Welcome to the China Compass Podcast on the Fight Laugh Feast Network. I'm your China Travel Guide in exile. Missionary bin, follow me on ex at China Adventures, at China Adventures on X2A's there in the middle, where I share a new Chinese city or county to pray for every single day. I miss a day every now and then, actually, most often, I don't just miss a day. Sometimes I accidentally post the same city over again. It's hard to keep thousands of Chinese unreached and unchurched cities in order. Feel free to write anytime, China Compass at privacyport.com, and then all of the books, my sub-stack, which I'm going to talk about here in a little bit again, Patreon, where you can find different groups of podcasts that I've grouped together in different topics. And everything else can be found at praygivego.us. Praygivego.us has easy links to all of these different things, including the ministry that I'm helping to. I'm working for now. I'm actually the executive director now of a ministry called Mission Catalyst. And we do a lot of pastoral and traditional and traditional Chinese Catalyst. And we do a lot of pastoral and training of missionaries and evangelists in the native countries around the world. You know, parts of Africa, many places here in Asia, including working with Chinese leaders as well. Mission Catalyst mci3.org is the website for that. But it's also available. You can get to that through though link at praygivego.us. Praygivego.us. The books that I hope to work on, I'm going to mention briefly here because they tie in a little bit to the topic of today, the interview, conversations that I'm going to play for you here. And a few minutes, the autobiography of John G. Peyton. John Peyton, they tried to kill him every way they could find on the islands there in the South seas. They tried to stab him. They tried to shoot him. They tried to drown him. They tried to burn him. They tried to spear him. They tried to poison him. They tried everything. But he wouldn't die. And today I'm going to talk about my story when I almost died from the cold. One thing I guess John Peyton didn't suffer there is he didn't almost freeze to death on the island of Tanna. But almost everything else. Borden of Yale, the millionaire missionaries, another book that I've helped to publish about the millionaire missionary, Borden, who died in Egypt as a young man 25 years old on his way to China. Never made it to China, died in Egypt. Again, I was just 22 years old. You'll hear in a few minutes when the story that we're going to talk about today took place. Unbeaten is my own story of being arrested and interrogated and deported from China almost eight years ago now. We'll talk about more about that here in a couple of weeks. And then finally, the memoirs of William Millen. He was the first Protestant missionary here in Malaysia 200 years ago. Two hundred and two years ago now. And he died at just the age of 37 here after serving for a number of years here in Malaysia as one of the very first people to work with the Chinese church. So all of these books, again, are available really, really inexpensively and in some cases for free. The ebooks are free. In some cases at praygivego.us. You can get to all of these things there. Now, the interview you're going to hear, again, it's not really an interview. It's more of a conversation. And I do most of the talking, I guess, telling the story, reading the story. So I'm reading the story that my buddy wrote. And then we're talking through the details of the story. Because we experienced this together 20 years ago last week. I'm about a week late on this. 20 years ago, last week on March 28, 2006, me and my buddy from South Africa, Jack, and another lady who was one of the members of the team that we were hosting at the time there. In Tibet, in Western China. We went on a motorcycle journey one day. It was supposed to be an afternoon journey to a monastery way up in the mountains. And then come back by evening to have dinner with our team and everything. It turned into an adventure that took about half the night. We got back midnight or later. We almost froze to death. The bikes almost killed us. It was a crazy story. And we're going to talk about that story for most of today's podcast. Now this was, again, the spring, late winter, early spring of 2006. China was a different place back then. We could bring in these larger teams of people. We had 20 something people on that particular team. Not in the one city, but we scattered around different cities there in that part of Western China Tibet. But it'd be so hard to get away with doing what we did. Then today, China was a very different place back then. And this was the very first time that I hosted one of these larger teams there in that part of the country. The very first time. And so I was kind of just trying to figure out what we could do with these larger numbers of people who had the heart to do. A lot, they didn't have the language ability to be able to do a lot of one on one ministry. But they had the heart and they wanted to serve. And so we were trying to figure out how we could use them. And they did an amazing job. And we've had friends from that very first team that's still to this day. Some really good friends, including Jack, who you're going to hear along with myself here in just a minute. And we will be talking for the majority of the podcast. I'll come back at the end and kind of share a couple of details from some things we mentioned in our chat. And then close out the podcast. Enjoy. How old were you 20 years ago? This will give away your age now. But how old were you when we had this adventure? 20 years ago. I was actually much older than most of the guys who went on the world's rise. So I went to in 728. Okay, 2720. See, I was 22 going on 23. Yeah, but the veteran in China already by that time, I remember you speaking the language after just a couple of years like flu and treat was not crazy. So yeah, I was 22 going on 23. And so again, this has been 20 years. So we're giving away our ages here. You know, I'm in my early 40s. You're in your later 40s now. Yeah, it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. That's crazy to think about. So just last week, I was in northern India and right in the foothills of the Himalayas there in northern India. And I told the church, I spoke at a church and I told them I said, you guys look up at the mountains. And you see like, ooh, it's Tibet. Look at the mountains. How amazing would it be to visit somehow someday across the mountains? I said, but I look at the mountains and I say, my home is over those mountains. Like I used to live there. That was where I lived in my home. And I told them I said, you know, we're closer to my old home than we are even to the capital of India. We were in northeast India and we're closer. And their eyes got big. Like, whoa, that's pretty crazy to think about. And so yeah, I was, I was only, I mean, you know, South Africa is a pretty big place too. Just to give you an idea. I think I was only about 700 kilometers from you shoe from that area where I was in north India. That's not that far, right? And so relatively close to that to the area. Let me go ahead and start working through the story here and we'll see how this goes. You wrote this again and I'm reading it and then we'll both make some comments on it. So the morning of the 28th of March 2006 broke slowly in Nung Tin Tibet. Now, by the way, it wasn't Tibet, the province. It was the Tibetan Plateau, but it was Qinghai Province. But same difference really. The air was sharp and cold slicing through even the thickest layers. I don't remember how cold it was. I, to me, it was just kind of normal. You guys noticed the cold more than I did, I think, at that point. I think by that time you were like a, a clemitized already. I was thinking March, March, March 28th is getting warm by then. That's like, that's like springtime. So it was, it was not bad at all. We had intended, we had intended to get going early, but the sub-zero temperatures kept us curled deep in our sleeping bags until about 9.30 a.m. This wasn't a day for comfort though. We were on a mission. That's true. My friend Eugene, that's me. I'm Eugene in the story. I'm showed up at Tinian carrying bread from the local bakery. I don't remember the bread. I do remember we bought boiled mutton, boiled lamb mutton to take me to this on the off to the web. Yeah, that was to take with us for the day. I think we had some bread left over too, maybe. It was a modest breakfast, but our thoughts were fixed on the journey ahead. I'm not going to read everywhere. I'm going to skip some of the, some of the smaller things. I'm going to post this on my, on my blog at some point too. People can read it if they want. A minor motorcycle accident, the previous day had had sideline two of our members, Sarah and, and Lana, your wife, right? She was fighting on Bronchitis, and they stayed behind to care, stay behind with our, our missionary friend from Mexico. That just left three of us for the journey. Me, Eugene, Tana, our remaining world race teammate, and then you, Jack, we'll call you Jack, remember? We packed light mounted our small 125 CC motorcycles and made our final checks. Just before we left, Lana came running toward me a silver space blanket in hand. Here she said, handing it to me, you might need this. I tucked it into my pack, not knowing how true her words would prove. Now, tell people what is a space blanket? People, people who haven't hiked or been outdoors much. It's just a little like a heat blanket, right? It is like a very small when it's packed, packed up in your bag. It is like probably an inch and a half by inch and a half, but it looks like tenfoil. But it is sort of something that you use to, to, to insulate yourself in the cold when you're like in a crisis situation. Yeah. I think it's mainly like designed to use within your, in your sleeping bag or something like that when you're out in the wild and there's a crisis or something. Like an extra, an extra emergency layer to use or something like that. Yeah. As we rode out into the mountains, the snow drape peaks loomed above us like frozen giants. Our destination was a remote monastery. One that Eugene had spotted on a map. It was deep in a hidden valley, unreach and isolated. Our mission was to go and connect and deliver gospel tracks. Little, actually, we had, I wasn't just tracks. We had the little Bible portions like a gospel of Mark. I think it was one of the, but one of the portions. There was a few other things. About an hour and a half into the ride, we reached a high mountain pass, 4,800 meters above sea level. The wind was brutal and the air thin. From there, we had to turn off from the main road where only a narrow horse trail cut down into the valley below. No road signs, no guarantees, just a path disappearing into a wilderness down below. We started down, riding slow and steady. The trail was rough, narrow and covered with loose rocks and gravel. Our city bikes, they weren't made for off-roading, really. Not built for terrain like this, struggled. We had a few close calls as the tires spun and skidded on the unstable surface. After an hour and a half of descent, we reached the valley floor. A crystal clear river greeted us. We stopped eight lunchbikes and tried to soak in the beauty and silence around us. Now, I want to mention here, that was an amazingly beautiful valley. That valley was unbelievable. When I think of remote, beautiful mountain valleys to this day, that's one of the first thoughts in my mind. Is that valley with the river and the snow cat peaks in the distance and just a beautiful scene. I thought that the river was crystal clear, with a slight greenish tint, but it was beautiful. We went down that road because I thought that road would lead us to the monastery we were looking for. You could see on the mountain across from us, there was something up on the mountain like a monastery up there. As we went down to the bottom of the river, we couldn't find a way across. There just wasn't any way across the river. There was the road ended there and it ended in a bunch of ice. There was ice piled up along the river banks at one point. It just kind of became a dead end. There was just no way across. I was confused because that's what the maps showed. Again, this is back before we had good Google maps or anything. This was just us looking at a paper map and there's a dot on the paper map. We're trying to get to that dot. We tried to continue by bike along the river bank, but it wasn't too long before the snow took over the path entirely. We pressed on by foot trying to find another route, but the river widened and the icy water blocked our path. Completely, there was no safe way forward. Reluctantly, we turned back and now came the hard part climbing out of the valley. You wrote about this here. There's a whole paragraph where you talk about the corners and the edges and the gravel slipping. The biggest worry was the bikes just didn't have enough motor to go up the mountain that steeper that long. It was thousands and thousands of feet up the mountain. What do you remember about that particular part of the? What I remember was obviously you were the more experienced driver. So, Tonna rode most of the time with you. I think your motorcycle obviously took a lot of strain, but you sort of handled it. Even me riding by myself, I remember like the motorcycle was skidding all over the place with the loose rocks. It was just tiring to get up there because it even took longer if I think back then when we went down into the valley. I remember when we got back up on the ridge, I was thinking, oh goodness, thank you Lord. We're up yet and it's finished. I remember at one point it seems like we got stuck and it just wouldn't go. It's something happened at one particular switchback and it just wouldn't either your bike or my bike, one of the bikes just wouldn't get traction, wouldn't go. Something like that happened. I can't remember the details of that, but we did finally make it back up to the highway. But that trail, like you said, was like a horse trail. It was just a small track. It wasn't a proper road at all. We need to tell people as well. This is not an area with traffic. There was like no cars on the highway anywhere. There was nobody else out there. We didn't see anybody for all day almost. Almost the whole day. Didn't pass any vehicles. Not going, not coming. Almost, almost. Did we see any cars at all going or coming? I can't recall any cars on that road. Nothing, not even on the main road, not even on the highway. There wasn't also there wasn't like downs in between as well. There was like one or two houses along the way, but that was it. Yeah, just just a couple tiny little villages, hamlets. All right. So by 4 p.m. we crested the ridge, relieved, exhausted, and still a long way from done. We checked the map again and noticed the Tibetan border not far ahead. We didn't have permits to cross it, but curiosity pulled us onward. I think I encouraged us to go onward to, hey, we can do that. That's not too far, right? And it looked like a 25 kilometer detour, but it was closer to 40. I mean, it was honestly, it was even further than that probably all the way to the border. I've done the trip to the border since then, and we didn't know, I didn't know what we were getting into. We were just exploring. We didn't really know what was ahead. The dirt road had steep drops on one side. Well, it wasn't dirt. I guess it did turn to dirt. At some point right around there, it turned to dirt. It went from being a paved road to a dirt road on top of the mountain. When we went back in 2010, when we had that incident with a company in Boucher, when we almost rolled off the hill, then it was like a paved road all the way there. Before it was in between, it was still dirt road. Yeah, you're right. Jagged cliffs on one side, no guardrails. We went to win howled around us as we pressed on, unsure of what we would find. Then Eugene spotted something we did not expect. A dirt path veering off to the right with a monastery entrance gate visible from the road. On instinct, we followed it. Now, looking back, this led us to another monastery. This might have been the monastery that was on the map. The dot was put in the wrong place. Looking back at the way maps used to be done, somebody just put a dot on the map and it could very well have been the right monastery because it's the only monastery in that whole area. There's another monastery out there in that particular area. And it was a big one. It was big, yeah. So we parked the motorbikes and decided to continue on foot. We had to go up that little, we had to go through the gate sort of thing and up the road a little ways. And then we parked it about maybe a kilometer further up the road. We parked the bikes. The temperature was dropping fast. An icy stream flow beside us. Ahead of us stood a mountain, not capped with snow, but crowned with solid ice. You've got pictures here. You can see the ice and snow in the pictures you posted on this article. I'll need to post those as well. And then beneath the mountain, there was a monastery. As we approached the monastery, we saw an immense stone structure and 80 meter long shrine built from generations of stacked rocks. I don't remember the shrine, but I've seen a bunch of those shrines. But it's just rocks piled up on top of each other. Just hundreds of feet long piles of piles of rocks and prayer flags, Tibetan prayer flags. So it's a Tibetan shrine. Monks and villagers walked clockwise around it, spinning prayer wheels and murmuring mantras. It was their ritual of Korah, a form of spiritual purification meant to earn merit and wash away bad karma. It was a sobering site. These people were devout, hungry for meaning, but lost. We walked slowly, but in the opposite direction, anti-clockwise and approached the temple at the back of the monastery. By now, night had fallen, the temperature dropped below freezing. It was almost dark by that point. Remember that? As we neared the entrance, a few monks stepped forward forming a silent barrier between us and their temple. They didn't speak. They just stood there. I don't remember these details. I know it sounds familiar. Because at some point, I did tell you guys, hey, don't go around. Just walk around like you're looking at the scenery and go around behind the monastery like you're exploring. That's what you wrote here. Walk around just like you're exploring. We obeyed. I walked around the structure slowly, watching shadows shift as we moved. In the dark, we discreetly slip small gospel tracks into cracks and the walls and into the crevices of prayer wheels. Tiny seeds hidden in faith. I don't think I even told you to do that for sure. You guys just did that on your own knowing that was probably your only chance to do that maybe there at the monastery. 10 minutes later, we were moved. And by that time, it was dark. It was dark already. So we had more opportunity to do that. 10 minutes later, we regrouped and found that the monks had vanished. Only Eugene stood waiting there. I was thinking in my mind, I remember going with you. But now that I think about it, I didn't go with you. I waited and kind of I was exploring the front and you guys were coming around the back. So we were kind of taking it from both sides, you know, from the front and the back at the same time. I remember the same way that if I recall correctly, you went the other way around. And I was also not walking with Tana, but as I went around the building, she was not far behind me. And that's when we caught up again and walked around. So the idea was that we all would go in a different direction, but it just didn't work out that way exactly. Yeah, well, there's really only two ways to go around, either go to the left or the right. And then there's not much other choice. A young Tibetan, maybe 13 or 14 years old approached, he looked up as he said softly, come and eat. He led us to a nearby home. This is inside the monastery, one of the rooms in the monastery. Inside, warmth exploded around us about 20 monks sat eating dinner there, laughter filling the air. They welcomed us with smiles and hand gestures, motioning for us to sit and join them. That really was a weird scene because it was like, what are we doing here? What are they? And then all of a sudden, we're like in this kind of cozy setting with food and it's warm and there's tea and everyone's... And nobody seemed to like care about us. They kind of just, oh, there's some warmers that just walked in. And they just kept talking and kept eating and nobody really paid much attention to us. Except for this one guy, right? And older monks sat next to Eugene and began speaking into Tibetan. Eugene, who speaks fluent Chinese and Spanish, had recently been picking up the local language. I don't speak Tibetan to this day. I knew a little bit back then. The monk leaned in and asked in a hushed voice, are you people who believe in Jesus? Is that what he, I don't even remember that. Did he ask me that? Did I tell you that? I forget. I know he had some questions. I can't recall it, but I did write it into my journal the next morning. So he probably must have said that. Because he was still fresh in my mind. Well, you know what? It might have been as a response because at some point, as I was talking to this friendly monk, at some point, I gave him directly a couple of the books we had. And so he might have said that in response to the books I gave him as well, not just out of nothing, out of nowhere. So I can't remember for sure, but I definitely gave him some of these gospel books. And it was something I wouldn't normally have done. I wouldn't normally just kind of come out in the open, hey, we're missionaries in the middle of Tibet and China, where it's illegal. You know, we don't normally do that. But I felt like that was a cozy setting and he was being friendly enough. And here we are. We might as well just be who we are and talk straight up. And so I gave him to him and we had a short conversation there. The room around us buzzed with laughter and noise. No one else noticed the conversation Eugene and his new friend were having with, here we go. Without fanfare Eugene reached into his sleeve and slipped the man a pack of gospel tracks. It was some sort of a two or three booklets. I can't remember which ones they were. He received it carefully and tucked it under his robe. No words, just to look. A silent understanding. He didn't mind. We talked a little bit after that. I don't remember the details of our talk. We stayed for dinner, dried fruit, warm bread, meat and tea. It was simple warm and served with open hearts. They invited us to spend the night. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember this. They're like, you need to stay with us. You need to stay the night. And we were like, no, we can't. We cannot. We've got to get back. And it's a long ways back. And they're going to be worried about us already, because it's already getting late. And so we're already worried about the time. Like it's getting late. It's getting cold. And they're going to wonder. And then we had to leave the next morning on a bus anyway to go all the way back across the province. And so there was just zero. There was zero chance we could spend the night. And but they were insisting, no, you got to stay. You can't leave now. Look how late it is. And we said, yeah, no worries. We're good. Right. We got to go anyway. No, we have no choice. At 915, I can't believe you wrote the time. I don't remember what time. At 915, we step back into the freezing night air. Now about 10 below zero Celsius. That's about what in Fahrenheit, 15 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe our breath rose like steam. And we walked toward the bikes. The young boy, again, he was a teenager. He guided us back towards our motorbikes. And as he greeted us farewell, he said with quiet sincerity, please come back one day. So you skipped over something here that I remember. And I talked to him on the way down. And I gave him directly another booklet or two. And I asked him about if he knew anything about the creator, the Lord of heaven and earth. And he said he had he had met a Buddhist monk from Taiwan. And he knew Chinese a little bit so we could speak Chinese to one another. But I had a short conversation with him about God and gave him directly some books, hoping that hoping that he would keep those and not necessarily have them taken away by his elders at the monastery. That was my hope is that he would have something directly there. And he was I think he might I said 13 or 14 in my mind. I might have asked his age. He might have been 15 or 16 is what he might have told me. I can't remember for sure. And with that, we began our journey back to Nong Chen only to discover that the hardest part of the journey still lay ahead. As the three of us made our way toward the motorcycles, the freezing air stung our faces again. You're remembering the cold more than I was. It was chilly, but the cold for me came later, not not not not yet. It wasn't cold yet for me. It came later. But here's the thing we actually go ahead and say this. We didn't dress for the cold. We dressed for the daytime afternoon warmth, which wasn't warm like hot warm, but it was sunny in the afternoon. It was nice and pleasant, but we didn't dress for the middle of the night. We didn't have too many layers. We didn't have real strong winter clothes on for the nighttime. So we weren't prepared for coming back in the dark. I think something something to keep in mind as well with that elevation. Man, it's a different type of cold. So you can say something is minus thin. But with the elevation of 4,500 meters, it feels like so so cold. I think that's why to get that together with struggling just to get your breath back after walking 100 meters or so. It was just so overwhelming to do basic normal things with the temperature and the elevation there. I hear you. Yeah. The path was barely lit. It wasn't lit at all. We had to use our flashlights and our headlamps. I think the ground was uneven and hidden puddles. Then it happened. Tauna, our girl teammate. She stepped into what looked like a shallow patch of mud, but her foot sank so deep that when she pulled her leg free, her shoe stayed behind. I don't know how it happened, but it seems like her foot didn't even get dirty. But the shoe was just completely sunken in the mud and into the end of the mud there. And so when she pulled her foot out real quicks or her foot was dry but cold obviously with no shoe and the shoe couldn't be used because it was muddy and wet. We stopped. The temperature was freezing and now she'd have to ride more than two hours on a motorcycle in minus 10 degrees with a wet exposed foot. So maybe your foot was wet. In my mind, maybe it wasn't, but maybe it was. We all knew that this could become dangerous very quickly. We finally reached the bikes. I kicked mine into gear only to realize my headlight was suddenly not working. So now we have two bikes, three people, two bikes and one of them. The headlights not working and we've got two hours to go over the mountains up to bet. So it sounds fun. It had held up through the entire trip during the day until now. Thankfully, Eugene's headlights still worked. I'll add for the time being, right? Without much choice, Tona climbed onto his bike and we started off into the pitch black night toward the monastery's gate entrance. I rode in total darkness relying upon Eugene's light ahead of me to guide the way. So you're going behind me just following my light to try to find your way on the path out to the main road. When we stopped at the gate, Eugene turned to me with concern. We have to do something about Tona's foot. It's freezing. That's when it hit me. The space blanket that I had packed, the one Lana had run to give me just before we left that morning. I dug it out of my bag wrapped it tightly around her foot and fashioned a makeshift shoe. It wasn't pretty, but it would hold off the cold. That thin layer of foil-like material became a welcome barrier from possible frostbite. I can't imagine what it would have felt like going two or three hours with just socks on just one sock in a wet foot. That would have been just... That's why I stopped. We got to find something to do because there's no way. Her foot would be like a block of ice getting back. It wouldn't be good. We got back on the bikes. I pulled a small headlamp from my pocket, strapped it onto my forehead and flicked it on. The soft beam cut through the darkness just enough for me to see the road ahead. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. Barely a kilometer down the road. Eugene and Tona came to a sudden halt in front of me. Eugene's headlight had also gone out. I'm going to correct you here. I think it was more than a kilometer because we had about 20 to go just to get to the pass. I think it was a little ways up. That whole section of darkness and dirt road, it might have only taken 30, 40 minutes, but it seems like... It was just a weird time. There was no time. The lights were acting funny. Somewhere down the road, we stopped because my light went out. We're out there in the dark with the light out. Silent waiting for you. Then you came up to us and said, let me try my light again. You flicked the switch on your bike and your headlight came on. Tona switched to ride with you. I followed behind. I'm riding behind you following you guys in your light ahead of me. As we made our way to a steep section of the mountain road, Eugene's adventurous spirit kicked in. His headlight came back on and he passed us wanting to scout the road ahead. I could see his light stretching far up the hill, maybe 200 meters in the distance. Then just as suddenly my headlight died again. I was... My light came on at some point and I'm like, let's get up this road, let's finish this. Let's get over this mountain pass. We were climbing up the pass. I went way on ahead. I think at one point I was maybe even half a kilometer or more, maybe a kilometer ahead of you, not just a few hundred meters. Then yours went out again and now you're going in the dark. I'm going way up there ahead of you. You're behind me now without a light. It was now just me and Tona. Again, this is Jack riding here through the blackness with only my headlight lighting the way. A headlight, two people on a motorcycle with a headlamp and a big mountain pass and a big drop off on one side down the mountain. The silence was deafening. The wind howled around the cliffs beside us and the edges of the road disappeared into shadows. I prayed silently, Lord, please let Eugene look back. Don't leave us. You're thinking, I'm just going to keep going and never stop. You'll find me somewhere along the way. It was clear we would have had to rely on my headlamp. You eventually saw him ahead waiting by the side of the road. When we pulled up next to him, he looked up and said, my head lights dead again too. Now my head lights out and your head lights out and we're sitting there near the top of the pass with no headlamps at all or no lights at all. Only headlamps at that point. Tona had one and you had one or no she had a flashlight and you had a headlight. She got a flashlight at the back of your motorcycle in that compartment at the back. She found one. It was clear we would have to rely on my headlamp and whatever we could find for the rest of the journey. Then Eugene remembered the small flashlight he had stashed in his bike storage compartment. I forgot about that. It was dim but better than nothing. We agreed that Tona would ride with Eugene again holding the flashlight over his shoulder to light the path. She was a trooper in this difficult situation. I would ride behind guided only by my headlamp. It was risky but we had no other options. As we rode high cliffs, rose on one side and a sheer drop on the other. By now we're actually heading down. We started down the other side of the pass but it was still a long ways from where we were headed. Our visibility was barely a few meters and we were still a long way from safety. Every bump jolted our tired bodies. Every shadow looked like it might be the edge of the cliff. Then came another blow. We stopped. Eugene looked at my bike and said, jock, your front tires flat. In my memory that happened right at the top of the pass. Right at the top near the top. We were sitting there talking like, what are we going to do? I said, shine your headlamp down at your tire because I could see in the dark and it's something that didn't look right. You shine it down and you have no air in your front tire. You've been riding on it already for a while with no air. No air in your tire, no lights were working in either motorcycle. I stared down feeling the weight of that new settle in my chest. We still had at least 50 kilometers to go. Gravel roads across what they call the roof top of the world, sub-zero temperatures. Now I have to do it on a flat front tire. I waved them on and told them I'd manage. I don't think we were going to leave you because I didn't have much life to work with anyway. As they pulled ahead, I said, you'd manage. I remember you saying, I'll just do it. I'll make it work. You'll just hold on tight and try to keep up and try to stay with us. As they pulled ahead, I fell behind crawling along at no more than 30 kilometers an hour. That's foul. I don't think you were going even that far. I was going maybe 30 an hour. You might have been going 20 or 25 just right behind us. My arms ache from the strain of keeping balance. So was it hard to hold the bike steady without the air in the tire? How hard was that? So much of my concentration went from just focusing on the road to actually just steering and at least look straight to miss to look for little crevices and stuff in the road. I was afraid that this tire might come off the rim. So that together with the steering became very heavy. That was quite straining. I think especially after earlier when we went into the valley and back because by that time I was already tired. I was just trying to concentrate and also like I started singing because yet again the cold was so so immense by that time because it's not as if we were wearing helmets and stuff. So it was really cold for me by that time. So I was starting to sing just to to keep my concentration and to keep this road the motorcycle up and running and to try and at least keep this tire on the rim. Yeah. So that's what happened. So we disappeared into the dark ahead of you for a moment. Then suddenly they came back into view but something was different in the faint glow of my head lamp. I saw what looked like the silhouette of a third figure on their bike. A shape to tall to upright to be tauna and the jacket it wasn't her familiar pink one it looked different was I seeing things I whisper Lord could it be could you really be showing me that of an angel assisting us. They faded from view again a few minutes later they reappeared in the beam of my head lamp this time there was no mysterious silhouette just Eugene and tauna her pink jacket clear as ever. But I couldn't forget what I'd seen maybe was exhaustion maybe cold and strain playing tricks on my eyes or maybe just maybe God was showing us that we were not alone on this. Journey Jack you might have seen my guardian angel that's pretty cool. I like. I'm still still when I think back about that and tauna's pink jacket was so prevalent in my view it was like this drink I have with me here. You know you can see it and when you went out of my sight and came back it was quite a distance but it was like on the edge of my my lamps range in my view and and I was like I'm going to go out and I just remember when I saw it I was trying to convince myself that this must be the cold this must be because of the situation maybe I'm tired maybe this thinking of all other possibilities and but when you came back you went out of my view again and when you came back into my view it was once again the pink jacket of tauna and that was when I started to say Lord but wow. Isn't it that you you are showing us that that you are protecting us in this because I do I do still believe to this day and I think you will agree with me that this was like a supernatural attack on on after we visited the monastery yeah because it happened twice in your lifetime in two two thousand a 10 again yeah which is maybe a story for another day so I think literally the Lord also wanted us to know look I'm here with you this isn't it. This isn't something that you just struggling through through a dog road tonight but my angels are there protecting you didn't you say that you look back over your own shoulder one point to see if you had one two is that or I make that up. Yeah that's that I can't remember but that would be cool. I always tell the story because I think you did say that at one point that you glanced over your shoulder and there was nothing there that's how I've told the story before maybe you forgotten what you told me early on. As we continue along the treacherous mountain road fatigue beginning to blur the edges of our focus Eugene and tauna hit a hidden mound of gravel on the side of the road. The front wheel jumped the bike wobbled just for a moment but Eugene by the grace of God held it steady as they flew through the air in the dark anything could have gone wrong but somehow they stayed upright. So yeah I remember just hitting this something and it was I couldn't see it like you didn't see anything all of a sudden I'm like launching in the air and this bike and just trying not lose control in the dark on the side of the mountain there. And you were you were behind us at that point I don't know how far behind us but again it was just one of those things were just trying not to have a wipe out there on the side of the mountain. I remember that actually being on the on the right side on the on the not on the cliff side but very close to to down to the downhill there on the right side of the road I should the road back so that was actually very very scary when you eat that I thought oh my goodness. Yeah I think it was also a part of just again we were tired we're just trying to keep the bike on the road we're trying to we're trying to avoid like potholes and like big rocks and bumps because again your your tires already messed up you don't want to hit anything too hard I'm trying not to hit anything that's going to cause me to fall but then I ended up hitting something I didn't see right something was hidden there. And so it was it was tough by now the cold wasn't just uncomfortable it was dangerous our limbs were stiff our hands numb even through our gloves and we knew the warning signs hypothermia wasn't just a possibility it was a real threat. I remember my legs I didn't have any layers I just had a pair of jeans on I think I didn't have any like under layers my pants and so my legs were already just just freezing cold just my skin on my legs. Then through the blackness we saw a house just off the road on the left a light burned faintly inside we pulled over desperate for something warm to drink but the moment we got off our bikes we were greeted by two massive Tibetan mastiffs hooking wolf like dogs bred to guard and defend they roared with deep feral barks teeth flashing in the moonlight now they weren't they weren't free were they they were on the inside of the fence or outside of the fence. No, no, there was a fence between us and them otherwise we I think we would have just kept kept on going. No, I know that's why I don't even remember the dogs because I wasn't too worried they were behind the fence I'm used to that but they were outside yeah would have been a different story. And by that time you were just the same size to the type of big dogs you get there. Intubate and on the plateau because they are not like human normal South African or American type of dogs it is like massive pocket things there. It's the doses thing that you can get to like a physical manifestation of of a demon would be that dog because it is just a massive bulk of hair and it's scary. And they're they're mean to their they're trained to be mean into attacking to hurt people they're not they're not they're not nice they're not nice fluffy dogs that you would want to pet. But I remember the dogs being a blessing in one sense I thought I thought the dogs would wake people up and they would actually come out and see what's going on and then I can talk to somebody and maybe get help that was my hope is hey we're going to be able to see somebody and get some help but nobody came out like there's three or four houses on both sides of the road this little village. Nobody was nobody was coming out everyone just inside their homes out of the cold. So finally one guy came out right after a while a man stepped out he walked from his house out to the gate. His face was worn by the mountain winds I'm reading which you wrote here and he stood silently watching us I step forward explain to him who we were and asked if we might have some hot water to warm ourselves. I said can we have a little bit of tea can we come inside just for a minute and I think I when I said was can we go have some tea but that's basically saying can I come inside and get out of the cold that's the idea is not that we wanted to drink tea necessarily but we just wanted to be inside for a few minutes out of the cold. Yeah man took one look at us through the gate you know through the little the gate saw we were foreigners I guess any we weren't from around there and without a word he turned around close the gate in my face the close the little the little I guess window of the gate whatever it was and walk back in his house leaving us outside in the dark in the cold with the dog still. Starling embarking on the other side of the fence we stood there in disbelief there would be no help tonight and so yeah that's what's when I gave up I said you know what no one's going to help us out here for some reason we got we got to get back we got to get back to the to the town to the hotel where it's warm and we still had a ways to go. We climb back onto our motorcycles adrenaline fighting off the chill we made the decision we would ride the final final 30 kilometers it was maybe more than that to nung chin as fast as the broken terrain would allow it no more stops no more to lay just finish the journey yeah we can't stop and play around anymore we just got to get back we got to do it it's freezing cold we got to get back with 20 kilometers to go the first flakes of snow began to fall soft white specks carrying catching in my headlamp it was strangely beautiful falling silently across the winding road but beauty aside we were still moving through some zero darkness on rough gravel and I was I was still riding with a flat front tire so I've forgotten so back then the entire road would have been the entire road except for maybe. The very beginning near the town was all gravel later when we can we drove on the car it was all by that point yeah every kilometer was a fight my front wheel wobble dangerously over the rocks and it was nothing short of God's mercy that the tire didn't come off entirely yeah that's pretty crazy that it didn't after all those my it's a long ways over those rocks and mountains and that tire with no air to state on that state on that rim I mean I don't know what would we have done if the tire would have come off could you have could you have moved on on the rim with or just will we have been stuck I don't know I think yeah I think we would have been stuck at least you you guys would have had to go and and get another motorcycle or something but but obviously we I don't think we even though the Chinese do it but I don't think necessarily three people would bet on your about motorcycle by that time you know no you know I was I'm thinking now I never thought about this before but you know we we must not have had cell phone service because otherwise we could have called ahead and said hey one of the guys come out meet us with the bike somewhere partway but we didn't even have a way to contact them and let them know we were late there was just no self there was no signal anywhere out there in that particular area at all and this is before you know I had a cell phone but it would have been just an old dumb phone it would have been just an old analog phone not a digital phone of any kind yeah so here we get we're almost to the in here finally far off in the distance we saw them lights nong tin nong tin by the way is spelled in a NG Q E Q E N is how we spell it nong tin our hearts lifted exhaustion still gripped our bodies but hope now pushed us forward as we rolled into the courtyard of the hotel and this is not a fancy hotel this is just a little Chinese hotel with with with barely any barely any running water they had like one one cold water spiket out in the out in the courtyard you know it wasn't like a proper hotel yeah after one in the morning we were by familiar faces Lana which is Jack's wife Sarah another teammate isch my oh is my teammate from Mexico their expressions were a mix of deep concern and overwhelming relief before we could even begin to tell them what it happened they rushed to speak first during the evening they said while playing a simple card game to pass the time they had felt an urgent and strange leading again and again they had passed the time pause the game as the Holy Spirit prompted them to pray not just general prayers very specific ones they had prayed that God would send his angels to protect us and they prayed unprompted with conviction that our tires would be kept safe when they said it chills ran down my spine we hadn't spoken to them in hours well all day and they had no way of knowing what we're facing but God knew we then told them everything about the headlights going out the space blanket the freezing temperatures the mysterious silhouette the flat tire the barking dogs and the long ride home there was all in the room not fear just reverence we all knew we'd experience something far bigger than ourselves Lana handed us hot water to warm our hands and feet we wrapped ourselves in blankets and slowly but the heat returned to our bones by the way I didn't I didn't experience that I think I went back to my place earlier with with isch mile and I was I was still cold the next morning I was immediately into the bed and and you guys were standing like I was there like hospital patient playing in the bed and you guys don't know you were still standing around and then you still had to go to your house yeah I was cold I was cold the next morning when I woke up I was cold still we finally crawled into blood electric blanket plumbing softly the first comfort we felt all day but sleep didn't come quickly our minds race the journey had been long exhausting and at times terrifying yet there was also a strange piece the kind that only comes when you walk through the valley and felt God's hand holding you looking back I believe every challenge we faced after planting the gospel tracks every mechanical failure every barrier every close call was a spiritual counter attack the enemy had taken notice but we belong to the most high God and while the enemy may strike at our surroundings he cannot touch the hand that holds us for in all these things we are more than conquer through him who loved us this mission mission had etched itself into our souls and we'll go ahead and stop there we'll do the other story about the car incident four years later we can do that another time but no what you said there you know it does looking back the motorcycles acting so weird the way they did the lights going on and off is just so strange it had never done that before and I don't remember if it did it afterwards either you know we had to get it fixed at some point but the fact that they would go off and on and off and on and then they were off completely and we're having to deal with that plus the tires and plus the road it was just a weird experience and we had literally just been sitting in this Tibetan Buddhist monastery which are demonic places you know there's all kinds of evil things that happen there it's not just worshipping false gods the Tibetans are known for a lots of other sins of different kinds homosexuality is rampant in those places there's lots of things that are that are issues in those Tibetan Buddhist environments and very demonic strongholds so who knows who knows what we were facing exactly but God did bring us through that situation and it's hard to believe again it was 20 20 years ago but you can tell by the way we're still talking about it that it's been etched into our minds and we're not going to forget it it was it was a moment both of like extreme suffering in some ways you know just really really really really cold and it could have been way worse you know if we would have had an accident or if we got stuck out there all night it could have been really bad you know we would have been we would have been hypothermic for sure if we would have been stuck out there in it the fact that we made it home safely that night and we're able to get warm without getting even colder is a miracle in itself and so yeah anything what do you want to say to kind of tie this up anything you want anything you thoughts come into your mind did that I think when I two things when I think back off of this out experience it was also something that that was a pivotal marker in my life when I think think back because that is really unreach peoples they are like unreached there it is in the middle of nowhere and I remember when when we were riding on those motorcycles and the silence was deafening it was you couldn't hear anything it was just these two motorcycles and that was it and it was pitch black it felt like what people would describe as a god for second country you know in the sense that it's mapping it's pitch black dark so so that is the one thing that I that when I think back was it is still even even after riding there's it's still difficult to tell people exactly what that experience was like before you're right experiencing it was so for me personally doing all of that and going through all of that it was so intense on my mind and my body and and also I think spiritually just just to keep everything together to concentrate and at least stay signing or focus and the other thing that I wanted to say about this is it is also a story that I keep close to my heart so I don't share it with everyone I sort of tend to to to to to read want to read a group first before I share it because yeah I don't want to it just to be a story about adventure yeah because it is the the testimony of of how the Lord brought us through it and and he must get all all the glory and the honor for that because in my mind it was a miracle yeah so you're right there I mean there was adventure in the story but that wasn't the point the point wasn't hey we're gonna go have an adventure but when we set out that date the point the point that day was there's a monastery that nobody's ever been to with the gospel and we're gonna try to get to that monastery and we tried and failed at first and then we the Lord led us somehow we ended up stumbling on to probably the monastery we were looking for and then we were able to go in and in a short amount of time make some connections and friends and share the gospel a little bit share what we had do what we could do and then we literally we had to go we have no choice we have to go there's no way to spend the night we've got to get back we've got a busted catch we've got people waiting for us and so every part of it was like absolutely necessary like we have to continue there's no there's no choice you know what we're just gonna stop this and go check into a nice hotel there was no nice hotel there was no nice road there was no taxi there was no other option if you remember on that road we didn't see one vehicle going and we didn't pass one vehicle going back not one not one motorcycle not one car not one truck absolutely nothing so it's not like you can just say you know what let's just stop and wait for the next truck to come by and they can give us a lift there's no trucks there's no lift there's nothing and and so it really was like all all the steps we took were necessary steps to do what we were aiming to do and yet by God's grace we were able to complete what we had set out to do and also arrive back home without losing limbs or without having accidents or crashing all those lines the Lord brought in one piece and the next day we were on a bus you know heading back with all of our teammates and it was like I can't believe we're here I can't believe that happened and we're here and it was it was something it was something that it was hard to talk about you know for a long time it was hard to tell the story because it was just so like emotional and like man that was because when you're in it when you're in it you're like I might die out here like I might literally freeze out here we might not make it back our friends might think we're dead we you know you're you're going through your wife you know your wife was waiting for you back at the hotel and the little hotel I should say and so yeah there's a lot of emotion there that we felt in the moment that we've even we have not I wouldn't say forgotten but it's it's gotten to be a little bit more distant you know we've we're we're not necessarily feeling all the emotion we felt when it first happened 20 years goes by and you you start to remember more the good the good memories and you forget you forget a few of the hard and the tough memories right and so one more thing before we we stop you know what happened we went back to the capital city of the province we had a long bus ride the next day like a 20-hour bus ride and then we were back in the capital city with other teammates kind of having a debriefing time and you me and Tauna we all sat down in an internet cafe sometime the day or two later and we all attempted to write out our story in an email like an email to our family an email to ourselves to our friends and it's I think the same thing happened to all of us somehow or another all the emails all what we wrote got erased and so I yeah I clicked I clicked the wrong button it got erased something happened in boom it was gone you said the same thing Tauna said the same thing it was just a weird thing where none of us were actually because we were on the world race we had blocks that was given to us through the world tries call it server or what even so me and Tauna tried to write at least a bare bone story of what happened yeah and never through through the all year of traveling through 23 countries had any problems but that day when we wanted to upload the server was down it just disappeared from our screens and we couldn't use it it was gone yeah maybe maybe maybe I was doing the same thing because I also had a blog through the same server back then maybe that was the issue all of us tried to do it and and I remember after that happened we we all said to each other well we just got to remember because we tried to write it down and it didn't work we've got to remember and we got to tell the story and so it was just an odd it was an odd ending to that particular week or weekend yeah we couldn't put it on paper but the thing was is writing it down still wasn't enough like it didn't scare the full experience of what we felt and what we've been through it's not a thing all right I'm about to lose my voice here I've been out all day thanks for talking and and we'll catch up again you know I'd wanted to do this before and then all of a sudden I was like oh no it's already the date so that's no problem brother but let's catch up sometime and I would like to talk to you about just future plans that you might have and things like that and the other work is going still in China and things like that awesome brother thank you hey tell me one thing you mentioned you mentioned last time we talked and I was listening to it again about you're working full-time at the port yes I'm I'm also still a pastor so my church is like congregation is just like a hundred meters from from our house and then in the week I'm working at Puebla Harbor missions so so we just go on all all the ships we have two ports in Port Elizabeth one is in the city one is just outside of the city 20 kilometers so we drive between the two harbors and then go onto the vessels and and minister to the guys and the ultimate airtime you know some cards and things like that you just get connectivity to find their families and so on but it's a good ministry option that we have awesome that's cool it say you said that and I was listening and I thought wait a minute he said work but is he does he mean he's like working in the port like some sort of like work work or is it ministry sounds like ministry but so it's more of a ministry okay okay that's awesome all permissions that's really cool that's really cool I I'm I'm somehow I missed that the last time we talked I heard it but it didn't it didn't click and at some point I'm gonna make it down to South Africa so at some point I'll see you there I don't know when I've actually I've actually oh you don't you don't even know this brother I'm gonna be in Africa here in two weeks but not South Africa I'm going to Uganda Uganda oh yeah that's a far Uganda Ethiopia and Kenya I'll be for about a week total I've I've got some meetings with some pastors I'm gonna do some training for some look some native missionaries in those areas and and so I'll be there for about a week and then maybe later this year I'll be further south I might be in Zambia at some point later this year and so who knows maybe my friend you might come and pop in man maybe my flights will take me to you somewhere I'll I'll see yes so I hope so please take it to where I will I'll try okay I'm trying to you guys are the opposite opposite seasons as we are so it's if I if I was there in November December that's like springtime for you guys right yeah December is the beginning of summer okay based time to be here awesome brother thank you see you cheers brother bye bye well I wish we had more time to kind of go even deeper I wish the audio was a little bit better it was hard to get jacks audio just right there you could hear him I think but but it wasn't as good as I would have liked it to be but and you heard us mention I want to mention briefly we don't have a lot of time I want to mention briefly you heard me mention the car accident in 2010 he mentioned it I think I might have mentioned it at one point this was in the almost the exact same location just a few miles away from the monastery in 2010 and me and Jack and three or four other guys were in together in the car we almost died then the car rolled almost rolled off the mountain I've told that story on the podcast it was back on December 27th I believe it was of last year I've got a link here in the show notes you can get to it through that if you want to go back and listen to that episode but Jack and I will get together again at some point in the future and we will talk about that incident as well because that was very moving for him and for the other guys that were there as well they I mean we really thought we were going to die as we were rolling down a Tibetan mountain pass at 14,000 feet not the same pass where we got stuck this other time but one more pass further south further into Tibet is where the car accident took place and we'll talk about that again like I said in the future I don't have time this week to look at the pray for China cities I will look at those on the midweek podcast coming up in a couple of days as we talk about praying for China once again thank you for listening subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform and if you'd like to support our China ministry you can find mission catalysts and everything else all the books everything else praygivego.us once again Luke 10 verse 2 the harvest is plentiful the workers are few so let's ask the Lord for more workers and listen to what jack said earlier about just the the extreme need in these places pray for more laborers and and think about pray about going yourself if God opens the door God bless