Many who know all the processes and situations that we go through to get things done in the training have said that it is marvelous that over six hundred Americans have come to Taiwan to coordinate with over three thousand saints here in Taipei in such harmony. It may be impossible to find this anywhere else. Thank the Lord that the training and the churches are truly in harmony. If we look at the training center, we will see that the kitchen alone is marvelous. Sometimes we have over one thousand people eating at one time, and we serve both Chinese and American food. If the saints in Taipei did not cooperate together, how could the kitchen cook for so many? If the American saints did not come, how could we make American food? We all know that eating is a great matter. If we do not eat properly, we will not want to do anything or be able to do anything. In the medical office there are American doctors and Chinese doctors and also American nurses and Chinese nurses. There has not been one emergency that we were unable to handle. This kind of coordination is blended and harmonious. For this reason, we truly thank the elders, co-workers, and especially all the saints in Taipei. This has been a move for His recovery in the reality of the Body of Christ.
The past “feast” was truly a great blending for us. Before the feast we had already been considering how to blend the people whom we had brought to salvation through the door-knocking in the training with the saints meeting in the church in Taipei. We had been trying to connect them for over a year, but we still had not found a proper way before the feast. However, in late October this matter was fully accomplished in the feast. The new ones who had been saved through the training and the saints in the church were fully blended into a hundred booths (cf. Lev. 23:42). The result of the feast was that those who joined the Lord’s Day meetings in various districts for the past five weeks have all testified that every district meeting caused them to worship God.
In 1985 we did not see any results from our promoting of the small groups, but in February and March of 1986, the results of the small groups were manifested. According to the statistics from the church office, there were over three thousand people meeting in the small groups in March, over four thousand in April, and over five thousand in May. However, the training was a major interruption to the small groups. Our experience in the church life over several decades has shown us that when there is a training or conference, the church will suffer temporarily. Because everyone is concentrating on the training, the church meetings will naturally be neglected. For example, if a company allows some department heads to temporarily set aside their jobs to get further education, then the business of the company will surely suffer some loss. However, this loss will eventually be compensated and rewarded. This is the reason that in 1986 the number of people in the small groups exceeded five thousand, but when we began to prepare for the training in July, the small groups were neglected, and the numbers dropped.
Since the training began, there has been a need for laborers. For instance, the preparation of food in the kitchen requires much coordination. Because there were not enough laborers, the number of saints in the meetings of the church in Taipei dropped. Moreover, in the second half of the last year, an evening training was added. Many elderly saints put on their training uniforms and joined the training, so the situation of the small groups became even worse. However, we are very clear that the decline in number does not matter because it is only temporary. When everyone comes back from the training, the whole church will be happy. In a similar way, when a company sends out a group of workers to another country for further study, the business will surely suffer temporary loss. However, when they come back, the level of business will surely rise.
After the feast we recovered over two thousand two hundred saints who had not been meeting for a long time and started meetings in their homes immediately. Once they began to meet, they were enlivened and started functioning. When we invited them to the meeting hall, they were not willing to come, but they were willing to meet in the homes. Consequently the number of people who meet in the church life in Taipei is a little over five thousand. Because some of them take turns coming to the meetings, the actual number in the meetings is around three thousand. During the past year and a half more than thirty thousand people have been baptized through the trainees’ door-knocking. Among these thirty thousand new ones, only five thousand are being taken care of and remain due to the lack of laborers. The trainees have been laboring every day without stopping in order to take care of these five thousand people. Among these five thousand, there are a little over three thousand who have meetings in homes. Some of these meetings are small group meetings and some are bread-breaking meetings. This is the result of our door-knocking.