Breaking Free
by Sandy Kang
The intense college-application season has hit our household for the first time. Previously, my daughter wrote her essays to achieve the honorable “A” from her schoolteachers. She is now meticulously crafting her words for another audience—the college admissions review team. Eventually, this essay will serve as her rite of passage to adulthood as she has chosen to profess her journey to faith in Christ and the discovery of her authentic self as a pastor’s kid. Read more →
From Children’s Ministry to Cyber Missions
by Grace Chen
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone had to shelter in place, the Children’s Ministry Department moved to cyberspace with the help of our volunteer workers. Throughout this year, we tried various formats to minister to our children. We started out before the Summer by holding weekly Time with Abba sessions. Then we held an online Kids Adventure Camp during the summer. And as the new school year began, we started a weekly evening Kids Prayer Club. Throughout this season, we’ve gathered our children online to worship every Saturday morning. We’ve even created our own YouTube channel since March. We produced various video lessons appropriate to our children for those who could not attend the weekly meetings. Consequently, we accumulated a lot of video resources and starting a couple of weeks ago, we adapted some of these videos, re-edited them into either Bible story or craft videos, adding Chinese subtitles, and broadcasted them over the internet. There are 16 such videos and they have generated about 10,000 views over the past week. Read more →
THE STORY OF MINH AND HA
by Betty Young
Our ESL ministry has been serving the Rockspring community for many years. I speak on behalf of every ESL teacher when I say that our most pressing desire is to share the Gospel with our students. As we teach our classes, our foremost thought is the salvation of each and every student. Yes, we can teach English, help them become US citizens, help tutor their children and even befriend them, but our best gift is and will always be salvation. Salvation is the most precious and costliest gift we can give our students. It meets the greatest need, brings the greatest blessing and has the most lasting results.
Pre-COVID19 we often saw our students every Tuesday and Thursday evening nine months out of the year. Some of the teachers saw them more often than their own family members. No wonder that we care so much for them. And now, during these COVID19 times, teachers have continued to keep in touch. We have provided our students free food boxes provided by our church and we hope and pray that we will one day be able to serve again as ESL teachers. Read more →