Flesh-and-blood love lives among them

【Phenomena】

Photo courtesy/Sun Yonghao

With original love, meet the needs of the community

Seven years ago, my wife and I, who serve in the "Kaohsiung City Feiyang Welfare Service Association", were appointed to use the association's funds to rent a small Toutian house in Daliao, Kaohsiung, to provide services to disadvantaged junior high school and primary school students. Provide free academic tutoring and character education. At that time, church building was the biggest burden and calling in our hearts, but community service was our main job.

When the supplementary class was first established, it was intended to provide care for children with dysfunctional families. We use resources from all over the world to provide these children with academic support and guidance, character correction and assistance, and build their self-awareness, confidence and independence. Although we long to build a church, we must be patient and do a good job in the newly developed tutoring work, and then build relationships with parents and children and win their trust. We do not "trick" people into church, nor do we intend to just give them the Bible and doctrine. Instead, we try our best to meet the needs of the community in a very practical way.

But no matter what, the gospel has always been spread. We not only use Tuotian House as a class supplement, but also as a venue for worship and small group gatherings. All the current core co-workers were students in the supplementary class at that time. Looking back now, because of that primitive inspiration, we had the first connection with these teenagers, which enabled us to better understand how to love others and understand what flesh-and-blood love is.

Most of the parents and children we interact with are non-Christian and come from disadvantaged families. Children and parents from such families usually have one thing in common: lack of self-confidence and low self-image. Among parents, we often face two extremes: I leave all my children in your care; or, I don’t want you to interfere in how our family teaches. For a long time, values have been influenced by family culture, so that we often have a huge conceptual pull when communicating with them.

▲Students in Daliao’s supplementary class interact closely with their teachers.

The Structure and Common Problems/Phenomena of Counseling Families

The association we belong to has six similar workstations. In addition to the headquarters, the families counseled by the other five workstations also have similar situations.

The administrative district I am responsible for is Daliao District, Kaohsiung, with a population of about 110,000. The composition of student families in order of size is: 1. Low-income households 2. Single parents 3. Children of foreign spouses 4. Aboriginal people. Usually the government provides living allowance benefits to these families. If these subsidies can help them escape poverty and turn their lives around, it is worth it. Unfortunately, because the subsidies received by some families even exceed the average family income, some parents not only strive to achieve "low-income" status, but also hope to "enjoy" the subsidies forever. Such a mentality sometimes hinders the independent development of parents and children.

Based on my own observations of serving in this unit for nearly ten years, I often think like this: Will providing one-way financial subsidies make these parents and children more responsible? Will it make them more motivated? Will it make them more willing to be educated and adjusted? Will they be willing to open their hearts to faith?

Of course, parents cannot be entirely blamed for family dysfunction. Most of the parents come from disadvantaged families. When they were growing up, they did not have enough resources and complete education. Therefore, the opportunities for ability cultivation and development were greatly limited from the starting point, resulting in poor knowledge, information, communication, and expression ability. , basic academic qualifications, and even mental maturity are obviously insufficient. Therefore, various forms of addiction, loss of emotional control, marital relationship and parenting problems will be more likely to occur in these parents.

Some parents live with their children, but do not give their children a correct parental image, such as: lax work attitude, lack of discipline in life, lack of mature emotional expression, lack of responsibility for the family, etc. These negative life examples plant wrong perceptions in children's minds.

Daliao District, which is dominated by grassroots groups, lacks resources related to marriage counseling. People have no idea about the image of marriage. The subconscious relationship with their spouses mostly follows the relationship between parents of the previous generation. Many men and women combine at will and hastily enter into marriage before they have solved their own problems. Naturally, marriages are prone to problems.

▲Self-study time for Daliao supplementary class students.

What impact do family problems have on children?

Due to the influence of various family problems, students in supplementary classes generally have the following behavioral tendencies: giving up easily, often being late and absent, having no sense of responsibility, irregular work and rest, poor ability to take care of themselves, low self-confidence, and moodiness If there are obstacles, problems will occur early in the relationship between the sexes.

Case 1: Xiaolian (pseudonym), who comes from a single-parent family, entered the association’s supplementary class when she was in the first grade of junior high school. Her mother was addicted to gambling and almost all the money she earned was lost in gambling. Later, her mother ran away from home to avoid repayment due to accumulated gambling debts, leaving her younger sister, who was in the third grade of elementary school, to be taken care of by Xiao Lian. With no living expenses left at all, Xiaolian was forced to work after class to earn living expenses to support herself and her sister.

Xiaolian was full of negative thoughts during that time, and at one point she wanted to end her life with her sister. But every time I have these thoughts, I will think of the teachings and encouragement from the "Character Course" in the supplementary class: pray, believe in God, and entrust big and difficult things to God! So Xiaolian started to pray. Every time she opened her mouth to pray, the negative thoughts would leave. Now, Xiaolian has not only returned to the supplementary class to continue her studies, but she has also worked hard to pursue her faith and participate in services every week. She once fell into depression and deliberately alienated herself from the crowd, but now she has a smile on her face every day.

Case 2: Xiao Yi (pseudonym) comes from a single-parent family. Her mother is a new resident. After divorcing her father, she brought Xiao Yi back to Vietnam to raise her. Later, because her mother hoped that Xiaoyi could be educated in Taiwan, she entrusted her to an aunt who married in Taiwan. After Xiaoyi finished sixth grade in Vietnam, she returned to Taiwan for two years. At school, because I was two years older than my classmates in the same grade and because my Mandarin was not up to standard, I was often the target of bullying by my classmates. When the social worker brought Xiaoyi to register for the supplementary class, she was hunched over, head lowered, and wearing a mask, which made her look distressing.

After the teacher took the initiative to comfort her and established a trusting relationship with her, Xiaoyi was touched by the Holy Spirit during a gathering and cried continuously during worship and praise. When the teacher prayed for her, Xiao Yicai bravely expressed the sadness of missing her mother and the humiliation of being bullied by classmates at school. In order to help Xiao Yi get rid of her low self-esteem, the tutor immediately accompanied Xiao Yi to school, communicated with the teacher, and asked the teacher to help improve the social problems between Xiao Yi and her classmates.

How can the church go deep into the community and help these families and children?

In addition to the basic services in the three aspects of tutoring, character and faith, Pastor Guo Zhibin, the founder of the "Kaohsiung City Feiyang Welfare Association", has extended a wider range of ministries based on the actual needs of students of different age groups.

Since last year, the association has launched the "Reversal Rider" activity led by Pastor Guo, accompanying young people to ride bicycles around the island for 11 days, a total distance of 1,000 kilometers. The activity is designed to enable these children who are accustomed to giving up on everything and lack successful experience in life to develop perseverance, set goals, and experience the exhilarating feeling when reaching the goals. Over the past two years, such a meaningful event has reshaped the lives of many children.

Secondly, in order to cultivate the competitiveness of this group of young people in other skills, the association also organizes a weekly "career exploration course" to allow them to find out their interests and expertise. The courses currently offered include: beauty care, hair styling, pastry baking training class, motorcycle maintenance, Chinese catering license training class, woodworking creation class, bicycle leader certificate C level, hand-brewed coffee, patchwork class, Japanese class , interior design, etc.

Due to the limited tutoring time of three hours a day, I personally look forward to building a student center in the future so that these children can live together, learn and grow, and I will serve as the dormitory to help them plan their daily life. . If the children can be changed first, the parents will follow. When we focus on improving children's supplementary education first and improving character education, parents' willingness to cooperate will increase accordingly.

▲"It's time to eat!" During lunch break for students in Daliao's supplementary class.

Conclusion

In the work of planting churches and associations, it is important to remember the original intention. I often seek God again and again during prayer, examining whether I am still on track with my calling and whether my own subjectivity has interfered with God’s will for my life. God has put us in this position now, and it seems that it has nothing to do with building the church, but in fact, behind our active promotion of public welfare, the Christian spirit submerged within us is the powerhouse that drives us to take the initiative everywhere.

I hope that I will use my life to influence more lives in need in the community. “I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only one grain. But if it dies, it will bear many grains.” ” (John 12:24) In addition to serving the community with a professional attitude, we must also generously share God’s precious blessings with others.

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