November 8, 2007

Our 10th year of mission work in Taiwan

Dear Friends,

Choon Lim speaking at a welcoming service for new students in 2007.

On July 25, 2007, we celebrated our tenth anniversary of coming to Taiwan. Including our time as missionaries in Korea, it is our sixteenth year in mission service. Looking back at what we have been through, we see God’s grace and mercy in our mission work. Visitors or supporting churches often ask us how we started campus ministries in Hualien, Taiwan. We answer without hesitation that it is the grace of God.

After completing two years of Mandarin language study in Taipei, the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) asked us to move to Hualien to plant a campus ministry. The PCT introduced us to aboriginal pastors and several college students in Hualien, but it didn’t work out well. With disappointment, we continually prayed and sought God’s help. Then one day we went to the Presbyterian Church of the Tai-Chang Amis tribe to attend a worship service and met Komod, a student from National Teachers College. He asked Choon to visit his aboriginal college meeting in his school. Choon and Komod prayed together that a new Christian group would be formed in his school. Later, Komod brought his aboriginal friends to the mission center for the Aboriginal College Ministry. That small group became the first Christian campus ministry group in Hualien. Now, more than twenty students gather in the mission center for the Bible study and other activities every Friday. Komod became the group leader and the first chairperson of the Aboriginal College Committee to which each six college Christian groups each send two representatives.

Worship service in 2007 to welcome new students to the Hualien Campus Ministry Center.

God’s grace also intervened in a Christian group at Buddhist Nursing College. Choon wanted to plant a Christian group there, but he didn’t know what to do. One day he met a nursing student in a print shop. She saw that he was copying gospel songs, and she asked him if he would teach her an English gospel song. Choon said he would if she brought friends to the center. The following week she brought two students to our center. That small group has now become the largest Christian group in Hualien. We have more than seventy students in this group, which is called Pan-shi, or “Rock.”

As you can see from our testimony, it is all God’s grace. God uses us to do God’s work. We humbly become God’s instruments to expand the Kingdom of God in Hualien. We also see that God has used you to help us to do this mission work here. Therefore, we give thanks to God first and then to you.

Perhaps you have already heard about “Mission Challenge ’07.” For four weeks in October 48 PC(USA) missionaries fanned out across the United States to share their witness of how God works in the world. One missionary spent a week in 144 presbyteries of the PC(USA), making this by far the largest event of its kind. The purpose of MC07 is to connect PC(USA) missionaries with PC (USA) churches. Our PC (USA) put a great effort into this so that more churches can be involved in supporting PC(USA) missionaries.

Again, we thank you for faithfully supporting us. We also believe God has blessed you abundantly because you have obeyed Jesus’ great commission to spread the good news to the end of the world. We wish you a very blessed and spirit-filled Thanksgiving and Christmas no matter where you are. We sincerely pray that the blessing of Emmanuel be with you always now, in 2008, and forever.

Faithfully in mission,

Yen Hee and Choon Lim from Hualien, Taiwan

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 253