austraLasia
#1822
114 year-old Taiwanese
baptized for Easter!
HSINCHU (Taiwan): 19th April 2007 -- Here's a story with a difference, and also
possibly suggests that other sources have gone quiet for a few days, so fire'em
up boys!
114-year-old Hsu-Song Ai-ren became the oldest
person to be baptized in the Taiwan Catholic Church, and at that age might well
hold a world record for life let alone preparation for entry into eternal life!
According to her Catholic former employer, John Chi Cheng-chung, who attended
her baptism on Easter Sunday, she agreed to be baptized after he told her that
they would be able to reunite in heaven if she became Christian. Hsu-Song had
previously believed in Chinese folk religion. And on April 8, Chi, 59, a physics
lecturer at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University, pushed Hsu-Song, seated in a
wheelchair, into Immaculate Conception Church in Chutung town, Hsinchu county,
for the ceremony. Hsu-Song, who is still mentally alert, is now living at the
Hsinchu diocesan-run Chang-An Hospice for the Aged in the county. She has been
single all her life. She was born into a poor family in mainland China during
the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). Her parents, to lessen their financial burden,
gave her to a well-off family to work as a maid. In 1948, because of the Chinese
civil war, she and her employer's family moved to Taiwan. However, the family
returned to the mainland the same year and entrusted her to the Chi family since
she suffered from seasickness and could not tolerate another boat trip across
the Strait of Taiwan.
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