East Taiwan Family Missions
East Taiwan Family Missions
Project Managers: Nicholas Wright and Pietro Varroto
The East Taiwan Family Mission provided assistance for the aged, sick, orphans, handicapped and the imprisoned. Their activities involved assisting in a number of local hospitals, prisons, orphanages, homes for the elderly and homes for handicapped children. They focused their attention primarily on indigenous peoples and aboriginal tribes in East Taiwan. ETFM has been recognized by many agencies and governmental organizations, with ETFM volunteers staningd ready to provide relief assistance to the people of Taiwan in the event of natural disasters.
Hualien, Taiwan (R.O.C)
Mark and Pietro with typhoon survivors they are assisting in mountain village.
Visit to Buddhist Tsu Chi Hospital
On Children's Day, we usually perform programs in the Children's wards of several local hospitals. Last year we took our clowning/singing team to three hospitals, The Mennonite Christian Hospital, The Tsu Chi Buddhist Hospital and the City Government hospital. Here we sang songs, clowned and ballooned, all activities designed to make it a special day for the kids.
Typhoon Toraji hit Taiwan on the 30th of July, 2001, causing serious damagefrom flooding and landslides. We sent a team with a load of food and clothing to one of the villages affected, Ta Shing,Kuangfu Hsiang, Hualien. A landslide had buried a large part of this village in the early morning while people were sleeping. Twenty four people died and fifteen were missing, buried under tons of mud and rock.
After the busy Chinese New Year we planned our second rice delivery project to the single parents and neediest folks amongst the Aborigine Mountain Villages here in Taiwan. We approached various sponsors whose contributions helped buy the rice, as well as the Aborigine church pastors for their help in preparing the lists of those needing help. For this second project we amassed another 1000 kilos of rice. We were escorted through the villages by the villages elders who are members of the Presbyterian Church here in Taiwan, founded by missionaries about 100 years ago, the most famous being George Mackay from Canada.
We organised the Easter programme in two prisons, the Hualien city prison and the Kuangfu prison, bringing in a young people's dance team from Taipei and other volunteers from various cities in Taiwan. Our shows were very well received by the prisoners and prison staff alike. We did a spirited Easter performance with our four very good modern dance numbers, followed by some acoustic guitar accompanied songs, mostly in Chinese to reach the maximum amount of audience with our message. One of the most touching times was when we had the prisoners singing with us, "Through it all, Through it all, I learnt to trust in Jesus I learnt to trust in Him."
We travel to previously unexplored territory, at least places our team has never been before, among the high mountain villages around Hsinchu County. We pass quiet river valleys, as we climb through misty clouds, and then climb higher still to villages we see off in the distance. Here we continued our distribution of humanitarian aid to the aboriginal tribes, passing out everything from baby cereal, diapers and clothes, to sponsored sets of educational videos. The local villages will use the latter in their village youngsters' education, organized by the local village church or school. It is our goal to provide sets of educational videos to as many of the Aborigine villages as possible, knowing that the contents will positively influence and help mould the young Aborigine children in solid family principles and concepts.