John Bentley
Eight years ago when God called me to China, I was a middle-aged attorney who had never been to Bible school, had no background in Chinese culture, didn’t speak a word of the language, and had no support in place whatsoever. I didn’t seem a very likely candidate to be one of His representatives to the people of China, but I came in faith, remembering that God had called an old Bedouin to deliver the Israelites from Egypt and a shepherd boy to be King of Israel. He called a fisherman to be his apostle to the Jews and a Pharisee to go to the Gentiles. I was unqualified by every measurable standard. It didn’t matter – God had called me. “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant…” (2 Cor. 3:5-6)
The result of answering that call is that I became the founder and Executive Director of Harmony Outreach, a ministry to poor and vulnerable people in China. Harmony has six different outreaches in China. The cornerstone of our work is a home for orphaned and special needs children near Beijing called Harmony House. It is here that children who were born with special needs and abandoned by their parents go through our Three Steps to Hope (foster care, surgery, adoption) program. Harmony orphans have been adopted all over the United States and the world. Our inland projects include the Kaifeng Deaf School, the Dingbian orphanage for teens, the Catholic orphanage of DaMing, and an underground seminary which is part of the Back to Jerusalem (B2J) movement. Harmony also provides a great deal of surgeries for poor people and minority groups in Western China’s remote Qinghai province.
