After a while, the two cars arrived at Qiufeng Church.

Qiufeng Church is a very large building, but it is located directly south of Water and Fire Street, which determines that it must be dilapidated.

Water and Fire Street is the spine of the area. The northward direction the better, until the rich area; the southward direction the more you go, the more you break, until the shack area.

It was originally a carriage and horse carriage, with a "long-standing history". With Mobil's warehouse, there was a distribution center for kerosene. Such places must require logistics. Therefore, there are many carriages and horse carriages around Shiligou. This is a place where long-distance merchants park carriages and relax and sleep overnight. It has the function of a hotel, and also rents vehicles, mules, horses and oil barrels.

Later, the Mobil warehouse was moved out and the carriage changed hands. The new landlord turned this place into a shaky group rental building until Wang Xintai bought it three years ago and turned it into the Qiufeng Church.

This history determines the layout of the Qiufeng Church:

The door was very big, and it still retained the original style of the carriage and horse carriage. There were five decadent logs on the arc on the door. There were original advertisements + merchant names, but "Some Carriage and Horse Carriage" had been stripped away by wind and rain, and no handwriting could be seen. The church just tied a man-high cross wooden frame to the east door post and revealed that it changed the owner here.

Entering the gate, there is a huge open space. It was originally designed to place various carriages and mules and horses. Now it is covered by the church with a simple wooden shed, which is completely covered by the open space and is used as a large place of worship, so that the church can gather to listen to the sermons.

Two-story wooden buildings were built on the north and east of the open space, the same as Fang Bingsheng's residence, as if several drunk giants were holding hands and overlooking the square in the middle. These buildings had a smaller chapel, and in addition to the simple residence of co-workers and volunteers in the church.

(In a narrow sense, co-workers are people who serve full-time in the church and receive salaries. Church volunteers do not receive salaries.)

To the west are two small courtyards with brick and stone structures connected together, which are very grand. Both are just built this year. One is the home place of the "elder" of the founder of the church, Wang Xintai, and the other is the imperial examination cram school of the "Feihuang Lingyun Academy".

After getting off the emperor's carriage, Fang Bingsheng looked around at the church door:

I saw bright lights in the distance in the south, and there was a giant dragon in the air sucking red smoke, like a city in the demon country. It was a factory area. Most factories were still working at this time, and the chimney was smoking;

But under the magnificent "city", there was a thick darkness saturated with the smell, and countless red light spots spread out on the ground like ghost fires in the cemetery. It was as if the city had just experienced a war. Outside the city wall was burned into a ruin by the enemy. The residual fire was still burning - it was the residents of the shacks who were cooking dinner, and they could only cook open fire outside the shacks, and the lights were generally not lighted in the shacks;

And behind me, it was as bright as daylight, like a huge gem eye gazing at the city in the distance. The Qiufeng Church has lit countless torches and foreign oil lamps. If they look in the air, they will definitely illuminate their wooden shed like an extremely huge firefly wing.

Fang Bingsheng slowly turned his face to the right and looked for a long time. It was the direction of the capital, but in fact he could not see anything. He could only see the shadows of the cross from the church swaying under his feet with the flames inside. He sighed in his heart: "In the past, the place where I was always brightly lit, but now, I am trapped in this darkness."

"Master, are you very pious when Qiufeng Church is doing this evening's preaching?" After putting down the rickshaw, Zhou Lizai, who ran over happily, interrupted Fang Bingsheng's melancholy.

"Ah!...ah...ah...ah...is not bad..." Looking at Wang Yan's face next to him, Fang Bingsheng stuttered a few times, then he reacted and asked back, "Pastor Wang, it's dark now, are you preaching?"

"Yes, because the villagers nearby are too busy, working in factories or shops from morning to daytime, and have no time to listen to sermons; some time is just after get off work, so my cousin, Elder Wang Xintai, decided to increase the sermons at night so that these lambs can also hear the gospel of Jesus." Wang Yan replied with a smile.

"Oh." Fang Bingsheng nodded. This area is an industrial area, with most residents being workers. Now the normal working hours of the factory are usually 12 hours. Of course, if you work from five in the morning to five in the evening, your wife and neighbors may gossip and even scold you: You don't work overtime, you don't seek motivation, you don't pursue overtime pay! When can your family move from the shack to the wooden building? Look at the person who works for 14 hours a day, but he ends up becoming a foreman? I heard that he has set up a large mansion for his hometown, and when he goes home, he is held like a grandfather by his fellow tribe, and the children are all good families...

This is the culture here.

No matter how cruel the system in the factory is, the foreman's whip can only remove your skin; and the omnipresent whip of culture will suck your heart.

Therefore, workers actually worked for a long time, and many people worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and were praised by neighbors and neighbors. The people who came to propose marriage collapsed the straw mat in the shack.

Factory owners like Christianity because Christians, especially Protestants, are hardworking and not lazy, so they even ask pastors to preach in the factory, with the motivation to not delay production.

But what if the factory owner doesn't invite a pastor?

Unless the worker is particularly pious and squeezes out time to go there, it is difficult for him to have time to listen to the preaching.

Fang Bingsheng had heard his son come back and say: When he heard Elder Wang quarrel with people, he said that the people who came from being too poor, either beggars or females, without workers, this would not work.

Jesus taught believers not to care about the treasures on earth, but no church can do much without money.

Workers are the celebrity class of Shiligou: although they may live in shacks, their income is not low, and even relatively high-paying classes, the church must strive for it.

Fang Bingsheng was very clear about the above judgment and admired the strategy of Qiufeng Church - no matter how hard the workers work, how ruthless the factory owners are. Working for 14 hours or 16 hours, you are always free at dinner time. Whether you say it for a break or say "leave the air", they will always leave the factory and walk around outside, blow the air and drink. The preaching at this time really grasps the lifeline of this area.

"So smart..." Fang Bingsheng gave Wang Yan a thumbs up, suddenly realized that he had said the wrong thing. He should say the same thing from another perspective. He hurriedly stopped and changed his words: "Qiufeng Church is really a good shepherd of God. How many lost lambs have you served like this? I don't have time to listen to the sermon at work. I can come to listen to God's words in the future if I have nothing to do! Thank you so much. Hallelujah, this is all God's grace to Shiligou."

This was so powerful that when he heard these words, Wang Yan, the young man who looked young and tender, grinned at the ear. He waved his hands repeatedly and said, "We must work hard. It is God's grace that gives Elder Wang this wisdom..."

"What is the lights on there?" Fang Bingsheng ignored Wang Yan's modesty. He saw a strange place in the south: it seemed like he had hung a torch on several wooden pillars and lit a bonfire, and surrounded people in a shady circle. A man stood on a pile of boxes and was talking excitedly. It was too far away and he could not hear any sound. He could only see the man and his projection, like a dancing elf born in the firelight.

Wang Yan looked along Fang Bingsheng's finger, then his face changed, and said, "Tan... don't worry about him..." Then he hurriedly reached into his robe and pulled out a pocket watch. The protective shell of the pocket watch was opened by Wang Yan's thumb. With a crisp "bang", he continued to look at the dial with a fire, pulling Fang Bingsheng and said, "It's six-thirty now, the young men, and the school is over at 7 o'clock. Why don't you sit down and listen to the preaching first? It's our elder Wang Xintai who preaches himself. It's the end soon, don't worry, haha."

"Master, you are sharp-eyed!" Zhou Lizai next to him said in a thief manner.

"What does it mean?" Fang Bingsheng had some meaning that monks couldn't touch their heads.

At this time, Wang Yan gently pulled Fang Bingsheng's arm and asked in the door, knowing that he was an "uninvited guest" - someone wanted to invite Li Zai, but Li Zai got him over casually. This way, it was not easy to refuse, so he could only follow the guests.

Fang Bingsheng followed Wang Yan to the preaching meeting, and looked at Wang Yan's pocket watch stuffed into his arms with the brighter fire. He casually found the topic and said politely: "Pastor Wang, your pocket watch is very good, high-end goods."

This pocket watch is absolutely expensive to make such a crisp sound when opening the case.

"Ha, how can you see the eyes of people like you who have seen the world like this? This is what my cousin doesn't need to give me. Those who serve God are poor, but they need to teach around and need to seize the time, so he gave it to me. The old one, he said it was worth only five or six yuan." Wang Yan laughed.

"You dare to tell me five or six yuan in person. If it is six yuan, I will charge as much as you have! The pastor lied to others in person?" Fang Bingsheng shouted in his heart. He turned his head to look in surprise. The other party's expression was very sincere, and he didn't seem to be fooling him. Fang Bingsheng was stunned for a moment and shut up in confusion.

After entering the gate of Qiufeng Church, I took less than two steps to reach the wooden shed and was the preaching hall. In fact, it was considered an open-air preaching hall:

The carriages and horses were originally parked at a length of dozens of meters and a width of dozens of meters. All the sheds were covered. Looking around, they were neatly timbered wooden pillars. Although each wooden pillar was crooked and the worst wood, so many were placed together so neatly, but they were as neat as the tree-shaded trees on the Imperial Avenue;

At the farthest point is a square wooden platform, half a meter high, which is the priest's sermon;

Between the entrance and the pulpit, bamboo baskets filled with soil were pressed upside down to the ground. Each two or three bamboo baskets were long wooden strips spanning the top of which had been smooth and shiny, which was the seats of the audience. From the entrance, the pulpits were neatly arranged in a row of wooden strips and bamboo baskets, layered, making people feel as if they had arrived at a vegetable garden carefully prepared by a farmer.

The wooden strips are also carefully and patiently tied together with cloth strips, and bamboo strips and bamboo baskets filled with soil. This is a must. This area is a treasure pot, but the public security situation is very bad. Anyone, regardless of whether you are a church serving God or not, dares to place human-made things in this place where people are mostly crowded: chairs, benches, and even bamboo tubes, and wooden boards will disappear.

However, Fang Bingsheng was concerned about lighting: in order to preach at night, it seems that Qiufeng Church has invested a lot of money: torches or foreign oil lamps are tied to the pillars, in front of the jury, in order for everyone to see the preacher clearly, two large iron barrels were even placed around the podium, and the bonfire ignited by coal and firewood was burning:

In the darkness, light appears precious;

In secular considerations, the light in the night is not as simple as praying that God will give the house some light before going to bed, so that he can see the face of his father who has never seen him in the daytime. There are neither clear springs nor pick up firewood or trees here! The water, firewood, kerosene, and coal in the slum are all commodities. The slum is bare and only people!

In addition to silver dollar bills, the things that can shine in the slums: candles, vegetable oil, firewood, coal, kerosene, and even pieces of paper, cloth heads, and wooden blocks, all of them are money!

The brightness of the light means how much money you have invested in it.
Chapter completed!