The Fabulous Finale

I stepped outside my comfort zone on this trip in our accommodations  I booked us a "room" in an AirBnB - it was significantly less expensive than a full apartment to ourselves, and the location was absolutely perfect for us! By the grace of God and His divine appointments, our AirBnb hosts were Chinese. 

The first day, I was introduced to the wife, realized they were Chinese and shared our connection to China. The second day, she showed me a book her husband had written, and gave me a copy. The third day, I put the pieces together....and WOW! 

Dr. Yang Jianli is a true Chinese dissent. In 1989, he was studying in the US, and learned about the pro-democracy protests that were going to take place in June - and he left his studies and returned to Beijing, where he was a participant in the Tiananmen protests and a witness to the massacre. He escaped and returned to the US - but returned to China in 2002 to help train the dissent leaders. He was arrested and jailed for five years, many of those in solitary confinment with "only me and my God". 

Upon his release, he was expelled permanently from China, returned to the United States and formed an NGO to fight for democracy in China. 

Thursday morning - we ate breakfast and talk with Dr. Jianli - and it is a conversation that will not be forgotten. He radiates Christ in a way I rarely (never?) see in Western Christians - crying as he spoke about the state of the church here and the division and the hateful words being attributed to believers. Clearly - his heart breaks for the things that break God's heart and he lives that life out in sacrifice. He mourns for his fellow countrymen and misses his homeland and family there. He doesn't speak much of his imprisonment, but the scars on his face from the beatings are visible. His love and compassion for humanity is palpable. 

World changer. 

We had but a short time left - and there was one more thing we needed to do. 

We saw this as we drove into Washington on Monday morning (pardon the photo quality - taken from a moving car!). We weren't sure what it was, so we researched it. 

It's an art exhibit designed by Suzanne Firstenberg - and this is the goal - 

This art exhibition blankets the National Mall with over 660,000 white flags, showing the magnitude of our loss as a nation, while honoring each person who has died from COVID-19.

This was the "In America Remember" board with the total lives lost as of Monday at 10:30 am 

This was the total 72 hours later 

It is incredibly powerful and moving and sobering to see this many flags - one representing each live lost to Covid. One flag representing every person's families and friends and colleagues left behind. 

Do the math - 5100 hundred lives in 72 hours. Multiplied by tens and hundreds who miss them. 

We came here generally, but also specifically to leave a flag in honor of our friend Kirk Wilkerson. 

One of the really neat things about this art exhibit is that if you can't physically get to DC - on their website you can ask them to do a flag for your loved one. They are also geolocating all the flags, so that you can find them, The exhibit runs until October 3rd....

The most cool thing about this was that when we got there, they weren't quite open yet for people to write flags. When I explained to the woman there that we were catching a plane, she stopped what she was working on, walked us through the whole process. She listened to our story about Kirk and his family - and she grieved with me. Then introduced herself

Suzanne Firstenberg. The artist. 

A woman using her gifting for humanity - in her words - 

This art is created not only to honor each individual whom we have lost, but also to create a moment of pause, a moment of reflection for our nation.  

What an incredible blessing to meet yet a third world changer. 

We could have stayed longer. We will be back. But for now - it's time to go home! 

Thanks for coming along with us!