Wednesday afternoon two young sailors from the container ship Xin Bei Lin walked into the Mission building. Their ship is registered in China and all crew members are Chinese citizens. They asked if I could call a taxi as ten sailors wanted to go to the Richmond Center.One of the sailors wore a name tag with what I thought was his name in both the Chinese and English language. The Chinese name I obviously could not read, but the English translation was P. Commissar. I thought, hmmm Chinese names are rather similar to our names, until I suddenly realized that his name was not P. COMMISSAR but rather POLITICAL COMMISSAR!!
I had to laugh to my self. The political commissar was a young man with a friendly face. I asked the other sailor if the commissar was spying upon the crew? Both had a good laugh. 'No' was their answer, the P. Commissar is one of the stewards on board.
When the ten crew members were picked up by the taxi's the P. Commissar was with them. Apparently all Chinese state owned and registered ships carry a P. Commissar. How concerned the Chinese government is of controlling and spying upon the crew members I don't know. What I do know is that over the years many Chinese bibles and other Christian material have been taken on board ships by Chinese crew members.
The message of the Good News of Jesus Christ is unstoppable, no matter how many P. Commissars there might be in this world!
