Hong Kong and Macau (5)
Macau: The ELP
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
March 1996
Living Water Church is a lot bigger than I imagined. Luke and Paul took us there Wednesday afternoon.
This is the second home of the ELP. They outgrew their first location (it's now home to an English program run by a Baptist group), but found another place nearby with 800 square feet. They put down a $400 (US) deposit and were within a couple days of making the 30% down payment when a lady called them out of the blue. She had an apartment for sale which she thought would make a good church, and was calling churches in town to see if anyone was interested.
They took a look, and knew within five minutes--this is the place. It was twice as big, 1600 square feet, and the same price--$75,000. Three years ago, the facility was appraised at $150,000, so they've doubled their investment.
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The Living Water church is on a narrow, one-lane street. Upon entering the building from the sidewalk, you walk across a marble floor past the mailboxes, hang a right, then climb some tiled steps which curve to the left. You find yourself facing some elevators, with the ELP entrance just to the left.
Straight through the entrance is a reception desk. To the left is a big room which functions as the sanctuary on Sundays, big enough to seat about 100 people. The shiny black Yamaha piano was donated by a Hong Kong member. During the week, they pull a divider down the middle to form two nice-sized ELP classrooms, a white board in each. When it's time for chapel, they open the divider and form all of the chairs in a big circle.
To the right of the reception desk is the office of Karis Vong, the pastor. There are three other small rooms, plus a kitchen and an inner courtyard where they've held cookouts.
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"We don't know how long missionaries will be allowed here, so we need to prepare our local leadership," Luke says. "This is probably the thing that is most difficult, because our leadership is young, and there are not many people willing to go into the ministry."
Only 20% of the pastors in Macau, maybe less, were born in Macau.
"Macau has done a terribly poor job over the years of raising up pastors from its own people," Luke says.
Which helps understand why they are so blessed, so delighted, to have Karis Wong as pastor of Living Water Church.
"She is God's gift to us," Luke says. "There's no way we could have engineered a seminary graduate from Macau, Macau born, to work in Living Water church. So when you see Karis, treat her right."
Karis Wong attended a Catholic school for ten years, and was even drawn to the idea of becoming a nun "because they were very beautiful and very spiritual." But then her sister became a Christian, and Karis became a Christian through her witness. She later went on to attend Macau Bible Institute. While there, she did an internship at Living Water Church. Now, she's been at Living Water four years. She supervises the daily work of Living Water Church.
During her internship, Karis met her future husband, Lawrence, who works in a bank. They were married September 3, 1995--the first wedding in Living Water church.
"Karis has a real heart for evangelism," Jana says. "When we're doing evangelism with students in the ELP, we always try to pull in a Chinese person. Our testimony is a lot different than the typical Chinese person, because most of them haven't grown up in a Christian home. She's really good at being flexible with us, and going out with us with students to try to build that bridge between the ELP and the church. I really appreciate her commitment to evangelism."
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"We have a very difficult Tuesday through Friday," Luke told us. "Our missionaries come to the office at 9:00, or they go teach at Pui Ching, or they teach at Living Water church, but their day starts about 9:00. They do something in their teaching area or office until 4:00 or 5:00, and then evening classes start at 6:30 and go til 10:30. And then Sundays are nonstop."
This was the final night of the ELP's special winter term. We watched Stacey and Paul team-teach about a dozen students at Living Water Church. Classes always follow the same format:
- 6:30--7:30--teaching.
- 7:30-7:40--chapel.
- 7:40-7:50--break.
- 7:50-8:20--teaching.
That schedule starts all over at 8:30 for a second class, which finishes at 10:20. Paul told us, "I usually get home somewhere around 11:00, and then try to study my Cantonese for a little bit. It's a busy night, but it's fun."
While Stacey and Paul were still teaching, we left for Living Word Church, where Jana Hoobler and Linda Burns were leading the English Language Program at its second location.
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To get to the Living Word church, you go down an alley way, and recessed there at the end, on the right, is a doorway. Luke says there's no way to describe how bad Living Word's building looked when they first saw it. It had been a dormitory for transvestite prostitutes from Thailand. Some people deemed it beyond redemption, but they turned it into a nice facility.
We found nine young adults and one Pomeranian sitting in a semi-circle. Jana Hoobler sat on the edge of a folding chair wearing a turtleneck, sweater, and gray slacks. She was very animated and enthusiastic as she taught, speaking mostly in English but occasionally lapsing into Cantonese to clarify something.
We arrived just in time for chapel. "Since this is a tell-a-story night, I'm going to tell a story about four girls in Macau who were very good friends," she began. She then told a story which led to an application related to the word "stable." She said God makes her life stable; wherever she goes, she knows God is with her. She told students that if they ever feel their life is unstable, she hopes they will think about how God can make their life stable.
Each class includes a ten-minute break, which Jana says is "an important time for us to try to get to know our students. That's really the goal of the program, to get one-one-one relationships with people where we can really share the gospel with them. We spend that ten-minute break time talking to students and interacting with them."
After the break, class resumed, with Linda Burns teaching this time. She put a picture on the board, which they immediately recognized from the Wizard of Oz. She asked them to identify objects in the picture, and they did--palace, trees, girl, dog, lion, scarecrow. Linda wrote the items on the board as they mentioned them.
Jana told us, "People here fill their time with things. That's why our English classes have students. They work all day, they work overtime, then after work they come to our English class for two hours. Then they'll go eat supper, and they don't get home until 10:00 at night. And a lot of them, if they're taking our class on Tuesday and Thursday, on Wednesday and Friday they'll study Portuguese or cooking or something."
Part of it, he realizes, is that their homes are small. They don't have yards to keep up, or space to do much of anything around the house. But a lot of it, too, is simply city life. "They just fill their time completely. On the streets, people's aren't running around quite like they are in Hong Kong, but it's hard to just stop here, to take time to slow down."
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Linda Burns is a volunteer missionary in Macau, coming at her own expense. While she works in the English Language Program, her "day job" is teaching at the Macau Christian Academy. She is one of three teachers there. All 21 students are missionary kids. Piers and Bridger Fetters attend here, as do kids whose parents serve with Norwegian Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Conservative Baptist, and other groups.
"They all come from fantastic Christian families," Audrey told us. "You couldn't pick better friends for your kids."
The setting is great. Pretty buildings, lots of plants, cool air circulating, lovely walkways, fruit and other trees. Almost like walking through a botanical garden.
The Southern Baptists own the property, and we're responsible for securing one teacher. Pauline Gibbs was the first, and Mildred Gleason the second. Linda, whose home is in Valparaiso, IN, came in 1994. The year before, she visited Macau with a group from Huntington College. That whet her interest. She raised her own support from various churches and individuals and came as a volunteer. Otterbein UB in Rockford, OH, pays her housing.
"Basically, I'm a first and second grade teacher," she explained. "I have seven students in my class. I teach them during the morning, and late in the day I help teach science for all of the different grades up to the 8th grade."
That's as far as the school goes. After grade 8, students usually go to a school in another country, like the Philippines.
"We have so much fun. They're such a close group."
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Next: Part 6
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