Tea Houses by The Spring

OMF started a church years ago specifically for the homeless here in Taipei. It's called "The Spring" and the group of regulars has grown into quite a vibrant group of folks, though they are really a sight to behold to outsiders. Most of them have a disability of some sort, have an addiction or are very elderly. They are linguistically separated from the mainstream of Taiwan because their first language tends to be Taiwanese instead of Mandarin, which is the official language. The language issue served me well, because I speak Taiwanese a bit better than Mandarin. I hit it off with the folks. One of the guys offered me betelnut with a mischievous grin while teaching me to play some inscrutable Chinese chess-like game. Betelnut is this mild narcotic that turns your mouth bright red and makes everyone look like they have a BAD case of TB b/c of the torrents of red stuff that they spit up. Yuk. Perhaps an American cultural equivalent would be dip or snuff. Well, it was nice to be accepted.

The Spring was turned over to Taiwanese leadership last year and one of the OMF missionaries, T, who helped to start the church, now serves simply in a supporting role. This has given her the opportunity to begin a new outreach. The evening I first visited The Spring, she met me at the subway station to bring me to the church. We walked into the busy marketplace, crammed with snack carts, shopkeepers hawking their wares and just crowds and crowds of people out for the night life. Then suddenly, we ducked behind a street sign into a dark alley, walked under a shrine to the earth god, and found ourselves in a lane lined with dingy tea shops. T greeted two ladies who were standing outside and they invited us in to sit. We chatted aimiably over tea and snacks for about 20 minutes. It wasn't until after we left and a few words from T that I realized that they were prostitutes and that "tea houses" in Taiwan are actually brothels. T is praying for workers to join her in reaching out to this population.