China Challenges

SABAH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (STS), Malaysia, is an absolute blessing for much of Asia. AFA has supported numerous students at STS over the years, some of them from China – including HU YU MEI, 29, who has now returned to the mountain regions of Yunnan Province in South West China, not far from Laos and Myanmar. She now is an evangelist there.

She is fine now but her amazing father is not. He builds schools for the tribal LISU people staying in the remote areas. He teaches the children Bible knowledge, hymns, the Lisu dialect, the Mandarin language and mathematics. His tribal work links in well with AFA’s tribal work on the other side of the border in Laos and Thailand. We are giving some small scale support but have to send someone there first to investigate more thoroughly. We do not intend to simply move now into China as well.

Writes Hu Yu Mei, Thank you for having such a passion for our LISU tribe. My grandfather was a student of James Outram Fraser, the great British missionary who pioneered the work among the LISU people in South West China 90 years ago. At the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) my grandfather was imprisoned because of his faith in Jesus.

So my father was brought up in a Christian family. He became a missionary too. He is the principal of the new school he just built for the LISU people. My father has to look after needs of the school, the students and the teachers. My mother's health is not good, so the situation is often hard.

The "Three-Self" Church Council of Bao Shan City pays my father and the teachers 800 CNY p/m each ($165) for their living expenses and work. – AFA believes that this is cripplingly little and stifling the care of the kids.