Christian Wei and Agape

Dear God’s Elect, was the salutation of an email I received and immediately, I thought of Christian Wei and the Agape Christian School.

Christian Wei is not a misspelling although there is Christian Way Missions, the work Eucon president and Bob Jones U grad Christian Wei who came to our attention early part of this century. Most recently, his school name bears the water bottle delivered to my apartment through my local sari-sari store operator.

I also noticed numerous Eucon students walking up and down Middle Road near the school wearing their reflector vests even in midday but given local drivers’ propensity to step on the gas on the stretch of road that comes closest to a drag strip on Saipan, the students’ orderly and disciplined walk is necessary.

Close to the offices of NMPASI where I previously hung out and where some of my close colleagues work, is the Eucon Medical Center. Evidently, Christian and Judy Wei have spread their wings further since I last ran into their musically talented children at the Tinian Dynasty sometime in mid-2000.

Agape is the premium theological metaphor for “transcendent love” and it looks like the Pang family had gotten a school with that name up and running. Koh and Jimeian Pang were next door to Eucon when I first intruded into their territory.

I was on a flight from China with 10 Shanghai-recruited students to Saipan to pursue nursing studies in English at Eucon. At the time, I served with the NMC Nursing Advisory Board and I was familiar with the academic situation on Saipan. I sat with two of the students on the plane and I learned that they signed up for a two-year stint on the promise of a student visa.

Knowing at the time that there was no such “student visa,” I kept my mouth shut, gave the students my name and phone number, and offered assistance if needed. I was the director of the Marianas Resource Center (MRC) at Oleai for the UMC. Short of three months down the line, I got a phone call. Shortly after, I secured visas and transferred three students out of the Eucon housing, two to the MRC and the other, an admirably self-reliant one, moved out on her own.

It was the tailend of 2001. Four of the student nurses wanted to segue into the NMC Nursing program (three eventually did, two finishing with honors); they sought assistance from the Pangs, erstwhile colleagues of the Weis at the start of their ministries, but parted ways for various reasons. Jimeian Pang accompanied three girls to our initial meeting.

Later, I accompanied one of the Chinese student nurses who moved out of Eucon to a Sunday worship service that the Rev. Kok Pang conducted for workers of the garment industry.

A word about the pair of religious glasses I wear. I am a self-defrocked clergy of the Methodist Church (2003) whose Philippine ordination was transferred to the California-Pacific Annual Conference (an Episcopal Diocese) that administers Saipan’s Immanuel UMC where I brought my clerical collar.

My glasses were tinted for 20 years growing up in a Methodist parsonage, then at a Seminary in Kentucky that was too conservative in an out-of-the-way town, refusing to build the Inter-State highway in its neighborhood fearful that it might taint the place with “modernism.” I lasted three semesters; learned of the word “evangelical” and its ecclesiastical meaning.

One of my classmates thought Kentucky was too liberal and transferred to Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, Dr. Wei’s alma mater. I went the other way to a liberal school in Dallas, Texas where my mind was sharpened, heart warmed, found a wife, finished a degree, and returned to my starry-eyed lark convinced that I was needed in the Philippines!

A secular monastic by temperament, and organizationally ecumenical, I am quite familiar with the traditions of our Taiwanese faithful Dr. Christian Wei and his Eucon, and the Pangs’ Agape Christian School within the Bible-belt orientation.

Intimately familiar with the whole history of the Judeo-Christian journey from Sarah and Abraham of the Mesopotamian rivers to the scattered congregations that dot developing world’s landscape as a consequence of the spirited missions that followed Uncle Sam’s military around the world, in the same way as friars trekked with conquistadores of old to banish the pagans, and the entrepreneurs and the educators followed the steam engine in an accented world where the sun never sets on the British Empire.

Fast-forward to 2015 and my bottle of water labeled Eucon retains a nebulous connection. I only met Christian Wei once when he graciously let me take three of his wards off his hands so they can move to NMC. Something about the way he handled the matter left an indelible mark that allowed me to trust his word and his ministry, much as our metaphors do not jive.

I’ve recently ran into stately Kok and bubbly Jimeian Pang while they treated Chinese students to a meal at the end of the school year. They look fine. I am sure, so does Agape.

Dear God’s elect is a metaphor I have shorn longtime ago. In their way, it fits the Weis, and leaves the Pangs with a sacred bang!