{FECA Vision Choir} Report 1

Saturday July 20

After an uneventful flight, we arrived in Taiwan a few minutes after 5 AM, passed through immigration and picked up our luggage by 6:40.  Charmaine, Tania and their mother were waiting outside for us and Josh arrived a few minutes before 7.  We said goodbye to the Epicentre team led by Ben Hui (who were transferring to a flight to Indonesia) and the TWSTM team, Pastor Joshua Cheng, Alan Liang et.al. who were going to Taichung, and boarded our bus for Zuodong, arriving at the church hosting us at 8:30.  Pastor Chou greeted us warmly as we settled in.  At 10:30 we met up with Tina from last year and several young people from Pastor Chou's church, 3 of his children and 4 others, although 3 of them have to return to school or Army next week.  But we played icebreaker games to bridge the shyness of these newcomers.  After lunch, they were emboldened enough to sing, and we practiced John 14:6 and Lamb of God because we have been asked to sing 3 songs at the service tomorrow.  We then started preparation of the American holidays lesson plans for teaching next week.  

We found out from Pastor Chou that it takes a long time to convert the youth here.  Many of them have been attending the youth group here for years, but will not be baptized until they are over 18 years of age.  Even Pastor Chou's father, who became a believer years ago, had to run away from home as his father vowed to kill him for becoming a believer.  Like the Yazidis in northern Iraq, rejecting the family faith is tantamount to rejecting the family or the tribe.  There is great sadness when a son believes Jesus, even an adult son as the parents feel no one will honor them.  So in this culture, when the father of the family comes to faith, the family also does the same.  We ate dinner, had our group devotions, and Pastor Chou officially welcomed us, and told us a little about how his church was started some sixty years ago by Korean Presbyterian missionaries.  We then heard the testimony of a Korean missionary to China who was recently asked to leave.  She challenged us as Chinese to be the next people group to replace Koreans as world missionaries.  We then retired for the day, having slept little in the last 50 hours.