Grace enjoyed.
Grace passed on.

I am Brother Zeng Qihua. I believed in the Lord and was baptized on August 31, 1962. By August of the following year, it would be sixty years. I thank the brothers for this opportunity to look back and tell how the Lord’s abundant grace has reached four generations of our family over these sixty or seventy years. Thank the Lord!

My parents came to salvation through a midwife who lived out Christ. Because of her, my father often recalled the Lord’s words in Mark 14:9: wherever the gospel is proclaimed, what this woman has done will also be remembered. Whenever I tell this part of our story, I am deeply moved.

My father, Brother Zeng Guoshu, came from Fujian to Taiwan with the government in 1949. In 1951, my mother, Sister Zeng Lin Meimei, made the difficult journey from Xiamen to Shenzhen and then Hong Kong. She waited there another month and six days before boarding the Yongsheng to join my father in Taiwan. In 1952, the second year of their marriage, I was born in Taipei. The clinic where I was born has since become part of Kaifeng Street.

My father originally ran a rice mill in Taipei, but a fire at the film company next door destroyed it. Life became difficult. A former classmate helped him find work as secretary of a forestry association in Ershui, Changhua. My parents knew no one there. Local people called them newcomers from the mainland, and spoke of my mother by a disparaging nickname. My younger brother Dihua was born in Ershui in 1953. During my mother’s prenatal checkups, a midwife at the health station warmly taught this young mother how to care for herself. The woman was active in helping the community, and everyone respectfully called her Mrs. Hsiao. Her name was Chen Chuan-chiong. After the birth, she refused the customary red envelope. She even said that the refreshments prepared for her should be kept for the new mother. She continued coming to bathe the baby and brought eggs, an expensive food at the time, for my mother. Watching her come again and again with food and help, my father wondered whether she wanted a favor through his forestry work, since her husband worked in logging. Yet she never asked for anything.

One Sunday, my father was pushing his bicycle along the street with me on it when he met the midwife, neatly dressed. Curious, he asked where she was going on her day off. She said that she was a Christian and was going to worship. Her answer struck him like a great light. Shocked and ashamed, he felt unworthy to walk beside someone like her. He quickly made an excuse, went home, and told my mother that they had misunderstood her kindness. The two of them embraced and wept. They also remembered hearing the gospel preached by John Sung on the mainland. After noon, they took me and carried my little brother to the church. They knocked and told the pastor, “We want to believe in Jesus. What do we need to do?” After hearing them, the pastor raised his hands and prayed a blessing over our family. In this way salvation came to our whole household.

My mother remembered one phrase from that prayer: the branches would run over the wall. At the time she did not understand it. Later, she saw that I had spent nearly twenty years working and living abroad, including Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and the United States. My children and grandchildren were also living overseas under the Lord’s leading. My younger brother earned a doctorate in the United States and returned to teach in Taiwan, but his daughter and son-in-law were living abroad with their family. My elder younger sister’s children and grandchildren were far from Taipei, and my youngest sister’s younger daughter and son-in-law were also overseas. Mother finally understood that the prayer had been a blessing spoken in faith, fulfilled in her children and grandchildren.

After being saved, my father was full of joy. He told everyone that he had believed in the Lord, that the Lord Jesus was his joy and peace. His face shone with satisfaction. A man who had won a patriotic lottery bought a motorcycle with his winnings. In 1953, a motorcycle was worth something like a house. He said that his happiness was the greatest kind. My father replied that his happiness would soon end, while he had found a spring of joy that would continue. Not long afterward, the man had an accident at Tianzhong while riding from Ershui to Changhua, and his happiness was gone. My father, however, kept sharing the joy of his life wherever he went.

Our family moved to several places in Taiwan—Baozhong in Huwei, Dongshi in Taixi, and Kaohsiung—before settling at Zhishanyan in Shilin, Taipei. A colleague invited Father to a prayer meeting at what is now Hall Eleven of the church in Taipei. That night, the spirit of prayer deeply impressed him. After attending several Lord’s Day meetings, he was drawn by the truth spoken by the brothers. Someone told him he was attending the “Little Flock church.” Not knowing what that meant, he asked the serving brothers. They showed him Luke 12:32: “Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father has been well pleased to give you the kingdom.” Father was delighted. He had believed in the Lord to receive God’s kingdom, and now he heard that the Father was pleased to give it to the little flock! From then on, he was even more steadfast in the sweet church life with the saints at Hall Eleven. He eagerly pursued the truth of the Bible, and the margins of his Bible were neatly filled with the light and feelings he received in reading.

Another sister’s service helped my parents love the Lord more fervently. When my mother needed surgery for acute appendicitis, Father wanted someone to pray. He remembered the powerful prayers at Hall Eleven and asked his colleague to bring the brothers. That evening, brothers and sisters quickly gathered around Mother’s hospital bed. Their sincere, heartfelt prayers deeply touched my parents. Mother felt strength come to her during the prayer, and she recovered quickly after surgery. After she returned home, a sister visited us. I was then in the third grade. She was the mother of Brothers Wu Youcheng and Wu Fuhua. Mother Wu encouraged my mother by saying that their two families were more blessed than others: her family had seven children, ours had five, while most had only three or four. We spent more time washing clothes—and therefore had more time to pray to the Lord Jesus and sing hymns! Only later did Mother learn that this sister’s husband had suffered a stroke, and that one of her twin sons was confined to bed with his leg in a cast after a traffic accident. Even then, she supplied and supported my mother with strength and joy. Touched by such love, my parents were greatly encouraged. They felt that this was a family that truly loved the Lord and the brothers and sisters, and they became firmly settled in the church life. Both their believing in the Lord and their loving Him were encouraged by the Christ expressed through Mrs. Hsiao and Mother Wu, women who feared God and loved people.

Brothers Xu Gongyi and Hong Qincheng also served the Lord at Hall Eleven. The Lord placed them before us as good examples of serving Him and His church. Thank the Lord! After Father was saved, he was like someone who had found something delicious and wanted all his friends to taste it. He often coordinated with Brothers Li Wenzhi, Guo Wende, and Guo Fulai to preach the gospel throughout Taiwan. Brother Li Wenzhi was Brother Li Guanghong’s father. Brother Guo Wende, the middle-school classmate who introduced Father to faith, was Brother Guo Yixi’s father. They labored tirelessly, traveling north to Keelung and south to Pingtung, even going by boat to Penghu to preach the gospel of God’s kingdom in Taiwanese. Throughout his life, Father sought God’s kingdom and righteousness, proclaiming the Lord’s name in many places for the spread and building of His kingdom.

My parents loved the Lord and the church and often prayed for the five of us, hoping we would remain steadfast in the church life. I grew up going in and out of the meeting hall with them. At ten, I was baptized into the Lord. On the way home that evening, I sat on the front crossbar of Father’s bicycle and looked up at him. The joy between father and son was beyond words. Later, all five of us developed well in different fields and served in coordination in the church. I owe it all to Father’s daily intercession for us.

Life was simple then. After school we often went to the meeting hall to study with the brothers, accompanied by brothers and sisters at university. Brother Zhao Zhibi, who had recently gone to be with the Lord at ninety-six when I gave this account, asked us to memorize Bible verses, encouraged us to read spiritual books, and taught us to sing hymns and enjoy the Lord. This laid a foundation in us of longing to pursue the Lord, seek the truth, and understand it. With four colleges nearby, Hall Eleven had more than a hundred young students who loved the Lord. Brother Chen Hongjun lived upstairs in the meeting hall, and we could go to him for fellowship at any time. With warmth, wisdom, and simple words, he answered our questions and helped us learn to live simply unto the Lord as we coordinated in the church life. He and his wife faithfully served the Lord in their simple love for Him and for people. They too were examples for us.

An international conference was held in Taiwan in October 1977. The day after it ended, Sister Wenzhi and I were married at Hall Eleven in Taipei. The meeting was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the overseas brothers and sisters visiting Taiwan also witnessed our marriage. The prayers and blessings of the older brothers encouraged both of us to consecrate ourselves to the Lord. Our neighbor Brother Peng Yisheng wrote us an acrostic blessing using our names, which we have treasured.

He blessed us to reveal the truth in the church life and to proclaim Christ through the gospel for the propagation and increase of Christ’s Body. That blessing has been fulfilled in us. We love reading the Bible and pursuing with others. Whenever the opened truth of the Bible touches us, we have unspeakable joy. My wife and I also coordinate to preach the gospel to those around us, learning from Sister Zhou Liu Yumei to gain new ones month after month and bear remaining fruit.

The Lord remembers the prayers of all who consecrate themselves. He is seeking those who make great resolutions and searchings of heart toward God, who will cooperate with Him, express Him on earth, and testify for Him among different places, nations, and peoples, helping others know God. After marriage, we were perfected in many services at Hall Eleven: infants, children, and opening our home to establish a Bible-reading group for young working adults. On weekday mornings we had morning revival with the saints. In the evenings there were prayer meetings, perfecting meetings, visits to saints, and visits to the homes of student brothers and sisters. The church life was busy but full of vitality. My efforts at work were also recognized by my supervisors, and I experienced the Lord’s blessing in being promoted ahead of others who had joined at the same time.

Hall Eleven later multiplied to form Hall Twenty-Three. There we were perfected in learning, for the first time, to care for older saints. I often felt there was not enough time and wanted to leave my profession to serve the Lord full time. My wife hoped that, like Paul, I could serve full time while keeping a job. Once, while seeing Brother Lee off at the airport for his return to America, I had an opportunity to fellowship with him. I felt it was the Lord’s arrangement. He warmly invited me to sit beside him and spoke about my circumstances. I was surprised that, among so many brothers and sisters, he knew a younger brother like me so well. He told me that the church’s need was great, and he also encouraged me to serve full time while remaining employed. With his confirmation, my profession was indeed used by the Lord in many ways and on many occasions.

In 1988, I first experienced the Lord’s heavenly call to move to a town for the work: Xizhi. My wife had once called it an out-of-the-way place where nothing happened. Yet through obedience to the Lord’s call and the blessing of His presence, we coordinated with the older saints there and a group of young working saints who all had the heart to be full-timers with a job. We spent eight years in a church life that felt like a haven. The number grew year by year. How we thank and praise the Lord!

Because the saints longed to read the Bible, the Lord led us to establish Bible-reading groups. The Recovery Version had just been published, so we followed its presentation, carefully studying each book’s subject, introduction, and outline, then pursuing word by word, sentence by sentence, verse by verse, and chapter by chapter. Beginning with our household and neighbors, the group grew from six people to more than fifty. Some neighbors came to read and their whole families were baptized. Some Catholics understood the Bible through the reading and joyfully entered the enjoyment of the church life. When I first attended a Lord’s Day meeting in Xizhi in 1988, there were fewer than twenty, including the five of us. Before the Lord led us to Singapore in 1996, the number had grown to 150. Thank the Lord for His wonderful work of increase!

In 1996, the Lord called us again, this time to Singapore, for the testimony there that had just been restored and for fellowship with the Body of Christ. He gave us two hymns that strengthened us to go forward.

The first was supplementary hymn 428, Brother Nee’s hymn about loving without seeking appreciation. It encouraged us to serve God in that spirit.

The second was hymn 40. Its fourth and fifth stanzas encouraged us with the blessed hope, strengthening us through weary wildernesses and difficult paths, and directing us toward laying our crowns before the throne.

My wife prayed that the Lord would prepare a job for me so we could live without anxiety and devote ourselves to serving Him there. He fulfilled this according to His will. After an interview with the Singapore branch of a New York bank, I resigned from my position as a bank branch manager and went to the vice-president position the Lord had prepared in Singapore. In the church life there, we helped establish the Simei district with the saints and shared in the living testimony of purchasing a large meeting hall for the church in Singapore. We also opened our home to read the Bible and enjoy the Lord. God’s love spread through this. Many gospel friends were baptized: an entire family from Taiwan, the husband of a sister from Malaysia, and an atheist family who had moved from China, among others. We thank the Lord for such rich experiences.

In 1999, four brothers from Vietnam passed through Singapore and fellowshipped about the need for the Lord’s move in Vietnam. I sensed that God was calling me there. I prayed and sought Him: if this was of Him, would He prepare work for me in a bank so that my desire to go and serve in Vietnam could be fulfilled? He truly prepared a branch-manager position for me. Although I passed the interview, my wife and I spent another four months praying and seeking before we were sure it was of the Lord. Then I put everything aside and went alone to Ho Chi Minh City.

To be built together with the local saints, I began learning Vietnamese from the Holy Word for Morning Revival. For sharing on the Lord’s Day, I prepared PowerPoint presentations in Chinese, English, Korean, and Vietnamese, so that saints familiar only with their own language could pursue the contents together without that limitation.

Wherever we went, we saw many Christians who thirsted for the Lord’s word. Using the Chinese and English Recovery Versions, together with the opening in the Life-studies, we shared the truth of the Bible in many places. Government officials, senior company managers, and family members who had come to work in Vietnam from different countries studied the Bible together and grew in appreciation for the Recovery Version’s translation and footnotes. Some asked us to buy copies for them. Others went to the local gospel bookroom when they returned home to buy a Recovery Version, and discovered the wealth of other spiritual books there as if finding a treasure-house. Some requested baptism before returning home after seeing the Bible’s revelation; entire families were also baptized into the Lord’s name. One participant from Malaysia was baptized, became a sister, and attended the summer training in Anaheim. At the time of this account, she was coordinating and being built together with the local saints in Malaysia. Thank the Lord!

After arriving in Vietnam, we also helped the local saints be joined to the universal Body. I remember brothers from Vietnam attending an international conference of more than two thousand people in Malaysia. They joyfully testified that they had seen on earth the expression of the Body of Christ they had read about in the spiritual books. Through blending, they have become closely joined to the building up of Christ’s universal Body. Thank the Lord!

Each time the Lord called in my spirit, I put aside the work before me and sought Him to prepare new employment in that place for the church’s testimony. He taught me to depend on Him, believe Him, and accept His leading, offering my one talent to God. He also enabled me to glorify God and exalt Christ in my profession.

In Vietnam I was country representative and general manager of the foreign bank with the largest number of branch licenses. My colleagues saw the Lord’s blessing and marveled at His work, saying that we should pray often in our work. Although I reached retirement age and retired once in 2017, the Lord continued providing employment for the need of His church. At the time of this testimony, I was serving as our group’s general manager of finance. I had resigned the previous year as chief supervisor of a listed company in Vietnam. After helping a software technology company bring in investors and resolve financial difficulties, I was also invited to serve as a director. I thank the Lord that the heart to be a full-timer with a job was still operating in me.

In November 2013 I returned from Vietnam to Taiwan and lived the church life at Hall Twenty-Three in Taipei, which later multiplied to form Hall Sixty-Three. To help the saints enter into the messages they were pursuing, with a verse coming into daily life each day, and to nourish the many newly saved saints and gospel friends we had gained in different places, I began using verses from our daily pursuit in the Holy Word for Morning Revival to shepherd people and establish home meetings. Through LINE and WeChat, I sent verses every day to nourish and supply them. Supplied by the word, the saints gladly forwarded them. Besides saints throughout Taiwan, the supply was passed on to Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, and Canada. Thank the Lord for the growth and multiplication of His own word!

In 2017 the Lord led us to move to Hongshulin, where we were built together in love with the saints in Tamsui. From October, because my workplace was in Tainan, I also enjoyed the church life there from Monday through Friday and returned to Tamsui on weekends. This actively working God stirred me inwardly again through the ministry. I saw that Daniel, knowing Jeremiah’s word about returning to Jerusalem after seventy years, prayed daily facing Jerusalem. This urged me to act on the word I had read—to go.

We again prayed, sought the Lord, and looked for confirmation. In July 2020, He led us to Sanzhi to live the church life with the saints there and build up the Body of Christ. From October 2020, as part of the church in New Taipei City’s move to spread into towns, I shared the Holy Word for Morning Revival every Tuesday evening with saints in Pitou, Beidou, Shetou, and Xizhou in Changhua. After so many places, I deeply feel the reality of Acts 6:7: “And the word of God grew,” and the disciples multiplied greatly, all for the testimony of the one Body. Praise the Lord! By the August following this account, it would be sixty years since I was saved. The Lord has given me employment and enabled me to offer my small, single talent in the church life. I can only rejoice and praise Him.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child according to the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” At the time of this account, the Lord had also given me five grandchildren, ranging from eight to two years old. From Monday through Friday, three generations of our family, scattered across Taiwan and the United States, came online together to read through the Bible in a year. Hearing the grandchildren read in their young, halting voices filled me with unspeakable joy. I hope that through the people, events, and things recorded in the Bible, my children and grandchildren will know God’s will, magnify the Lord, and rejoice in God their Savior, so that Christ may be passed on in our family from generation to generation, forever.

My father had been at rest for forty years. While living, he longed for God’s kingdom, and I believe he has obtained it. He left us the all-inclusive Christ, whom we can explore throughout our lives and never exhaust. My life is full of God’s presence. Through prayer I am joined to the Lord day by day, continually experiencing God everywhere and everything as God. I let Him lead my daily life and do what He wants me to do. Life is full of meaning. May He bless you too, so that you and I may enjoy His presence and a life full of joy. I thank the Lord deeply.