Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest (John 4:35). Jesus spoke these words into a context where the Jews had been prepared for centuries for the Word of God, and now, so many were waiting to find the Messiah, as evidenced by the thousands coming to Christ in just a few months after his resurrection. But how does this verse apply to the Dong?

Today, the Dong celebrate "ghost day" (the festival day of spirits or ghosts). For far too long, they have lived under the deception of the evil spirits they serve. The spirits are not something to like; they are something to fear. That in itself is an indicator of the evil nature of the spirits and that there may be a good natured One. The spirits are appeased so that they would leave us alone. Does not that ever bring up the thought that there might be One Good God or at the very least, the One who has authority over these oppressors?

The signs of harvest season are spreading across the Dong areas: scorching work days out in the fields cutting and threshing rice, news of harvest festivals, and a general sigh of relief that the crops came in again this year. The Dong people spend their lives in tune with the seasons, yet fail to perceive the organizing, life-sustaining Power behind those seasons. They sweat and toil in the shadow of mountains and clean their implements in the streams, but do not seem to question the Origin of all things.

Recently, in a worship service mixed with Christians from the village and those from the town, the thanks given brought out this realization. The town folk were thankful for an opportunity to spend a day out in the village, where they felt so much closer to nature and the Creator. The village folks, laughing, said they were thankful for the opportunity to come into town and get away from the unceasing labor of the village.

All of the Dong areas would have been able to view the solar eclipse today (morning for them). The northern parts of the Dong areas would likely have seen a total or very close to a total eclipse, and even in the southernmost areas, an obvious partial eclipse, including a darkening of the sky, would have been visible.

In an e-mail yesterday from a reader living in the Dong areas, a Dong person was quoted as sceptically saying, "We will just see if the sky goes dark tomorrow," as if it were not a mathematical certainty. To them, though, this is not about astronomy or mathematics; the Dong worldview would not divide this occurrence into some scientific category in order to explain it, but would lump it together with their spiritual understanding of the world.

That is not to say they believe "a spirit hid the sun" or any such interpretation, but rather to say that from a Dong mindset, this is something that completely does not fit within how they understand, and no amount of talk on the national news will make it any different.

In reality, though, this is indeed a spiritual occurrence (not just scientific as our Western-trained minds might suppose), for One, holy, all-powerful Creator holds all this in his hands, and he can and does use it for his glory.

A couple years ago, Chinese Religious Affairs officials surveyed counties in one area, including some Dong counties, to determine if an open church (Chinese Three Self) would be established in the county seats. If they found enough Christians in the county seat, a church could be opened. Sadly, the Dong counties did not obtain permission.

Most efforts to share the gospel with the Dong people have been aimed at villages, and that certainly makes sense, but in an effort to hit the heart of the Dong people out in the villages, these efforts have bypassed the county seats. The problem we now have is that the gatherings of Dong believers have very little connection to one another. They may know each other, but there is no practical tie between them that would allow them to have regular contact and fellowship with one another.

For most of us, we do not sit around trying to figure out how to establish more authority in our churches. Unity maybe, but not authority. Either our churches have it or they do not. And for some, the word "authority" is even seen as a negative, because it is taken to mean building a hierarchical church structure, which is a big negative in many Protestant churches. Whether the answer is hierarchical structures or not, the Dong church does need some spiritual authority to tie them together.

Sure, they may have Jesus as their high priest, and those passages from Hebrews are in their chronological story set which is now starting to be used in churches, but they do not have anyone else. They do not have elder, experienced, Christ-like examples who can help them walk the way of Jesus. Individual churches do not even have leaders who could identify weak areas that need growth or even shepherd the flock in general.

Most Dong churches (we cannot speak for all, because we do not even know all) are groups of believers with no mutually-accepted leadership. And besides those, probably half of the known Dong Christians are individual believers with no gathering at all. It is not impossible for them to grow in Christ, but certainly close to impossible.

The Kingdom of Priests prayer guide has been out for quite some time, and the first half of the guides have already been distributed to Dong prayer partners...probably some of you reading this. The prayer guide prays through seven moments in the Exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt, praying for a spiritual exodus of the Dong people from spiritual bondage into the freedom of Christ.

If you have not seen or heard of this guide before, you can download the PDF version from our media page (just click on the image to the right). However, because few of us enjoy using a computer during our prayer times, we have also had these guides printed up into small booklets, which all include eight postcards which themselves serve as excellent prayer reminders. If you would like to order some for your church or prayer group, just contact us for more information.

A new and hopefully helpful media project is now "hitting the streets" in the Dong areas. It is stories from the Bible, told in the Dong language, and recorded. Now, the many Dong people who struggle reading the Bible in Chinese have a few of the stories retold in their own language.

There are many potential uses for the stories, but the primary use is the building up of the Dong church. It is an aid to the many churches who right now must rely on interpretation from Chinese to Dong for Bible study. It is not the whole Bible, by any means, but does have a core set of stories chosen around a theme of redemption.

Let us pray as these stories begin to be used:

Many of our prayer requests are centered on the gatherings of Dong Christians (the churches, villages, and families), but today, we want to focus our prayers on the many individual Christians who are totally isolated from all Christian fellowship. Not only do they not have encouragement and guidance in their walk with Christ, but there is a danger of allowing their relationship with Christ to slowly falter.

There are no other known Christians where these individuals live. We have heard reports of Christians in almost every Dong county, but most of those counties have less than five: one here and maybe two there. There are very few "meeting points" of worshippers. Most of these heard about Christ either from tourists passing through or as they were in the bigger cities studying or working.

It is truly difficult to pursue the Lord in total isolation. However, the Spirit is everywhere. To all those individuals scattered throughout the Dong areas, the Spirit can fill, console, guide, and strengthen. Let us pray a prayer used by Christians for hundreds of years, but pray it for them:

The Dong brothers and sisters need our encouragement and prayers. The frequently face pressure from family and authorities to give up on the faith and to quit "causing trouble". Let us turn to words from which so many have found encouragement before, the hope of consolation from the Lord Jesus himself once we have finished the race:

"These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear form their eyes" (Rev 7:14-17).

Just today, I was reading through 1 John, and the last verse really stuck out. Honestly, I did not quite understand why it was there, but I quickly thought of the Dong people.

After an entire book focused on love for one another, following God's commandments through love, and other extremely practical ways to grow in faith, the book ends with this: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." I saw two answers. One, as we just said, John's epistle is extremely practical, and without much explanation, "keep away from idols" sums up an entire topic in a few words. Two, the verse immediately preceding speaks of the true God, and being followed by a warning against idols is clearly connected to the same thought.

DongTeam just received this in an e-mail:

Just yesterday, I was talking with some friends trying to explain the difficulties in the struggle to reach the Dong people for Christ. Though most folks have heard this before, I thought I would send in this e-mail so it could be shared as a journal entry there on DongTeam. Even if it is old news, they still need new prayer.

I was explaining to my friends the problem with financial dependency. Even when Dong Christians are offered only bus fare and lodging to leave their villages to attend a training, they always come and often even bring along other "interested" family members. They will have to attend training all day; it is no vacation. But there is the catch: to a poor farmer who never gets out, even that offer translates to them as an all expense paid vacation to the big city.

And that is only the beginning. What these non-local trainings have (quite accidentally) brought about is an expectation for compensation for any Christian activity. Well, they do not think of it that way, but that is what it is. Never do we hear about locals just going to the next village to share or anything simple and without cost.

None of us wants to lose our spiritual mentor. Many of us have never had one. For whatever reason, losing that person who invested in us and helped us grow is hard. Sometimes, we never fully recover and end up spending years not fervently seeking the Lord, and rarely does that happen without some effort on our part (or someone pushing us).

Remember Clement from the last entry and his exile. Many followed him into exile, exactly because exile was better than losing that spiritual guidance and community. There were plenty, I am sure, who did not go into exile with Clement, and stayed behind. Many Dong people are in that exact situation right now.

It has happened before and is happening again. The Lord is moving spiritual mentors out of the Dong areas, strong Christians who were helping young Christians grow in the faith. It is easy for us to feel this is a negative situation, but knowing God has all things under his control and wills only good for his children, let us pray that his will be done for the Dong Christians left without that spiritual guidance.

As with many other times with our open communication of sensitive prayer requests here on the Prayer Journal, this request requires you to pray with understanding and insight. This history of the Apostle Clement of the Seventy can help us pray for others enduring similar circumstances today.

Clement was baptized by the holy Apostle Peter and became his zealous disciple and constant companion, sharing his toil and sufferings with him. Shortly before his own sufferings and death, Peter consecrated Clement as Bishop of Rome.

The virtuous life, charitable works and prayerful activity of Clement converted many to Christ. He once baptized 424 people on the day of Pascha. Among the baptized were people of all social classes: slaves, officials, and even members of the imperial family.

The pagans, seeing the success of his apostolic preaching, denounced Clement to the emperor Trajan (98-117), accusing the saint of insulting the pagan gods. The emperor banished Clement from the capital, sending him to the Crimea, to work at a stone quarry near the city of Cherson. Many of the saint's disciples followed after him voluntarily, preferring to go into exile rather than live without their spiritual Father.

April 5th is the Qingming Festival this year. Dong families will head back home, join together, and head to the mountains where their ancestors are buried. It is much more than just a time to clean up the grave sites from the year's growth, but is a time to pay respects.

"Grandpa and Grandma, here are your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. We come to pay our respect to you and to ask for your blessing on us. Bless us in our business, in our families, in our studies, and in every way."

The Dong people live under the deception, passed down through many generations, of who is God and who is god, a deception of who is Creator and who is created. Pray that during this important festival time, many will see the uselessness of praying to fellow creatures, but that they would finally seek the Father who created them and yearns for a relationship with them.

As Easter approaches, we prepare ourselves for the greatest event in all history, the event that changed history forever and, more importantly, gave the world assurance of God's power to resurrect his children too. Hundreds of thousands of Dong people still have no idea the resurrection ever happened, though.

In this season, I often think of the twelve disciples. They too had no clue what was going on, even though they were frequently told quite clearly by Jesus. And when I think of how the Dong people will ever understand, if it took the disciples so long, I have to wonder how Jesus did it.

It was a wonderful combination of three years of daily witness, completed by the trial, death, burial, and resurrection. Of course, the disciples still did not understand immediately, but with instruction and the Lord opening their eyes to the meaning of the Scriptures, they did finally get it. In these last weeks before Easter, remember the journeys of the disciples, their paths to understanding the gospel, and pray the same will happen among the Dong people.