January 12—Daming

This was the day we would make a round trip to/from Daming, about 50 miles away, and the site where the W.C. Voth famly served as Mennonnite missionaries in the mid-1920s.

We arrived in Daming some 50 miles away at 10 AM and proceeded directly to the complex housing the former Mennonite mission. There we met Messrs. Li Da Qing, General Secretary of the church, and Zhang Bo Sheng, a church spokesman. Nearby was a large red-brick church built in the past few years, but now used largely as a Christian training center with some 60 local residents in regular attendance. More than 30 “Bible training classes” have been held at this church since its return. In a corner of the complex we viewed the “memory stones” of the three toddlers who died in Puyang, viz., children of the Voths, the Browns and the Kuaffmans. We were told that Daming County now has some 10,000 Christians who meet regularly in 47 “prayer points” around the county.