Friday night worship, Bible study takes place at Federal Way Chinese Fellowship

Readers,

Last night, I ate, socialized and worshiped with the Revs. Rowena and Mike Wang at Federal Way Chinese Fellowship, where Rowena is pastor. It's one of our new mission starts. I absolutely love visiting here, but had not been to the Friday-evening Bible study, which grew to include Sunday worship in 2011. Whenever the thought of Mike comes to mind, I picture him at the wheel of a minivan, window rolled down, leaning out, picking someone up, letting someone off, with a thousand different details in the back seat. Whew.

In any event, Rowena and Mike on Fridays pick up Chinese students from Highline and Green River community colleges, then bring them to a large intergenerational potluck at Calvary Lutheran Church of Federal Way, where this new worshiping group meets.

Then it's a delicious potluck of foods from China, made by the older ladies of the group. It's like family, and the meal is a reminder of home to these students who are as young as 17. As usual, everyone made me feel so welcome - I always hate to leave.

Then after the meal and socializing, it's into worship, which also has a Bible-study aspect to it. Last night, we learned from Mike about Noah's Ark (taught in Mandarin) and how Jesus is our ark today.

I'll be writing a story about the wonderful evening for the next newsletter and for here. It's just so inspiring to see how the Wangs and Federal Way Chinese Fellowship, along with the students' host families, the colleges and the Chinese-American community all creating a warm and strong safety net for these students so far away from home.

Many of the young people are interested in pursuing careers in business. One young man was studying the Home Depot model, to take home and replicate with his father, who is in the home-improvement business there. All wanted to ride the entrepreneurial wave of the emerging China.

I invited some of the students over to Bremerton while I was there. I'd give them a tour of my newspaper. Everyone likes to watch the big, huge press spitting out newspapers. I hope they take me up on it. I say field trip. Here are some scenes from last night:

— Rachel Pritchett