Taiwan Church News
3184 Edition
March 4-10, 2013
Headline News

Reported by Chen Yi-hsuan

Written by Lydia Ma

The first Friday of March is World Day of Prayer around the world and the PCT is among churches around the world that observe this special day. In both Tainan and Chiayi presbyteries, their Women’s Division hosted this year’s prayer meeting. The topic selected for this year was “I was a traveler and you hosted me”. France was the country highlighted in this year’s list of prayer items.

Tainan Presbytery’s prayer service took place at An-Nan Presbyterian Church. When the service began, 6 women wearing traditional French clothing representing different groups of women in France came to the front and gave a brief introduction about the group they were representing. These women wore silk scarves of different colors and one of them wore a gray silk scarf. This woman later said that she represented women who were neglected and who were nameless travelers. During the presentation, the other women formed a half circle around the woman wearing the gray scarf as a sign of their acceptance and a sign that they were all God’s children.

During the sermon, Nanhua Presbyterian Church pastor, Rev. Chen Chun-jia, referenced Matthew 25:31-40 to underscore that a Christian’s attitude when ministering to others is representative of his attitude toward Jesus Christ. He added that prayer is as important as deeds, and faith without works is dead. For this reason, he encouraged the congregation to love one another.

During the latter part of the service, the congregation prayed together for France, the country designated for this year’s prayer list. Though France is commonly known as a country where arts and cultures flourish and the land that made the term “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” popular, the country currently faces many challenges because of a sluggish economy, high unemployment rates, and influx of illegal immigrants. Furthermore, though women in France can get higher education and become professionals in all fields of study, their wages are much lower than men’s wages. The average income for women is 23.5% lower than the average income for men.

There was a special time of offering during the prayer service for Rev. Fu-Lan Ritter Chen, a PCT missionary commissioned to serve in Ethiopia. Rev. Chen became an overseas missionary in 1995 when the PCT sent her to promote ministries aiming to stop female genital mutilation. These ministries primarily reach out to Hadiyya people, an ethnic group of approximately 1.5 million people scattered across 10 administrative regions in Ethiopia, and counsel them against female genital mutilation. From 2006 to 2011, these ministries succeeded in abolishing this ugly practice from 7 of the 10 administrative regions. Chen and her family moved to Addis Ababa in 2010. She now works as a counselor at a girls’ Christian school, teaching basic health education, strengthening family values, and counseling people against female genital mutilation.