April 9, 2002

Dear Friends,

On Easter Sunday, March 31, we were terrified by a deadly earthquake. That day I preached and baptized three children at one of the aboriginal churches. This was the first baptism I have done in Taiwan. I was excited and worried, but Yen Hee told me that I did fairly well. I must have done quite well because she usually does not give me a good grade. While I was driving on the local road I felt something strange and saw that the cars parked on the street were rocking back and forth. I stopped my car right away and my car also was rocking. I didn’t know what to do, so I prayed silently. It seemed like the rocking lasted a long time.

Hualien is an earthquake-prone place. This time the epicenter was in our Hualien. The earthquake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale and lasted for one minute. Eight people died and more than 300 were wounded. Many buildings house were destroyed. It was a terrifying experience for us, and we kept saying, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" Thank God we were out of our house. Otherwise, it would have scared us more. Our house wasn’t damaged except that a picture fell off the wall and broke and the tiles on our walls are cracked more. On September 21, 1999, we had a 7.3-magnitude earthquake. That was the earthquake that cracked the tiles, but our landlord didn’t want to fix them because he’d have to re-do the whole room. And we didn’t want to change houses just because of this problem. So we still have the wall cracked by the 1999 earthquate, but we are safe. We are used to earthquakes now. Please keep praying for us.

On that Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We sang hymns such as "Hallelujah, He is Risen." The feast of the Resurrection is more than just the proof of Jesus’s claim to be the Christ. His resurrection is the promise of our eternal life. It gives hope to all people and removes the ills of human life such as pain and death from the condition of eternity, where death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more.

Because Christ rose, our joy never ends. The risen Lord gives us joy and new life in any circumstances. "Hallelujah, He is Risen." Amen.

Our aboriginal campus ministry is expanding and does lots of activities. Representatives of six colleges get together once each month to plan monthly activities. In March, we published our student body’s newsletter. We sent it to more than 400 aboriginal churches in Taiwan and to all the college students in the six colleges. We also did a volleyball tournament. This is the first sporting event we have done since establishing our student board. Four colleges participated in it, and they had a good time of fellowship and competition. My teachers college group won first place. The students from the Buddhist nursing college couldn’t find male students to play, so they gave up.

On April 27 and 28, we are going to do a special praise night at the Bunong church. It takes about two hours to get there by car. On Saturday night we will do praise night and then stay over until Sunday, when I will preach. On May 18 and 19 we will be in Heavenly Mountain to train our student officials. We have invited a special speaker who has worked as a director of campus ministry for more than 20 years. I felt our officials needed to be trained, including myself. Please pray for these events so that we all can be better equipped to be God’s servants.

Yen Hee works for the campus ministry as a chef. She prepares food for the students. They don’t wait for the Bible study, but for a good meal. Her ministry has been very effective. Besides cooking, she also works for the mobile health clinic and with disabled children. For the mobile health clinic, she has to take a two-hour ride by van to a Peace mountain village. She works there as a nurse. In her work with disabled children, she helps feed and bathe them and change their position in bed. It is a very depressing job, but with God’s love she’s glad to take care of them.

Again, we thank you for your prayers and support. With your support we can share God’s love with people in Taiwan. We truly believed that those who sow in tears will reap songs of joy (Psalms 126:5).

In His Service,

Yen Hee and Choon Lim from Hualien

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 187