Along with the first snowflakes in 2020, the Dawn Church in Baoji City, China’s northern Shaanxi, held its 14th annual Thanksgiving Service on Sunday, November 22.
At the beginning of the service, two choirs of Canaan and Joshua sang together to praise God.
Then came three sermons in the morning. First, Elder Yi Lianmei shared the gospel. She spent more than half an hour reviewing the 13-year journey of the church and sharing three things before the sermon. First, she said that on one day in September 2007, three believers were suddenly injured in an accident on a trip to Xi’an. Though they suffered severe injuries of varying degrees, they were saved under the protection of God. Because of God’s saving grace at that time, the church started to celebrate Thanksgiving Day every year.
Second, Elder Yi recalled three experiences of building the church and described in detail the hardships and labors with gratitude.
The third experience was of believers struggled to make contributions when Thanksgiving Day was approaching. Two months before this thanksgiving service, an older sister came to the church and donated all the expenses of the Thanksgiving Day. There were also countless believers who offered meat, rice, vegetables, and steamed bread.
In the afternoon, thanksgiving worship performances began. In the next two and a half hours, the three choirs of the elderly, Canaan, and Joshua, together with the five districts of the south, east, north and middle, presented 10 programs. They were poems, singing with action, dancing scenes, dancing, and choirs from each district.
There were also some special programs. The first were videos of a thanksgiving message from Elder Yi, the leaders of the three choirs, and more than a dozen believers in the choir, which were shown on the large screens on both sides of the sanctuary. They shared the development of the church, the growth of the choir fellowship, and their different service experiences.
The second was a musical melodrama created and directed by the choir themselves. With this year's pandemic prevention and anti-pandemic as the background, they let people from all walks of life to perform on stage to show the helplessness and the fear when facing the plague. The nurses and doctors came forward bravely and rushed to the front line to fight against the pandemic. Though the services were suspended, believers also served the Lord. While staying at home and listening to the sermons of the church’s pastors, they actively donated money and materials to support the fight against the pandemic.
(The author is a Christian in Shaanxi and the original article is published by Gospel Times.)
- Translated by Abigail Wu
