Dear Life Light Friends
Peace in the Lord! At the end of the first quarter we thought everything would be back to normal by the second half of the year. With more people having taken the vaccine and with the warm summer weather, it seemed likely that we would have COVID-19 under control in the United States. However, the delta variant brought this disease into another peak season. Although people are less panicked and have learned how to deal with it better, we still wonder when life will ever return to normal. For this reason, our co-workers strongly advised us to skip this year’s sharing/Thanksgiving dinner party again. It is simply too risky to host a large gathering at this time. Therefore, we decided to follow last year’s method of updating everyone through a video. Additionally, we prepared a few small gifts for our friends. I would like to bring your attention to our umbrella gift, which has a flash light on the handle. May the light help guide you, while using it in the evening. It also symbolizes our name Life Light, “When we walk in the darkness, the LIGHT will guide us through.”
Although we are still in uncertain times and living an abnormal lifestyle, we are happy to inform you that Life Light is still going strong! Almost all aspects of our ministry have had the same achievements as 2020. Please watch our video to update you on our ministry: https://youtu.be/Hso_EX8YoZY
- Short-Term Missions:
Since 2010, we have taken short term mission trips to visit and support our blind vocational high school. Our aim was to share God’s love to the students. Even if they couldn’t see or touch it, we wanted them to know it was real. We want them to know that there are people on the other side of the world who really care about them. Last year, we were fortunate to have Kitty represent us and visit the blind school in Zheng Zhou. She called us early this year to inform us there were 4 sisters willing to join her on the short term mission this summer. We were very excited and asked one of our co-workers in China to go with them. There was plenty of time to plan a successful mission trip, however, plans change as they often do and the 4 sisters ended up unable to go after all. Despite only having 2 members represent Life Light, God still used us to show our love and compassion to these students. Some of us in the U.S. also utilized Zoom to chat with the students and had a really good time reconnecting.
- Educational Ministry:
In addition to supporting the Zheng Zhou Blind High School and one blind girl studying in the music teaching master degree program, we also recently started to support two more blind students who were eager to further their education. A graduate student majoring in broadcasting and one majoring in a music bachelors degree program. God gave us the vision to help not only the blind vocational high school students but also talented young adults seeking higher education. Due to the unstable situation in China, we also decided to diversify and get involved with institutions in the U.S. who specialize in helping blind students attain education or gospel ministry, such as Braille Institute and Lutheran Braille Worker.
In terms of theological education, we continue to support all students who are studying at the China Theological Seminary. However, we changed our policy for recruiting new students this year. We don’t want to support all new applicants, and wanted to make certain they are called to attend the seminary. So we accept only half of the number of new students this year after several interviews with them. We are excited to announce we will have 5 students graduating from Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary and obtaining their masters degree next year!
- Online ministry:
Due to the Chinese government’s strict control, we’ve been forced to make some changes on our radio programs which are published on the WeChat official account. We now avoid religious and politically sensitive programs and upload only non overtly religious content three days per week. We made this change after learning that all our radio friends in Singaport, Australia and other region were block completely. By doing this we hope our present in Wechat can be extended longer than other radio station friends. Luckly we still have our own broadcasting channel-MBC Online Radio Station-available which we can still upload all the radio programs that we produce.
Because all of the religious stations on YY are also being forced to close, we switched and uploaded our Sunday online worship to the MBC Broadcasting Station. As a result, it turned out to be a blessing. The number of people listening to our Sunday worship program has increased by 5 times because the blind Christians are not limited to joining the service at the exact time of 9:00am, but can listen to the worship service whenever they have free time on Sunday. Also with our co-workers’ continued effort to promote our MBC Broadcast channel, our audience has increase to a few thousands listeners. Our goal is to reach ten thousand soon.
Even during hardships, God always provides us with more than we ask for!
- The music evangelistic service:
In the beginning of this year we thought the music outreach in the Western world and Southeast Asia would resume by the second part of 2021. However, Covid-19 limited our opportunity to do music evangelism in all churches worldwide. Although we were doing very well the first half of this year in Taiwan, they soon faced lockdowns due to COVID-19 in May, June and July. The government closed all public gatherings, include church worship. Luckily, Taiwan started to open their churches in August after their strict lockdown and success at pushing the vaccine. Let us pray that our music group can book enough services in different Taiwan churches throughout the remainder of the year. We continue to praise and give glory to God even though the hard times and struggles!
Life Light is dedicated to carry out our ministry goals and projects. May God bless and lead the way for the future of our foundation. Please continue to support and pray for us. Thank you everyone!
Life Light Educational foundation
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