On June 2001, in Ping Ding Shan city, Brother
Yang received another call from this general secretary Lian
of the Haggai Institute. Over the phone, Mr. Lian said that
he was back in mainland China again, and he hoped to meet
and talk to Brother Yang once more in Ying Yang city, He Nan
Province. Lian left his daughter’s pager number with
Yang. Yang called Shen soon afterwards, and the two of them
agreed to go to Ying Yang together. At Ying Yang Railway Station,
the person who responded to their call and came to pick them
up was a man in his twenties. He took Yang and Shen to a family
in the suburbs, where they met the three members of Mr. Lian’s
family who had been there waiting for a long time. Brother
Yang introduced Shen to Mr. Lian. The content of the conversation
this time was about the same as the last meeting, mainly about
the advance of the Gospel in Mainland China and the training
of coworkers. Mr. Lian said, “The Institute has consented
to receive a few house church coworkers for its three-month
leadership trainings. Each candidate should hand in a résumé
(with a photo) along with an application letter, and both
documents were to be signed by their leaders to be valid.
The Institute also offered to send people to Mainland China
to help house churches train workers in response to the great
need.” Shen answered, “That is a most welcome
suggestion. House church leaders are carrying very heavy responsibilities,
and many of them feel inadequate. If they have this opportunity
to get equipped in the Word, it’ll be far better than
anything else.” Mr. Lian replied, “I will faithfully
report to the Institute about your need. As far as when to
start, it can only be decided after I go back and talk to
President Haggai.” When it was time to say good-bye,
Mr. Lian proposed to lift up this matter in prayer and wait
for God’s grace.
However, one year quickly passed after this
Ying Yang meeting, and no news whatsoever about this matter
was ever heard again, and this training issue nearly slipped
out of everybody’s mind.
On March 4th, 2002, in Ping Ding Shan city,
Brother Yang unexpectedly got a call from Mr. Lian from Guangzhou.
Recognizing it was Mr. Lian’s voice, Brother Yang was
very surprised because his phone number had been changed a
long time ago. Mr. Lian explained on the phone that he got
Brother Yang’s number from Ai Yanlin in Yu Zhou City.
He called because he wanted Shen’s phone number. At
that moment, Brother Yang suspected him and did not tell him
Shen’s phone number. Immediately after that, Brother
Yang went to meet Shen. Just when they were about to finish
discussing the matter, Mr. Lian called Yang again. Yang let
Shen answer the phone. On the phone Mr. Lian said, “The
Institute has made some decisions concerning the training.
It’s necessary for us to meet and talk about this in
detail.” Shen agreed to bring some coworkers to meet
him. Meanwhile, Brother Yang noticed that although Mr. Lian
had said he was in Guangzhou, his cell phone number was a
local number. So Brother Yang went to the local mobile phone
service and found out that the owner of that cell phone was
called Zhang Hong. Brother Yang called Mr. Lian and asked
him what the true story was. Mr. Lian replied that Zhang Hong
was one of his friends in Ping Ding Shan. Zhang worked for
Mr. Lian’s company in Guangzhou after he was laid off.
Mr. Lian called Yang with this friend’s cell phone.
In this way, all doubts that Brother Yang and Brother Shen
had were removed. The number of the cell phone that Mr. Lian
used then was 138-3751-8267. Since Mr. Lian asked to meet
Shen, Shen called another Shen, leader of the Fellowship.
At the appointed time, the two of them went to the family
in Yingyang where Shen met Mr. Lian last time. Again they
met Mr. Lian and his daughter, as well as a man who claimed
to be Edward Yu, Vice President of the Singapore Haggai Leadership
Institute. “President Yu” brought greetings from
the Institute, saying that the purpose of this trip was to
communicate with the CGF coworkers and confirm the leadership-training
plan with them. They explained the reason why there had been
a one year break in their contact. It was because people in
the Institute had disputes about recruiting students from
Mainland China; over this, Lian and his daughter had gone
through a lot of stress. As a result of the meeting, they
decided to recruit 34 students who could go to Singapore for
the training in turn, with 2 or 3 people in each team. As
for the exact times, places and specific approaches, they
had yet to work out these issues until after discussions with
President Haggai.
