We had met several times over the years at gatherings of house church leaders. He was a brilliant man, a former law professor who had converted to Christianity and become a passionate preacher.

His church was much larger and more visible than mine. He had been outspoken about religious freedom, even publishing documents criticizing the government’s religious policies.

Many of us had warned him that he was being too bold, too public. But he believed that silence was complicity.

The raid on Early Rain was different from previous crackdowns. It was massive and coordinated.

The authorities did not just detain people temporarily. They filed serious criminal charges. Pastor Wang Yi was charged with inciting subversion of state power.

One of the most serious political crimes in China. The potential sentence was 15 years in prison.

The message was clear. The government was no longer content with warnings and short detentions.

They were going to make examples of prominent house church leaders. They were going to show that resistance would be crushed.

In the weeks after Pastor Wong Yi’s arrest, over 500 people connected to Early Rain Covenant Church were detained, questioned, or placed under surveillance.

Many lost their jobs. Many were forced to move out of their apartments when landlords learned of their connection to the church.

Children of church members were expelled from schools. It was systematic persecution designed not just to punish but to destroy the entire community.

I attended a memorial service for the church held secretly in a home far from the city center.

About 30 house church leaders from across Chungdu gathered to pray for Pastor Wong Yi and his congregation.

We knew we might be next. We knew the gathering like this was dangerous, but we needed to be together to encourage each other, to remember that we were not alone.

One elderly pastor, a man who had already spent 10 years in labor camps during earlier persecutions in the 1980s, spoke to us that night.

He reminded us that the church in China had faced persecution many times before and had always emerged stronger.

He reminded us that persecution cannot destroy true faith. It only reveals it and refineses it.

He reminded us that our brothers and sisters in the first century had faced far worse and had counted it joy to suffer for Christ’s name.

His words strengthened me, but they also made me aware of how afraid I was.

I did not want to go back to that detention center. I did not want to face years in a labor camp.

I did not want my family to suffer. I was not as brave as I wanted to be.

Throughout 2019, the situation continued to deteriorate. New regulations expanded government control over all aspects of religious life.

Online religious content was banned entirely from major platforms. Christian e-commerce sites were shut down.

Apps that provided access to Bible translations or Christian resources were removed from app stores.

The government was constructing a comprehensive system to eliminate Christianity from the digital space. Physical restrictions also increased.

Churches were required to install surveillance cameras that fed directly to local police stations. Facial recognition technology was used to identify and track people attending religious services.

In some cities, believers reported being contacted by police officers who knew exactly which church services they had attended.

Even though the services were held secretly in private homes, the social credit system was weaponized against Christians.

Believers found their scores lowered because of their religious activities. This meant restrictions on travel, employment, housing, and education.

Some Christians could no longer buy plane or train tickets. Some were denied promotions at work or fired entirely.

Some found that their children were rejected from good schools because of the parents religious beliefs.

The goal was clear to make the cost of following Christ so high that people would abandon their faith.

To create a society where being a Christian meant accepting secondass citizenship, poverty and isolation.

But the opposite was happening. The church was growing. The very persecution meant to destroy us was actually purifying and strengthening us.

People who had been nominal Christians attending church out of habit or social connection were falling away.

But those who remained were deeply committed and new people were coming to faith precisely because they saw believers willing to sacrifice everything for something they claimed was true.

I remember a young man perhaps 25 years old who started attending our cell group meetings in mid 2019.

He told me that he had been an atheist his whole life, a loyal Communist Party member, a believer in dialectical materialism.

But he had noticed that his Christian co-workers were different. They were honest when others cheated.

They were kind when others were cruel. They had a peace that circumstances could not disturb.

He began to wonder what could create such a transformation. Then he heard that several of his Christian co-workers had been fired for refusing to sign documents renouncing their faith.

They lost good jobs, jobs they needed to support their families because they would not deny Christ.

This shocked him. What could be so valuable that rational, intelligent people would sacrifice their careers for it?

He began to investigate Christianity secretly, reading the Bible online through a VPN, watching smuggled sermons, asking questions.

6 months after he first visited our group, I baptized him in a river outside the city at midnight.

He knew what it would cost him. He knew he was choosing a life of difficulty and danger, but he said that meeting Jesus was worth everything.

Stories like this gave me hope. The government could pass all the laws they wanted, could arrest all the pastors they wanted, could demolish all the buildings they wanted, but they could not stop the Holy Spirit.

They could not prevent the gospel from spreading. They could not kill something that had already conquered death.

Still, the cost was real and growing. By late 2019, dozens of pastors I knew personally were in prison.

Hundreds of church members had been detained, questioned, or placed under surveillance. Thousands more were living in fear, not knowing when the knock on their door would come.

My family was under constant pressure. Anne and she, now teenagers, faced discrimination at school because of my criminal record.

Teachers treated them differently. Other students avoided them. They were not allowed to join the Communist Youth League, which meant they would face difficulties getting into good universities.

Mailing had lost two jobs because employers discovered her connection to a house church. We lived in a small apartment, barely making ends meet on my engineering salary.

We could not take vacations or buy nice things. We were always one emergency away from financial disaster, but we were together and we were free for the moment.

In October 2019, I had another conversation with Mailing about leaving China. She was more open to it now than she had been before.

She could see the trajectory. Things were getting worse, not better. Our daughters had no future in China as the children of a religious criminal.

If we stayed, we would eventually face something we could not survive. But I still could not bring myself to leave.

I kept thinking about my church members, about the young believers who depended on me for teaching and guidance, about the people who would lose heart if their pastor abandoned them.

How could I flee when they had no option to flee? I told Ming I needed more time to pray about it, to seek God’s will.

She said she would support whatever decision I made, but I could see the worry in her eyes.

She was afraid and she had every right to be. That conversation happened on a Wednesday evening.

On Friday morning, my decision was made for me. I was leaving work, walking to the subway station when two men in civilian clothes approached me.

They showed me police identification and told me I needed to come with them for questioning.

They were not rough or aggressive, but their tone made clear that this was not a request.

They put me in an unmarked car and drove me to a facility I had not seen before.

It was not the detention center where I had been held previously. This building was more isolated, more secure.

As we drove through the gates, I saw high walls, guard towers, multiple layers of security fencing.

This was not a place for temporary detention. This was a place people disappeared into.

They took me to a processing area where I was photographed, fingerprinted, and stripped of all my possessions.

They gave me a prison uniform, dark blue this time instead of gray. They told me I was being detained on charges of inciting subversion of state power.

The investigation would take several months. I should not expect to be released soon. My trial, they said, would be scheduled when the investigation was complete.

Until then, I would be held here. I asked if I could contact my family if I could let them know where I was.

They told me my family would be notified in due course. They told me that cooperation would be in my best interest.

They told me that many people had provided evidence against me and that my situation was very serious.

Then they took me to my cell. It was smaller than the one in the detention center.

The walls were concrete painted institutional white. There was a metal bed frame with a thin mattress, a small desk and stool bolted to the floor, a squat toilet, and a sink that provided only cold water.

A camera was mounted in the corner near the ceiling, its red light blinking constantly.

I would be watched every moment of every day. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands.

I thought about Mingling coming home from work to find me gone. I thought about Ann and she wondering why their father had not come home.

I thought about my church scattering when they learned their pastor had been arrested again.

This time on charges that could mean 10 or 15 years in prison. I thought about all the choices that had led me to this cell.

If I had agreed to register my church with the government, I would be free.

If I had promised to stop preaching, I would be home with my family. If I had fled China when I had the chance, I would be safe in another country.

But I had made my choice. I had chosen Christ. And Christ had not promised me comfort or safety.

He had promised me his presence. Even in the darkest valley, even in the shadow of death, I knelt beside metal bed and I prayed.

I thanked God for counting me worthy to suffer for his name. I prayed for Mling and my daughters that God would protect them and provide for them.

I prayed for my church that they would remain faithful even without me. I prayed for strength to endure whatever was coming.

And I prayed for my capttors, for the officers who had arrested me, for the officials who had signed the orders, for the government leaders who had created this system of persecution.

I prayed that God would open their eyes to the truth, that they would come to know Jesus Christ before it was too late for them.

The next morning, my interrogation began again. But this time, it would not end after 9 days.

This time, I was here for the long road. This time, I would truly learn what it costs to follow Christ in China.

The trial was held 6 months after my arrest in a small courtroom with no observers except government officials.

My lawyer was appointed by the state and met with me only once before the hearing.

He advised me to plead guilty and show remorse. He said it would reduce my sentence.

I told him I could not plead guilty to following Christ. The prosecutor presented a thick file of evidence, photographs of me entering various apartments, audio recordings of my sermons, testimony from informants who had infiltrated our church meetings, financial records that they claimed proved foreign funding, though I had never received a single UAN from outside China.

The narrative they constructed was elaborate. I was an agent of Western imperialism using religion to undermine social stability and turned Chinese citizens against their government.

I was allowed to speak briefly. I told the court that I had organized religious gatherings because I loved Jesus Christ and wanted others to know him.

I said I had never encouraged anyone to oppose the government or harm anyone. I said that following Christ meant loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you.

I said I would continue to follow Jesus no matter what sentence they gave me.

The judge showed no emotion. He had heard it all before. The verdict was predetermined.

I was found guilty of inciting subversion of state power and organizing illegal religious activities.

The sentence 7 years in a re-education through labor facility. 7 years. My daughters would be adults by the time I was released.

Ming would have to raise them alone. I would miss everything. Graduations, birthdays, the daily moments that make up a life.

The weight of that loss hit me like a physical blow. They transported me in a prison van for 2 days, moving northwest toward Shing Jang Province.

I was shackled at the wrists and ankles. There were 11 other prisoners in the van with me, some Christian, some Muslim, some political dissident who had criticized the government online.

We were not allowed to speak to each other, but our eyes met and we understood.

We were all guilty of the same crime. Thinking for ourselves, the re-education facility was in a remote area surrounded by desert.

The landscape was flat and brown, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The facility itself was a collection of gray concrete buildings surrounded by three layers of fencing topped with razor wire.

Guard towers stood at each corner, armed officers watching through binoculars. There would be no escape from this place.

During intake processing, they shaved my head. They issued me a blue uniform with my prisoner number stencled on the back.

They took my photograph holding a placard with the number. They assigned me to a dormatory with 40 other prisoners sleeping on bunk beds so close together you could barely walk between them.

The routine was rigid and unchanging. Wake at 5 in the morning to the sound of a harsh bell.

Stand at attention beside your bunk for inspection. March in formation to the cafeteria for breakfast.

Watery rice porridge and a small steamed bun. Marched to the factory building for work.

We manufactured clothing for export. Sitting at sewing machines for 8 hours with one 15-minute break for lunch.

March back to the dormatory. 2 hours of mandatory political education. Dinner. Thin vegetable soup and rice.

1 hour of free time. Though we were not really free. Lights out at 10:00.

The food was never enough. I lost weight rapidly in the first weeks. My body achd from the long hours sitting at the sewing machine doing the same repetitive motion thousands of times per day.

My fingers became calloused and sometimes bled from needle pricks, but physical suffering was almost easier to bear than the psychological assault.

Every evening we were required to attend re-education sessions. We sat in rows on hard benches while instructors lectured us about our crimes and the need for ideological transformation.

They told us that religion was a mental illness that could be cured through proper education.

They told us that Christianity was a tool invented by Western powers to colonize and exploit China.

They told us that the Communist Party had liberated China and given us everything and we were ungrateful traitors for following foreign superstitions.

We were forced to watch propaganda videos, hours and hours of them. Videos about the evils of religion.

Videos about the glory of socialism. Videos of former believers who had renounced their faith and now testified about how they had been brainwashed and deceived.

Some of the testimonies were clearly coerced, the speakers reading from scripts with dead eyes, but others seemed genuine, people who had been broken by this place and had given up everything to make it stop.

After the videos, we had self-criticism sessions. Each prisoner had to stand and confess their crimes, explain what they had done wrong, describe how they were being transformed through re-education.

If your confession was not deemed sincere enough, you would be criticized by the instructor and the other prisoners.

You would have to try again the next day. I watched carefully during my first few sessions to understand what they wanted.

They wanted displays of remorse. They wanted renunciation of previous beliefs. They wanted declarations of loyalty to the party and President Xi.

They wanted us to internalize their ideology to genuinely believe that our previous thoughts had been wrong and harmful.

I made a decision in those early days. I would show outward compliance to survive, but I would guard my heart.

I would say the words they wanted to hear, but I would not believe them.

I would memorize the speeches and slogans, but I would also memorize scripture. They could control my body and my words, but they could not control my mind or my soul unless I let them.

This was a form of compromise, and I wrestled with it. Was I denying Christ by playing along with their re-education program?

Or was I being wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove as Jesus had commanded?

I prayed about it constantly and I felt peace with my decision. God knew my heart.

That was what mattered. 3 months into my sentence, they called me to the warden’s office.

I had never been there before. It was a surprisingly normal room with a desk, chairs, a computer, and a window overlooking the compound.

The warden was a thin man in his 50s with gray hair and an expression of permanent disappointment.

He told me that I had been identified as a leader among the religious prisoners.

He said I had influence over others and that this influence could be used positively or negatively.

He placed a document on the desk in front of me. It was a confession and renunciation of faith.

Several pages long. It detailed my crimes and my transformation through re-education. It stated that I now understood Christianity was false, that I renounced Jesus Christ, that I pledged loyalty to the Communist Party, that I would actively work to discourage others from religious belief.

At the bottom was a line for my signature. The warden told me that signing this document would change everything for me.

I would be transferred to better housing. I would receive better food. My work assignment would be easier.

My sentence might be reduced. Most importantly, I would be allowed contact with my family.

I could write letters. Eventually, I might even be allowed visits. He showed me photographs, mailing and my daughter’s recent pictures.

Obviously taken by surveillance teams following them. The girls looked older, more mature. They looked sad.

Seeing their faces after 3 months of no contact nearly broke me. The warden asked me if I wanted to see my family again.

He asked if I cared about their well-being. He told me that my stubbornness was not just hurting me, but hurting them.

They were suffering because of my choices and had been rejected from the university she had applied to because of my criminal record.

She was being bullied at school. Mailing was working two jobs to support them because I was not there.

He said all of this suffering could end. I just needed to be reasonable. I just needed to sign the document and acknowledge reality.

I looked at the photographs of my family. I looked at the document. I looked at the warden.

I told him I could not sign it. I explained that Jesus Christ was not just a belief system I could renounce.

He was a person I had encountered, a truth I had experienced. Signing this document would be lying and I could not lie about the most important thing in my life.

I told him I was sorry for the suffering my family was experiencing, but I could not purchase their comfort by denying Christ.

The warden’s disappointment deepened into something harder. He told me I was a fool. He told me I would regret this decision.

He called a guard and instructed him to take me to the isolation unit. Solitary confinement was in a separate building at the edge of the compound.

The cells were smaller than my dormatory space, perhaps 2 m by 3 m. There was a concrete sleeping platform, a toilet, a sink, and nothing else.

No window, no natural light. A single bulb in the ceiling provided dim illumination 24 hours a day.

The isolation was worse than any physical discomfort. In the dormatory, I could at least see other people, even if we could not speak freely.

Here, I saw no one except the guard who brought food twice a day and removed the waste bucket.

He never spoke to me. He would slide the food tray through a slot in the door, wait for me to finish eating, then retrieve the empty tray.

That was my only human contact. The food portions were cut in half. I was constantly hungry.

My body, already thin, became gaunt. I could feel my ribs, my hipbones protruding. I tried to exercise to maintain some strength, doing push-ups and squats in the tiny space, but without adequate nutrition, my body weakened steadily.

Time became strange in that cell. With no natural light, no schedule, no variation in routine, days blurred together.

I tried to keep track by marking scratches on the wall, but I would lose count and have to start over.

Was I here for weeks or months? I genuinely did not know. The silence was oppressive.

In that isolation, your own thoughts become very loud. Every doubt, every fear, every regret gets amplified.

I thought constantly about my family. I wondered if they knew where I was or if they thought I was dead.

I wondered if the authorities had told them anything. I imagined Anenshi growing up without a father, being shaped by his absence, perhaps eventually coming to resent him for choosing God over them.

These thoughts were torture more effective than any physical abuse. I would lie on the concrete platform at night or what I assumed was night and struggle against despair.

Why had God let this happen? Why had he called me to ministry if it meant destroying my family?

What good was I doing for the kingdom locked in this cell? Unable to minister to anyone, unable even to encourage other believers.

I had moments of real doubt in that darkness. Moments when I wondered if the warden was right, if I was being stubborn and foolish.

Moments when I thought about calling the guard and asking to see the warden, telling him I had changed my mind, that I would sign the document after all.

But then I would remember scripture. Verses I had memorized years ago would surface in my mind with startling clarity.

Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. If we suffer with him, we will also reign with him.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds. The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed.

I would whisper these verses aloud in the darkness and they would give me strength to endure another day.

One night or day, I could not tell. I had an experience I still cannot fully explain.

I was lying on the concrete platform in the lowest moment of despair I had yet experienced, seriously contemplating whether I should just end my life and be done with it.

I felt utterly abandoned by God and man. Then suddenly the cell was filled with light.

Not the dim electric light from the bulb, but a warm golden radiance that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

And with the light came a presence. I cannot describe it better than that. A presence that filled the tiny cell.

A presence of overwhelming love and peace. I heard no audible voice, but words formed clearly in my mind.

I am with you. I have never left you. You are not alone. The experience lasted perhaps 30 seconds, perhaps a minute.

Then it faded and I was back in the dim cell. But I was changed.

The despair was gone. In its place was a deep piece that circumstances could not touch.

I knew with absolute certainty that God had not abandoned me, that he was with me even in this place, that my suffering had meaning and purpose, even if I could not see it yet.

From that moment, solitary confinement became something different. It was still difficult, still lonely, still painful, but it was no longer unbearable.

I began to see it as an opportunity, uninterrupted time with God, free from distractions.

I prayed for hours every day. I recited every verse of scripture I could remember.

I sang hymns quietly to myself. I found joy even in that cell. After what I later learned was 8 months in isolation, they returned me to the general population.

The transition was jarring. Suddenly, there were people everywhere. Noise, activity, stimulation. It was almost overwhelming after so long in silence.

The other prisoners looked at me with a mixture of respect and pity. I had been in isolation longer than anyone else in our unit.

My appearance shocked even me when I finally saw a mirror. I looked like a skeleton, my cheeks hollow, my eyes sunken.

But I had survived. And that meant something. In a place like this, I was assigned to the same dormatory as before.

Many of the prisoners I had known were gone, either released or transferred to other facilities.

But there were new prisoners, too. And among them, I discovered something that gave me hope.

There were Christians scattered throughout the facility. I began to identify them carefully, watching for signs.

A man who closed his eyes briefly before eating, giving silent thanks. A woman who handled difficulties with unusual peace.

Someone who spoke with kindness even when it cost them something. We could not openly identify ourselves, but we developed ways of recognizing each other.

One man in my dormatory, Brother Chen, had been a house church elder in Hanan Province.

He had been arrested along with 40 members of his congregation. His crime was teaching the Bible to children, which was now explicitly illegal.

He had been sentenced to 5 years. We developed a friendship slowly and carefully. We would work side by side at the sewing machines and have whispered conversations that sounded innocuous but carried deep meaning.

We encouraged each other. We shared verses of scripture that had sustained us. We prayed silently for each other through brother Chen.

I was connected to a small network of believers in the facility. There were perhaps 20 of us scattered across different work units and dormitories.

We could not meet openly, but we found ways to communicate. A word passed during work.

A note hidden in a location where another believer would find it. A hymn hummed quietly that would be recognized by others who knew it.

The most precious moments were when we could share communion. It had to be done secretly at great risk.

Someone would save a small piece of bread from their meal ration. Someone else would save a bit of fruit juice.

Late at night, three or four of us would gather in a corner of the dormatory, hidden from the cameras by carefully positioned bodies, and we would break bread together and remember Christ’s sacrifice.

These moments of fellowship sustained us. We were not alone. We were part of a body that extended beyond these walls, beyond China, beyond time itself.

We were connected to every believer who had ever suffered for Christ, every martyr who had chosen faithfulness over comfort.

I also discovered opportunities to share the gospel even in this place. Many prisoners were here because they had opposed the government in some way.

They were dissident, activists, people who had questioned authority. They had learned the hard way that the state could not be trusted.

Their disillusionment made them open to hearing about a kingdom not of this world. One young man named Leu had been imprisoned for posting criticism of government corruption online.

He was bitter and angry, full of hatred for the system that had destroyed his life.

He was assigned to the sewing machine next to mine. Over months of working side by side, I shared my story with him.

I told him about my faith, about why I was there, about the hope I had found in Christ.

He was skeptical at first, but he kept listening. He was drawn to the peace he saw in me.

The lack of bitterness despite everything I had suffered. One day he asked me how I could believe in a good God when there was so much evil in the world, so much suffering.

I told him that God had not created the evil. Humans had through our rebellion and sin.

But God had not abandoned us to our evil. He had entered into it, taking human form, suffering with us and for us, paying the price for our sins so that we could be reconciled to him.

I told Leu that in this broken world, we all have to choose what we will serve.

We can serve ourselves, our comfort, our safety, but those things will always let us down.

Or we can serve Christ, who suffered infinitely more than any of us will ever suffer, who conquered death itself, who promises to be with us through anything.

6 months after we first started talking, Leu came to faith. We could not have a baptism in any traditional sense, but one night, Brother Chen and I found a moment alone with Leu in the bathroom facility.

We filled a mop bucket with water and Leu knelt beside it. Brother Chen and I placed our hands on his head, said a brief prayer, and poured water over him.

It was the most humble baptism imaginable, but the joy on Leu’s face was radiant.

Moments like that made even the suffering worthwhile. The government had sent me to this place to break me, to silence me, to neutralize my influence.

But God was using it to expand his kingdom. I had led more people to Christ in this prison than I had led in the last year of my ministry outside.

In early 2020, everything changed. News filtered into the facility that a new disease was spreading rapidly in China.

It had started in Wuhan but was now appearing in cities across the country. The government was implementing strict lockdowns.

People were dying. The facility went into complete lockdown. No new prisoners arrived. No transfers out.

No visits. Not that I had been allowed visits anyway. Guards began wearing masks. They checked our temperatures twice a day.

Anyone with a fever was immediately isolated. The lockdown made conditions even more difficult. We were confined to our dormitories for longer periods.

Exercise time was reduced. The food quality, already poorer, got worse as supply chains were disrupted.

Tensions rose as people were forced into closer quarters with less relief. But the lockdown also created opportunities.

The guards were distracted, worried about the pandemic, worried about their own families. Security became slightly less rigid.

The Christian network in the facility used this time to meet more frequently, to pray together, to encourage each other.

We prayed for the pandemic victims, for the medical workers, for the people of China.

We prayed that somehow God would use even this disaster for his purposes. We prayed for the leaders of our country that they would turn to God.

During those months, I also received information that gave me hope and grief in equal measure.

Through the network of believers, through carefully passed notes and whispered conversations, I learned that my family had managed to get messages to me.

Ming was surviving. She had moved to a smaller apartment to save money. Both girls were healthy and had found work at a factory since she could not attend university.

She was still in school, struggling but persevering. They thought of me every day. They were praying for me.

They had not given up hope. This news sustained me, but it also filled me with guilt.

My daughter’s lives had been derailed because of my choices and should have been at university preparing for her future.

Instead, she was working at a factory with no prospects. She should have been enjoying her teenage years.

Instead, she carried the stigma of being a prisoner’s daughter. But I also learned something that lifted my heart.

The church I had pastored was still meeting. They had scattered into even smaller groups, but they were persevering.

New believers were being added. My imprisonment had not destroyed the church. It had strengthened it.

People saw believers staying faithful despite persecution and wanted what they had. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

I had heard that phrase many times. Now I was living it. Near the end of 2020, Brother Chen approached me with extraordinary news.

He had been contacted by the Christian Underground Network that operated in China and beyond its borders.

They had helped thousands of persecuted believers escape the country over the years. They were planning an operation to get him out, and they could include me if I was willing to take the risk.

The plan was dangerous and complex. During a medical transport to a hospital outside the facility, there would be a staged emergency.

In the chaos, we would be taken by the underground network and hidden. From there, we would be smuggled out of Shing Jang and eventually out of China.

The odds of success were low. If we were caught, we would face additional charges and much longer sentences, but if we succeeded, we would be free.

I struggled with the decision for days. If I escaped, what about the other believers in this place?

What about my responsibility to them? But brother Chen pointed out that if I escaped, I could tell the world what was happening here.

I could be a voice for those who had no voice. My testimony could help more people than my presence in this cell.

And there was my family. If I stayed, I had more than four years remaining on my sentence.

Four more years of Anchi growing up without a father. Four more years of Mingling struggling alone.

But if I escaped and made it out of China, perhaps they could join me.

Perhaps we could be reunited. I prayed about it constantly. I searched my heart for God’s guidance.

And slowly I came to believe that this opportunity was from him. It was time to go.

The medical transport was scheduled for a Tuesday morning in late November 2020. Brother Chen and I had both reported symptoms that required evaluation at a regional hospital.

Symptoms that were real enough to warrant the trip, but not so severe that they would refuse to transport us.

The plan had been coordinated through a network of underground believers that stretched across China.

People risking everything to help persecuted Christians escape. The night before, I barely slept. I lay on my bunk reviewing everything that could go wrong.

If the plan failed, I would likely never see freedom again. They would add years to my sentence.

They might send me back to solitary confinement permanently. But if I did nothing, I faced four more years in this place, watching my life slip away while my family suffered.

I thought about the last time I had held my daughters the night of my arrest.

Anne had been 14, she 11. Now Anne was almost 18, she almost 15. I had missed years of their lives already.

How could I miss more if there was even a chance of escape? At 4 in the morning, I whispered a prayer, not for success necessarily, but for God’s will to be done.

I told him I trusted him whether I stayed in this prison or walked out of it.

I told him that my life belonged to him and he could use it however he chose.

Morning came. Brother Chen and I were processed for transport, handcuffed, shackled at the ankles, dressed in our prison uniforms.

Two guards would accompany us in the transport van. The drive to the hospital would take approximately 3 hours through mountainous terrain.

As we were led to the van, Brother Chen caught my eye for just a moment.

His face was calm, peaceful even. Whatever happened, we were in God’s hands. The van pulled out of the facility gates at 7 in the morning.

I watched through the small barred window as the prison compound receded behind us. The desert stretched endlessly in every direction, brown and flat under a gray sky.

I wondered if I would ever see this place again, and I was surprised to realize the part of me would miss it.

I had suffered here, yes, but I had also grown here. I had learned what it meant to truly depend on God.

We drove for an hour in silence. The guards sat in front, occasionally talking to each other in low voices.

Brother Chen and I could not speak without drawing attention. So we sat quietly, praying in our hearts.

The road began to climb into mountains. The landscape changed from flat desert to rocky hills.

The curves became sharper, the grades steeper, my heart rate increased. According to the plan, the staged emergency would happen somewhere in these mountains where the road was isolated and help would be far away.

Another 30 minutes passed. Nothing happened. I began to wonder if the plan had been abandoned.

If something had gone wrong, if we had taken this risk for nothing. Then suddenly the van lurched violently.

There was a loud bang like a gunshot or an explosion. The driver shouted and fought with the steering wheel as the van swerved.

We were slowing rapidly, pulling toward the side of the road. Smoke began to pour from under the hood.

The guards were shouting at each other, confused and alarmed. The driver managed to bring the van to a stop on a narrow shoulder at the edge of a steep drop off.

He jumped out to investigate the engine. The second guard stayed inside with us, his hand on his weapon, alert for any threat.

Through the window, I could see the driver examining the engine. Thick gray smoke billowed from it.

He was shouting that something had exploded, that the engine was destroyed, that we were stranded.

The second guard got out to help, leaving Brother Chen and me alone in the back of the van.

We looked at each other. This was it. Whatever happened next would determine our fate.

Minutes passed. The guards were on their phones trying to call for assistance, but we were in a remote area and the signal was weak.

They were arguing about what to do. Send one guard to walk to the nearest town for help.

Stay with the van and wait for someone to come along. They could not abandon us, but they also could not fix the van.

A truck appeared on the road coming from the direction we had been traveling. It was old and battered, loaded with produce.

It slowed as it approached the disabled van. The driver, a weathered man in his 50s, got out and asked if they needed help.

What happened next occurred very quickly. The produce truck driver engaged the guards in conversation, distracting them.

They walked around to the front of the van to look at the engine together.

At that moment, two other men emerged from where they had been hidden among the produce in the truck bed.

They moved swiftly and silently to the back of the van. The door opened. One of the men produced keys.

How had they gotten keys to our handcuffs and shackles? And began unlocking us. My hands trembling, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

Brother Chen was freed first, then me. The man gestured urgently toward the truck. We had seconds to decide.

Once we climbed into that truck, there was no going back. We would be fugitives.

I thought of my family. I thought of my church. I thought of four more years in that cell versus the slim possibility of freedom.

I climbed out of the van and ran for the truck. Brother Chen was right behind me.

We scrambled into the back and the two men quickly covered us with burlap sacks and produce.

I could barely breathe under the weight of it all, but I stayed perfectly still.

I heard the produce truck driver calling out goodbye to the guards, saying he had done all he could, but the engine was beyond roadside repair.

I heard the truck engine start. I felt us begin to move. We drove for what felt like hours, but was probably only 20 minutes before the truck slowed and turned onto a rougher road.

When we finally stopped and the produce was pulled away, I saw we were in a small farmyard, hidden from the main road by a grove of trees, a woman was waiting, middle-aged and seriousfaced.

She told us we needed to move immediately. The guards would have reported our escape by now.

Every security checkpoint in the region will be looking for us. We had minutes, not hours.

She led us into a farmhouse and down into a cellar that I had not realized existed.

The entrance was hidden under a false floor. In the cellar was a small room with two beds, some food and water, and a bucket for waste.

She told us to stay here and make no sound. Someone would come for us when it was safe to move.

Then she closed the door and we heard the false floor being replaced above us.

We were in complete darkness. Brother Chen and I sat in that darkness for a long time.

Neither of us speaking, both of us trying to process what had just happened. We had escaped.

Against impossible odds, we were free of that prison. But we were not safe. We were still in Shinjang province, still in China, still hunted.

Eventually, Brother Chen began to pray aloud, thanking God for delivering us, asking for continued protection, praying for the believers who had risked everything to rescue us.

I joined him and we prayed together in that darkness for hours. We stayed in that cellar for 3 days.

The woman brought us food twice a day, simple meals of rice and vegetables, and emptied our waste bucket.

She spoke little, only giving us essential information. The authorities were conducting a massive search.

Checkpoints had been set up on all major roads. Our photographs were being shown everywhere.

We needed to wait until the initial intensity of the search diminished. On the fourth day, she came and told us it was time to move.

Late that night, we were taken out of the cellar and put into the back of a different truck.

This one carrying coal. They buried us in the coal, gave us cloths to cover our mouths and noses, and told us to stay absolutely still no matter what happened.

The journey was nightmarish. The coal was heavy and suffocating. Black dust filled my lungs despite the cloth over my face.

I could not see anything, could barely breathe, could not move. The truck drove for hours, stopping several times, checkpoints, I assumed, where I heard muffled voices and the sound of inspections happening.

Each time, I prayed they would not probe too deeply into the coal. We survived each checkpoint.

When they finally pulled us out, I was black from head to toe, coughing up coal dust, my eyes burning.

But we were in a different city, farther from the prison, farther from the search perimeter.

A new family took us in. They were Christians who had been part of the underground network for years.

They showed us to a small room where we could wash and rest. The husband told us that we were now part of an underground railroad that stretched across China, a network of believers who moved persecuted Christians from safe house to safe house until they could be taken out of the country.

He explained that the journey would be long and dangerous. We would move every few days, always at night, always hidden.

We would meet dozens of believers along the way. All of them risking imprisonment or death to help us.

We must trust them completely and follow their instructions exactly. I asked if there was any way to get a message to my family.

He said it was too dangerous right now. Any contact could be traced and would endanger both us and them.

Later, when we were farther from the search zone, they would try to establish secure communication.

That night, lying on a thin mattress in a stranger’s home, I felt the full weight of what I had done.

I had escaped prison, yes, but I had also left my family behind. They did not know where I was or even if I was alive.

They would hear that I had escaped and would live in constant fear that I had been recaptured or killed.

The authorities might interrogate them, pressure them, trying to find out if they knew anything about my escape.

I had thought escaping would bring me closer to reuniting with my family. Instead, I had created a new kind of separation, one filled with uncertainty and danger for all of us.

But there was no going back now. I could only move forward and trust that God would work out what I could not.

For the next 3 months, Brother Chen and I moved from safe house to safe house across China.

Each family that sheltered us had their own story of faith and persecution. Each had made the decision to risk everything to help believers escape.

There was the elderly couple in Gansu province who had been imprisoned themselves during the cultural revolution for being Christians.

They had lost their only son to the labor camps. But their faith had never wavered.

They sheltered us for 5 days, feeding us from their meager supplies, encouraging us with stories of God’s faithfulness through decades of persecution.

There was the young family in Shanchshi province with three small children. The parents were both house church leaders who knew they might be arrested at any moment.

Yet they opened their home to us, hiding us in a secret room they had built specifically for this purpose.

Their children played and laughed in the apartment, having no idea that two fugitives were hiding behind their bedroom wall.

There was the widow in Hanan Province who ran a small noodle shop. She hid us in her storage room during the day and at night after the shop closed she would bring us hot food and sit with us praying and sharing scripture.

She told us that her husband had been a pastor who died in prison 10 years earlier.

She stayed in China and continued his work, helping the underground church however she could.

Each of these believers humbled me. They had so little, yet they gave so much.

They faced constant danger, yet they showed no fear. They were the true heroes of the Chinese church.

Not famous pastors or visible leaders, but ordinary people who quietly, faithfully served Christ at great personal cost.

Through this network, I also learned more about the state of persecution in China. It was worse than I had realized.

While I had been in prison, the government had escalated its campaign against Christianity dramatically.

Thousands of house church pastors had been arrested across the country. Many were serving sentences of 5 to 10 years or longer.

Some had died in custody under suspicious circumstances. The government’s official explanation was always natural causes, but the families had their doubts.

The crackdown on children had intensified. Schools were now required to report any signs of religious belief in students.

Children who were identified as Christians faced harassment, discrimination, and political indoctrination sessions designed to turn them away from faith.

Some families had fled China specifically to protect their children from this persecution. The scenicization campaign had expanded.

Churches that agreed to register with the government now faced increasing control over every aspect of their ministry.

Sermons had to be approved in advance. Certain books of the Bible were effectively banned from being taught.

Churches were required to display propaganda posters and portraits of communist leaders. Some churches were mandated to sing newly composed hymns that praised the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping alongside traditional worship songs.

Online restrictions had become almost total. All Christian content had been removed from the Chinese internet.

Websites, social media accounts, chat groups, everything was gone. Believers trying to share their faith online were quickly identified and punished.

The government had developed sophisticated AI systems to monitor and flag religious content. Yet, despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, the church was growing.

The very persecution designed to crush Christianity was purifying it and strengthening it. Cultural Christians who had followed Jesus superficially were falling away.

But those who remained were deeply committed and new believers were coming to faith drawn by the testimony of Christians who would sacrifice everything rather than deny Christ.

I heard stories that gave me hope even in our desperate situation. Stories of entire families coming to faith after seeing their Christian neighbors stand firm under pressure.

Stories of government officials secretly becoming believers after witnessing the peace and courage of Christians they were supposed to be persecuting.

Stories of house churches multiplying faster than the government could shut them down, like trying to contain a flood by building walls.

The water just found new paths. The church in China had learned to function in the catacombs just as the early church had.

We met in secret. We communicated in code. We trained leaders underground. We baptized in hidden places.

The structures were invisible to outsiders, but the life was abundant. In late February 2021, we reached Yunan Province in southwestern China near the border with Myanmar and Laos.

This was the final stage of our journey inside China. The next step would be crossing the border illegally into Southeast Asia.

Our guides were brother Joe and sister Lynn, a married couple who had been smuggling persecuted Christians out of China for over a decade.

They had helped more than 300 people escape. They moved with quiet confidence, people who knew every backro, every mountain pass, every bribable border guard.

They explained the plan. We would hike through the mountains for 3 days to reach a remote section of the border that was less heavily monitored.

The crossing point was a river that formed the natural boundary between China and Myanmar.

We would cross at night when the current was manageable. On the other side, contacts would be waiting to receive us.

The risks were significant. Border patrols, surveillance drones, motion sensors, wild animals, the possibility of getting lost in the mountains, the river itself, which was fast and dangerous even at its calmst.

But there was no safer option. Every official border crossing was heavily monitored with facial recognition technology.

Our faces were the system as escaped criminals. We would be arrested the moment we tried to cross legally.

Brother Joe also told us that he had established secure communication with my family. They had been moved to a safe location by the underground network.

They knew I had escaped and was trying to reach them. They were making preparations to leave China through a different route.

If all went well, we would reunite in South Korea, which had agreed to accept us as refugees.

Hearing that Mling and my daughters were safe and working toward escape filled me with overwhelming relief and gratitude.

God had protected them. The underground church had protected them. They were coming. We spent 2 days preparing for the mountain crossing.

They provided us with proper hiking shoes, warm clothing, food supplies, water purification tablets, and basic medical supplies.

Brother Joe drilled us on what to do if we encountered patrols, how to move quietly through the forest, how to read the mountain terrain.

On the third night, we set out. The journey through the mountains was the hardest physical challenge I had ever faced.

We hiked only at night to avoid detection, sleeping during the day in hidden campsites.

The terrain was steep and treacherous. My body, weakened by years of poor nutrition in prison, struggled with every step.

We climbed narrow paths along cliff edges where one wrong step would mean a fatal fall.

We forted ice cold streams. We pushed through dense vegetation that tore at our clothes and skin.

My feet blistered and bled. My legs cramped. My lungs burned in the thin mountain air.

But brother Joe and sister Lynn kept us moving. They encouraged us when we wanted to give up.

They shared their own food when we ran out. They prayed with us when fear threatened to overwhelm us.

On the second night, we heard voices in the distance, a border patrol. We immediately went silent and hid in thick brush off the trail.

The patrol passed within 30 m of us, their flashlights sweeping the darkness. We stayed frozen for an hour after they passed, making sure they were truly gone before continuing.

On the third day, as we rested in a hidden ravine, a drone passed overhead.

We pressed ourselves against the rocky ground, covering ourselves with branches and leaves, praying the thermal cameras would not detect us.

The drone circled the area for 20 minutes before moving on. We did not know if it had spotted us or if we had been lucky.

That night, we reached the river. It was wider than I had expected, perhaps 40 m across, flowing fast and dark under a moonless sky.

The sound of it filled the air, a constant roar that would cover any noise we made, but also made it impossible to hear if patrols were approaching.

Brother Joe studied the river carefully, looking for the best crossing point. He chose the spot where the current appeared slightly slower, where large rocks broke the surface, offering potential handholds.

He had brought rope, which he tied around his own waist. He would cross first, secure the rope on the other side, and then we would use it to help us cross.

If anyone was swept away, the rope would save them. I watched as Brother Joe waited into the river.

The water was immediately up to his thighs, the current pulling at him. He moved carefully, testing each step before committing his weight.

Halfway across, he lost his footing and was briefly swept downstream before catching himself on a rock.

Sister Lynn gasped but said nothing. Brother Joe recovered and continued. After 15 agonizing minutes, he reached the far shore.

He secured the rope around a tree and signaled for us to begin. Brother Chen went next.

He was younger and stronger than me. He made it across with difficulty but safely.

Then it was my turn. I waited into the river, gripping the rope tightly. The water was shockingly cold, numbing my legs almost immediately.

The current was stronger than it had looked from shore, pulling at me with relentless force.

I focused on moving one foot at a time, testing each step, keeping tension on the rope.

Halfway across, my foot slipped on a mosscovered rock. I fell forward into the water, going under completely.

The current grabbed me and pulled me downstream. I held desperately to the rope, feeling it burn through my hands as I slid along it.

My lungs screamed for air. Then hands grabbed me. Brother Chen had jumped back into the river and caught me.

Together, we fought back against the current, using the rope to pull ourselves to shore.

I collapsed on the muddy bank, coughing up river water, shaking from cold and shock.

But I was across. I was out of China. Sister Lynn crossed last, moving with practiced efficiency.

When she reached our side, she quickly untied the rope and threw it into the river to erase evidence of our crossing.

We were on Myanmar soil now, technically safe from Chinese authorities, but we were not truly safe yet.

We were illegal immigrants in Myanmar with no documents, no money, no way to prove who we were.

We needed to reach the Christian aid workers who were waiting for us. We hiked for another 4 hours through Myanmar jungle before reaching a small village where a truck was waiting.

The driver was a Karen Christian who had been helping refugees for years. He drove us to a larger town where a safe house operated by an international Christian organization was located.

At the safe house, we finally stopped running. We were given clean clothes, hot food, medical attention for our injuries.

A doctor examined me and was shocked by my condition. Severe malnutrition, multiple infections, a likely case of tuberculosis from the prison.

I needed immediate treatment and months of recovery. But I was alive. I was free.

And I could finally allow myself to believe that I had truly escaped. We spent 6 weeks in Myanmar while arrangements were made for our journey to South Korea.

The Christian organization that operated the safe house helped us navigate the complex refugee process.

They provided medical care, counseling, and support. During this time, I learned that Ming and my daughters had successfully escaped China through a different route.

They had traveled through southern China into Vietnam, then to Thailand. They were now in a refugee processing center in Bangkok waiting for approval to travel to South Korea.

The organization arranged for us to communicate by video call. When Ming’s face appeared on the screen, I broke it down completely.

She was thinner, her hair had gray that had not been there before, but she was alive and well.

Then Anne and she appeared. They were so much older, so much more mature than when I had last seen them and was 19 now.

She 16. I had missed years of their lives. We talked for an hour, all of us crying, trying to bridge the gap of lost time with words.

They told me about their escape, about the believers who had helped them, about their hope that we would be reunited soon.

I told them how sorry I was for everything they had suffered because of my choices and said something I will never forget.

Father, you showed us what it means to follow Christ no matter the cost. We are proud of you.

In April 2021, I boarded a plane to South Korea. It was the first time I had ever flown.

As the plane climbed into the sky and I looked down at the landscape falling away below, I thought about everything that had happened to bring me to this moment.

The arrests, the interrogations, the prison, the isolation, the escape, the underground railroad of believers who had risked everything to save me.

I thought about the Christians still in China, still meeting in secret, still being arrested and imprisoned.

I thought about Pastor Wang Yi still in prison serving his 9-year sentence. I thought about Brother Jang and Sister Lee and all the others from my congregation who I might never see again.

I had survived. I had escaped. But so many had not. Why had God saved me and not them?

What responsibility did I now have to use my freedom to help those still in chains?

The plane landed in Soul. I was met by representatives from a Christian refugee organization who would help me navigate life in South Korea.

They took me to a small apartment that had been prepared for me, providing basic furniture, supplies, and a modest stipen until I could support myself.

3 weeks later, Mling and my daughters arrived. Our reunion at the airport was overwhelming.

We held each other and cried, a small island of embracing bodies in the busy terminal.

People flowing around us while we stood together. A family reunited after 3 years of separation and suffering.

We were safe. We were together. We were free. But freedom felt strange after so many years of fear and restriction.

I did not know how to live without looking over my shoulder. I woke up at night expecting to hear guards footsteps.

I tensed whenever I saw police officers. I felt guilty for having enough food to eat when I knew believers in China were hungry.

I had escaped China, but China had not escaped me. The trauma lived in my body and mind, the faces of those I had left behind haunted me.

And slowly, as I adjusted to life and soul, I began to realize that God had not saved me just so I could live quietly in safety.

He had saved me so I could be a voice for those who had no voice.

He had saved me so I could tell the world what was happening to Christians in China.

My suffering was not over. It had simply entered a new phase. The first months in Seoul were a strange mixture of relief and disorientation.

Everything was unfamiliar. The language, the food, the customs, the pace of life. South Korea was technically still my cultural homeland, but after a lifetime in China, it felt foreign.

Simple tasks like buying groceries or using public transportation required enormous mental energy. My family struggled, too.

Anne and she had to learn Korean quickly to function in society and found work at a Korean Chinese restaurant where her ability to speak Mandarin was valuable.

She enrolled in a special program for refugee children to help her catch up academically and learn the language.

Mailing cleaned offices at night, work that did not require language skills. We lived in a tiny two- room apartment in a neighborhood populated mostly by other refugees and migrant workers.

It was cramped and old, but it was ours and no one could take it from us.

We had freedom. We had safety. We had each other. After everything we had endured, that felt like immeasurable wealth.

But I could not settle into this new life. Every night I dreamed about China.

Sometimes they were nightmares about the prison, the interrogation room, the isolation cell. Other times they were dreams about my church, about leading worship, about baptizing new believers in the river.

I would wake up disoriented, not knowing where I was, my heart pounding with anxiety.

I struggled with survivors guilt. Why had I escaped when so many others remained in prison?

What made my life more valuable than theirs? I thought constantly about Brother Jang, about Sister Lee, about the dozens of believers from my congregation who had been arrested and whose fates I did not know.

A counselor from the refugee organization told me I had post-traumatic stress disorder. She said it was normal after what I had experienced.

She encouraged me to be patient with myself, to give my mind and body time to heal.

But I felt restless like I was supposed to be doing something, accomplishing something, not just recovering.

3 months after arriving in Seoul, I received a visit from a representative of an international Christian human rights organization.

He had heard about my escape and wanted to know if I would be willing to share my testimony.

There were many organizations working to document religious persecution in China, he said, but firsthand accounts from recent escapes were rare and valuable.

I agreed to meet with him. Over several sessions, I told him my story. Everything from my childhood to my imprisonment to my escape.

He recorded it all. Took detailed notes, asked careful questions. He told me that my testimony could help raise awareness about what was happening to Christians in China.

It could influence policymakers, mobilize prayer, encourage the global church to support their persecuted brothers and sisters.

But he also warned me about the costs. If I spoke publicly, I would become known to the Chinese government.

They would brand me a traitor. They might make threats against me or my family.

They might try to discredit me with propaganda. I would never be able to return to China, not even to visit my grandmother’s grave.

I told him I understood the risks. I told him that speaking out was the least I could do for those who could not speak for themselves.

My first public testimony was at a small church in Seoul, a congregation of about 60 people.

The pastor was a kind man who had worked with North Korean refugees and understood the challenges of trauma and adjustment.

He invited me to share my story during a Sunday service. I was terrified. I had preached hundreds of sermons in China, but this was different.

I would be speaking in Korean, a language I still struggled with. I would be revealing painful experiences to strangers.

I would be making myself vulnerable in ways that felt dangerous even here in freedom.

But when I stood before that small congregation and began to speak, something shifted inside me.

I told them about my grandmother’s hidden Bible, about coming to faith in university, about building the house church in Changdu.

I told them about the persecution, the arrests, the re-education camp. I told them about the believers who had risked everything to help me escape.

As I spoke, I saw people crying. I saw them leaning forward in their seats, hanging on every word.

When I finished, the entire congregation stood and prayed for the Christians in China. Many came forward afterward to embrace me, to tell me how my story had moved them, to promise they would pray for the persecuted church.

Walking home that day, I felt something I had not felt in years. Purpose. God had preserved my life for this.

I was meant to be a voice for the voiceless. I was meant to tell the world what was happening to my brothers and sisters in China.

After that first testimony, invitations began to come from other churches, small congregations, mostly Korean, Chinese or Korean churches with connections to China.

I spoke at prayer meetings, at mission conferences, at seminary chapels. Each time I told my story, I saw people’s hearts being stirred to pray and to care about religious freedom.

The Human Rights Organization began including portions of my testimony in their reports and publications.

They were careful not to use my full name or identifying details that could endanger family members still connected to China.

In their documents, I was simply Pastor L, a house church leader from Sichuan Province.

Through these connections, I learned more about the scope of persecution in China. The situation had continued to deteriorate throughout 2021 and into 2022.

The government had implemented new waves of arrests targeting house church leaders. Thousands more believers were in prison or labor camps.

The cynicization campaign had expanded with even registered churches facing impossible requirements to integrate communist ideology into their theology.

I also learned about the camps in Chinjang. What I had experienced was mild compared to what was happening to weaguer Muslims and Christians in that region.

Mass detention, forced labor, torture, deaths. The camps held hundreds of thousands of people whose only crime was their faith or ethnicity.

It was cultural and religious genocide happening in real time while the world largely looked away.

This knowledge burdened me. I felt I needed to do more, say more, reach more people.

But I was limited by language, by resources, by my refugee status that restricted what I could do.

In early 2023, I was contacted by a coalition of Christian organizations that worked on religious freedom issues.

They were organizing a forum on persecution in Asia, and wanted me to participate. The forum would be small and private, mostly local churches and organizations held here in South Korea.

They wanted me to share my testimony and then participate in a panel discussion about how churches could support persecuted believers.

I agreed. The forum was held at a church in a suburb of Seoul. Perhaps 150 people attended, pastors, missionaries, human rights workers, concerned Christians.

I sat on the stage with four other people who had experienced persecution. A North Korean SKP, a pastor from Myanmar, a Christian from Pakistan, and a woman from Vietnam.

Each of us told our story. Each testimony was powerful and heartbreaking. When it was my turn, I shared about China, about the house church movement, about the escalating persecution.

I was more comfortable speaking now, having done it many times. I could speak in Korean with less hesitation, could communicate the emotions and details more effectively.

After our testimonies, we had a panel discussion about practical ways churches could help. We talked about prayer, about supporting organizations that helped refugees, about advocating for religious freedom with government officials, about being willing to sacrifice comfort for Christ ourselves.

During the question and answer time, a young Korean pastor asked me something that struck deep.

Do you ever regret your choices? If you could go back, knowing everything you know now about the cost to you and your family, would you still choose to pastor a house church in China?

I thought about this carefully before answering. I told him that I had asked myself this question a thousand times.

Every time I looked at my daughters and saw how their lives had been affected by my imprisonment.

Every time I woke up from nightmares about the re-education camp. Every time I thought about the believers still suffering in China, but my answer I told him was yes, I would make the same choice because Jesus Christ is worth everything.

Because knowing him and making him known is the purpose of human existence. Because when I stand before him one day, I want to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Not you played it safe and comfortable. I told him that suffering for Christ is not something to seek out or romanticize.

It is painful and costly and real. But it is also meaningful in ways that comfort can never be.

My time in prison, as horrible as it was, was also when I felt closest to God.

When I understood most clearly what matters and what does not, the persecution purified my faith, I explained.

It burned away everything superficial and revealed what was real. It united me with believers across China in ways that prosperity never could.

It gave me a story that could encourage others and bring glory to God. I would not wish suffering on anyone, but I would not trade what I learned through suffering for anything.

The young pastor was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Thank you,” he said.

“I needed to hear that.” Throughout 2023 and into 2024, the news from China grew worse.

The government mandated that all Protestant churches, even those registered with the three self-patriotic movement, must incorporate newly composed patriotic hymns into their worship services.

These hymns praise the Communist Party, President Xi, and socialist values. Churches that refused faced closure, and their leaders faced arrest.

Online restrictions expanded further. The government developed AI systems that could detect and block religious content with increasing sophistication.

Even using virtual private networks to access blocked websites became more dangerous as the government improved its ability to detect VPN usage.

The ban on children participating in religious activities was enforced more strictly. Schools conducted regular anti-religious education sessions, teaching children that religion was superstition and harmful to Chinese society.

Children were encouraged to report if their parents engaged in religious activities at home. Some families were broken apart when children indoctrinated by these programs reported their own parents to authorities.

Persecution of converts from other religions intensified. Muslims who converted to Christianity faced not only government persecution but severe backlash from their families and communities.

Some were forcibly returned to their families and subjected to beatings or imprisonment in private facilities to correct their apostasy.

Buddhists who converted faced similar pressures, ostracized from their communities and losing social and economic opportunities.

I heard these reports and felt increasing urgency to speak out more widely, but I was constrained by my limitations.

I was still learning Korean. I had no formal education beyond my engineering degree. I had no platform or influence.

I was just a refugee pastor living in a small apartment trying to support his family while dealing with trauma.

But I did what I could. I continued speaking at local churches, usually small congregations.

I wrote short articles for Korean Christian publications about what was happening in China. I met with anyone who wanted to hear about persecution and how to pray for the Chinese church.

In late 2024, I was invited to share my testimony at a slightly larger gathering, a regional prayer conference with about 300 attendees.

It was the largest audience I had addressed. I was nervous, but I prepared carefully, praying that God would use my words to move hearts.

I told my story as I had told it many times before, but this time I focused on calling people to action.

I told them that prayer was essential, but it could not be our only response.

We needed to advocate for religious freedom. We needed to support organizations helping refugees. We needed to build relationships with the Chinese church and find careful, wise ways to support them.

Most importantly, I told them, we needed to examine our own faith. Christianity in free countries had become too comfortable, too cultural, too casual.

We needed to ask ourselves, what would we do if following Christ cost us everything?

Would our faith survive persecution? Was Jesus really our treasure? Or were we just using religion to make our comfortable lives feel meaningful?

The response was powerful. Many people came forward after my talk, committing to pray regularly for persecuted Christians.

Some wanted to know how they could help financially. Others asked about volunteer opportunities with refugee organizations.

A few young people told me they felt called to ministry among Chinese communities to serve the diaspora and find ways to support the underground church.

One elderly woman approached me with tears streaming down her face. She told me that she had been a Christian for 40 years, but had grown cold and complacent.

Hearing my testimony reminded her what following Jesus actually meant. She asked me to pray for her, that God would reignite her first love for Christ.

As I prayed for her, I realized that this was part of why God had allowed me to suffer and survive.

Not just to inform people about persecution, but to challenge them spiritually, to remind them that following Christ is not about comfort and convenience, to show them that Jesus is worth everything.

Through 2024 and into 2025, I continued this work, speaking when invited, writing when I could, praying always for my brothers and sisters still in China.

I remained in contact with the underground network, receiving occasional updates about what was happening on the ground.

I learned that my church in Changdu was still meeting, though it had fractured into even smaller cells for safety.

Some of the original members had been arrested. Others had fled to other provinces. But new believers had joined, and the network had actually grown.

The leadership had passed to younger pastors who had been trained in the principles of house church ministry.

I learned that Pastor Wong Yi was still in prison, having served 5 years of his 9-year sentence.

His health was deteriorating, but his faith remained strong. His wife and son had managed to escape China and were now living in the United States, advocating for his release and for religious freedom in China.

I learned that the number of Chinese Christians was estimated to have reached 100 million despite the persecution or perhaps because of it.

The church was growing fastest in rural areas and among young people in cities. Precisely the demographics the government was targeting with its restrictions.

This news gave me hope. The gates of hell would not prevail against Christ’s church.

The government could arrest pastors, demolish buildings, ban children from services, control the internet, implement social credit systems.

But they could not stop the Holy Spirit. They could not prevent people from encountering Jesus.

They could not extinguish the light. I also maintained contact with brother Chen, my companion, from prison and the escape.

He was now living in the United States, having been granted asylum. He was attending seminary, preparing to minister to Chinese diaspora communities.

We spoke by video call every few months, encouraging each other, praying together, remembering what God had brought us through.

During one of these calls, Brother Chen told me something profound. He said that he used to think the goal was to survive persecution, to endure it, and come out the other side.

But now he understood that persecution was not an obstacle to overcome but an opportunity to participate in Christ’s sufferings.

It was not something to merely survive but something through which God was accomplishing his purposes.

The church in China was being refined. He said persecution was burning away nominalism and cultural Christianity revealing who truly belonged to Christ.

It was creating a generation of believers who understood the cost of disciplehip and had counted that cost and chosen Christ anyway.

These believers would be the foundation for whatever came next in China’s history. His words resonated deeply with me.

I had spent so much time focusing on the pain of persecution that I had sometimes missed its purpose.

God was not just allowing his church to suffer. He was using suffering to perfect his church to prepare us for glory.

My daughters were adjusting to life in South Korea. Though it was not easy and had dreams of attending university but could not afford it, she continued working at the restaurant, sending money home to help support the family.

She had grown into a strong, mature young woman with deep faith. She often told me that watching my willingness to suffer for Christ had shaped her understanding of what truly mattered in life.

She was in her final year of high school, studying hard despite the language and cultural barriers.

She wanted to become a doctor to help people, to use her life for something meaningful.

She had nightmares sometimes about the night I was arrested, about the uncertainty of those years when she did not know if her father was alive or dead, but she was working through the trauma with the help of counselors and the support of our church community.

Ming had found work as a home care aid for elderly Koreans. The work was physically demanding, but she found it meaningful.

She had aged visibly from the stress of the past years, but her faith had deepened.

She told me once that she used to pray for comfort and ease, but now she prayed for faithfulness and endurance.

Persecution had changed what she asked God for. We attended a small Korean Chinese church in our neighborhood, a congregation of about 40 people, mostly refugees or migrants.

It was nothing like the vibrant growing house church I had pastored in Changdu. It was small and struggling meeting in a rented space with worn furniture and limited resources.

But it was a community of believers who had learned to value what could not be taken away.

Many of them had their own stories of persecution and escape. We understood each other in ways that more comfortable Christians could not.

We had all lost things for Christ and we had all discovered that Christ was enough.

I occasionally preached at this church though I was not the pastor. I served where I could, helping with practical needs, counseling those dealing with trauma, praying with people, teaching a Bible study.

It was humble work, invisible work, nothing like the ministry I had once had, but it was good work, kingdom work.

In early 2025, I was contacted by a researcher who was writing a book about the Chinese House Church Movement.

She had heard about my testimony and wanted to interview me extensively for her project.

She assured me that she would protect my identity using a pseudonym and changing identifying details.

Over several months, I met with her regularly, telling her my full story in far more detail than I had shared publicly.

She asked probing questions, pushed me to reflect on things I had not articulated before, helped me see patterns and meanings I had not recognized.

Through this process, I began to understand my story differently. It was not just my story.

It was the story of thousands of Chinese Christians who had made similar choices, faced similar persecution, paid similar costs.

I was one voice representing a multitude who had no voice. The researcher told me that she hoped the book would help Western Christians understand what their brothers and sisters in China were experiencing.

Too many people in free countries had no idea about the reality of persecution. They took their freedom for granted.

They complained about minor inconveniences while believers elsewhere were dying for their faith. I told her that this was exactly why I continued to speak out despite the personal cost.

The global church needed to wake up. Christians in free countries needed to use their freedom to advocate for those who had none.

They needed to pray. They needed to support refugee and human rights organizations. They needed to make religious freedom a priority in their political engagement.

But most of all, they needed to examine their own hearts. They needed to ask themselves, “Is Jesus Christ truly my treasure?

Am I willing to follow him regardless of cost? Or am I just cultural Christian going through religious motions while my heart is set on comfort, success, and security?”

These were the questions persecution had forced me to answer. These were the questions I wanted to force others to consider.

Not because I wanted them to suffer, but because I wanted them to discover what I had discovered.

Christ is enough. Christ is worth everything. And knowing him is more valuable than all the comfort and security the world can offer.

As I sit here now in my small apartment in Seoul, looking out at the city lights, I think about the journey that has brought me to this place.

From my grandmother’s whispered prayers to my own encounter with Christ as a university student.

From building a house church in Chungdu to being arrested and imprisoned. From the re-education camp to the desperate escape across mountains and rivers.

From the Underground Railroad of believers to this safe but strange new country, I think about the cost.

The years of my life spent in prison. The trauma that still affects me daily.

The daughters who grew up without a father. The wife who suffered alone. The church family scattered and persecuted.

The country I can never return to. The graves I can never visit. The cost has been high.

I will not pretend otherwise. But I also think about what I have gained. A faith refined by fire that cannot be shaken.

A certainty about what matters that no circumstances can disturb. A fellowship with Christ’s sufferings that has brought me closer to him than comfort ever could.

A community of believers united not by culture or convenience, but by shared sacrifice for the one we love.

I have learned that Jesus meant what he said. Following him does cost everything. Taking up your cross is not a metaphor.

Losing your life to find it is not poetic language but literal instruction. But I have also learned that he is worth it.

Every sacrifice, every tear, every moment of fear and pain. It is all worth it for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

The church in China is suffering. Many of my brothers and sisters are in prison right now.

Some are being tortured. Some are being forced to choose between Christ and everything they love.

Some will die for their faith. This is the reality. I cannot soften it or make it more palatable.

But the church in China is also alive. It is growing. It is being purified and strengthened.

Young believers are coming to faith with their eyes wide open knowing exactly what it will cost them choosing Christ.

Anyway, the blood of martyrs continues to be the seed of the church. I want to ask you, whoever you are reading this, whatever your situation, what would you do?

If following Christ cost you your freedom, your family, your future, would you still follow him?

If worshiping God meant risking everything you value, would you still worship? These are not hypothetical questions for millions of Christians around the world.

They are daily realities. And increasingly they may become your reality too. Persecution is spreading.

Religious freedom is eroding in many countries. The comfortable Christianity of the modern west may not last.

The day may come when you must choose between Christ and comfort, between faith and safety.

I am praying for you. I am praying that you will choose well. I am praying that you are building your faith on the rock now while there is still time so that when storms come and they will come you will stand firm.

I am praying for my brothers and sisters in China for those in prison that they would know Christ’s presence with them.

For those being tortured that they would stand firm. For those making impossible choices that they would choose Christ.

For those who have lost everything that they would discover Christ is enough. I am praying for government officials in China that God would soften their hearts or remove them from power.

That he would raise up leaders who will protect religious freedom rather than suppress it.

That he would accomplish his purposes even through those who oppose him. I am praying for the church worldwide.

That believers in free countries would use their freedom to advocate for those who have none.

That they would support persecuted Christians through prayer, through giving, through action. That they would value their own freedom while they have it and use it for kingdom purposes.

And I am praying that God would continue to grow his church in China despite everything.

That the persecution meant to destroy us would instead refine us. That the attempts to silence the gospel would instead amplify it.

That the darkness would make the light shine even brighter. The government can arrest pastors, but they cannot stop the Holy Spirit.

They can demolish buildings, but they cannot destroy the church. They can control information, but they cannot control truth.

They can kill believers, but they cannot kill the faith. Christ has already won. The resurrection proves it.

Death itself has been defeated. Every earthly authority will one day bow before him. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Our suffering is real and it is painful. But it is temporary. The glory that awaits us is eternal.

This is why we endure. This is why we do not give up. This is why we choose Christ over comfort, faithfulness over freedom, treasures in heaven over temporary security on earth.

Because he is worth it. Because he proved his love by dying for us. Because he has prepared a place for us that no government can take away.

Because one day all tears will be wiped away. All pain will cease. And we will dwell in his presence forever.

Until that day comes, we keep the faith. We run the race. We fight the good fight.

We follow Christ whatever the cost. I close with a blessing and a challenge to my brothers and sisters in China still suffering.

Be faithful unto death and he will give you the crown of life. Christ is with you in the prison cell in the interrogation room in the labor camp.

He has not forgotten you. Your suffering is not wasted. Your faithfulness inspires believers around the world.

Hold fast. The night is dark, but morning is coming. To believers in free countries.

Do not take your freedom for granted. Use it for kingdom purposes while you have it.

Pray for the persecuted church. Support organizations helping refugees and advocating for religious freedom. Examine your own faith.

Is it real enough to survive what your brothers and sisters in China are enduring?

Build your life on the rock of Christ now. So when storms come, you will stand.

To those who do not yet know Christ, I invite you to consider what you have just read.

What could motivate people to sacrifice everything? Freedom, family, future, life itself for faith in Jesus Christ.

Either we are deluded fools or we have encountered a truth so profound, a person so valuable that everything else pales in comparison.

I urge you investigate Jesus. Read the Gospels. Consider his claims. Ask him to reveal himself to you.

I promise you will find him worth everything. The sun is setting over soul. Another day is ending.

Somewhere in China, believers are gathering secretly to worship. Somewhere, a Christian is being interrogated.

Somewhere, a pastor is in prison, choosing Christ over freedom. Somewhere, a new believer is being baptized in a hidden place, joining the great company of those who follow the lamb wherever he goes.

The church of Jesus Christ continues. Persecution cannot stop it. Death cannot end it. Hell itself cannot prevail against it.

And I am honored. Honored to have suffered for his name. To have lost everything and discovered he is more than enough.

To have been counted worthy to share in the fellowship of his sufferings. I would do it all again.

Christ is worth everything. May you discover this truth, whatever it costs you. May you follow him faithfully wherever he leads.

May you treasure him above all things. And may you one day hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your Lord. This is my testimony. This is my prayer.

This is my hope. For the glory of God and the sake of his church.

Amen.