Hakka Evangelist at Hsinchu, Taiwan

Evangelist Hsuan Lwo

      To evangelize in GuanXi, the first step was to help the non-Catholic residents who live within the GuanXi parish boundary develop a desire to enter the Church grounds.   With the pastor’s active promotion and support, free classes and community activities were organized and offered to the local residents, so that they would have the opportunity to get near the Church.   Non-Catholics and returning to practice Catholics attended weekly classes, and the accomplishments of individuals in the classes were exhibited at a quarter-end celebration.   At the celebrations of Easter and Christmas, Christians and non-Christians friends were invited to attend. These classes and celebrations energized the parish growth; the parishioners had never seen so many non-Christians who were willingly to come to the Church.  Non-Catholics also prayed and sang hymns with the Catholics at the beginning of every class or event. This was a great first step to begin evangelism.

From all the volunteer helpers in classes and events, I trained several enthusiastic parishioners to begin direct evangelization.  We started the Legion of Mary, which, assisted by the pastor, led community activities and continued the operation of a total of ten classes, each of which has six to ten persons.  In order for the evangelist to carry out the next phase of the mission-- outreach to local communities through being closer to the non-Catholics-- I picked the area where the most people gather, the traditional markets, to be our evangelization epicenter.  I felt we needed to enter the center of the township and bring a deeply rooted love of the Christ into town residents’ heart: then the evangelization would more easily thrive and flourish.  Now the parish has been energized and become a gathering place for non-Christians. Although we are still in the seeding and nursery stage, we will continue under the light of the Holy Spirit.  Even though there are a lot of obstacles ahead, we will carry on the Hakka “hard-necked” spirit of not giving it up.