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Thursday, July 25, 1996
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Wednesday, September 13, 1995
post-China thanks
September 13, 1995
Dearest Brothers and Sisters:
Greetings to you again in Christ our Lord!
It’s hard to believe that it was only about four months since I last wrote you, and it’s even harder to believe that it has already been almost a month since I returned to the United States from China. How time flies!
I hope you will forgive me for the lateness of this letter. When I last wrote you in the letter dated May 15th, I was in the UCR/UCLA seven‑year Biomedical Sciences program. This summer I discovered that I wasn’t accepted into the fourth year. Thus, before my senior year at UC Riverside begins, I’m trying to complete as many medical school applications as possible. God willing, I will be attending med‑school next fall.
Just as I wrote to you before, God has been good! I feel that I can especially say so for His faithfulness to His own this summer. It was a blessedly awesome experience I’ll never forget!
I had entered into this summer’s adventure rather naively. When I thought that I would be a missionary in China, I was shown that I would more accurately be an ambassador for Christ, what some people call a “tentmaker.” The organization I worked with, Educational Services International (ESI), in dealing with the Communist Chinese government, identifies itself as a blatantly Christian ‑‑ but not missions ‑‑ organization. My job in China was to teach English and teach it well, and in so doing I was to show who Christ is and be ready to answer questions about Him.
We had to deal with the reality of China. Not only is atheism promoted as the official “religion” of China, but missions, particularly Christian missions, are also seen as a remnant of the nation’s humiliating eras of imperialism and colonialism, and as a possible threat to China’s sovereign government. Thus one of our goals was to be sure that our Christian faith is separate from our culture. Certainly we know that “Christian” doesn’t mean “American” nor vice‑versa, but this is what we had to show the Chinese people. They didn’t have to become American if they wanted to become a Christian. Christianity could be just as much a part of China as tofu or chopsticks!
This summer for a month‑and‑a‑half, nine other teachers and I each taught three classes, our own homeroom and two others, at the Hubei College of Education in Wuhan. (Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, located in the central region of China along the Yangtze River.) Each of our classes consisted of sixteen students who were primarily middle‑school English teachers themselves, and on the average they were older than I. What a privilege it was for me to be their teacher and to become their friends. They were particularly impressed with our teamwork, diligence, and patience. Knowing that we were Christians, some of them had the boldness to ask about it. Some went to church for the first time with us; for some we were the first Christians they had ever met; we gave some of them the Bibles we had brought. Near the end of the experience in response to many compliments they had lavished upon us (as it seems the Chinese do unto their teachers), I stated, “Please do not think that I am the way I am because of my own efforts. It’s not even because of my parents ‑‑ I do have good parents ‑‑ or because I’m American, but it’s because of God.” I pray that they took that to heart.
From God’s word in the third chapter of First Corinthians we know that in the “field” of lost souls, some workers are assigned to sow into people’s hearts the seed of His word. Others are called to nurture the ensuing plant. Still others are to reap the fruit of salvation. Though we did experience some sowing and reaping, much of our work instead dealt with the even earlier work of “breaking rocks,” the tearing down of obstacles blocking out God’s word, so that the “soil” of their hearts would be prepared and ready for the next step in God’s plan for them.
Our work is not yet over. I pray that our commitment did not end when we left Wuhan. As with any friendship, communication is essential, and our team is dedicated to continued correspondence with our students and friends. The Chinese have a saying: “A teacher for a day, a teacher forever.” We are still in a position through letters to plant seeds and nurture plants. May God bless us with being able to someday even reap fruits. It would be greatly appreciated if you could also pray for our continued commitment to loving the lost.
I suppose the main point of this letter is not only to tell you about my summer adventures but also to thank you for being so integral a part in what I believe to be God’s plan for me.
THANK YOU!
“I thank my God every time I remember you.” I don’t think I’d ever felt this sentiment for anyone to the same degree as the apostle Paul felt for the Philippian church (1:3) until I was in China. Every day during my quiet time I thanked the Lord for providing so much support, particularly in the form of brothers and sisters thousands of miles away ‑‑ YOU! ‑‑ who had provided financially and were committed to praying for our ministry.
I reread that last letter which asked for your support, and what awed me was the realization that every single thing that I had asked you to pray for was answered in a positive way! Wisdom and humility were constantly on my mind, and God gave me a team to keep me accountable in this area. I found that it was unusually easy for me to work with others and be flexible in the expectations I had of my teammates and of our accommodations. God showed me more and more how to love my students no matter how lovable they were. And lastly, God had provided enough funds for me to go to China in the first place. At last count, financial support had come in at over $3000!!! You’d better believe it: God is truly faithful!
I feel that it’s my obligation to tell you that since the funds raised exceeded the need, the church has designated the surplus money for future missions trips. If you have any questions or comments about this, please ask me.
Again, I thank you so much for making this summer possible! I hope you are encouraged by this letter. Perhaps you’d like to know more about the organization I worked with or details of the program and/or ministry. If you have any questions, please feel free to write or call. I’d love to hear how you are doing. I’d especially like to know how I may support you in prayer or perhaps even financially for your own endeavors for God.
May God continue to bless you abundantly with His grace.
Another witness to His faithfulness,
Sid Steve Wu
Dearest Brothers and Sisters:
Greetings to you again in Christ our Lord!
It’s hard to believe that it was only about four months since I last wrote you, and it’s even harder to believe that it has already been almost a month since I returned to the United States from China. How time flies!
I hope you will forgive me for the lateness of this letter. When I last wrote you in the letter dated May 15th, I was in the UCR/UCLA seven‑year Biomedical Sciences program. This summer I discovered that I wasn’t accepted into the fourth year. Thus, before my senior year at UC Riverside begins, I’m trying to complete as many medical school applications as possible. God willing, I will be attending med‑school next fall.
Just as I wrote to you before, God has been good! I feel that I can especially say so for His faithfulness to His own this summer. It was a blessedly awesome experience I’ll never forget!
I had entered into this summer’s adventure rather naively. When I thought that I would be a missionary in China, I was shown that I would more accurately be an ambassador for Christ, what some people call a “tentmaker.” The organization I worked with, Educational Services International (ESI), in dealing with the Communist Chinese government, identifies itself as a blatantly Christian ‑‑ but not missions ‑‑ organization. My job in China was to teach English and teach it well, and in so doing I was to show who Christ is and be ready to answer questions about Him.
We had to deal with the reality of China. Not only is atheism promoted as the official “religion” of China, but missions, particularly Christian missions, are also seen as a remnant of the nation’s humiliating eras of imperialism and colonialism, and as a possible threat to China’s sovereign government. Thus one of our goals was to be sure that our Christian faith is separate from our culture. Certainly we know that “Christian” doesn’t mean “American” nor vice‑versa, but this is what we had to show the Chinese people. They didn’t have to become American if they wanted to become a Christian. Christianity could be just as much a part of China as tofu or chopsticks!
This summer for a month‑and‑a‑half, nine other teachers and I each taught three classes, our own homeroom and two others, at the Hubei College of Education in Wuhan. (Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, located in the central region of China along the Yangtze River.) Each of our classes consisted of sixteen students who were primarily middle‑school English teachers themselves, and on the average they were older than I. What a privilege it was for me to be their teacher and to become their friends. They were particularly impressed with our teamwork, diligence, and patience. Knowing that we were Christians, some of them had the boldness to ask about it. Some went to church for the first time with us; for some we were the first Christians they had ever met; we gave some of them the Bibles we had brought. Near the end of the experience in response to many compliments they had lavished upon us (as it seems the Chinese do unto their teachers), I stated, “Please do not think that I am the way I am because of my own efforts. It’s not even because of my parents ‑‑ I do have good parents ‑‑ or because I’m American, but it’s because of God.” I pray that they took that to heart.
From God’s word in the third chapter of First Corinthians we know that in the “field” of lost souls, some workers are assigned to sow into people’s hearts the seed of His word. Others are called to nurture the ensuing plant. Still others are to reap the fruit of salvation. Though we did experience some sowing and reaping, much of our work instead dealt with the even earlier work of “breaking rocks,” the tearing down of obstacles blocking out God’s word, so that the “soil” of their hearts would be prepared and ready for the next step in God’s plan for them.
Our work is not yet over. I pray that our commitment did not end when we left Wuhan. As with any friendship, communication is essential, and our team is dedicated to continued correspondence with our students and friends. The Chinese have a saying: “A teacher for a day, a teacher forever.” We are still in a position through letters to plant seeds and nurture plants. May God bless us with being able to someday even reap fruits. It would be greatly appreciated if you could also pray for our continued commitment to loving the lost.
I suppose the main point of this letter is not only to tell you about my summer adventures but also to thank you for being so integral a part in what I believe to be God’s plan for me.
THANK YOU!
“I thank my God every time I remember you.” I don’t think I’d ever felt this sentiment for anyone to the same degree as the apostle Paul felt for the Philippian church (1:3) until I was in China. Every day during my quiet time I thanked the Lord for providing so much support, particularly in the form of brothers and sisters thousands of miles away ‑‑ YOU! ‑‑ who had provided financially and were committed to praying for our ministry.
I reread that last letter which asked for your support, and what awed me was the realization that every single thing that I had asked you to pray for was answered in a positive way! Wisdom and humility were constantly on my mind, and God gave me a team to keep me accountable in this area. I found that it was unusually easy for me to work with others and be flexible in the expectations I had of my teammates and of our accommodations. God showed me more and more how to love my students no matter how lovable they were. And lastly, God had provided enough funds for me to go to China in the first place. At last count, financial support had come in at over $3000!!! You’d better believe it: God is truly faithful!
I feel that it’s my obligation to tell you that since the funds raised exceeded the need, the church has designated the surplus money for future missions trips. If you have any questions or comments about this, please ask me.
Again, I thank you so much for making this summer possible! I hope you are encouraged by this letter. Perhaps you’d like to know more about the organization I worked with or details of the program and/or ministry. If you have any questions, please feel free to write or call. I’d love to hear how you are doing. I’d especially like to know how I may support you in prayer or perhaps even financially for your own endeavors for God.
May God continue to bless you abundantly with His grace.
Another witness to His faithfulness,
Sid Steve Wu
Sunday, November 13, 1994
...for EFCtIE's 3rd anniversary publication...
Mexico Missions 1994
"Queremos invitarles a un programa de payasos, dramas, titeres, y musica para todos empieza a la una a el Templo de Monte Carmelo."
That was the sentence (if I remember correctly) each missionary in our group had to say as we walked around the dirt roads of the poor colonias in Mexico to invite people to our miniature evangelical services. Continue reading, and you'll find out soon what the phrase means.....
Just last summer (1994) our local church of the Inland Empire sent eight people from our youth group on the EFC summer Mexico Missions, and even though the experience was a very short ten days, we were all very intimately blessed by being used as God's instruments in the missions field surrounding Tijuana, Mexico. We are especially thankful to God for His faithfulness, for the way He ministered in us, to us, and through us.
Perhaps you're thinking, "why did this guy italicize the words 'in', 'to', and 'through'?" It's because God ministered to us in different ways. I think you'll get my drift if you'll just read on.
Praise God for His ministry in us! Before we even set foot across the border, we went to the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) base in Sunland, California. There He gave us time to meditate on why exactly we were going on missions. He taught us that since "God so loved the world" (John 3:16) and not just us, we need to follow His commission to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). There is still desperate need for the Gospel in what the YWAM staff called the 10/40 Window (portions of Asia & Africa between the 10th and 40th parallel, which happens to include Taiwan). At that base and even while we were in Mexico, He taught us how we should always depend on Him through prayer. On a personal level, I learned that in our evangelism we need to be humble, being careful of the attitude that "we Americans are coming in to tell you about our Gospel, so you poor, ignorant people just listen and accept it." God showed us that we could learn a whole lot from the people we ministered to; yes, we Americans, for example, could stand to be more content with little and hospitable with others. Indeed, God is faithful in ministering in us!
Praise God for His ministry to us! You must have heard stories about the conditions in Mexico. Some of those stories are true, especially in the poorer sections which we visited. Sanitation in food preparation, drinking water, and bathrooms is pretty bad. Housing conditions are pitifully meager and inadequate. Many streets are still unpaved and uneven, which makes for plenty of dust (and fun rides in our church vans!). Despite all of this, God kept us safe and secure. We did have some gastrointestinal abnormalities (some were fairly severe), but nothing was truly unbearable. Perhaps this is another case of God's ministry in us, in that He was showing us one of the hardships of missions to help us decide if we could handle long-term missions. (Besides, through our experience we added new meaning to the words related to "missions"!) Other stories include His fixing our van troubles and helping us get past language barriers--I'll let you ask the team to tell you about them; writing about them here would make this article too long. But let this be said: God is faithful in ministering to us!
Praise God for His ministry through us! Most people think of missions as merely an exercise of evangelism. And our focus was on evangelism: We held miniature services in parks and in churches. The services included translated testimonies, and presentations of the various non-language-based ministries we learned from YWAM. All of us were involved at least one of the following: dramas, music, clowns, and puppets. One time at el Templo de Monte Carmelo (a church we visited several times), at least twenty grade-school-aged children responded to the minister's altar call to receive Christ! Jesus truly loves the little children! In all of our services, we believe that God planted seeds, to which He will be faithful to cause to bear fruit according to His will and timing (I Thessalonians 5:24). Sharing the Gospel of love implies that we not only tell people about Christ but also show them what His love is all about. Within the short time we stayed in Mexico, we were able to build a small house for a family and help in the construction of a church. Now, we may finally declare: God is faithful in ministering through us!
So what have you learned from reading this article? I hope by now you'll at least know that GOD IS FAITHFUL (I Corinthians 1:9)!!! And though our faithfulness to Him could never match up to His faithfulness to us, let us always strive to be faithful in serving our Lord, particularly in the area of evangelism. By the way, the sentence at the beginning of this article means, "We invite you to a program of clowns, dramas, puppets, and music for everyone at one o'clock at el Templo de Monte Carmelo." Basically, we were inviting people to meet God. It is our prayer that you do the same, for we should all be missionaries, sharing the Gospel with everybody we know, wherever we are.
"Queremos invitarles a un programa de payasos, dramas, titeres, y musica para todos empieza a la una a el Templo de Monte Carmelo."
That was the sentence (if I remember correctly) each missionary in our group had to say as we walked around the dirt roads of the poor colonias in Mexico to invite people to our miniature evangelical services. Continue reading, and you'll find out soon what the phrase means.....
Just last summer (1994) our local church of the Inland Empire sent eight people from our youth group on the EFC summer Mexico Missions, and even though the experience was a very short ten days, we were all very intimately blessed by being used as God's instruments in the missions field surrounding Tijuana, Mexico. We are especially thankful to God for His faithfulness, for the way He ministered in us, to us, and through us.
Perhaps you're thinking, "why did this guy italicize the words 'in', 'to', and 'through'?" It's because God ministered to us in different ways. I think you'll get my drift if you'll just read on.
Praise God for His ministry in us! Before we even set foot across the border, we went to the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) base in Sunland, California. There He gave us time to meditate on why exactly we were going on missions. He taught us that since "God so loved the world" (John 3:16) and not just us, we need to follow His commission to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). There is still desperate need for the Gospel in what the YWAM staff called the 10/40 Window (portions of Asia & Africa between the 10th and 40th parallel, which happens to include Taiwan). At that base and even while we were in Mexico, He taught us how we should always depend on Him through prayer. On a personal level, I learned that in our evangelism we need to be humble, being careful of the attitude that "we Americans are coming in to tell you about our Gospel, so you poor, ignorant people just listen and accept it." God showed us that we could learn a whole lot from the people we ministered to; yes, we Americans, for example, could stand to be more content with little and hospitable with others. Indeed, God is faithful in ministering in us!
Praise God for His ministry to us! You must have heard stories about the conditions in Mexico. Some of those stories are true, especially in the poorer sections which we visited. Sanitation in food preparation, drinking water, and bathrooms is pretty bad. Housing conditions are pitifully meager and inadequate. Many streets are still unpaved and uneven, which makes for plenty of dust (and fun rides in our church vans!). Despite all of this, God kept us safe and secure. We did have some gastrointestinal abnormalities (some were fairly severe), but nothing was truly unbearable. Perhaps this is another case of God's ministry in us, in that He was showing us one of the hardships of missions to help us decide if we could handle long-term missions. (Besides, through our experience we added new meaning to the words related to "missions"!) Other stories include His fixing our van troubles and helping us get past language barriers--I'll let you ask the team to tell you about them; writing about them here would make this article too long. But let this be said: God is faithful in ministering to us!
Praise God for His ministry through us! Most people think of missions as merely an exercise of evangelism. And our focus was on evangelism: We held miniature services in parks and in churches. The services included translated testimonies, and presentations of the various non-language-based ministries we learned from YWAM. All of us were involved at least one of the following: dramas, music, clowns, and puppets. One time at el Templo de Monte Carmelo (a church we visited several times), at least twenty grade-school-aged children responded to the minister's altar call to receive Christ! Jesus truly loves the little children! In all of our services, we believe that God planted seeds, to which He will be faithful to cause to bear fruit according to His will and timing (I Thessalonians 5:24). Sharing the Gospel of love implies that we not only tell people about Christ but also show them what His love is all about. Within the short time we stayed in Mexico, we were able to build a small house for a family and help in the construction of a church. Now, we may finally declare: God is faithful in ministering through us!
So what have you learned from reading this article? I hope by now you'll at least know that GOD IS FAITHFUL (I Corinthians 1:9)!!! And though our faithfulness to Him could never match up to His faithfulness to us, let us always strive to be faithful in serving our Lord, particularly in the area of evangelism. By the way, the sentence at the beginning of this article means, "We invite you to a program of clowns, dramas, puppets, and music for everyone at one o'clock at el Templo de Monte Carmelo." Basically, we were inviting people to meet God. It is our prayer that you do the same, for we should all be missionaries, sharing the Gospel with everybody we know, wherever we are.
Monday, June 20, 1994
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