Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The New Children of Taiwan

Earlier today I saw this link about families of foreign wives here in Taiwan as posted by OMF Field Director Phil Nicholson on his facebook page. As our bookkeeper/secretary said this past Sunday in small group, it is no longer appropriate to call them, in either English or Chinese, "foreign brides" since so many of them have lived here so long already.

Many places I have been recently (field directors' meeting from earlier in the month, mission prayer meeting, various other conversations) I'm hearing people talk about this-- even more than before. The 60+ children who participate in ShuiLin Presbyterian Church's tutoring and outreach programs 15 minutes down the road are almost exclusively from foreign bride Taiwanese families. How might God be wanting to love the so-called "new children of Taiwan" (xin taiwan zhizi) and mixed marriage families, and use them to subversively transform Taiwan's worldview to a Christian worldview from the inside-out (Paul Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews)? How might we move in line with Him in our church planting projects to accomplish this very purpose?