Report from the New Living Stone Church in Macau
Carlson and Naomi Becker, UB missionaries in Macau, sent the following report on March 22 It tells about the launch of the Living Stone church on Taipa island. This is the third UB church in Macau.
We launched the services of Living Stone church on February 26 with 30 adults and 2 children present. We are praying that many of them will continue to worship with us and get involved in Bible studies and the Alpha Course so that we can help them grow in knowledge and commitment to our Lord. It will be a long process to try to make progress in reaching the thousands who live a short walk from our worship center. We mailed 5,000 invitations to apartments near the center and handed out invitations to area businesses. We are trusting God to open ways for us to reach out to them.
We announced to the congregation that our intention is to make this a Chinese church and not an American one. We wanted them to know that the primary language will be Cantonese, and that someday the Americans will back away and the Chinese leadership will continue the work into the future. My prayer is, that that will happen sooner rather than later. We already have lined up Cantonese speakers and pastors to speak each month, with my speaking being only once or twice a month for the rest of this year. The worship time is already being led by Michael, our Cantonese-speaking co-worker, who is a national, born in Macau.
We have involved our Cantonese language tutor, Larry, and his wife, Anna, in the ministry as well as a couple who have just moved back to Macau after having lived in Vancouver, Canada, for some years. Their names are Mike and Ellen, and they seem very interested in helping the church get a good start. Mike moved back to Macau to take over his father's business. They live in the apartment building just a few feet from the front door of our center.
The Opening Celebration was held in the afternoon, and we had over 60 people present. There were about 12 from Hong Kong and about that many from Living Waters, a few from Living Word, and many other churches were represented as well. We had 11 visitors in church on March 19.
Our classes have been larger this term, for which we are grateful. It is harder to get to know each student as well as when they were a little smaller in number. We just had our morning "Current Events" class over for breakfast, and we had a really great time with them. We are enjoying getting to know them, and the opportunity to see them outside of the classroom is very helpful to us.
Sunday evening Bible study is larger right now, and we are thankful for that. One of the attendees recently went back home to Mainland China to spend time with her family. Before she left, she talked to Michael and me about what it would be like at her home. Her parents will have a picture of a departed ancestor, probably her grandfather, hanging on the wall. The family would offer sacrifices of food and flowers to the picture in hopes that the ancestor would bring them good fortune and watch over them. As we discuss some of these things in class, we find that many of the younger Chinese do not believe in these practices as do their parents. If they practice them, it is because they don't want to offend their parents.
On the other side of the picture, we would have to say that the people are very friendly, and we feel very safe and appreciated. We are making some very good friends and are praying that God would lead them to believe in Christ as their Savior.