September 2019 –After enduring a 13-hour train ride, 22 Chinese Christians arrived at a small hotel room for the privilege of sitting on a wooden floor for three days of leadership training. Pastor Wayne Cordeiro of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii, quickly realized he had only 15 Bibles to pass around among the trainees. But that didn’t matter, because several of the Chinese Christians had committed to memory large portions of Scripture.
Cordeiro learned that 18 of the 22 trainees had been imprisoned for their faith. Several had used their incarceration to memorize Scripture smuggled in on scraps of paper.
At the end of the training, one of the Chinese Christians asked Cordeiro to pray that he would become like the pastor. In a sermon back in Honolulu, Cordeiro told his congregation that he refused the request. Rather, he told the Chinese Christian, “I will pray that we become just like you.”
