The Sun Moon Lake Church of Christ

During the Christmas trip to Taiwan, Chris and I visited the Sun Moon Lake. My last trip to the lake was four years ago, while Chris was 29 years ago.

28Dec 2019

Went to the Sun Moon Lake today. Encountered quite a few incidents, eg. missing our high speed train, a long wait for the bus. So it was very late by the time we got there. When we took the last bus to Ita Thao, there was suddenly a loud metallic noise, and Chris thought a metal had broke in the wheels and was prepared to knock open the bus window in case the bus plunges into the lake! Turns out it wasn’t the wheel, but the door that broke. We all had to exit through the emergency exit when we got to the destination. Despite these incidents, we give thanks to God, as we got to hear a beautiful string concert at the Sun Moon Lake Church of Christ, and a friendly fried tempura stall owner called a taxi for us so we could get back to our accommodation at Shuishe Pier. The driver is a Thao, and he told us the tribal name “Ita Thao” means “we are human.” The Thaos used to live on the Lalu Island, which was originally not an island, but a piece of land. The Sun Moon Lake used to be a river, but became a lake when the Japanese modified it into a dam. (I looked up more information afterwards and found that the Sun Moon Lake was originally a lake, and the surface area of the lake increased from 4.5 km2 to 7.7 km2 after the Japanese modified it. Water flooded the land where the Thaos used to live. In other words, their land was taken away from them.)

We stayed at the Sun Moon Lake Teachers' Hostel, which is actually great value for money. However, Chris googled this place up and saw there are many ghost stories about this place in relation to the ship accident 29 years ago in Sun Moon Lake. Many people reported hearing heavy pounding on the glass in the middle of the night, like people stuck in a boat pounding the glass for help. That made him very scared. Fortunately, we slept peacefully that night, and there were no weird noises.

29Dec 2019

It’s an amazing grace to visit the Sun Moon Lake Church of Christ. Chris had become very obsessed about violins lately so I bought one for him as a Christmas gift for him to learn himself. He enjoyed the string orchestra concert at the church very much. On Sunday, we received great hospitality from Sherry, the preacher and other co-workers in the church as well as intercessory prayer. Sherry even gave us “almond coconut pineapple cake” (in Mandarin, these words sound the same as “serving Jesus”) and milk nougat candies. Chris loves pineapple cakes! What an amazing place to visit!