7,116 miles from Kansas City, Missouri to China. This summer, senior Jewell Allen travelled to China for a Christian mission trip under Rain Ministries. “Rain Ministries has two branches,” Allen said. “I went through the Royal Servants branch. I chose China because of the type of ministry we did there. We worked with high school students.” Allen’s travels included a one-week training period in Wisconsin and five weeks in China. “The first week I was in Wisconsin at training camp,” Allen said. “Training camp was really hard. It prepares you for the conditions to go overseas and they purposefully make the training hard so your ministry [in China] will seem easier.” According to Allen, teenagers attending the training camp were required to wake up at 5 a.m., carry heavy packs around, and run everywhere. After the training period, Allen and her group travelled to Fuzhou, China where her group did ministry toward children. However, Allen and her team faced some obstacles. “In china, it’s not allowed for Christians to come in and minister to other people,” Allen said. “So we went [into China] as tourists. In Fuzhou, we were able to be a
little bit more direct with our Christianity because it was a bigger city. So, we just played with the kids and sang with them, read them Bible stories, and did art with them.” After stopping in Fuzhou, Allen’s group travelled to a small city west of Nanning, China. “[The city] is a really small town,” Allen said. “We had to be really lowkey with our Christianity. We disguised our ministry as a cultural exchange.” Allen and her team did this by exchanging different holidays with the Chinese high school students they worked with. “The high school students would tell us [a Chinese] holiday,” Allen said. “Then we would tell them an American holiday, which would be Christmas or Easter. Then we could tell them more about God and Christianity. We still couldn’t tell them a ton [about Christianity]. We had to wait for them to ask, which was really hard.” Allen and her team continued to work and bond with the Chinese students, which made them “super close,” according to Allen. “My favorite part was working with the high school students,” Allen said. “It’s amazing, a lot of them didn’t speak English very well, so they were kind of shy. It was amazing how the language barrier didn’t hinder them from loving us. We built such great relationships with them.” After their time with the Chinese students, the
group travelled to Beijing, China for a period of debriefing. “We went to Beijing to process our growth and challenges and just to prepare us to go back home,” Allen said. The group also had time to explore the city, according to Allen. “In Beijing we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in one day,” Allen said. “Then we went to the Great Wall [of China] and the pearl market, which was really cool.” After her time in China, Allen said she would “definitely recommend any of the Royal Servants trips.” “I would recommend [Royal Servants trips] to people who are Christian who want to go on a mission trip or grow closer to God or themselves,” Allen said. “I would go back on another Royal Servants trip, but probably not to China just because if I had the chance to go overseas, I would go somewhere new.” H
Fuzhou, China Location: Fujian Province Population: . 2.124 million
Time difference: 13 hours
Known for: min opera
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