Love River

For a long time I've thought, "Wouldn't it be great if Taiwan's churches would host open-air evangelistic crusades in the cities" because the Taiwanese really flock to these kind of events. Even if they don't know what's going on, they will go out of curiousity. And they seem to love crowds. The more people, the merrier.

Then, to my utter delight, I learned there would be an open-air worship and prayer service along Love River, hosted by the Taiwanese churches in Kaohsiung. So I went and checked it out. It was awesome! You could sense the Holy Spirit's presence and quite a crowd gathered for it. What an effective way to reach out to Kaohsiung residents since there are always tons of people walking along Love River in the evenings. I'm sure many unbelievers heard the gospel Sunday night as they were out for their evening stroll.

Here are a couple pictures of the meeting:



The meeting was actually from 6pm to about 10pm, so it was pretty dark outside. The below picture is what it really looked like. The above two pictures were taken with a slower shutter speed to let in more light.I decided rather than to sit down at the meeting I would continue walking along Love River because a. if I sat down I would get eaten by mosquitoes, b. it was 32 degrees -- too hot to sit among a crowd of hot bodies (lol), c. the service was all in Chinese/Taiwanese so I couldn't understand it (no, my Chinese is not that good yet), and d. the walk along Love River is very beautiful. So I walked along and took pictures of some of the scenery. Here are some of them (note: it was very dark out, so if the picture is light it is because of a slow shutter speed)

Here are some dragon boats awaiting the Dragon Boat Festival and races in June. It is a big event in Taiwan.






A close-up of the water:




There are usually lots of musical/instrumental performers along Love River. Sometimes they don't spread themselves out enough and their music clashes with the next performer 10 steps away. But overall, it is really cool to listen to the different kinds of music. Here is a picture of a girl singing while her mom plays the keyboard. I'm not sure if they were taken donations for themselves or raising money for a charity, but the boxes in front are donation boxes.