In late July, continuous heavy rainstorms led to serious floods in Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, Hebi, and other cities in Henan Province, leaving local people in "deep water".
Several believers from the Christian Truth Church in Yangxin County, Hubei Province, volunteered to donate money to the disaster area in Henan Province after exchanging views.
As such, those believers agreed through the church's deacon committee, to send out an initiative message in the church's WeChat group to donate money to the flood-stricken areas in Henan province, suggesting that the church assign a co-worker to record and collect donations for disaster relief. At the same time, these believers began to donate money in that WeChat group in the form of individual online red packets. Other believers of the church saw the message about the donation initiative for flood-stricken areas in Henan and the donation action of some believers, so they joined in, giving online red packets and noting that the money was for disaster relief in Henan.
In response to this action, the church’s deacon committee assigned a co-worker to collect and record donations from believers. Some old believers who do not know how to use WeChat to give red packets learned about this activity, asking their family members or other believers to help them give red packets, or directly gave cash to the co-worker responsible for collecting and recording the donations.
From July 29 to August 2, the church's followers donated a total of RMB15,250 to the disaster area in Henan. Having contacted a CC&TSPM branch in the flood-stricken area of Henan Province, the church's leader entrusted them with assisting the church in making the donation.
In fact, the believers of that church always followed the example of the "good Samaritan” and became the "neighbor" of people in the disaster area in every major natural disaster. At the beginning of 2020, the church was in the core disaster area of the novel coronavirus epidemic, yet the money and materials donated at that time amounted to more than 20,000 yuan.
The church was 1.7 million yuan in debt when it was built in 2018. Now it is still nearly 200,000 yuan in debt, which must be paid off this year, owning nearly 300 registered believers with about 150 weekly attendance on Sundays.
- Translated by Stephen Huang
