Gospel Testimony, Vancouver, January 2024 · Ling Hsu

Hello, brothers and sisters. I am Sister Ling Hsu. I was born and raised in Taiwan and come from a Christian family, so I enjoyed a sweet church life from childhood. At that time there were three families who were especially close. Every week we took turns having small group meetings in different homes, and the children and adults sang hymns joyfully together. Even the love feast at noon on the Lord's Day was prepared by each family in turn, and afterward the adults led the children in cleaning up together. Sometimes we went to play T-ball together or went hiking, and so on. In short, little by little we lived quiet, peaceful, and sweet days. In elementary school, with the blessing of the brothers, I was baptized and became a child of God.

But after I entered junior high, my parents became so busy with work that they no longer had much time to bring us to the meetings, and I went from being a child whose parents dropped her off and picked her up to being a latchkey kid. I went to school by myself, bought my own food after school, and went to cram school. When I fell asleep at home my parents still weren't back, and when I woke up the next day they had already left.

Gradually I got used to being alone. I forgot the church life I once had, forgot the uncles and aunties who loved me, and forgot the friends I had played with since childhood. Since there was no one at home, I started learning how to pass the time outside, and the glittering world out there became perfectly ordinary life to me. I began to question what I was studying for, and what the meaning was of my parents working hard their whole lives. It seemed that whether or not one tried hard, life was just like this—nothing worth looking forward to.

So I insisted that I would never study again. My parents disagreed, and neither side would give in. In the end they compromised and required that I at least finish high school, so I went to night school. Night school opened the door to a whole new world for me. My classmates ranged from twenty to sixty years old: hostesses, a full-time mistress, someone who washed bodies at a funeral home, people who used and sold drugs, and also successful business owners opening one shop after another—every kind of person. Listening to their stories, I began to question again: some people barely scrape by just to survive, while others squander money like dirt. What is our life really for?

I remembered the uncles and aunties in the church. I don't recall ever hearing them talk about any great achievements of their own; for many of them I didn't even know what they did for a living. Yet there was truly light on them. Every one of them was full of warmth and love—so different from my classmates. My classmates were desperately afraid that others would not know about their small accomplishments, as if they had seen and experienced a lot of life, but I knew they had no light.

Thank the Lord for putting me in such a special environment and giving me a choice. Although it may look negative, I believe the Lord knew this was what I needed. I would not listen to what others told me; I had to see it with my own eyes to understand.

So I prayed to the Lord that I truly was willing to go back to school, and I asked Him to give me the ability and strength to study. At that time my only prayer was, "Lord, bring me to a school where there is the church life." Under the Lord's blessing and mercy, He brought me to Nanjing for university. Surrounded by the love of the brothers and sisters, I returned to the sweet church life. This time He was no longer my parents' God, but my God. I do not want to leave the church life again; I want to dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold His beauty and to inquire in His temple.

The Bible is our unique standard, and it is also the answer to every difficulty in our married life. We grew up in different cultures, each with habits built up over decades, and at first we disagreed on most things. But the Lord had mercy on us, and we could bring every disagreement before Him to deal with it and check it one by one. No one can be the judge between us as a couple to tell us who should listen to whom. Yet because we live in the church life, among the brothers and sisters, the Lord has greatly preserved us. Sometimes it is a word a brother or sister shares in a meeting; sometimes the Lord shepherds us through the word of the Bible or the ministry. Thank the Lord, we know that this spouse was apportioned to us by God. The Lord Jesus' thoughts are higher than our thoughts; He is the highest, the greatest, and the One who loves us most. What He has yoked together, let man not separate. There are always times when I am so angry that I cannot submit and feel I cannot love. My only way then is to go to the Lord and pray. Wonderfully, the Lord always opens my eyes and makes my brother seem more lovable than before—more lovable year after year—and submission is naturally placed within me. It is not that, because the Bible says wives should submit to their husbands, I grit my teeth and obey outwardly while resisting inwardly. Rather, the Lord has truly given me the ability to submit, so that I really feel that submitting and being in one accord is something that keeps us and pleases the Lord. In the seven or eight years since we married, we have lived in six cities, changed schools, changed jobs, and had children. All the trivial matters of daily life have not worn us down; instead, because the Lord is among us, continually checking and adjusting our values, and because we are willing to be constituted and transformed by Him, everything has become a blessing, giving us more love for each other and more appreciation of each other.