Global Witness to the Chinese in Central America

Central America! It conjures up images of the busy Panama Canal, or perhaps ancient Mayan pyramids buried in the lush jungle from which fly gorgeously colored toucans and parrots.

One does not think of Chinese in this region, but in fact there are over 230,000 of them living in the seven countries that make up this distinct region:

Belize 7,000
Costa Rica 63,000
El Salvador 1,300
Guatemala 20,000
Honduras 2,000
Nicaragua 7,000
Panama 130,000

However, evangelical Christian witness is weak among them. There are believed to be only about 1,300 believers, meeting in only 18 churches and fellowships across this region. (This means only about 0.6 percent of the overseas Chinese communities here are believers.)

Worse, there are no fellowships operating at all in four of the countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua). And in two countries—Honduras and Nicaragua—there are no known Chinese Christians.

Throughout the region, Roman Catholicism is the dominant faith. In many cases it has become very nominal, and in others is a thin overlay covering native folk-religion and animism which dates back to the time of the Maya and the Aztecs.

In recent decades the Protestant churches in Central America have enjoyed explosive growth. In two countries (Guatemala and Belize) they number about 25 percent of the total population. In the remaining five countries Protestants account for between 11-21 percent of the population. Except for Belize where the Anglicans, and Honduras where the Christian Brethren, are the largest denominations, the largest churches are Pentecostal. The Assemblies of God have many churches across the region.

Is it too much to hope that these vigorous, growing Spanish-speaking churches will develop a burden and the skills to reach out to the Chinese communities in their midst?
In Panama, many of the large Chinese population can trace their ancestry to the laborers who migrated to the country in the early 20th century to build the canal. Many are small shop owners who work long hours. There are three relatively established Chinese churches and a handful of full-time or part-time workers. Various short-term teams visit to preach and evangelize but there is a desperate need for long-term pastors.

In Costa Rica, the Chinese community largely came from Guangdong. Today they run restaurants, shops, bars and hotels. More recently many have come from Taiwan and the Mainland. Catholicism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and traditional Chinese religions have made strong inroads into the Chinese community. In San Jose, the capital, there are four Chinese fellowships using Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese as well as Spanish for the younger generation growing up who have lost their Chinese roots. These churches rely on Chinese missionaries to preach and pastor.

In the other countries, there is either no witness or small fellowships struggling to survive. Will you pray for the spiritual upbuilding of these small Chinese fellowships and that more committed evangelists and pastors will be called to Central America to reach the rapidly growing Chinese population?

(We are grateful to the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism for much of the above information.)

CONGRATULATIONS FEBC!

Sixty years ago the Far East Broadcasting Company started broadcasting trial-run gospel programs from Shanghai. Today FEBC continues to broadcast the word of God into China. OMF is glad to work in partnership with FEBC and to continue to support their vital ministries of evangelism, discipleship and theological training.

FEBC ministry has touched and changed countless lives in China. Mr. Duan in Shandong is one of these. He wrote in December:

“1983 was the most memorable year of my life. I had barely turned 20 when my father died leaving the family heavily in debt. I am the oldest son and the family burden on me was unbearable. I even contemplated suicide. One evening I accidentally turned on the radio and heard a voice saying: ‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ I was deeply moved. I learned to pray and received great comfort.”
This is just one life touched for Christ. Pray that many others will hear the gospel for the first time, and others be established in their faith, through FEBC’s round-the-clock radio ministry.

CHINA’S SOARING AIDS EPIDEMIC

The number of Chinese testing positive for HIV is growing dramatically, adding to fears that a once-hidden epidemic is spreading through the country’s booming sex trade. By the end of October 2006 183,733 people had tested positive for the virus, compared to 144,089 for the whole of 2005—a rise of almost 30 percent in 10 months. Local AIDS activists say the government is still underestimating the crisis. But international agencies said the increase was partly due to the extension of testing programs as the authorities became more open about a disease whose infection rates it covered up for years. Drug use and the explosion in prostitution as the economic boom continues to threaten to spread the disease more widely.

A scandal in central China in which it is believed hundreds of thousands of farmers were infected through unsafe blood-selling practices, was covered up in the nineties. Campaigners who tried to bring it to national attention were beaten and arrested.
When a new national leadership came to power at the end of 2002 it demanded greater openness on the disease and both Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao have been filmed shaking hands with AIDS patients. The government itself yesterday pointed to low awareness of the issue among China’s huge [200 million] migrant worker population which includes a thriving sex trade in the new industrial centers of the east coast and along transport routes. Half the country’s intravenous drug users share needles while in some areas only a third of men using prostitutes use condoms.

The official figure for those testing positive for HIV is 650,000. Wan Yanhai, an internationally renowned researcher who has often clashed with the authorities on the issue said the true figures were likely to be much higher. “It’s hard to give any credit to their figures.” (Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2006)

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING—DEMISE OF THE FRIENDSHIP STORE!

Foreign visitors to China in the 1970s and 1980s remember with wry amusement that famous institution—the Friendship Store. With its range of Western luxury goods only available to Westerners and those Chinese cadres who had by fair means or foul obtained the necessary ‘Foreign Exchange Certificates’. It was an unholy capitalist oasis blatantly flouting its decadent extravagance in the face of drab, Maoist proletarian egalitarianism. The Beijing outlet opened in 1964 just before the Cultural Revolution.

Now the free market has caught up and surpassed its echoing and often empty halls. Since the reform period started in 1979, it has struggled to compete with the vast luxury shopping malls growing up all around it. Now it may be redeveloped into a luxury office and shopping center in a typically post-Mao mixture of communism and capitalism. It will stay in the hands of the State corporation that owns it, but be rebuilt by a Hong Kong developer to the design of Australian architects.

Two aspects of shopping at the Friendship Store will not be missed—the exorbitant prices and the proverbially abysmal standard of politeness and service. In one celebrated encounter an American woman, who complained the ice cream she had bought had gone bad, had the contents of the tub poured over her head! Ah, those were the days!