Xie Yanqing was a woman many people feared. She confesses, “I was aggressive and vulgar and not pleasant to be with.” It is hard to imagine this of a woman who, today, has a warm smile and who is known for her quiet and gentle nature. She has worked at the Amity Printing Press since 1986. The company publishes Bibles for the China market and overseas. Xie is honest about the kind of person she used to be. She admitted that she stole a Bible from the printing plant. Reading it, changed her life.
“My life was turned around 180 degrees the day I became a Christian,” she says. She was having family problems. Her husband had left her, sold their house and took all the money. She and her eight-year-old son were forced to move into her mother’s house. During that season, a friend invited her to church. She remembers the moment she walked in. “I was so struck by a beautiful song they were singing that I began to weep. People noticed me and came to comfort me. They showed such genuine concern and compassion that I opened up and shared all my difficulties. I felt so at home among them that very night I became a Christian.”
She began reading regularly from a Bible she had stolen from work. She sensed a voice, the Holy Spirit, telling her to read Isaiah 30. She could hardly believe what she read, “I will keep you safe if you turn back to me and calm down. I will make you strong if you quietly trust me” Isaiah 30.15 (Contemporary English Version)
“When I read that passage it felt as if it had been written for me. It was about the difficulties that the people of Israel were going through. In it, God promises that the pain will end and that good things will come. I felt that God was promising that I would get my own home and my husband back.”
That is exactly what happened. Her husband contacted her and asked if he could return home. He became a Christian as well. Now she is proud to be part of the work at Amity Printing Press. “I pray over the Bibles, that they will bless the people who receive them.”