Summer 1994.....the Hong Kong Peak is issued by missionaries of the ABFMS. MISSIONS FULL CIRCLE This past year a partnership was forged between the 12th Pahk Chinese Baptist Churches in Thailand and the Kowloon City Swatow Baptist Church in Hong Kong for the development of a ministry to Thai migrant workers living in Hong Kong. There are presently over 12,000 Thai workers in Hong Kong, and more in the nearby Portuguese colony of Macau. There are numerous Thai restaurants in the Kowloon City area which employ hundreds of Thai workers. This affords the Kowloon City church a special opportunity to share the love of God. At present there is only one small church in Hong Kong ministering to Thai workers. The 12th Pahk churches will provide the salary support for a Thai missionary family, while the Hong Kong church will provide housing, and paly for expenses related to the development of thisnew ministry. Praise the Lord for the historic work of American Baptists in these two countries which has enabled these national churches to grow and nature to the place that they can now be mission sending churches. The Thai missionaries, Pastor Wicha Chanvititkul, his wife, Susan and their two small children arrived in Hong Kong on January 29. Susan is originally from Hong Kong, so this is a home coming for her. They will use a variety of ministries to develop relationships with Thai migrant workers including English and Cantonese classes, opportunities for fellowship and recreation, interest groups, etc. These activities will afford them the opportunity to build relationships with the workers and to share the gospel with those who are open to receive. Please pray that God will use this new ministry to touch the lives of hundreds of persons for Christ. The Thai migrant workers are from predominately Buddhist backgrounds. Often, these displaced persons are far more open to receive Christ than they would be in their own country. Those who receive Christ will one day return to Thailand as missionaries for Christ to their own people. Wilbur Stone KOWLOON BAPTIST KINDERGARTEN "GOES THE SECOND MILE" The Kowloon Baptist Church Kindergarten, where Linda Tennis serves as pincipal/supervisor, has always included a ministry to children with special needs. It has become known as a place which "go the second mile" in Christian love to help a child. Because of this reputation, people in Hong Kong call the kindergarten when they feel a child could be helped by some special care and love. One example is a family who moved to Hong Kong from Singapore. The husband is on the staff of Hong Kong Baptist College. They had a daughter, Laura, who has Down's syndrome. The pressures of trying to adjust to a new city, coupled with the special problems being experienced by their daughter, the mother in this family was not marking a successful adjustment. They appealed to the Kowloon Baptist Church Kindergarten to accept the child into a class. Laura was accepted. Linda and others made contacts with a hospital in Hong Kong which provides assistance for special needs children. Consultation was also made with appropriate government agencies. With everyone working together the child received the help she needed. Laura is now enrolled in a special education class in a regular primary school. "Without your help," Laura's mother told Linda, "I could never have coped." Another example is 'a young family who lived near the kindergarten. Thieves broke into their aartment one night. When the couple resisted, the father was murdered and the mother seriously injured. Their little son, Aaron, slept through the violent episode. The next day he was taken to live elsewhere because his mother had to be hospitalized for a long time. He was never told why, and as a defense mechanism Aaron withdrew into himself, and refused to speak. As the mother began to recover, she asked the Kowloon Baptist Church Kindergarten to enrol her child. They did, and with patient and loving care by the teachers, after six months Aaron began to speak. Now, in his second year at the school, he is a happy, outgoing child who readily joins in the fun of learning and playing. His teacher at the kindergarten continues to have regular contact with the mother to ensure that she also is making a good and complete recovery from this painful ordeal. The mother has been lavish in her raise of the Christian care experienced through the Kindergarten staff. Please ask God to bless these two their families and the Kindergarten staff as the "go the second mile" in meeting these special needs Linda Tennis THE VIEW FROM HERE Hundreds of high rise buildings sprawled at our feet, our eyes gazed at the expanse and quickly focused on the Tung Tau district of 30,000 people. "What a view," said Terrance Man, the pastor intern. "It sure is," I agreed. "Let's go sit on that rock. From here we can look over the whole area as we ask God to give us a vision for a church in Tung Tau." "Look at that," said Wilson Chan, the young pastor assigned to the Tung Tau project, "Tung Tau is tucked down in the middle, surrounded by more prosperous areas, but it is so central, you can easily reach out to all the adjacent areas! We focused our attention on Tung Tau, where the Brotherly Love Swatow Baptist Church has started the Tung Tau Youth Study Room. As we worshiped and praised the Lord our hearts were stirred as God's vision came into focus. We began to see that the Tung Tau people need a sense of community. This will be our strategic focus as we establish the church by forming cell groups. Eight of us have already formed a leadership cell group. We meet together for worship, prayer, encouragement, equipping and sharing what God is doing in and through us. As we reach out to the people of Tung Tau we will seek to provide a model of true community. To help us to better understand the community, we are doing research in the Tung Tau area. Besides reading government reports and historical documents, one of our most useful tools will be 'prayerwalking'. We have already chosen a time to 'prayerwalk' around the perimeter of the district to study its physical and spiritual features. We will go 'prayerwalking' through different neighborhoods to get a street-level view of people's needs and to ask God how we should respond. Our leadership cell presently oversees the Study Room which serves 500 secondary school students. Through our relationships with students we will contact their families. We plan to produce a video about the Study Room and highlight life in the Tung Tau District. It will show not only how the Study Room provides a quiet place to study, but will also introduce other activities such as camps, interest groups, family life seminars and discussion groups. As we serve people, they will come to Christ and our cell groupwill grow, divide and multiply into many cells. Please pray the Tung Tau cell church will help to build community among itv'people and reach out across Hong Kong wherever God leads. What a great view! Becky Trask SHUN TIN - SMOOTHING THE WAY FOR THE GOSPEL Shun Tin is a public housing estate for low income families. It has a Baptist chapel with a reading and study room and a Christian children's and youth center administered by Baptists. Although the study room and youth center are only about 75 yards from each other, for a number of years they have been separated because of different views of evangelism, and administrative and personal tensions. The Shun Tin Fellowship Chapel/Study Room, under creative, energetic leadership has done some very good work over the years. At least fifty percent of the people involved in the Chapel's worship service and its other activities are young people who first came to use the Study Room. The Chapel will soon become an independent church. It already has a ministry center in another area of Kowloon where some of their members will establish a new church. The Shun Tin Christian Children and Youth Centre has a bright future, but over a period of time has neglected the spiritual dimension. A number of the present staff are not practicing Christians and the number of people using the Centre has decreased. The newly appointed director is a strong Christian. This will encourage evangelism among the approximately 1200 children and youth enrolled in the Centre and its program. The new director, Cindy Tang, is experienced in children and youth center work and holds a degree in social work. The Centre's Board is made up of missionaries from the Mission and members of the Kowloon City Swatow Baptist Church. It has a strong commitment to bringing the Chapel and the Centre ministries together into a working relationship. Please pray these two ministries can combine and complement each other as they smooth the way for the gospel in Shun Tin Estate. Murray Beck MISSIONARY VOLUNTEER ENCOUNTERS HONG KONG CULTURE After 20 hours of flying from New York I arrived at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport. Within minutes I realized that not only had I arrived in another city on the globe but also into another culture. Hong Kong has many international features but the most striking is the Chinese themselves, who make up most of the Opopulation. As a Westerner, I had to drop Western styles and expectations and be fully open to the rich and profound cultural experience that I was encountering. I embraced this time of different and exciting experiences as a treasure. It has truly given me a gift that reading books and hearing lectures could never offer. I thank God for this enlightening and challenging experience as a missionary to teach about substance abuse, drug rehabilitation and counselling skills to students from India, Malaysia, the United States and Hong Kong. Before the course I taught started, I was able to get involved in counselling Chinese male teenagers recovering from heroin addiction at a Christian drug rehabilitation center called Bliss Lodge, a ministry of the Wu Oi Christian Centre. Being a former cocaine (crack) and heroin addict, I know personally the shame, pain, guilt, loneliness, anger, abandonment and intense feelings of despair that drug addicts experience both when they use drugs and when they stop. After my own experience of the spiritual ruin of drug addiction it took the healing power and love of God to restore me to sanity. It is also by God's grace that I have been called to teach and demonstrate the healing power of God's love. These Chinese boys have experienced these same feelings and also the spiritual ruin of drug addiction. I have met them on a feeling level, understanding their emotional devastation. In working with these teenage boys, I have been able to penetrate cultural barriers and help them to express the feelings that used to empower their drug addiction. Drug addiction is a very serious problem in Asia. Being in Hong Kong, with its high level of heroin addiction, has clearly reinforced my belief that drug addiction is no respecter of persons, beliefs or cultures. It is by the love of God that spiritual emptiness becomes spiritual fullness. Each and everyday I see the love of God shining through the eyes of these teenage boys. There is a strong need for trained individuals who can successfully work with recovering addicts. Please pray for me and the ministry in which God has called me to humbly serve. I will continue with the strength that God provides. Vincent Harris A.B.M. HONG KONG SET FOR CHANGE June, 1994, will mark a new era in the relationship between the Mission office and the Swatow Baptist Churches in Hong Kong. For the past forty years, the Hong Kong churches have related to International Ministries through the local office. In June of this year they will be able to enter into direct contacts with International Ministries ABC/USA. The new organizational structure will provide a more direct partnership as we cooperate together in sharing the gospel in Hong Kong. For many years the local churches have developed their programs in cooperation with, rather than in dependency upon the Mission. However, because the administration of Hong Kong will revert to the People's Republic of China in 1997, it will be important to avoid the perception that the church here is in any way subservient to a foreign mission organization. There is great potential for ministry and evangelistic outreach both in Hong Kong and beyond its borders. The Swatow Baptist Churches are extending their mission involvement to Macau and are supportive of the work of their fellow Christians in China. International Ministries of ABC/USA remains fully committed to continuing our partnership with them in future ministries. Missionaries....
Rev. Murray and Norma Beck
Rev. Wilbur and Sheila Stone
Rev. Keith and Linda Tennis
Rev. Becky Trask | 
