On February 15, 2019, a seven-person group from a county-level Three-Self Patriotic Movement of Guangdong visited a 90-year-old brother.
Brother Zhang Guoai, born in Xinliao Town, Xuwen County, became a Christian in his youth and was engaged in the ministry of the Nanliao Church with a 60 square meter building situated on an island.
The church was forcibly closed after 1960 and resumed service around 1979. While organizing believers to find a gathering place, Zhang kept asking the local authority to carry out the policy of the reimbursement for church housing property.
In 1983 when the construction project of a new church building was starting, he recommended that a young brother should study in a training program hosted by the Guangdong China Christian Council (CCC) &Three Self-Patriotic Movement (TSPM). After his graduation, the man fully succeeded in rising to his position in charge of construction and pastoring.
Three years later, the Xuwen County TSPM was established. He served on one of the committees until 1989.
Relieved of his office, he left the island to make a living by cutting hair in Haian County. During that period, he often traveled back to the island to care about the ministries of the Xinliao Church.
In Haian County, he organized ten believers who had to walk for more than ten kilometers to gather in a believer's family to attend Sunday services in the county seat. In 1995, a three-story church was set up with an area of 360 square meters (0.089 acres).
He worked as the director of the Haian Church from 1989 to 1999 and as the deputy director to assist a pastor in the next decade. After resigning from the church administrative board, he often preached sermons until when he was unable to stand in the pulpit.
- Translated by Karen Luo
