Blessing Baby Naomi-- in China

Naomi did me the honor of smiling for a picture in her frilly blessing dress.

A couple weeks ago Kevin was able to bless Naomi in church here. And by "here" I mean here in our living room. It was a beautiful blessing for a beautiful, joyful child. We love her a lot already, and it's fun to get to know her better day by day.

A lot of people ask us how church works here in China, and I'll try to give a good explanation.

China has 5 officially recognized and accepted religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Even those religions have to work within the boundaries defined by the government here, which leads to such situations as Chinese Catholic churches having no ties to the Vatican. There is freedom of religious belief, but no freedom of religion or religious practice.

So being Mormon in China means I'm part of a church that isn't officially recognized by the government here. In China, then, we don't have missionaries, we don't talk about our religion, we don't even answer questions. I mean, if I have a friend who's also American (or other foreigner), then sure, I can talk about whatever I want. But I can't go preaching the Gospel to my Chinese friends.

There are many Mormons living in China. In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there are enough that they have big, hopping branches of the church there. As long as foreigners are meeting with foreigners, we can have church just like we would anywhere else. Well, anywhere else that would check your passport as you walk into a meeting.

There are some Chinese Mormons, too. Maybe they joined the Church while they were outside China, or maybe their Chinese LDS friends taught them about the Church. That's all fine and dandy. The Chinese LDS meet with other Chinese LDS. The foreigners meet with foreigners. We just don't intermingle.

Now, that's how it works in the big cities. But what about the random folks sprinkled around China? Here in Shenyang, we have several LDS families, and there are a couple other cities with groups of 20 or so, like us. But what about the one Mormon guy going to school in some city? What about the couple teaching rock-climbing in the South? What about the group of English teachers in that one place? There are random Mormons sprinkled throughout the country in small groups, often for short times. So in order to give us the opportunity to worship together, we get to be part of the China International Virtual Branch!

Our virtual branch works like this: our Branch President and Relief Society President live in Beijing. On Sunday, we all call them on a teleconferencing system, and we have church over the phone. They play a song, and we sing along. Someone in one city might give the opening prayer, while someone in another city gives a talk. For the Sacrament, they just mute the phone lines, and if your group has someone to administer the Sacrament, then you can go ahead and have it in your place. Or if not, it's a nice quiet time to ponder the Savior's life.

We communicate by email, receiving a newsletter every week. It's nice to hear from our leaders and hear what our other branch members are doing around the country.

We have a ton of kids in our twig (mini-branch, ha ha ha), so for the second hour of church (we only have 2 hours), a few of the parents go take all the kids into another room for nursery and Primary, while the rest of the adults get to attend Sunday School, Priesthood, or Relief Society. We rotate through those meetings each week.

Kevin and I taught Sunday School last week. It's interesting to ask a question and hope that someone A) is listening, and B) is planning on answering. You can't see them, so you just have to wait. Once a discussion gets going, though, people just introduce themselves and comment like they would anywhere else. I feel like we should preface our comments with something like, "Hi, I love your show! I listen every week, but it's my first time calling in."

So how does a baby blessing work? Well, we had about 4 elders meeting here, and they all held baby Naomi. And Kevin just gave the blessing over the phone. One cool thing about our virtual branch is that some of our family members were able to call in and hear the blessing, too-- all the way from America!

If you've followed me this far, you probably have some idea of how our church works. If you're like me, you've probably read this explanation and still have no idea how this would possibly work. It took me actually attending a meeting before I kind of understood. :)