Editor’s note: This story was corrected after its initial publication to reflect the Yao Yao is from China, not Taiwan.
ELEELE, Kauai, Hawaii – A 13-hour plane ride. Casual (and not so casual) conversation between strangers. That’s how the story started for Yao Yao.
Harvest stories are to be celebrated, Pastor Larry Hale says, but so too should be the sowing and the watering.
“Everybody has a part to play,” Hale told Baptist Press. He’s pastor of Eleele Baptist Church on Kauai. “I am so proud to be Southern Baptist. I was raised Southern Baptist, and we as Southern Baptists are known for evangelism.
“That’s a wonderful thing! However, we can put too much emphasis on evangelism. We can start to only celebrate the harvest of evangelism, and we can start to take the credit for the harvest, and by doing that, when we go out and don’t see a harvest, we can see it as a failure. I think it’s important to celebrate the planting and the watering.”
Now on a subject dear to his heart, Hale continued.
“Take the woman at the well, and what Jesus says to His disciples. What’s happening is harvest time. Jesus basically says one sows and another reaps. You are going to reap the results of those who have sown. Others have done the hard work. Jesus refers to that as the hard work.
“Sometimes you might be sowing and watering and you might feel like a failure, but that’s the hard work, the major components of evangelism,” Hale continued. “The woman on the plane has no idea what’s happening now, and the fruits of her labor, and that’s so important. She planted, she sowed the seed, and has no idea how Yao Yao has been baptized and is sharing his faith.”
The rest of the story of this new convert is that he is leading others to Jesus, and the church that befriended him has a new ministry.
A new life in more ways than one
To start at the beginning, after the grandmother who raised him died, Yao Yao was invited by his aunt to move from China and take over one of her Chinese fast-food barbecue restaurants in Hawaii.
During the first 13-hour leg of his journey, his seatmates were Mr. and Mrs. Lo, a couple in their 60s. She began chatting with the tall, good-looking younger man at her side. It didn’t take long before the conversation turned to her favorite topic: Christianity.
At the beginning it was just kind of a chat, Yao Yao told Baptist Press. His narrative was translated and sometimes explained by Mary Appel, a member at Eleele Baptist Church in Hawaii. “The wife asked him about his faith. Wife talk about Jesus. I show interest and wife continue talking about Jesus and I just listened. She also told [me] about the church they attend in Los Angeles. I listen and encourage her to talk more.
“God placed a Christian lady next to him,” Appel told Baptist Press. “Before, he never went to church. In China, they teach you there is no god. Yao Yao accept Jesus right in the airplane. First thing he said to auntie: ‘I want to go to church.’
“Lily [the restaurant owner aunt] called me because we’re good friends. I spend a day with Yao Yao. He had all kind of questions. I tell him I can send him English/Chinese Bible, and YouTube they have Bible study, one chapter a day. In Chinese.
“He told his aunt, ‘I want to be baptized.’ I called to Pastor Larry, tell him Yao Yao has a pure heart, like a little kid. Pastor Larry wouldn’t baptize just anybody. After Pastor Larry talked with him, he thinks Yao Yao ready to be baptized. He was baptized on the beach with handful of people to watch Yao Yao to be baptized. People around the beach were shouting and singing. It was so beautiful When Yao Yao come out of the water. I tell God, ‘Thank you, God. We cannot arrange this.’”
Pastor Hale said, with Appel’s help as translator, that Yao Yao told him he wanted to be baptized because, he wants to follow Jesus, “and a follower needs to be baptized.
“I tell him I want to talk more,” Hale continued. “He’s OK with that. In two hours, I go over the Gospel in detail. I become convinced he is a Christian. Baptism is showing your faith to other believers. It says, ‘I believe what you do,’ even though he doesn’t speak English.”
Yao Yao’s baptism was in the spring of 2024. Appel kept in touch with him as did Hale, via translated texts.
“After his baptism, Yao Yao feel he belong to the family of God, but he’s just a beginner, a baby, he has to learn so much,” Appel said. “He wants to be real Christian. Go to church doesn’t make you a believer. You have to have a relationship with God.”
Learning to follow
George also works at the restaurant, and in talking with Yao Yao became interested in Christianity. So did Lee.
“They asked, ‘Can we learn English’ and I said, ‘Absolutely yes,’” Hale said. They began meeting in January.
Now, each Tuesday, George and Lee come to the church to learn English and learn about the Gospel. Hale gives George an assignment each week, to read the Bible and write down questions about what he reads.
“We sit for 90 minutes. I ask, ‘How far do you get? What questions do you have? It gets very spiritual, the kinds of questions George asks,” Hale said.
As for Yao Yao, whose English isn’t good enough to attend church, he talks with his coworkers about Jesus every day.
“I think this is the Holy Spirit’s work,” said Appel.
Each week, while Hale is teaching George, Appel teaches Lee English by using the English-language Bible story book for children, the Beginner’s Bible.
“If [we] can finish this book, he can learn English and learn the whole story,” Appel said. “They only have one day off so we do it on Tuesday. We meet at 10 a.m. and they have to catch a bus at 11:45. So it’s a 90-minute class.”
Already Lee can read the words in English, with Appel at the ready to correct pronunciation.
“It’s a blessing to me,” Appel said about her first-ever nurturing of a new adult Christian, though she has worked with children for 30 years. “I think we should serve God the way He arranges it.”
The island of Kauai has about 1,000 Chinese-speaking residents. Eleele Baptist is waiting and praying, Pastor Hale said, to see if God leads in starting a Chinese-language church on the island. It would be the first.
Karen L. Willoughby is a national correspondent for Baptist Press.
Related posts:
Gaines at rally: Evangelism should be priority 
Pastors’ Task Force Releases Report on Declining Baptisms 
FIRST-PERSON: Pointed words from Brother Louis Beloney 
With stains removed, he returns to the streets 
Door-to-door nurture yields soul-winning daughters 
At a German university town, connections yield faith 
FIRST-PERSON: Evangelism ‘by the Book’ & ‘from the heart’ 
FIRST-PERSON: The guy I failed to witness to
