People who are receptive to our message about Jesus are Sheep, from Matthew 25:31–46: “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” People who reject us are Goats.
“We will pray against her!” Mommy Esther declares, gazing at us children with unusual fierceness. How dare they threaten her children!
My father soothes, “The Devil always sends persecution. That lets us know we are doing God’s work. We are God’s Family. His End-Time warriors, the true disciples who have dropped out of the evil System. Praise the Lord!” he finishes in a singsongy voice.
Fear of “persecution” is a constant companion.
Since before I can remember, my parents and caregivers have read me stories of persecution against God’s children. Daniel in the lions’ den, the first Christians killed in the gladiator rings by the Roman emperor Nero, missionaries being eaten by cannibals in Fiji, the slaughter of Christians in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion, or Christians who refused to denounce their faith drowned in ice water by Stalin’s soldiers. Sometimes God delivers you with a miracle, and sometimes you die and go to Heaven. With the Antichrist and the Tribulation spoken of in Revelation due to start any day now, anything is possible.
As part of God’s End-Time elite army and Grandpa’s grandchildren, I’m told the Devil’s forces will target us especially. This persecution targeting my personal family rather than the Family at large seems to confirm this. But I secretly hope I’ll also have greater powers to perform miracles, like calling down fire from God to burn up the Antichrist soldiers.
When Mommy Esther finishes praying, the air is still and heavy, and none of us dare say a word. Our entire Family is at risk. No one is safe.
Grandpa is in hiding—and now we are, too.
With our big hats in hand, my father takes us around for a tour of our new home.
I didn’t know that my father and mother had been coming out here secretly for the last few months as a work hideaway to escape our cramped apartment. Back in the city, we’d first rented three six-hundred-square-foot apartments in the same building for us, our caregivers, and other Family members who would pass through. We were one of several families who moved to Macau in the last few years to pioneer the Portuguese colony as a new mission field. At least three families with kids my age, as well as numerous single adults, all lived with or near us in the same neighborhood. As rents in the city kept going up, our family had to cram into two apartments, then one. So, we were desperate for more space on our tiny income.
“We’ll all live in this one room where we slept last night until the rest of the house is fixed up,” he says. “But don’t worry, with our new Chinese worker, it shouldn’t take long. Maybe a month or two, praise the Lord,” he says with optimism.
“Thank God we sprayed and managed to get rid of most of the fleas!” Mommy Ruthie says with relief. “When we first walked in here, fleas swarmed my legs.”
“Ew,” I squeal, moving my feet more quickly and checking to see if any of the almost-invisible black biting creatures have jumped on my naked legs.
As we continue our tour, my father’s spirits are high. “Praise the Lord!” he says. “I’ve been looking for a way to get our family out into the countryside so you boys can have farm animals like I did growing up on the ranch in Texas. I want you all to learn the value of hard work and responsibility! And keep you out of trouble.” My father is always regaling us with stories of ranch life in the dusty desert town of Thurber, where he tended cows, goats, and chickens as a kid.
“We just had to speed up the timing of our move to the village with the persecution from the newspapers, but God works in mysterious ways. Praise the Looord.” His voice swings up a couple of octaves on the last word in a singsong. Unless he’s angry, his voice ends on a high note.
We follow him through the short door to the connecting room where we just ate breakfast, which is about half as long as the side rooms. “This will be our living room once we finish cleaning it up,” he explains. He points to a rough wood-plank whitewashed dividing wall separating the back third from the rest of the living room—it’s a space full of dried-out paint cans that I’d missed earlier. “We can turn that small back room into a bedroom for you two girls.”
We cross through the next doorway into a long room like the first.
“This will be the boys’ room.”
There is dirt and chunks of plaster all over the floor.
“You boys can work with me to chip off the rest of this old plaster from the adobe bricks, then we will replaster it.” There is no glass in the windows, just rusted iron bars. “We will put in some mosquito screens and fix the hinges on the shutters that are falling off. And we’ll cement the floor in here and lay down linoleum just like in the other room. It will be great! You’ll see!”
All of us kids gaze in dismay at the mess around us, recognizing a big cleanup job when we see one. I feel an itch on my ankle and slap myself hard. I hope it’s not a flea.
At the end of the house tour, my father says, “Come on, kids. Let’s look at the village. Put on your hats.”
I follow my siblings out the front door, trying to balance the big bamboo hat on my head while being careful not to trip over the stone lintel as I step out into the blinding tropical sun. The thick adobe block walls and small windows keep the house dark and cooler. Now the full blast of the sun’s rays hits us. I’m glad for my big hat.
Macau has a subtropical climate with mainly two seasons, summer and winter. The almost daily spring rains of April are followed by a steaming summer, hot and muggy even at night, with occasional summer showers, thunderstorms, and days-long typhoons. October is the official start of autumn, but the summer heat and thunderstorms often linger until November. Though it never freezes in winter, the wet cold seeps into your bones. In late July, the red dirt sizzles in the humid heat, burning the bottom of my foot as my flip-flop slips off.
The first thing I see is that our small village is nestled against dark green hills. Mommy Esther points up to a road hugging the hills’ curves above us.
“That is the road to the beach from Macau,” she explains. “We are safe here. Almost no one from the city even knows this tiny village is tucked back here. But if some nosy reporter driving to the beach spots our blond heads from the road above, our enemies will find us.”
Now I understand why we are wearing these uncomfortable hats. But what would these enemies do to us if they found us here? I know better than to ask. Usually, my father shuts us down when we ask a question like that. “Because I said so!” or “Revolutionaries don’t ask questions!” are a couple of favorite responses.