April 1999

Dear Friends,

Every Monday evening, just a stone's throw from the Pacific Ocean, we meet with a group of aboriginal junior and senior high school students in a second-floor room. We sit on the floor and one of the boys leads us in song. It is said that the aboriginal people perfected their voices when they used to have to communicate with neighboring villages by singing from one mountain top to another. These young people love to sing. Because we have several different tribes represented, we use Mandarin Chinese as our common language. After our singing, we study a Bible passage, and most weeks they act out the story. Several of these teenagers come from non-Christian homes, and we are praying that we will come to know the Lord. They then hit the basketball court for a quick game.

Every Wednesday evening in different homes in villages sprinkled along the Pacific coast, we sit on plastic stools for family worship. The geckos or house lizards sing from the windows where they wait to catch a passing mosquito. It is the time each week to pray for different families in each congregation. The week we meet in a family's home, we specifically pray for their needs. Often the needs expressed include concern for children who are working in construction or factories in Taiwan's big cities on the west coast, concern for health, and concern that their walk with the Lord will be strengthened. The homes are very different from the home in which I grew up, and yet I feel very much at home in these family worships. A common hymn that we sing each week is "In Christ, we are all family." The aboriginal Christians have welcomed me as family.

Every other Thursday evening on the ninth floor of a city church in Taipei, high above the roaring traffic below, I meet with thirty business people who are hungry to study theology. They come from their jobs in their suits and carrying their briefcases. They often eat their dinner as class begins. We are studying spiritual formation, and I sense a hunger among the Taiwanese Presbyterians to know more faithfully how to follow Christ. We meet for three hours each time, and I am always amazed by their ability to stay focused. They are seeking to live out their faith in a non-Christian culture where the temptations are great.

Every Sunday morning in a tiny bamboo sanctuary or in a two-story cement church, children gather at 7:30 a.m. for Sunday school. Since many of the children live with their grandparents while their parents work on the west coast, the older siblings have learned to care for their younger brothers and sisters. They come, often wearing pajamas, bright and alert, willing to sing and dance and learn from the Bible. There are not enough teachers for graded classes, so most Sunday school classes have children from age two to age twelve. They too have a hunger to learn about the God who loves them.

Taiwan is a complex place. The church often reflects this complexity. The aboriginal people still face discrimination, but their living conditions have improved dramatically over the past thirty years. One elder recently told me how he had one pair of shoes each year when he was growing up. He would walk barefoot to school to protect the shoes and then put them on at the school door. Today all the children have shoes. They may prefer to go barefoot, but they have shoes. But as the TV commercials sell the products of the "good life," the cost of attaining this good life is often high. Many children only see their parents two or three times a year. An erratic building market forces many young men in their twenties and thirties to return to their villages for two to three months at a time to wait for the next job. Often that time is spent drinking. And yet it is a thrill to see young elders like Elder Hwang. He was recently elected a local governmental representative for his district. He is a faithful Christian and he and his wife and children and mother-in-law all seek to share God's love with others.

So please pray for the people of Taiwan, for the aboriginal people in the rural villages along the Pacific, and for those who have had to leave their homes to find work in the big cities. Please pray for the "plains people" who have acquired the material things which the culture now offers, but who are seeking for something more, for the living water which Christ offers.

As you rise on Easter morning, we will have worshiped about twelve hours before. We will meet on the beach for a sunrise service. The church in Taiwan will proclaim the same resurrection, the same hope, and the same promise. May the risen Christ transform your daily life.

In gratitude for our partnership in ministry,

John McCall