The staff of a Guangxi church went to pay a visit to a local leprosy rehabilitation village before the Spring Festival which falls on February 1.
On January 26, together with Beihai Church’s staff, Rev. Zhang Zhongye, president of Beihai Christian Council (CC) in Guangxi Province, posted Chinese New Year couplets designed and written by the pastor himself for every family, after they removed the old ones.
Instead of giving food supplies, they prepared red envelopes containing “lucky money" for each of them, letting them buy something according to their needs. A female villager told the staff that she had to stay there even during the Spring Festival when most family members in China got together. Having many children and grandchildren, she said she was not understood or accepted by her family as a leper.
More than ten kilometers far away from Hepu Town, the village is located at Jiaolongtang in Hepu identified as the last leprosy village in Beihai, the home of Christians suffering from the disease. Originating from Beihai Puren Hospital (for lepers) in 1891, Simon Church used to be the earliest chapel in Beihai, which was especially concerned about leprosy patients. In 1993, it relocated to Jiaolongtang due to urban development. In October 2014, the church was rebuilt with a donation from Shanghai International Church.
(The article is originally published by the Gospel Times.)
- Translated by Abigail Wu
