The Family
Haudenschild and SEND Taiwan
We, Rita and Alain Haudenschild belong to the SEND Taiwan
team since 1992. In 1997 Jonathan our son came into our lives. While Rita
originates from Germany and Jonathan from Taiwan, Alain has his birthplace
in Switzerland, which means our son grows up in a multicultural and multilingual
family set-up. Don't worry all of us have a Swiss passport!
For the first two years our first assignment
was full-time Mandarin Chinese language study in Taichung. During that
time the LORD's call to assist a local church in its church planting effort
became very obvious. In fact, this church, the "Living Water Baptist Church"
with then 29 service worshipers on our first Sunday worship service, later
was our language study internship church. This church is located in a new
high rise building district of Taichung with not much Christian testimony
around. Here we learned a lot about the dynamics among Chinese when it
comes down to make decisions and how to do a lot with a few but diligent
willing people.This church today not has grown to 100 members and is preparing
its first missionary at the theological seminary in Taipei, but also very
supportive in international short term outreach efforts with the SENDing
Function Committee of SEND Taiwan.
The following twofold assignment included church planting assistance to
a local church in Puli and the preparation for a SENDing Function Committee
to the point where local pastors and church leaders in cooperation with
SEND would take over most of such a committees responsibilites.This twofold
assignment made it seem very meaningful also to chair the Taiwan Missionary
Fellowship (TMF) from 1999-2000 and in conjunction with the "Chinese Christian
Evangelistic Association" and "Evangelical Fellowship of Asia" to strengthen
this missions umbrella organization's position for the church growth and
small mission movement in Taiwan in general.
In Puli the most significant
experience was the earthquake disaster (For details and SENDs reliefprogram:
http:/www.geocities.com/arhautw/under
"reports") and what the LORD did afterwards.The church had a hard time
changing its self-centered focus to a functioning cell group structure
with more potential of growth. SEND's Puli Relief Fund program which was
run through the church was an important step to reach out among unknown
people with big needs. While the church in the beginning seemed to be like
a big house group with some fighting leaders the growing cell group structure
helps to channel ideas and gifts in a more edifying and evangelistic direction.
This goes so far, that the church leadership has initiated the monthly
Puli Missions Prayer and had the 2000 Christmas Eve invitation and evening
program entirely run by the different groups.
From the beginning the churches in multicultural Puli had the need for
a kind of resource team of missionaries with different gifts able to serving
the various churches in different needs.In Taichung probably also because
of the culturally more homogenous setup of the Living Water Church the
struggles about leadership styles and directions were not even half as
many as in the multicultural membership of the Puli Christian Church. We
had to discuss the topic of unity in diversity every few months again,
before the introduction of a self-made "Puli Model" of diversity in cell
group leadership helped to calm down and finally let the groups growing.
There is a need for many more missionaries who if possible already would
come with some Chinese speaking abilities already in order to quicker learn
a second Chinese language. This is the main reason why our web site isn't
just a personal home page but purposely a source of information in four
languages to attract Chinese churches of these language groups to connect
with SEND or our sending European Mission Deutsche Missionsgemeinschaft,
DMG (German Missionary Fellowship) for helpful details, p.ex regarding
exploring trips, evangelistic short term assistance of Taiwan churches
or even how to become a career missionary.
See you on our website.
Alain, Rita and Jonathan Haudenschild ---> http://www.geocities.com/arhautw/index.html