Taiwanese Church

My wife and I are here in Taipei to attend our nephew’s engagement.  This morning we worship at the church with the newly-engaged couple and both sets of parents.  

The church has two services, one conducted in Taiwanese and another in Mandarin.  We attended the one in Mandarin, but I did take a look at the Bible translated into the Taiwanese dialect.  I noticed that in certain places, it has some similarity with Cantonese.  

The preacher, 張德麟牧師， taught in a university.  He is obviously very familiar with the history of Taiwan.  He used the missionaries' contributions to the development of Taiwan to illustrate the teaching “… you are the salt of the earth, …, the light of the world …”  

One of the missionaries from the United Kingdom paid the rent for 10 years for a church in Taiwan; when he went back to the United Kingdom he could not afford his own house.  Another found that in a certain place most of the new borns were boys.  Upon investigation, he found that many of the girls were thrown out when the parents found that they have given birth to girls.  And these are the lucky ones.  Some of the girls were killed at birth; someone had actually written instructions on how to drown them.  The missionary setup a shelter for those who survived.  He taught me something about the history of Taiwan.  He made the words of the Bible come alive and practically applicable. And he challenged us.  

The preacher asked the congregation to ask ourselves: am I the light of the world?  Am I making the world a better place?  Indeed, am I?

To conclude the worship, we sang one of my favourite hymns: “I keep your word in my heart,  so that I won’t offend you, and I won’t ever be far away from you. …”