Already White for Harvest

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?

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How Dong People View the Solar Eclipse

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.

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Paying Respect to Ancestors

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.

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That the Dong will Sing Their Song

The Dong people have a deeply musical culture. Guest enter villages through song. Work is often accompanied by song. Couples meet and get to know each other through song. Festivals never lack song and dance. When will their songs be raised in praise to the Creator of the world?

The prayer was are joining in this week is quite simple: that the Dong people would use their language and their music and raise a new song to the Lord which has never been heard before. Ask that the Lord will use their music to touch their hearts and edify their churches in ways they had never imagined. It is easy to stick to the Chinese songs taught by big city Christians, but it is time they sing their new song to the Lord from the depths of their musical souls.

As a prayer aid and reminder, DongTeam has put up a new prayer background for your computer desktops. Just click on the photo above and you can download the photos from the Media page.

The Problem of Financial Dependency

A common problem among the Dong Christians is financial dependency. Sometimes consciously, but hopefully not usually so, Dong Christians try to get the financial benefits of being a Christian. They too eagerly sign up for trainings in "the city" simply because it is a paid trip out of the village. They cannot imagine sending out evangelists on their own; surely a foreigner needs to give the money to do that.

This is a common problem among most (if not all) of the people groups in this part of the world. And evidently, it has been a problem among Christians in many contexts for many centuries, because Paul talked about it too:

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. (2Thes 3:7-9)

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Pressing on through Dull Times

Thinking again about the Olympics, because that is the obvious happening in China at the moment, a comment from Michael Phelps, the American swimmer, came to mind. When asked why he set a goal to gain eight gold medals at this Olympics, his response seemed rather simple.

He responded that he needed a goal. When training that much, it gets really old really fast. He said he could just remember his goal and then he would realize that the only way to really try for that goal was to keep going, keep pushing, keep training, and work through the monotony to what we now know as one of the most amazing Olympics ever for swimming.

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How Does the Olympics Affect the Dong

Everybody in China is excited about the Olympics. Obviously, it is a big thing. The Dong are no different. In villages, basketball courts are the effective village square. Table tennis is common among school children and adult workers alike.

In the Olympic spirit, DongTeam.org wants to share a couple of new computer desktop backgrounds to help encourage sports related prayer. Let's pray that sports will be a bridge of common interest through which the gospel can be heard.

Video: Cicada Song

We have one last video to share with you all. This song is a very famous Dong song, sung and re-sung at competitions and performances.

We share these videos with you for the fun of it or just for some easy prayer update. As we pray, sometimes we just want to have some specific information or a deeper understanding of the people for whom we are praying. It makes sense, right? It is hard to pray for somebody you do not know. In these videos, we can look into one aspect of Dong life that Dong people themselves highly value: music.

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Video: Playing the Lusheng

DongTeam.org has a new video for you...well, more accurately, we have another video from YouTube to share with you. We did not film these ourselves, of course, but they are excellent resources to find out a little more about the Dong people without needing to visit them yourself.

This video is of a Dong man playing the lusheng (pronounced 'loo-shung'), an instrument used by many of the minorities of Southwest China. It is made out of bamboo; thus, its alternate name, bamboo pipes. Small metal reeds are at the head of each pipe and provide the vibration which makes the sound, and air can either be blown or sucked to create sound (as you will see in this video...he never stops for a breath). It is made with varying number of pipes, anywhere between one and more than two dozen.

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Dong Cuckoo Song Video

We have something a little different this time. Recently, a friend sent DongTeam.org a links to a Dong minority video on YouTube. After a brief look, we realized there were actually several Dong videos available. So, over the next few days, we will post some of the nicer ones here on the DongTeam.org website.

Today's feature video is a well-known Dong song about the cuckoo ushering in Spring.

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Evaluating Our Motives

In Luke 12, Jesus reminds us, "Life is more than food and the body more than clothing." Birds have all they need and the flowers are so beautiful, but neither does anything to make it so.

We all so easily lose sight of our loving Lord. We feel blessed when we have good clothes, a nice house, and a little extra stored away in savings. Those things are fine, but Jesus tells us here to store up our treasures above instead of here on earth.

"Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

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Need for Solid Bible Teaching

A brother and sister who live among the Dong relate this story, which shows some of the pressing needs of Dong Christians:

The first thing they all asked us when we had all sat down in the living room was, "Is it ok to sacrifice to our ancestors?" At first, we did not know quite what to say. The question had a testing feeling to it, as if they were making sure we gave them the same answer as they had heard elsewhere.

Come to find out, several of them had just come from "training" in a nearby city. They receive most of their training from Chinese house church Christians, and though the house church has an incredible zeal for the Lord, they often lack cultural awareness. I do not want to say anything bad about them, but this story is a great example of what we often see in the local Christians.

They had been told, in more or less black and white terms, that sacrificing to their ancestors was wrong. Do not hear me wrong, we very much agreed with the teaching, but these Dong believers did not seem to have any biblical basis for such a statement nor did they understand any of what the Bible says on the topic.

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QingMing Festival in Dong Villages

This year's QingMing Festival, sometimes referred to as the Grave Sweeping Festival, has just taken place. Few foreigners know much about it, and this is a good opportunity to look into a traditional Chinese holiday which has some important spiritual aspects.

If we boiled QingMing down to its most fundamental meaning, it is a time to pay respect to ancestors. Families will visit graves of the ancestors (often located on a hill-face which has good "feng shui"), clean up the grass and brush, burn incense to the ancestors, burn gifts of fake money, and give gifts of food. The food is then distributed among the family (and any families that are nearby at their ancestors' graves doing the same) and eaten. So, the holiday ends up having a sort of picnic feeling.

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Overcoming Pressure from Family

Father, grant your children courage to be steadfast and immoveable in Christ, in the midst of opposition from family and friends, bearing witness to his life in word and action. Amen.

Though this story takes place in Vietnam, the family pressure this girls faces is very a common story with many across Asia. This is a quick look into the Asian mindset to help us understand the situation a little better and walk the tough road with them in prayer.

The Story
It all started about ten years ago, when she found a small book about creation in a friend's home. This young Vietnamese girl lived in a province just south of Ho Chi Minh City. She grew up visiting the pagoda regularly with her family, who were strongly influenced by her uncle, a famous monk in that area. He was much loved and respected, and when he passed away, continued to be revered in family worship. So, surely, wasn't it his influence in the spirit world that lead to his niece being accepted into a prestigious university in Ho Chi Minh City?

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Is God Our Intimate Companion or Infinite Judge?

One of our fellow workers in the Lord with the Dong people of China relates this experience:

I was spending some time in Bible study with three Dong friends on a Sunday, a humble yet new Christian couple and a believer of several years who has not shown much growth. We were reading about the love of Christ, a love of complete sacrifice, and a love he calls us to live out in his words, "by this all men will know that you are my disciples."

Then, the elder believer, who did not previously know the young couple, putting on the airs of a pastor, quite randomly began sharing from Psalm 139. At first, it seemed like it might fit in: a God of love, clearly showing his love for us, and using Psalm 139 to show the intimate relationship we have with Jesus Christ.

We all read the psalm outloud together, and our brother began a discourse along these lines: "No matter where we go, he always sees us. Even if we sin in our heart, he will know it. There is no sin or act we can hide from him."

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Are Our Training Sessions Just a Temptation to Sin?

"So, why did you become a Christian," one Dong Christian asked another believer she had just met from another area.

"Oh, why would you not become a Christian? You get free trips to go play!"

This interaction was shared with DongTeam a few days ago, and though we do not like to share such negative stories of Dong Christians, this reflects a prevailing mood among Dong Christians, and one that needs much prayer. Let us try to see this interaction from a Dong perspective and find how we can pray specific and direct prayers for our Dong brothers and sisters.

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Pulling Down Altars: a Night Mission

Tearing down altars: smashing the stone, melting the metal, and burning the wood. That does not exactly sound like a polite thing to do. It may not be polite, but young Dong Christians have to make decisions like these. Do they tear down the family altars? Do they eat food the family sacrifices to the spirits?

In Judges 6, we see Gideon following the Lord's bold order to tear down the altar to Baal and use the wood from the Asherah pole to burn a sacrifice to the Lord. The Lord did not say when it had to be done, so Gideon, in fear of his family and the townspeople took ten servants with him and did it at night.

Good or bad? The Lord does not seem to be distressed that Gideon feared their reaction, but only that Gideon was faithful. The surprising part is that when the townspeople came to kill Gideon, Gideon's father (who is the owner of the altar and pole) defends Gideon's actions: "Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? ... If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down."

What a statement! Again, though, the important part is that Gideon obeyed the Lord. This event shattered the superficial practices of Baal worship and crystalized the faith of the people in the Lord. Gideon was willing to follow the Lord, and a couple verses later, when the Medianites and Amalekites crossed the Jordan to attack, Gideon's tribe followed his call of action into battle.

The Dong people as well have altars, altars in every house, scattered around the village at important locations, beneath sacred trees, in their drum towers and wind and rain bridges, and in their hearts. What are Dong Christians supposed to do?

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How to Discern the Truth

A Dong father has just signed up his daughter for a summer English class with a foreigner, and he and his daughter are now standing around and talking. He never seems to leave, always asking more questions, which, interpreted, either means he is just a "sit around and talk" kind of Dong guy, or he still wishes to find something out.

The day before class, he shows back up, unannounced. He starts back into mundane conversation, when out comes a very telling comment: "I wanted to make sure there was really a class and you were not going to take our money."

Dong people, much like Chinese, do not know what to think of strangers. Many of these Dong have moved from the villages to the larger Han Chinese towns, and learn quickly to give out their trust sparingly. Everybody knows everybody in the village. Outsiders, from the point of view of a typical Dong villager, do not fit into any category of trust.

But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? (Rom 10:14)

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The Wrong Way

"It is easy to turn back if you go the wrong way, but not so easy if you say the wrong thing."

This proverb holds a simple, but true concept. We cannot reverse what we say. Proverbs 10:19 says, "Don't talk too much, for it fosters sin. Be sensible and turn off the flow!" Let's pray that the simple words from this Dong proverb would really sink in and give them a clearer path of the way of truth. Continue reading this entry...

Fierce Reality

Just a couple weeks ago, the Dong Proverb Calendar had a very interesting proverb: "A righteous person is not afraid of evil spirits who bang on the door in the middle of the night."

Spirits are not a superstition taught by aged storytellers. Dong people know the spirits are a real part of everyday life. A Dong person once said to me, "None of the women will go on the mountain trails alone at night for fear the spirits will attack them." If you ask further, they can tell you about friends who have been physically attacked.

The spirits are real, but the proverb hits on a truth, unfortunately not the full truth. The righteous in God have authority and power over these spirits and can excercise that authority to see the freedom from a world persecuted by spiritual evil.

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Hands Busy or Idle

Last week's proverb in the 2005 Dong Proverb Calendar is another proverb strikingly parallel to the Bible.

"Don't let your hands be idle if you want to have enough to eat."

The one that comes to mind right off the bat is this: "A little sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber" (Pr. 6:10, 24:33). I find it beautiful when the Dong proverbs are so close.

As I was thinking on the idle hands, though, I thought to the hands of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:19, "Her hands are busy spinning thread, her fingers twisting fiber. She extends a helping hand to the poor and opens her arms to the needy." Few verses sum up Dong woman and the work ethic of most Dong people better than this.

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The Grip of Money

China is booming. The incredible growth and progress in China only further encourages a people who already highly value money and material things. Even in Dong villages, where there is so little compared to the exploding cities, money is often the standard against which spiritual success is measured.

It does not take money to want money.

The Dong Christians are seen as poor (compared to their Dong neighbors), and as such, their god is unsuccessful in the eyes of Dong society. We do not need to pray for the Christians' financial status to change, but rather (over the next few entries) pray through some of the money related issues the Dong Christians face.

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A Tree with Strong Roots

For the third week of February, the Dong Proverb Calendar had an entry that I find quite amazing: "A man with a kind heart lives a long life, a tree with strong roots can hardly be shaken." There are many great scriptural parallels to that proverb.

"Only the godly have deep roots" (Pr. 12:3). And "...like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season without fail" (Ps 1:3). The author of the book of Proverbs tells the reader in many places that following the Proverbs written in that book will lead to a long life (3:2, 3:16, 4:10, 22:4, 28:16, and more). And Psalm 15, listing the traits of a godly man, are very similar, right down to, "he who does these things will never be shaken."

Just as Romans 1 says, the word of God is within their hearts. Proverbs like this come when the Dong people see the obvious truth of lives well spent and lives wasted. When Dong Proverbs reflect the same godly traits as the Bible, I think it is an excellent opportunity to pray that more Dong people would see the truth, the truth revealed all around them, and eventually find the truth fully told in the scripture.

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Knowing How to Sow

In the last entry, we prayed for our Dong brothers and sisters to be sowing spiritual seed, seed that will be grown by God alone. There are many Dong who have already received some seed, but seed that has borne no fruit so far.

We need to pray for the many Dong people who have that seed of truth within them. Regardless of how much seed has been sown, we should pray for the tiny mustard seed which grows into one of the garden's biggest plants.

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Spiritual Seed

This week's Dong proverb in the Dong Proverb Calendar has a good moral, one found in many sayings of many cultures: "If you use the time well in Spring, the grainary will be bursting in Autumn."

When applied spritually, it is also true, but sometimes much harder to visualize the spiritual grainaries. In other words, we need to be praying that our Dong brothers and sisters will be able to look forward to the fulfilled promise of God and be sowing spiritual fruit in preparation.

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The Virtues of Opera

Dong Opera is one of the favorite media of traditional entertainment in many areas. It can be a telling of a Dong folk tale, a Chinese story, or modern works by Dong musicians. It is technically opera (singing and acting in combination), but most likely does not fit the word "opera" as you think of it. It closely resembles Chinese Opera (within which, the famous Beijing Opera is one style), but is used in a Dong context.

In one village, where a cluster of Dong Christians live, there is a Dong man who both loves to write and perform Dong Opera and also is a Christian. He was a part of the opera troupe long before he became a Christian, and now that he is a believer, has a desire to use Dong Opera as a medium for communicating the gospel.

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Dong Worship Music

Worship. English speakers have hundreds upon hundreds of hymns and songs for worship, and a variety of media from which to choose. The Dong have none of this. Many of these things are available in Chinese, but not only would the Chinese materials be only marginally useful for the Dong because the words are not the right language, but the music, as well, is just as different from Chinese music as the Chinese language is different from Dong.

Dong people are incredibly proud of their music, using it in everything from ceremonies to recognize guests entering the village to the choosing of mates to the nightly pastime among families and communities. It is unique. The music made by the Dong is as unique to them as their language is. Let us pray for the development of Christian music in the Dong language using Dong music.

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Tis Open Before Your Eyes

"I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. ... If any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings of the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a fool, and that the greatest of his folly lies in striving to rise to the level of One he can never equal, be it in goodness, or be it in power."

- "Hawkeye" in Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

What could be more applicable. Many Dong speak and read Chinese where such books could be found, but only a limited number fully understand the books' meaning. Almost all of the Dong, though, are in daily interaction with nature: fields, livestock, mountain trails, natural springs, and a life dependent on the land around them.

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