Xiao Ye, Japan
I was born into a blessed family. From a young age, my parents loved me very much. In addition, my grades were good and adults often praised me in front of my brothers, sisters and me: “Xiao Ye will certainly have good prospects in the future….” I really felt so much pride for myself after hearing this and always indulged in self-admiration and wild arrogance, thinking I was better than my siblings, regarding myself as a rare talent in the family…. I grew up in such a superior environment.
In 2013, when I stayed at Aunt Liu’s home to study, Aunt Liu told me about the gospel of the kingdom. Because I was busy with my studies, I did not attend meetings very often and I knew very little about God’s work. However, during this period, I experienced God’s love and blessings. So in my heart I always believed in and trusted God. In 2016 when I was a sophomore, the university had an overseas internship program and because of this I had the opportunity to go to Japan to be an intern. In addition to this Aunt Liu told me: “Now God works very fast. There are brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God everywhere. God’s work has already extended to all parts of the world.” Hearing Aunt Liu’s words, I could not suppress the excitement in my heart, because in China it really is too hard to believe in God, and every day you are on tenterhooks, hiding from the CCP government’s persecution and arrest. However, there is real freedom of religion overseas and it is so great to believe in God there. I was also attracted to that type of free and liberated life free from persecution by the CCP, free to read the word of God together with brothers and sisters, to share experiences, sing hymns, dance and praise God. So I promised Aunt Liu that I would contact brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God after arriving in Japan.
In September 2016 I arrived in Japan full of expectation. After one month’s language training, I entered a hotel in Hokkaido with several classmates and started my internship. To begin with I thought my Japanese was good and that I was smart and I could quickly pass the standard, so I did not place a lot of importance on the internship at all. However, for many reasons, I failed to connect with brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God. Work in the hotel restaurant was hard and tiring and the repetitive and hard work every day made me feel like I couldn’t go on. At that time, the thing I did most was praying to God in my heart. I especially hoped that God could give me super powers to finish these hard tasks with ease. On the eighth day of work, my senior saw me working hard with low efficiency and always having problems and scolded me: “I teach others twice and they can do the work, but you are taught several times and still cannot do it!” When I heard her say this, I had no rebuttal but in my heart I wasn’t convinced: You are insisting on me doing something that is impossible. I haven’t done anything at home. It is very normal not to be able to do these things. Of course, I also felt awful because I kept getting things wrong at work but I didn’t expect my senior to say I couldn’t do anything in front of the supervisor. That day, her “guidance” made me feel powerless to ward off, and her words “cannot do anything” threw me in the abyss of suffering even more. “I didn’t offend her. Why did she make such harsh demands of me?” I thought, very unwilling to submit. Besides, my colleagues whose Japanese was worse than mine and who were younger than me received their labels of eligibility but I still ranked as unqualified. The more I thought about that the more aggrieved I became. I could not help running to the bathroom and crying and the more I cried, the aggrieved I felt. I really wanted to flee from this environment immediately.
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