Taiwan, continued

Mission workers Choon and Yen Hee Lim’s current assignment is with the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan (PCT)’s Aboriginal College Ministry, work that Choon initiated for the PCT in September 1999. Once several student groups had been formed, Choon brought them together to work in establishing the Hualien Aboriginal Campus Ministry (HACM). Then, Choon began to invest more time working with the pastors of the Ami tribe. He organized a Bible study in 2004 using “See Through the Scriptures,” which he translated into Mandarin. Choon has worked with all thirteen aboriginal peoples, but he has focused primarily on his work with the Ami and Taroko tribes.

Yen Hee, a registered nurse, works at Bethesda in Hualien, a children’s center for those persons with developmental disabilities and in a mobile clinic of the Mennonite Christian Hospital, through which she travels with the medical staff to remote mountain villages.

Fiji

The Pacific Theological College is in Suva, Fiji’s capital city, on the island of Vitu Levu. It is an ecumenical center for ministerial training in the South Pacific. Its forty-year history began with the help of Pacific-wide participation at the International Missionary Council conferences, held in 1961. The conferences recognized the need for a central institution that would provide theological education at a higher level than was available in the Pacific region at that time. Plans were made then for enlisting the cooperation of all church bodies involved in theological training in the Pacific for a central educational institution.

The participating churches that gave the initial formal agreement and support for the founding of the Pacific Theological College were from four denominational traditions: Anglican, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian/Reformed. Lutherans and churches representing unions among various traditions have also supported the college. Several traditions are represented on the College Council, the governing body of the college.