Taiwan Church News
3532 Edition
November 4 – 10, 2019
Church Ministry
Taiwan Government Urged To Restore Siraya Identity Missing For Almost Four Centuries
Reported by Chen Yi-fan
About 800 Christians, representatives from Tayal, Seediq, Paiwan, Bunun and many other aboriginal PCT presbyteries, attended an united thanksgiving memorial service, entitled as “God stands with Siraya people for the past 392 years”, at the Chó-Tìn Presbyterian Church in Tainan City on November 2, 2019.
To remember and offer thanksgiving that the Siraya people are the first to receive the Christian gospel on Taiwan island, the audience entered into the church one by one holding the lighted candle in the beginning of the service.
Later, in a drama performed in the service, the church’s youth actors played the story how the medical missionary – Dr James Laidlaw Maxwell sent by the Church of England- was astonished to find the Siraya people had already contacted and received the gospel in the era of Dutch colonial period in Taiwan.
Rev Dr Pusin Tali, principal of Yu-Shan Theological Seminary and College, encouraged the audience to be strong and resolute to serve the public without fear. More important is to make this good news incarnated in partial Sirayan New Testament manuscripts becomes God’s eternal blessing to the Siraya people, Rev Dr Pushi Tali said.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
