Hong Kong and Macau (8)
Macau: Church Services
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Steve Dennie
March 1996
The Living Water service got underway at 10:20, a fairly traditional service by American standards. Karis Wong opened by leading the congregation in singing "Sing Alleluia to the Lord," as Stacey played the piano. They sang in English, which seemed a bit odd until it struck me that most of the people here probably came through the English Language Program. Later, they used Cantonese to sing a chorus with a Hebrew beat. That's no stranger than singing a Hebrew song in English.
Like in Hong Kong, the dress style was casual. Maybe more so. Some long skirts, bluejeans, a mini skirt, nice slacks, a bluejean skirt. It appeared that the only suits were worn by foreigners--Luke, the Bishop, and Kyle. I didn't even see any other ties.
This Sunday, they celebrated paying off Living Water's building debt. To commemorate the event, they played a question-and-answer game about the history of the ELP. Everyone gathered in a circle of chairs while Jana read a question and a university student, Benedict Lam, interpreted it with much drama and teasing humor. Everyone was laughing and carrying on.
Benedict was masterful, and had me laughing even though I didn't understand what he was saying. "He's the craziest student I know," Jana told me later.
Audrey told me that Benedict came to Living Water through the church's first convert, Sylvia Cheong, who is now a student at Huntington College. "Sylvia brought a bunch of her friends to the high school fellowship," Audrey explained. "About five or six of them all went to high school together. Carol Chan was instrumental in working with them. They were part of our core group. Now, they're almost done with their university training. It's been fun to watch them grow and develop."
* * * * * *
During lunch in a corner restaurant, America's Funniest Home Videos came on a TV in one corner. You should hear Bob Saget dubbed in Chinese.
"Learning Cantonese is an adventure for everybody. It's a hard language," Jana says. "It's tonal, which means that if you say a word in a high voice or a low voice, it has a different meaning." She gives an example of a word which at one pitch says, "I know you," but at another pitch says, "I eat you." So in addition to learning the words, you must learn their proper tone. "It's just a tricky language to get the sound, the tone.
One time, Jana spent an afternoon with a student learning how to make dumplings. She told a church member about this. He listened patiently, but was confused.
He said, "You made them?"
Jana said, "Yeah, and then we ate them."
"You ate them?"
Finally, he figured out what she was meant. What she'd actually been telling him was that she had spent the afternoon making and eating Scotch tape.
"You must start speaking it while you're still just making tons of mistakes. Our church members are really patient with us, listening to us struggle, because you have to speak it to learn it."
There are up to three thousand basic Chinese characters, and you have to memorize them. Each character can stand for up to seven words. So for the most part, Chinese students don't have much trouble learning English, with its mere 26 characters.
"Most of our students learn English in kindergarten or first grade," Stacey says. "They learn it in primary school and have English all through school, but a lot of them don't know how to communicate with someone."
They receive a basic foundation of English, but don't get the chance to practice using it. As a result, they have trouble actually communicating in English.
"A lot of them just need practice," says Jana. "
"Then we also have the other extreme," Stacey says. "Some students that come, we're like, 'Wow, your English is great!'"
Jana said, "On some things, like grammar, they usually know a lot more than we do, because when you study a second language, you need to be able to recognize a present progressive verb and when to use it. So a lot of times, it's funny, they'll ask us questions, 'What is the past progressive verb form in this particular sentence.' It's kind of good. It gives them a chance to be better at something than we are."
"We usually say, 'We're conversational teachers,'" says Stacey.
* * * * * *
"Belinda helps me be Chinese," Luke says. "She has a way of taking what I do and what I say and making it Chinese as it comes out to other people."
Belinda Yuen came to Living Water church in December 1990. She recalls, "The first feeling I got when I walked in Living Water Church was, it looks like a big family. I felt the love of God here, because all of the members here, all of the people and the workers, were really concerned about each other."
At the time, Belinda worked in a shipping company, and wasn't a Christian. She took that step during a camp on the Macau island of Taipa. Then, after she was baptized, Luke and Jeff Sherlock asked her to consider becoming the secretary for Living Water Church and the English Language Program. She quit her job with a shipping company and began her new job in January 1992.
She started out fulltime, then dropped to parttime after she began taking education courses at the university. (She'll graduate in June.)
"Belinda is just a wonderful person," Stacey says. "She's very kind, very caring. She looks to meet people's needs. She takes care of a lot of details, and keeps everything very organized at our office.
"In our church, she's very good at talking to people one on one or one on two, and she's really good at getting people to talk about things they're struggling with. I think a lot of the girls really admire and look up to Belinda. If we have a student we want to go out with, sometimes she'll come with us and talk to them about the Bible. She's good at getting a conversation talking about God."
"During these years, I feel that my Christian life has grown a lot. God keeps teaching me, in my studies and also in my work, how to serve him." And she enjoys working with the American missionaries. "We learn from each other. Sometimes, the way Chinese think about God is different from the Americans, and we can share with each other and encourage each other in our faith."
Belinda does some of the chapels at the ELP. She is happy for this chance to share Christ with students.
"I would like to have more chance to serve God. I must remind myself to pay attention to opportunities I will have to share the gospel. Many Macau residents are superstitious in Buddhism; actually, they don't know what they believe. I would like to get more chance to reach them."
* * * * * *
Living Word Church holds its service on Sunday night.
In an apartment above Living Word Church, I noticed what appeared to be a Buddhist shrine, looking very pretty and red. I could see the heads of what I presumed to be a bunch of idols.
Said Stacey, "You read in the Bible about not worshipping idols, and you don't really think about it. But you come here and you realize there are people worshipping other gods. It gives me a whole new perspective on the commands God gave the people."
Luke told us, "Probably 80-90 percent of the people here would consider themselves to be Buddhists in one sense or another. They are Buddhist in the same way most Americans are Christians: their moms and dads believed something about Buddhism, and so they are Buddhist. They probably only worship at their Buddhist temple once or twice a year, may offer some sacrifices to their ancestors on specific holidays. This group of people and some others would really be functional atheists. They don't actually believe there is a God who relates to their daily life or cares about their daily life."
* * * * * *
"Seeing Living Word Church get started has been one of the most exciting parts of my work here," says Jana, who focuses much of her attention at Living Word.
Living Word began as the United Brethren Youth Center in August of 1993. It was intended to give students a quiet place to study and receive help from tutors, with the hope that it would eventually turn into a church. University students from Living Water Church organized a daily, three-hour tutoring program for kids whose parents don't have time to spend with them after school working on their homework. The missionaries also began teaching English classes there.
In 1995, on Easter, they began holding church services. Always at night. They have anywhere from 15 to 35 people, many of them nonChristians, which is what they want.
"Our services are pretty laid back," Jana told us. "We've tried to make it friendly to nonChristians." They sing upbeat choruses, have skits and special music, do a children's sermon. They're trying to focus on families at Living Word, whereas Living Water was built around students. After the service, people hang around for an hour or two, talking and playing games. "Sometimes we joke that we have a Sunday night party every week, because in a lot of ways, it's like that," Jana said.
* * * * * *
After a three-day jaunt to see our work high in the mountains of north Thailand, Lance and I returned with Luke to Macau for a very full day of filming. Bishop Seilhamer, Kyle, and MarLouise were still in Bangkok.
The new English Language Program term had begun two nights before.
Karis Vong sat at the reception desk, answering questions and getting a number of new students signed up. Three Portuguese people, two men and one woman, all young adults, came in to register. It had never occurred to me that non-Chinese people might enroll.
Paul and Stacey each taught a class, the divider between them. Stacey had 19 students, including the three Portuguese. Fifteen of her students were Chinese women, with one lone Chinese man dressed in a business suit; he had probably come straight from work.
At 7:30, they pulled back the divider and arranged all of the chairs in a big circle. Stacey did the chapel.
More people began arriving, prospects for the 8:30 session. Karis kept busy with them.
* * * * * *
Alas, we had to leave. Get a taxi to the ferry, take the jetfoil to Hong Kong, again, catch a few hours of sleep at the YMCA, back to the airport early in the morning, through immigration, fly to Seoul, South Korea, where, hopefully, we'd meet Bishop Seilhamer.
Some of which went smoothly, some of which didn't. But we found the bishop in Seoul and boarded a Korean Airlines 747. Fourteen non-stop hours later, we landed in Chicago, USA. What a trip.
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