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A Restaurant Disciple

I couldn’t believe it! Although Taiwanese education majors in memorization, I had to teach one of my seminary students at Christ’s Disciples Training Institute (CDTI) how to memorize! Her quiz grades improved from barely passing to 100%!
Although Helen had impressed me as a particularly perceptive student in class discussions, she didn’t get very good grades. Like many working class people in Taiwan, she hadn’t developed the study skills necessary to succeed in school. She did not even graduate from high school. Trained as a cook by her parents who had a small restaurant, she moved to Taipei, the big capital city, and worked as a teppanyaki cook in an international hotel. Two customers made friends with her and invited her to their nearby church. She was impressed with the warm, friendly atmosphere of her very first church visit. When they invited her to the young adults’ fellowship group, she also went along. They introduced her to a Christian cook in another of the hotel’s restaurants who held a Bible study during the mid-afternoon break for restaurant employees.
Helen found that her whole life orientation changed when she believed. Before believing in Jesus, her life’s dream had been to get a good position (which she had) and eventually to open up her own restaurant (which she was still working on). After believing in Jesus, she found that those things didn’t matter any more. She just wanted to help the kingdom of God grow. Before believing in Jesus, she had not been a good student. After believing in Jesus, she became a person who loved to read.
Her parents originally felt very skeptical about Christianity. They thought that Christians believed strange things and incredibly didn’t worship their ancestors. But Christianity seemed to have such a positive affect on Helen that they asked her to take them to a church sometime. She returned to her home town and introduced them to a nearby church. Her father believed in Jesus about six months later, and then her mother believed. She comments, “My father’s temperament changed dramatically. Chinese traditional religion made him very tense and anxious. After believing in Jesus, the whole family atmosphere changed.”
Her church leaders quickly saw the abilities that God had given Helen to minister the gospel into people’s lives. She was given a lot of responsibility as a young believer. She responded to a call for full-time Christian workers and came to CDTI for pastoral training when she was forty years old. I had the privilege of contributing to her training at CDTI.
After graduating from seminary, Helen served in her home church and is now on the staff of a para-church organization. But . . . . she realizes that her first love is evangelism. She is developing a plan to take the gospel to restaurant workers. After all, she was once a restaurant worker who didn’t know Jesus!

Paul Buttrey