San Francisco Chinatown, known as a famous attraction site for its hundred-year history, is heavily populated with new-arrived immigrants from China who are unfamiliar with the new country and seeks a more familiar environment to live and work in. Toiling in hard labor at minimum wage daily to feed their family, many of them live their entire lives without knowing Christ. Impoverished, they live everyday worrying about survival in an unfamiliar nation.
With the heart to better the lives of those who live in such social conditions, many churches and organizations have offered to lend their hands to help. Chinese Christian Mission in Chinatown, directed by Dr. Abraham Law, has provided free health services, English courses, and art classes over the past few years to serve the new immigrants and in the process teach them the gospel. The services have attracted many seniors and immigrants to its center, and were encouraged to come to Christ and attend Biblical studies.
Social services have been one of the major evangelistic forces that work not only in San Francisco, but also in many major cities where Chinese immigrants are gathered.
In Oakland Chinatown, each year at the third week of August the city would hold a street festival; over 10,000 people attend each year. The event is intended to introduce commercial and social services in the area to the public; local churches in the area took the opportunity to promote the gospel by setting up booths to promote English courses directed toward new-arrived immigrants and gospel pamphlets. Rev. Evan Kwok from the Chinese Independent Baptist Church of Oakland said that this kind of event gives them an opportunity to sow the seed of the gospel.
The charity of organizations, following the example of Christ and giving service to the public, has allowed new hopes in the lives of the new immigrants. While many are unfamiliar with the gospel, the warm loving hands of the church and believers have changed the lives of many who lived in hardship and opened the world of God’s love in their lives.
