In the late 1980s two young Christian teenage girls from Henan Province were called by the Lord to travel across the country to remote Qinghai Province to share the gospel with the unreached Tu and Mongolian ethnic minorities who live there. They had no financial support, no return ticket and no contacts. The whole region was completely devoid of the gospel.
After arriving among these people, their hearts were filled with compassion and they tried to share Christ’s message, but the local women opposed them and drove them out of their homes. They were forced to sleep wherever they could find shelter, under bushes, in farm sheds, and the like. They were struggling, their stomachs were empty, and nobody would listen to the good news they had brought with them. They were in a position where unless the Lord did a miracle, they would die.
The Lord never abandons his children in their time of need! One day the two girls heard about an unused cave the locals avoided because they believed it to be haunted by demons. The girls saw this as the Lord’s provision and prayed against any unclean spirits as they moved into their new home. But even here they were harassed. Many nights they were scared by the sounds of what they thought was a pack of wolves outside. Later they learned that the sounds came from group of young boys who were trying to frighten them.
Winter came and temperatures plummeted to below freezing. These were particularly testing times because the people refused to open their doors to the girls. The girls prayed for many hours with tears in their eyes, asking the Lord to help them. One night they were particularly downcast and hungry. They again prayed until they fell asleep. In the morning they awoke to find that during the night mushrooms had grown right outside the entrance of their cave! They picked them and immediately boiled them, thanking God for their nutritious meal.
The next morning they woke to find the mushrooms had grown up again during the night! This continued every morning for about a year! Even in winter these miraculous mushrooms never failed to appear, poking their heads up through the snow outside the entrance to the cave. The girls learned how to enjoy mushrooms in every possible way. They boiled them, fried them and steamed them! They always tasted delicious because they knew they were gifts directly from the Lord.
Gradually these two young sisters started to be accepted by the local community and alone by one they were able to lead local women to Christ, until they had a small fellowship for the first time in the history of these minority groups. After about a year, one of the young women secured a job as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. The very same day she commenced work, the mushrooms stopped appearing outside the cave!
For many years now the “haunted” cave has been used as a Bible training center for the new believers. Now hundreds of people have come to Christ in that area.
(From the book Back to Jerusalem, pg 87-88)