Tag Archives: Church Festivals

Holy Week and Easter 2018 @ Advent Church, St. John’s University, Taiwan!

April 1, 2018 Catherine Lee 4 Comments

Christ is risen, Alleluia! It’s been a meaningful, joyful and blessed Holy Week here at Advent Church, St. John’s University ~ and now Easter is upon us, so a very happy Easter to you all! This is the Easter fire, lit last night at 8:00 pm as we started our Easter Vigil Service…

And the sun’s been shining all week, and the cherry blossom was still out at the beginning of Holy Week…..

Holy Week started last Sunday, Palm Sunday ~ YES!

We began our Palm Sunday service with a procession around the main entrance of St. John’s University. We were very pleased that Bishop Lai was able to join us for the service and procession too.

The procession wound its way around the church, where we have the Stations of the Cross, pausing at each in turn. Then as we processed into the church, each person took one of the small green palm crosses…

During the service, we had a dramatic presentation of the events of Holy Week, acted out by our students, past and present…..

Then on Monday night, the St. John’s University ‘Movie Club’ showed the movie ‘Silence‘ 沈默 on a big screen on the main playing field. This was not done intentionally for Holy Week, rather they had to choose an evening when there was no baseball practice, and they chose the movie because it was filmed in Taiwan. But it so happens that it was so appropriate for Holy Week – and quite a number of us turned up to watch. This was my second time to see it, and it’s much improved on the second viewing ~ like I knew when the gruesome bits were coming up, but also I noticed things I had missed the first time round. Still utterly compelling and challenging. Brutal and horrific, and yet also so moving. And so fitting for Holy Week. For me, this was one of the highlights of the week.

On Maundy Thursday, we held our Passover Meal in the Advent Church Center, and a wonderful mix of students and adults came along. This took a huge amount of work and preparation, but all worth it. We were so pleased to welcome SJU President Ay and his wife too.

During the service that followed in the church, we had foot-washing. President Ay had his feet washed by our rector, Rev. Lennon Chang – the teacher washing the feet of his former student. We also had our chaplain, Rev. Wu Hsing-Hsiang, washing the feet of Jin-Ching, our SJU Student Fellowship Leader, and Shu-Jing from our chaplaincy washed the feet of Pei-Ching, one of our 4th year students who was preparing for her baptism on Easter Eve. We celebrated the ‘Last Supper’ together, remembering the evening when Jesus instituted the Holy Communion, and shared bread and wine with his disciples just before his death.

The altar had been stripped after the service on Maundy Thursday, and the crosses were covered in black cloth. On Good Friday, it being a working and school day, we had a lunchtime service with our students, faculty and staff acting out the events of Good Friday – the trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus, and we finished in silence around the cross and the altar…..

Then to last night, which was Easter Eve, Saturday, and we held our Easter Vigil at 8:00 pm, with the lighting of the Easter fire, and also 2 baptisms. It was great to see so many of our student fellowship coming along to support Pei-Ching in her baptism…

I was outside taking photos during the baptisms, along with a little 2-year-old and his father. He was totally absorbed in watching events inside at the font….

This morning, Easter Day, we could truly say, ‘Christ is risen, Alleluia!’ I even wore a skirt for the occasion, and got mentioned in the Notices as a result! Advent Church was filled with wonderful choir music as our choir sang and sang so much beautiful Easter music.

Yu-Jie accompanied the choir on the piano, and glorious sounds filled the church!

Ah yes, and to finish, we had an Easter egg hunt!

And then we had lunch and birthday cake – celebrating all April birthdays. Here we all are at the end of the service singing happy birthday together!

And so, wishing you all a Happy Easter. Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Taiwan

Happy Chinese New Year’s Eve 2018!

February 15, 2018 Catherine Lee 3 Comments

What a beautiful dawn and sunrise this morning, viewed from the 8th floor of St. James’ Church, Taichung! The start of a day of gorgeous weather!

One of the great traditions of Chinese New Year is catching up with old friends, often those not seen for a whole year or even longer. I’ve been riding around Taichung on a u-bike all week doing this – and today was special, because I visited Fr. Toon Maes, CICM, at St. Paul’s RC Church, Taichung, where he is enjoying the sun after all those cold, wet and windy years up near us on the northern coast in Jinshan! He’s 86, and in charge of a church which has about 120 people in the mass on Sunday. His church is beautifully decorated for Chinese New Year…

On Tuesday I visited another RC priest friend, Fr. Joy, MM, based at Tanzi Migrant Church, just north of Taichung and working with the Filipino migrant workers, who are mostly employed in the nearby export processing zone. He has a huge church of thousands, and lots of outreach and social programmes….

In case you’re wondering, both Fr. Joy and Fr. Maes did actually hold small Ash Wednesday services yesterday. But in fact, Joy told me that Lent has been postponed in the local RC Churches, due to Chinese New Year coming this week. After all, it’s really quite extraordinary to have Ash Wednesday – all that fasting and ashes – one day, followed the next day (tonight, Chinese New Year’s Eve) by the biggest family feast of the whole year! So I think it really makes good sense to delay Lent for a week. Not just delay Ash Wednesday, but actually Lent itself. I know it’s supposed to be 40 days, but hey, a few less really won’t make much difference. Otherwise people won’t know whether they’re supposed to be piously fasting, thus annoying all their family or friends by not participating in the New Year celebrations, or the alternative – eat, drink and be merry and then feel guilty afterwards! And we really don’t need any more guilt in this world and in the church, in my humble view at least. In the Taiwan Episcopal Church, it’s been left to individual churches to decide, and in St. James, the church council decided not to hold a service – as everyone was so busy getting ready and travelling.

And of course, having no Ash Wednesday left us all free to focus on Valentine’s Day instead ~ and in connection with Valentine’s Day, you must read this BBC News report about how some of Taiwan’s little green traffic light men down in Pingtung have got girlfriends in time for February 14….

Taiwan’s pedestrian crossing men get girlfriends – BBC News

Isn’t that wonderful?!

Red is the colour of Chinese New Year ~ and isn’t this doorway beautiful? Saw it in Taichung yesterday. And so, wishing you all a very Happy Chinese New Year!

Have good celebrations, wherever you are – we’re off on a little trip ourselves tomorrow. See you in a few days ~ but for now I’m off for Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner ~ yippee!

St. John's University, Taiwan

Advent & Christmas 2017 @ St. John’s University (SJU) & Advent Church, Taiwan

December 27, 2017 Catherine Lee 1 Comment

SJU is definitely a happening kind of place during Advent and Christmas! Taiwan doesn’t have any holidays for Christmas, so apart from weekends, the students are here in classes all over Christmas, the office staff are working all over Christmas, the professors are teaching all over Christmas (and this year our engineering faculty / college had an OFSTED-style inspection starting on December 25!) so we just get on and make the most of it!

During Advent, every department and main office in St. John’s University has an Advent wreath on display, and every week the St. John’s University Chaplaincy Team and student fellowship walk around the university campus visiting all those offices in turn, starting with President Ay’s office.

We invite one of the staff of each office to light the Advent candle(s) and read a Bible verse, we sing a carol or say a prayer, share greetings, and move on to the next office. It takes 3-4 hours to complete the circuit. One day we also included our new class of Vietnamese students, who gathered in a large group and joined in…

As there’s about 30 offices on the campus and we visit each office 4 times over the course of Advent, hey that’s quite a few candles being lit and prayers being offered!

Our students and church members have been busy for weeks preparing a Christmas drama, this year it actually included the Bible story of Christmas. We had 2 teams rehearsing, one of students and one of church members – with some overlap; during Advent, we took the performance around the community to different places. The students performed the drama during their evangelistic outreach event early in December, and on Saturday December 16, the church members performed the drama for our children’s Christmas party ~ it was fast-moving and thrilling to watch!

At Advent Church, we have said thank you and goodbye to Rev. Michael T. H. Liu, who after about 5 years of monthly preaching at Advent Church is finally retiring, at nearly 80 years old. This was his last Sunday with us on December 10 – so we all gathered for a group photo. Thank you Michael!

My monthly visits to Laomei Elementary School (an extension of Advent Church ministry) also continued through December, with our theme of Christmas trees. Ah, the kids are so much fun – these are the younger ones!

Our combined SJU and Advent Church Christmas Charity Bazaar is held every year on the Wednesday before Christmas. This year it was December 20, and everyone was busy for weeks beforehand getting ready. This year’s charity is Taiwan Xi En 希恩之家 in Kaohsiung, which was founded originally to provide a way of helping mothers who might otherwise decide to have an abortion, and the charity’s home helps take care of babies and small children up to the age of 2 years old. Our aim was to raise NT$ 250,000 and it looks like we might exceed that, thanks be to God! Most of the money is actually raised from direct donations, but the bazaar gives the students a chance to do their bit to help, giving of their time and buying their lunch that day at the bazaar. The day of the actual bazaar was dry weather – for the first time for many years! Not only that, but the weather continued dry and even sunny throughout the whole Christmas weekend. Possibly a first – YES!

The following day, Thursday December 21 was the Christmas carol-singing and final Advent walkabout, lighting all the 5 candles, and also visiting the student dormitories and our local neighbours. We had also visited Xian-Xiao (our neighbouring junior-high school branch) a few days earlier for carol singing and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

Then on Friday evening, our church members joined with the student fellowship and we extended our carol singing to cover the whole area from Tamsui up to Sanzhi. I joined the group that was singing outside the new ramen noodle shop run by our church members in northern Tamsui….

And then all the different carol-singing groups met up to visit SJU President Ay’s home here in his university accommodation. We had such a warm welcome!

On Christmas Eve, we held our evening service at 7:30 pm, starting in candlelight, and wonderfully supported by our choir, who as always, sang beautifully.

We had 2 baptisms that evening, Mr. Huang, brother of one of our former students who was baptized himself here a few years ago, and the other was our good friend, Jasmine Yu, in charge of Xian-Xiao School….

Jasmine invited 12 members of her family to come and witness this momentous event. These were virtually all people I know from the mountain-climbing trips we have done together over the years. Apart from one of her cousins who is a Christian, Jasmine is the first Christian in her family, and yet they all came along to support her. What a great testimony, and praise God! Please pray for them all!

Christmas Day, being a Monday, was a normal work and school day here in Taiwan. We had a short service on Christmas Day, and then we had another one today, December 27, for St. John’s Day – patron saint of SJU…

And last night, December 26, we had a wonderful Christmas Party for my combined community English class groups. Normally I have 2 adult English groups, one meeting on Monday afternoons, and the other (a new class this term) on Tuesday evenings. Actually the Monday afternoon group are mainly church members, and they took on the responsibility of running the party for the Tuesday evening group, who are mostly not. Everyone brought food, wore red and we all had a great time. Ah, I love red!

And just check out the fruit animals, made by Ms. Cho, one of the students!

We danced, ate, played Bingo, musical chairs and musical animal statues and it was all so funny, I could hardly take photos for laughing so much. Spot the penguins. And the lions. And plenty of other animals. Just my kinda party!

SJU has a brand new set of LED lights along our main campus boulevard, strings of blue and white lights hanging from all the banyan trees, and looking very splendid. The students are so impressed they are all taking and posting photos of themselves in the lights. This was last night, the grand opening was tonight!

Non-stop all month, and more to come lol. For now though, this is it. Christmas is well and truly upon us!

Belated Christmas greetings to you all!

Updated on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2017:

This morning in Advent Church we celebrated the First Sunday of Christmas. As it comes only days after St. John’s Day on December 27, so our SJU student fellowship were responsible for leading the worship, doing the readings, the notices, collection etc. They all did a great job!

We also welcomed Bishop David J. H. Lai for a confirmation service…..

Seven people were confirmed ~ ranging in age from 17 to 90!

Congratulations to everyone ~ and what a great way to end 2017!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year 2018 ~ and I’m off to write my new year resolutions!

CMS

Hot off the press ~ CMS Link Letter # 73!

September 21, 2017 Catherine Lee 3 Comments

In 1,400 words (that’s the CMS limit), my long silence on here has ended with the publication today of my latest Church Mission Society (CMS) Link Letter ~ click on this link below and it opens to a pdf document with words and photos describing why I’ve been silent for so long…..

Catherine Lee 73

However, 1,400 words was not enough – and I had to leave much out. Notably thanking certain people. My family of course, and all those who offered support and prayers….

Next would be Alice from Mauritius who spent the summer here in Taiwan, staying in my house while she visited her very lovely elderly parents who live up the road from me – while her energetic husband, Bishop Roger was on a mission study tour of the Church of South India. She is the reason why we visited St. Stephen’s Church, Keelung on Sunday August 6, and I was very grateful for her company and support all summer – and for looking after my house while I was away.

Then there was Rev. Keith C. C. Lee and lovely people of Good Shepherd Church and Kindergarten, Taipei where I had completed only one week of a four-week children’s summer camp when I had to return to the UK. It so happened that they managed to find another teacher at the last minute, who herself happened to return to Taiwan from her own holiday on the day I left. Amazing. God is good.

And especially big thanks to Bishop David J. H. Lai, Rev. Lennon Y. R. Chang and all the great people of the Diocese of Taiwan, Advent Church and St. John’s University for their support and prayers, and for releasing me for 3 weeks to return to the UK.

And finally, my mobile phone died on me the day I arrived in the UK. It refused to charge itself and so breathed its last, leaving me phone-less. As Taiwan is THE best place to buy a new phone, I decided to wait. And anyway, 3 weeks without a phone is not really the end of the world, and gave me a chance to switch off and focus on what was going on there. So maybe God had a purpose in it all after all!

So, many apologies if you’ve been checking this blog and wondered how come I was so quiet and posting nothing for so long ~ and no explanation either. Now you know ~ and I hope you will continue your support and prayers as always, thank you!

Advent Church, Taiwan

Easter 2017 @ Advent Church!

April 16, 2017 Catherine Lee 2 Comments

Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Our Easter celebrations started with the Easter Vigil last night, Easter Eve at 8:00 pm, and the lighting of the Easter fire outside in front of Advent Church.

The service started in candlelight….

And then all the candles were lit, and the Gospel reading was accompanied by 3 of our tallest students and church members as servers and carrying the cross…

The flowers were looking beautiful!

We were delighted to have 4 baptisms, 8-year-old Bo-Chang, whose aunt is a member of our church ~ he himself comes every day after school to do his homework, accompanied by one or two of our students…

And one of our alumni from 30 years ago, with 2 of his children – he attended our student fellowship at the time, and always regretted not being baptized before he graduated….

And here they all are with family and friends….

And so to Easter Day, and the big egg hunt after the service!

Happy Easter everyone, Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Taiwan

Trinity Sunday in Taichung!

May 23, 2016 Catherine Lee Leave a comment

A city of colour even on a rainy day!

Attended the morning service with the Filipino community, mostly migrant workers, who gather at the Church of the Immaculate Conception every Sunday. The main mass is at 12 noon, and is always packed out, so they now have a new mass at 10:45 am too – that’s the one I went to. The priest is a good friend of mine, Fr. Joy from Maryknoll Missioners.

And check out that beautiful church minibus, their very own popemobile…..

Now just waiting for the pope himself lol!

Advent Church, Taiwan

Happy Easter @ Advent Church!

March 28, 2016 Catherine Lee Leave a comment

From darkness to light!

Christ is Risen, Alleluia! 耶穌復活了!

Our Easter celebrations began with the Easter Vigil at 8:00 pm on Saturday, Easter Eve, with the lighting of the Easter fire, and then the first lighting of candles. After days of heavy rain, the sun had actually been out all day, and although it was very cold, it was dry, yes! We were delighted to welcome one of our students involved with our chaplaincy at St. John’s University, Mei-Han, who was baptised during the service. The church looked beautiful, the choir were amazing, and it was a very moving and inspiring service….

Easter Day, and we gathered for a very joyful morning service!

And an Easter egg hunt…. salted duck eggs!

Happy Easter everyone ~ Christ is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Advent Church, Taiwan

Good Friday 受難日‬@ Advent Church

March 25, 2016 Catherine Lee Leave a comment

A few highlights of our lunchtime service at Advent Church today….

The sermon took the words of John 18: 37-38…

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.

彼拉多問：「真理是甚麼？」Pilate asked, ‘What is truth?”

‘‎真理‬'(zhēnlĭ) ‘‎Truth’‬ ‪~ the Chinese characters are carved on the nave of Advent Church, along with the characters for ‘the way’ and ‘the life’ above and below.

Pilate asked, “What is truth?”

A suitable thought to meditate upon this Good Friday afternoon.

Advent Church, Taiwan

Maundy Thursday 設立聖餐日@ Advent Church

March 25, 2016 Catherine Lee Leave a comment

Pouring with rain and with a strong wind as a very late cold front has suddenly arrived in the last day or two bringing with it some horrible weather and a return to winter temperatures ~ hey, we’re used to it by now, but this winter seems far from over, and it’s almost April! But as you’ll see from the photos below, some of our hardy students are still walking around in T-shirts saying they can’t understand what all the fuss is about!

Our annual Maundy Thursday service was last night, and Thursday evening is also the evening when our St. John’s University student fellowship meets, usually about 30 of them. Actually they meet every evening for different activities, but their main gathering is on Thursdays. It’s open to any of our students, and it seems that about half of those who come are already Christians and half not. Some are interested in the Christian faith, some would really like to be baptised but too scared to ask their parents, others have asked and their parents say no, others are waiting until they they reach their final year hoping their parents will come round in the meantime. But there’s also many who are not interested, they’re here because they like the friendship and fun. Everyone’s welcome! But they all volunteered in equal numbers for the foot-washing, either to have their feet washed or to carry water and arrange the towels and bowls.

So we had 12 volunteers for foot-washing, 11 of them students from our student fellowship, plus Yu-lin who works with the students in our chaplaincy office ~ and 4 foot-washers, our 2 clergy, one churchwarden and Shu-Jing who also works with the students in our chaplaincy office….

One of our students, Mei-han is preparing for her baptism on Easter Eve, she had her feet washed by our churchwarden. After the foot-washing, we had communion, and at the end of the service, prepared the church for Good Friday ~ cleared the altar and covered the crosses with black cloth, and then read Psalm 22 in a darkened church….

Psalm 22:1 ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

And so we pause to remember the last evening and last night of Jesus’ life on earth…

PS Turns out that the reason why the girls were all smiling in the foot-washing photos was because the water was freezing cold, and they’d mostly put both feet in the water together, hence their ‘grin and bear it’ kind of expressions!

Faith

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

March 23, 2016 Catherine Lee 1 Comment

The Church of England’s Holy Week and Easter short film of Psalm 22….

“My God, My God why have you forsaken me ?” The words spoken by Jesus on the Cross from Psalm 22 inspired our new JustPray video for Easter. The film follows on from The Lord’s Prayer advert launched by the Church last Christmas which was banned by cinemas for its religious content.

The stars of the film have struggled with drug addiction, crime and homelessness on their journey to faith. Find out more about their stories here: http://www.justpray.uk/Psalm%2022/ Visit www.justpray.uk to learn more about prayer and to share your own prayers.

So do check the Just Pray website here and especially the background stories of the people in the film, and their Saturday Night Gathering…. brilliant!