Oct 07, 2007- Together a step forward for the Gospel

This month’s news letter failed to come out on time because of our heavy workload. I am sorry about that. But this is portraying the real-work-situation of our Tung Chung evangelical ministry: more than enough to do or consider and never enough time.

Until now we have raised more than four million HK dollar for this huge project, including the planning of the ministry and the reconstruction of the building. Each part in the development needed our full attention and appropriate action - always in a very short period of time. Workload and time compared to the manpower in the Tung Chung project are clearly out of scale. Thanks to God, through this situation God is teaching us to rely on him to do His work. I strongly believe that every prayer and support by our brothers and sisters contributes to our trust in God’s work for us.

Up to now most of the large mechanical engineering construction work has been completed. But as we hope to finish the construction before December, we need to increase the pace of the work. Otherwise we will not have enough time for the indoor decoration and furnishing.

Regardless of this we have set the date for the opening ceremony of the church on January 6th (the day of Epiphany), 15:00. Because Christmas holidays are over, there should be no hinderance for people to participate. We think it is a remarkable day and most appropriate to offer glory to Christ, as it is the first Sunday of the year and the day of Epiphany.

At the moment we still try to find a temporary place for worship, fellowship and Choir practice. A week ago I talked to the seminary student Kwan Chi-Chang. We share a common vision for the future of Tung Chung. We thought up a lot of potential projects. It is a very exciting experience for both of us.
The next step in our planning is to give more attention to many important topics. These are: to find a temporary gathering place, to supervise the engineering, to collect the donations, develop the love-neighbor ministry plan for next year, to arrange the Sunday services, to establish the new working committee, to prepare the opening ceremony etc.

Please pray for God’s preparation and the different areas of work in our Tung Chung ministry.

Sept 08, 2007

It is startling how many things need to be considered in a long-term project like the development of our Tung Chung site. Quite unexpectedly we needed to suspend the project end of June after the site was visited by an officer of the Lands Department. Apparently some of the boundaries on the construction-plan compared with the site were unclear. Therefore we needed to postpone the renovation until the situation was clarified. Finally on September 11th we received a letter from the Hong Kong Lands Department approving the continuation of the development. There was no objection to our proposed renovation work of the Tung Chung church. We are very happy, because God has answered our prayers!

From this experience we have learned a lot of things. First, in a project like this it is very difficult to avoid problems in the progress. Second, we were not aware of the importance of the Lands Department. Now we know that it represents the Hong Kong Government and therefore has a powerful role in this project. Third, the construction group, commissioned by the Church, which is monitoring the planning and oversight of the project, had to deal with the distressing turn of events. Despite their faith and confidence in the project, this unplanned suspension brought feelings of anxiety and pressure. However they did not let themselves get discouraged, but kept a high spirit in their work. All of us have experienced that the difficulties we had to face have brought us closer to God instead of turning us way. The number of people praying for Tung Chung has grown considerably. We bless God for his guidance in these times!

After restarting our renovation work of the church, we made a surprising discovery.
On September 3rd work resumed at 9am amid a light drizzle of rain. The task of the day was to remove a memorial-plaque on the front wall of the church building. When the workers took the plaque down, they found an urn hidden behind it. While the worker continued to chisel off the sand bricks, tiles and slabs, underneath them appeared a white ceramic material. To examine this finding the grit was carefully cleared away and two pieces of ceramic were found. And a historical testimony was recorded on them! On the first piece we found a list of the people who participated in the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone of the church. And on the second piece is written that Mr. Pan Dao Cheng and Mr. Chen Dao Xian were appointed missionaries of the church. Because we did not expect to find such important antique memorabilia, they were damaged in the process. But fortunately it is not serious.
After that the urn was removed. It turned out to be a time vase. The urn contained a Sing Tao Daily (October 29, 1960), a liturgy book, an instruction handbook for the people working in the Mission to the Buddhists and three coins. After completing the renovation work, all the items will find a new place in the Tung Chung church. On this day we had an abundant harvest.