Taoyuan City Mayor Thanks Ta-An Church to Care for the Marginalized Children

(相片提供/星中南崁大安教會)

Taiwan Church News
3681 Edition
Sept 12 ~ 18, 2022
Topic News

Taoyuan City Mayor Thanks Ta-An Church to Care for the Marginalized Children

Reported by Lin Yi-yin

In the afternoon on Sept 7, Mr Cheng Wen-tsan, Mayor of Taoyuan City visited Ta-An Church of Chi-Hsin Presbytery to give his thanksgiving and appraise for the church’s long-term engagement in the charity project, cooperating with Taoyuan City’s Social Welfare Bureau, to offer off-school companion for the children from the marginalized families.

Rev Lin Rong-ren, pastor of Ta-An Church, said frankly that many churches would not step into this companion ministry for the children of the marginalized family due to two reasons: first, its cost was quite expensive; second, the church didn’t know how to share the gospel via ministry and service.

The church’s companion ministry began about eight years ago, expressed Rev Lin, because his co-workers were shocked to find some community children were sent into local police office for stealing foods from the convenience stores. Therefore, to care for these children from the marginalized families, an off-school companion ministry got launched.

But the financial cost of ministry was also quite high in the first year operation, said Rev Lin, reaching total about one million NT dollars. So, in order to carry on the companion ministry, Rev Lin figured out many ways to raise the money, for example, recruiting 70 brothers and sisters from the church as “Gideon Warriors” to collect each 3,000 NT dollars per month, seeking the fiance and support from the Gideon International and the famous movie director Wu Nien-jen.

From September 2019, cooperating with Social Welfare Bureau of Taoyuan City, Ta-An Church launched a joint-venture ministry project, called “Love Doubled in Little Satellite”, offering kinds of service including off-school companion, summer/winter vacation curriculums, characters education, family recreation events, phone-call communication and family care. Meanwhile, the children and their parents were also introduced to learn the church’s charity services, musics and the gospel teachings, said Rev Lin.

Translated by Peter Wolfe

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