I have communicated off and on with the China Now! ministry for a couple of years, both because I have several good friends who have worked and are working in China because of them and because I have had an interest in some special opportunities that they have had in the past. This past weekend at NCMS I talked with one of the CN! guys for a while about things they are doing and about mutual friends. Today I received a form-letter followup email from them, which is nothing special except for the quote they appended at the end:

"It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home." -- J. Hudson Taylor

This is interesting to me because in a way it actually reaffirms the special call that I do believe I have to stay at home. Home, at least, being America. And staying at home meaning doing my long-term work here. I fully intend to spend significant amounts of more time in short-term works overseas, and certainly in China. But instead of being unseated by such a quote into the desire to hop a plane to Asia, it was strangely comforting to feel an assurance of what God wants to do with me here, for the university students of America.