V. Four Missions
“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; Your descendents will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”
Isaiah 54:2-3
The Hulin Street Taipei Mission
One day, I was reading the newspaper and I noticed a new community developing in the Hulin Street area in Taipei. There was an advertisement for property on sale. I thought there must be a need for new post offices, banks, elementary schools, and so forth in such a big new community. I thought there was an especially great need for spiritual guidance and this would be a great opportunity for our church to start a mission there to save souls. With such thoughts in mind, I went to inspect the place shortly after the community was completed.
While walking down Hulin Street one day, I happened to see two Christian sisters who were pleased to see me. I asked them why they were there and they told me they had just moved there from Jilun and were looking for a church. I privately thanked God for His guidance to such a coincidental meeting. They told me that if our church would start a mission there, they knew of Christian brothers and sisters in the area who would be willing to pay for part of the rent and utilities.
God had made His intention clear to me and I reported my thoughts in the church deacons’ meeting. Soon, the whole church had unanimously approved of the proposal. A house was rented and the Hulin Street Mission was established. Later, many faithful brothers and sisters continued to contribute to the mission in the form of manpower and money. An old Christian sister, Zhang, and her son-in-law, brother Yu, were especially enthusiastic about the mission. They led the daily early morning prayer meetings for several years and the church members did all the mission work in the Hulin Street Mission. It was finally established as a church in 1982 and a building was purchased for the church site.
After the founding of the Hulin Street Mission, I preached there one Sunday every month. Therefore, there was a close relationship between the MeiRen Baptist Church and the Hulin Baptist Church. The brothers and sisters of the two churches cherished a deep love for one another.
The Kunyang Street Mission
Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I started a Bible study and prayer meeting every Tuesday morning at my house. I fasted and prayed to the Lord for a revival of all the churches. In the beginning, I was the only one there. Later, a sister and former classmate from Taiwan Baptist Seminary, named Yongyin Shaoyuan joined me in praying. We would first read and study a chapter from the Bible before our prayer. Gradually, more and more people joined us from different churches.
One day, a sister named Xia from the Taipei Zhengyi Baptist Church came to the prayer meeting. After the meeting, she told me she had started a Children’s Sunday school program in a brother’s house on Kungyang Street in the district of NanGong. Since there wasn’t a church nearby, many children came to attend Sunday school there. However, this brother was planning to move to Taipei and the church was unwilling to take over the Sunday school program. She asked me what she should do and I told her the children needed to hear the Gospel, so the Sunday school program should not be stopped.
I told Xia to rent a house to continue the Sunday school program and I would come up with the rent one way or another. So, she went ahead, rented the house and continued the work. I reported this to the church deacons at one of their meetings and a motion was immediately suggested and passed that MeiRen Baptist Church should start a mission at Kunyang Street in NanGong so we could take care of the kids in the Sunday school. After Xia went back to serve at the Zhengyi Baptist Church, the Kunyang Street Mission was formally established and a student from the Taiwan Baptist Seminary would take care of the mission work. A new site for the church was later purchased in 1982.
The people in that area were extremely superstitious. Almost every house displayed idols for worship. Later, I learned that various Christian denominations had made many attempts to carry out the gospel work but all had failed. We succeeded by relying on the Lord because we firmly believed our Heavenly Father was Almighty and would surely bless His holy work.
The Muzha Mission
Four Christian sisters from Muzha attended the Tuesday prayer meetings at my house. In order to get to my house, they had to take the local bus from Muzha and then make other transfers to reach Taipei. I asked them if there were any churches close to where they lived and their answer was, “no.” The Holy Spirit moved me at that time to start a mission in the Muzha area.
With the sisters’ help, I went to inspect the few communities in the Muzha area. I asked them to look for a house that was for sale or for rent and if they would be willing to attend the meetings. I also asked if they would provide their services if we started a mission there. They all answered yes. Soon, sister Yu from the Grace Baptist Church in Taipei found a one story house in Muzha for sale. When I saw that everything was in place, I discussed whether or not to start a mission in the Muzha area with the deacons, brothers and sisters at the church. The MeiRen Baptist Church had always been enthusiastic about spreading the gospel, so they approved of the plan unanimously and assigned brother Wucheng Jiang and his wife, Linlin Chen, to take responsibility of the new mission work. After the mission site was chosen, I led groups of brothers and sisters from the church on a visit to the site. We went to the nearby neighbors to tell them of the Gospel and passed out gospel tracts. We would go visit any family willing to accept us. Soon, we prepared to start our first evangelical meeting there, with me as the speaker.
Buddhism was very deeply rooted in the Muzha area and the Zhinangong was a very prosperous temple popular in that area. It was only natural that Satan would not admit defeat easily when we held our evangelical meetings.
On the day of the first meeting, sister Jingzhi Liu and I had scheduled a prayer meeting for the afternoon at the mission site. Shortly after we arrived, and just as we were in the middle of preparing, a ferocious and violent man came in. The moment he came in, he asked if we had any Bibles, and when we handed him a new Bible, he immediately began to tear it up. Not only did he tear that Bible into pieces, he also picked up another and started tearing it. We were both stunned, and only then did we realize he was the servant of the demons sent to obstruct God’s holy work. We watched him tear the recently donated Bibles and hymnbooks into pieces, one after another. I asked him to leave, but he not only ignored my request, he started getting even more violent. He turned over chairs and the heavy piano, and he smashed the chairs into the glass windows and doors. The situation was extremely dangerous; I dragged sister Liu and sneaked out while praying and ran to a neighbor’s house to borrow a phone to call the police. Soon, the police officers came and took him away and they told us he was mentally ill.
The meeting was scheduled to begin soon, but the site was in total chaos. Fortunately, God inspired many people to help us clean up the glass-covered floor. They picked up the torn Bibles and hymnbooks and restored the piano to its original position. A church brother said, “Mrs. Liu, let’s just cancel the meeting for tonight!” I insisted, saying, “Absolutely not! The meeting is to begin as scheduled.” Miraculously, many people attended the meeting. Although all the Bibles and the hymnbooks were torn, the gospel continued to spread. Many people made their decision to believe in Jesus as their personal savior and follow Him as their Lord. God’s holy work at the Muzha Mission had formally begun.
Years later, a new church building site was purchased. That partly happened through the devoted work of Pastor Wucheng Jiang and his wife. Later, Pastor Tianming Jiang and his wife took over. The church work became better day by day, and now there are normally more than a hundred people attending the Sunday services at the Muzha Baptist Church. There are various types of mission activities and this church has been greatly blessed by our God.
The Neihu Branch of MeiRen Baptist Church
I went to one of the annual meetings of the Taiwan Baptist Convention in Lingtou. During the meeting, it was especially emphasized that all the churches should make a greater effort in starting more evangelical missions. I was really touched by this remark. I also ran into sister Buyan Yi Liu, who was a member of the Taipei JenAi Baptist Church. She was also a loyal attendee at the Tuesday prayer meeting in my house. I knew that she had bought a house in the Neihu area not long ago, yet she still went to the JenAi church for Sunday Services. I discussed the possibility of starting a mission at Neihu with her and I asked her to pray about it.
After I went back to the church, I continued to pray because I was aware of two uncertainties to consider. First, there was already a Baptist church in the Neihu area called the Neihu Baptist church, led by Pastor Huiyi Lu, though not many people were attending the services. Second, the Taipei Song’en Baptist Church also was planning to start a mission in the Neihu area. After several discussions with the church workers, we came to the conclusion that the Neihu area was very large and we could start our work a certain distance away from the Neihu Baptist Church. Later, we heard that the Song’en Baptist Church had given up the plan to start a new work there, so after those uncertainties were cleared, a Committee for the Establishment of the Neihu Branch of the MeiRen Baptist Church was set up and led by Pastor Barker, an American missionary. Through the assistance of a church sister, Buyan Yi Liu, I made a special trip to Neihu and rented the house for the branch church.
After the branch church started, it received abundant blessings from the Lord. The number of attendees increased day by day. Besides purchasing the church site and the pastor’s residence, the church even purchased an entire modern audio sound system. Presently, Sunday services are held in two sessions with more than a hundred attendees. Indeed, it is a church filled with the Holy Spirit.
Encouraging Church Members to Full-Time Christian Service
While I was leading the church, we would host a yearly Mission Week where our purpose was to give our church members an opportunity to learn about the needs for mission work. The needs were not only in our own area and our own church; they were in other areas in our country and abroad. I would call on the church members to dedicate themselves to the preaching of the Gospel, especially the young people. There were many who dedicated their lives to mission work on those occasions and God has been leading them every step of the way. Especially the young people from the Taipei MeiRen Baptist Church and its four branch churches, who dedicated dozens of young people to serve during that time. Among them, some stayed in various churches in Taiwan to serve the Lord while others were sent to the U.S., Germany, and other countries. No matter where they were, they all served the Lord wholeheartedly. Now that I am 92, I can’t go to visit each one of them in their own churches and Bible studies. Nevertheless, I often pray for each of them by name and I ask the Lord to put them to important use.
Once, two middle-aged men came to my house to visit me. One of the men said his friend would like to hear the Gospel, so, I introduced the Gospel to him and led him in a prayer in accepting Jesus as his Savior. A few years went by and I heard he had gone back to Taipei and was attending services at LingLiang (Bread of Life) Church. He was very active in seeking the truth of God and in spreading the Gospel. Later, he accepted the position of a preacher at a church in Seoul, Korea. Then, he came to the U.S. and started a Mandarin-speaking Christian mission work in San Francisco and he is a very faithful pastor today.
In a nutshell, God made me realize that as long as we faithfully do His work in leading others to Christ, He will make sure that those followers will continue to grow spiritually and He will use them.