VII. Ten Years in Colorado

Acts 1:8

After I immigrated to the U.S., I first lived for awhile at my son’s home in California. I got in touch with Pastor Nantian Lin who used to be a colleague of mine at the Huaining Baptist Church in Taiwan. He was now at the Chinese Baptist church at the western end of Los Angeles and he invited me to his church to witness God’s grace. He asked if I was going to settle down in Los Angeles and serve the Lord there and he offered to help me find a place to stay while my husband was still working in Taipei. I told him that I preferred to have a house near a university campus because I felt obliged to help the Chinese students that had come to Los Angeles. He showed some hesitation after hearing my request because the price is very high for both leasing and purchasing near the campuses. I had to give up the idea.

On a trip to San Diego to preach at a gospel meeting, I stayed at a God-loving Christian’s house. He said to me, “Liu Shimu (Honorable Mrs. Liu) there is a great need for your services in the Chinese churches here. Why don’t you settle down here and I will volunteer to drive you to home visits, Gospel preaching and leading people to come to the Lord?” I told him that if I could rent or buy a house near a university campus, I would be willing to settle down there and work with him. He too showed signs of hesitation because housing near campuses was expensive.

Later, I moved from Los Angeles to Boulder, Colorado and I lived in my daughter’s home. Their house was spacious and comfortable. The only inconvenience was that it was too hard for me to have any contact with other people, especially Chinese-speaking people. Limited by my inability to drive, all I could do was walk around in the neighborhood or chat with my friends over the phone. Rarely would I get a chance to preach the Gospel or lead people to come to the Lord. Quite unexpectedly, I lived in that city for ten years and started the Boulder Chinese Mission. Thinking back, I realized that it all had been arranged by God a long time ago.

My son-in-law, Tsai-Chuan Mar (Robert T. Mar) worked at IBM in Boulder. They lived in the suburb near Boulder. Many professors, students, researchers, and visiting scholars from all over the world lived in Boulder. There was the University of Colorado, NCAR (National Center of Atmospheric Research), NOAR (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Research), and other federal research organizations besides IBM. The city is blessed with beautiful scenery, fresh air, blue skies and white clouds.

At that time, there wasn’t a Chinese church in Boulder, only a Bible study group every Friday evening hosted in turns by Chinese Christians. The group was led by brother Guozhi Du, with only five to six people participating every session. My daughter was one of them and since they knew that I lived at my daughter’s home, they would often ask me to preach at their Bible studies. Later, the Bible study was held in two different areas and a monthly meeting was held in my daughter’s home. I would preach at those meetings and the number of participants grew gradually. During one of those meetings, it was suggested that we would have a pot-luck at the next meeting. I seconded the idea by suggesting we should invite non-Christians to come too. They all said, “Impossible, impossible.” They had tried inviting those people before, but nobody would come. I also realized that by having Bible study meetings at Christian homes, it was indeed inconvenient to invite newcomers. We should find a different location for the meetings.

At that time, my husband was planning to come to the U.S. and we needed a home of our own. We prayed to God and asked Him to prepare one for us and, thanks to our miraculous God, we bought a two bedroom condo in downtown Boulder near the University of Colorado (CU) for only $50,000. The bus stop was right around the corner from the condo and I could freely visit, shop and preach the Gospel. What a miraculous arrangement God prepared for us! As soon as my husband arrived in the U.S., we moved to our new home and my dream of living near a university campus finally came through. “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27).

After we moved to our new home, we began to participate in the meetings of the International Students Inc. (ISI) at CU where I met a lot of Chinese students. I wrote down their names and phone numbers and I told them there would soon be similar meetings in Chinese and all of them were invited. Everyone was looking forward to it. All the meetings held by ISI were in English. That made it very difficult for the Chinese students to understand, especially with issues of religious beliefs. The main motivation for them to participate in those meetings was to learn English in conversation.

The Boulder ISI meetings were originally held in the University Lutheran Chapel on the CU campus and we later moved on to a different location. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I went to visit the Pastor of the Lutheran Chapel and I requested the use of the activity center in the Chapel as a meeting place for a monthly Chinese Gospel meeting. I would be personally responsible for the rent and my request was approved and the Chinese Language Gospel meetings started. The meetings included singing hymns, giving testimonies, Gospel preaching, pot-luck dinners and social time. The Christians in the Bible study group took on many duties. They chaired the meetings, led the hymnal singing, prepared the food, greeted the guests, and so forth. I was mainly responsible for preparing the programs, preaching, inviting and counseling. Initially, my husband, my daughter and her husband, and their two daughters participated in different duties. Those included cleaning the site, laying out the chairs, preparing tea and food, etc. In my letter of invitation, I named the meeting “Chinese Language Gospel Meeting,” and welcomed all Chinese-speaking people to come. The meeting wasn’t limited to students, but also many Chinese people who had become American citizens.

At the first meeting, there were more than ten newcomers besides the Christian brothers and sisters from the Bible study group. More than half the newcomers had never heard of the name of Jesus Christ before. This really lifted everyone’s morale. Most of the non-Christian participants didn’t have a Bible. For each meeting, I prepared my lecture outlines and listed all the related excerpts from the Bible. The purpose of those outlines was to make it possible for the attendees to take it home and memorize the Bible verses.

There was a time when a lady PhD candidate was returning to China to visit her relatives and she asked me to make a copy of all the outlines of my lectures and all the hymns so she could give them to her sons to read. I began to give out Bibles or hymnals to the regular non-Christians for them to take home.

The Chinese Language Gospel meetings were held in Boulder for a total of nine years. The number of attendees grew continuously until it reached a maximum of seventy. Aside from the original members of the Bible study group, the regular participants were mostly Ph.D. candidates and their families from Taiwan and mainland China. There were also temporary students who were visiting and staying for half a year to a year. The pot luck dinners and social times after each meeting were always filled with joy and happiness. There were only a few Chinese restaurants in Boulder and the pot lucks provided people with a chance to taste home cooking, listen to their home language, exchange information on job hunting and other topics.

When the Chinese traditional Spring Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival arrived, many students would forget about them due to the lack of a lunar calendar. My husband and I would prepare some home cooking and invite those students who were away from home to our home and enjoy the food together. We would chat and take pictures which relieved their homesickness to an extent. Over the years, we made a lot of friends from places such as Taiwan, Beijing, Northeast China, Shanghai, Xinjiang, Canton, and even Tibet. Thinking back, every bit of it was so dear to me.

Every time I finished preaching, I would ask the people to bow their heads and close their eyes to pray. I would ask those who were willing to accept the blessings of our Savior to follow me in a prayer of accepting the Lord. I never asked them to acknowledge their faith in Jesus Christ publicly, because many of them would go back to China soon. I wasn’t sure if there was a “special agent” of the Chinese government among the attendees.  So I didn’t want to risk exposing anyone during the meetings and I prohibited picture taking. Those who would want to pursue more on the issue of beliefs were invited to come to a private session where I made myself available to answer their questions.

Through the Chinese Language Gospel Meetings, God opened doors to the existence of two Chinese churches in Boulder.

The first Chinese church in Boulder was the Boulder Evangelical Free Bible Chinese Church. Its foundation had a close relationship with the Chinese Language Gospel meetings.

            There were more and more Chinese people coming to Boulder for work or study. The church took their advice and invited Pastor Daheng Chow for the holy work. He had been serving at the Chinese Evangelical Church in Canada. After he arrived in Boulder, a Christian brother named Nelson Tsao Wu accompanied him to visit me. The purpose was to determine whether the Chinese church should be set up by the Evangelical Free Bible Church as the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting had already assumed the initial form of a church.

            If the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting planned to be organized as a church, the Evangelical Free Bible Church wouldn’t have to organize another Chinese church. Pastor Chow wouldn’t have to serve there. I told him that my responsibility was to spread the Gospel and I had no intention of starting a church. I extended my welcome to him to come to Boulder and do church work. We prayed together after the conversation. After Pastor Chow came, the families of the Bible study group and the people who had recently become Christians joined as initial members of the church. My daughter and her husband had always attended services at a Presbyterian church and so, they did not attend that church. However, we kept encouraging the Chinese at the Chinese Language Gospel Meetings to participate in the church. The monthly meetings at the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting continued uninterrupted and Pastor Chow and his wife always came to the meetings to lend a helping hand. The second Chinese church was the Boulder Chinese Baptist Church. The foundation of this church had a close relationship with me. It has been steadily blessed with God’s guidance.

            I was unable to drive after I arrived in Boulder. I had regularly attended the Presbyterian Church with my daughter and her husband. Every Thursday, I participated in a small group Bible study hosted by the pastor of the Southern Hills Baptist Church. The pastor knew I was leading the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting. One day, he took one colleague to visit me at my home. He was assigned especially for missionary work with foreigners. They showed great attention to the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting and asked about the needs of the Chinese people in Boulder. I told them there were about 1,000 people from Taiwan, mainland China, Singapore, and other places. I told them they had a great need for the gospel, continuing education and guidance. They were moved after listening to me. They invited Dr.Peter Chen from the Home Mission Board to come to Boulder to lead a few days of evangelical meetings at their church. Meanwhile, they asked me to accompany Dr. Chen to visit the Chinese families. At that time there were three dormitory communities for the University of Colorado in Boulder for families and faculty members. There were quite a few Chinese students, faculty members, scholars and their families. I also invited Pastor Chen to come to the Chinese Language Gospel Meetings to preach. When he saw there were 40 to 50 people attending, he was greatly encouraged. He decided to start Chinese services at the Southern Hills Baptist church. He helped to invite Pastor Yi Hu for the holy work.

            The Boulder Chinese Baptist Church was founded in the fall of 1990 and its members were mostly from the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting. The Chinese Language Gospel Meeting lasted for some time after both Chinese churches came to being. We encouraged members of our group to go either to the Chinese Evangelical Church or the Chinese Baptist church or other true doctrine churches.

            Since the two Chinese churches were well established, I decided to pass on the work of the Chinese Language Gospel Meeting to the Chinese Baptist Church in August 1995. The Evangelical Church had invited Brother Lu and his wife in addition to Pastor Chow and his wife to do the holy work. The Boulder Chinese Baptist Church had Mr. and Mrs. Qiaofeng Zhu after Pastor Hu resigned and I was assisting them. By July 1996, the Baptist Church felt the inconvenience of renting the space from the Lutheran University Chapel for the Gospel meetings. They decided to move them to their own church. God has never stopped giving His blessings to the Gospel Meetings.
 

            One day, while I was staying in Boulder, I received a call from brother Yaohuang Chen. He was a member of the Bible study group in Ft. Collins and he told me their group had started Sunday services, but they didn’t have a pastor. He invited me to go over to preach and I accepted with great joy, for the Lord had opened up another door for evangelism. During the years that followed, on the third Sunday of every month, I would go preach at the Ft. Collins Chinese Sunday Worship.

            In those years, I witnessed to a lot of non-Christian attendees who decided to follow the Lord. Meanwhile, I established a profound fellowship with several of the founders of the mission. Later, the mission formally established into a church and invited Mr. and Mrs. Toying as preachers. Since they had rented the meeting place from the Faith Evangelical Free Bible Church for a long time, the church gave them financial assistance. The Chinese Sunday Service was formally named the Ft. Collins Chinese Evangelical Church. That was the third Chinese church I was involved in setting up after I arrived in Boulder.

            I frequently visited the Chinese churches in Denver (for some time, they didn’t have their own pastor) and churches in other states to witness for the Lord. It was very convenient to take the bus to Denver or to the airport. I could always find somebody to drive me to Ft. Collins and one of the Christian brothers would send me back to Boulder after the meetings. The travel time gave us an opportunity to communicate with each other on spiritual, family or work issues. Thinking back on those days, I can’t help feeling the wonders of God’s arrangements. I still had many opportunities to serve the Lord through preaching in those ten years.

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