I recently shared a news article from Dhaka about Art Defehr’s early work with MCC Bangladesh and thought that I’d share another one. I don’t plan to do this too often so don’t worry that this will become an article blog.

Currently, MCC Asia and MCC Europe are launching initiatives to strengthen our connection with young people from Mennonite communities in Europe, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and elsewhere. Basically, we’re trying to reconnect with Mennonite communities that have not recently sent YAMEN or IVEP participants. I’ll write more about this later but, as part of that, I’ve been looking up on the Taiwanese Mennonite Church and I came across an article from 2020 commemorating what would have been the 100th Birthday of Reverend Gao Ganlin.

Gao Ganlin is the phonetization of Glen Graber in Taiwanese (Traditional Chinese). Glen was Crystal’s paternal grandfather. Unlike Crystal’s maternal grandfather, there’s very little information about Glen available online. At least, if you search online under ‘Glen Graber’. There’s actually quite a lot on him if you search ‘高甘霖’. However, it’s all in Traditional Chinese.

So I asked Google Translate and then corrected the most egregious of the machine translation errors.

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In Memory of American Grandpa—Commemorating the 100th Birthday of Rev. Gao Ganlin, the Father of Taiwan Orphans

In 1950, he founded the “Christian Taichung Guangyin Kindergarten” to create a family-style upbringing atmosphere in Taiwan’s kindergarten. He devoted the best years of his life to Taiwan’s double-blessing missionary work.

By Xie Dali (Resident Pastor of Taiwan Presbyterian Church in Vancouver)

Just as the Taiwanese church community is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Pastor/Doctor Xie Wei, we also commemorate another of his co-workers with the same gratitude, who is known as “Father of Taiwan Orphans” – Pastor Glen Daniel Graber (July 30, 1920-November 7, 2009). He successfully established Guangyin, Datong, Taipei Blind Children (the predecessor of Taichung Huiming School for the Blind), Taichung Nursery, established the “Christian Children’s Fund” (CCF) Taiwan branch, and established family support centers throughout Taiwan to support countless families and young children.

July 30th of this year is the 100th birthday of Pastor Gao, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Guangdong Nursery School, and the 60th anniversary of the development of Christian Children’s Fund in Taiwan. The beautiful footsteps of traveling medical missions in the era when Presbyterian churches and Mennonite churches cooperated with each other. Then, Mennonites focused on traveling medical missionary work and handed over the flock they served to the Presbyterian church for shepherding and care. This fully demonstrated the “planting of Paul” and “watered by Apollos”, in the spirit of co-workers, all growth and development lies in the God who “makes him grow”.

The establishment of a proper missionary partnership between the two denominations should be attributed to Rev. James Ira Dickson, who was then the dean of the Taiwan Theological Seminary. Because of his efforts, the American Mennonites who were forced to evacuate from mainline China were able to relocate to Taiwan. The medical missionary team affiliated with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was successfully transferred to Taiwan in 1948 to continue serving and achieved beautiful missionary careers, including the establishment of social welfare institutions, hospitals, and Mennonite churches in various place. The most widely known of which was Dr. Rolan Brown of Hualien Mennonite Hospital.

The Mennonite Central Committee team arrived first in Taiwan, focusing on medical needs in the mountainous in the east, and later extended to the west to set up a second mountain medical team. At this time, Dr. Xie Wei, who had been in Japan studying medicine returned to Taiwan and joined the intiative. Pastor Lu Chunchang and Ms. Sun Lilian (Lillian Dickson) and other pastors who care about the gospel of the aborigines are also accompanied along with the wave of mission work.

Let orphans feel the warmth of home
Gao Ganlin arrived in Taiwan in 1949. At that time, he had not yet received formal theological education. In 1950, he was sponsored by Dr. Daniel Poling, director of the Christian Children Fund’s Welfare Foundation (CCF) in the United States., Lillian Dickson, and other missionary teachers jointly to found the “Christian Taichung Guangyin Kindergarten”, which later became the “Taichung Guangyin Kindergarten”.

The kindergarten got its name because it is located at No. 5, Gospel Street, Guangyinli, next to Liuy uan Church in Taichung. It was the first to introduce “family-style” education to Taiwan, which was quite different from the traditional institutional education at that time. The kindergarten helped orphans at that time but there was still a sense of home in the nursery. “Family-style” planning meant organizing 10 to 15 people in each “family” unit, mixed ages living together to learn the way of siblings, and childcare teachers acting as parents to the “family” units. This enabled orphans to grow up in a family-like environment, and cultivated children to develop a sound physical and mental personality.

In 1951, Gao Ganlin married June Mable Straite (July 12, 1922-August 27, 1990, another translation: Gao Chunmei), a nurse of the Mennonite Central Committee Mountain Medical Team, and they had four children (Daniel, Vinnie, Katherine, and David). Both could speak fluent Taiwanese and had deep relationships with friends in Taiwan.

In 1955, after Gao Ganlin’s missionary work in Taiwan came to an end, he returned to the United States and entered New York Theological Seminary to complete his theological training. After graduating from the seminary in 1957, he was ordained as a Pastor and served as the Mennonite Church’s Commission on Overseas Mission teacher, once again returning to Taiwan to invest in a broader double blessing (gospel and welfare) missionary career.

Shuangfu missionary field from Taiwan to Asia
In terms of church planting, Gao Ganlin, with the assistance of Pastor Lv Chunchang, established the first Mennonite church in Taiwan, Linsen Road Church, in Taichung in 1954. After that, the two worked together to open Taichung Xitun, Nantun, Taipei Datong, and Daya churches successfully between 1957 and 1961.

In the 1960s, Pastor Gao actively developed the work of Christian Children’s Fund in Taiwan. Two years later, he took over the crumbling Datong Orphanage. In 1964, he established the Taichung Family Support Center and founded the Christian Children’s Fund Taiwan branch, serving as the first President. Pastor Gao was very concerned about the situation of the children among the aboriginal people of Taiwan. Starting in 1969, he opened ten mountain student centers to provide tuition and accommodation for aboriginal teenagers and children who were on the verge of dropping out of school.

Due to the outstanding performance of Pastor Gao in Taiwan, he was appointed by the Christian Children’s Fund General Assembly to go to Southeast Asia in 1973 in order to establish branches in Indonesia and the Philippines. In 1977, he became the Asia Deputy Director of World Vision and established branches in various countries across the region. In 1987, he retired and returned to the United States. He died in the United States on November 7, 2009, at the age of 90.

The Orphan Benefits God’s Son Becomes God’s Son
Pastor Gao devoted the best years of his life to the double blessing missionary work in Taiwan, becoming an outlet for God’s blessings in Taiwan and benefiting thousands of children and families. My family is actually one of those families. My father, Elder Xie Zhengci, often recalled:

“If there had been no ‘Guangyin’, then I would be carrying chairs at the temple in Linzhuangjiao (countryside) in Xigangzai, Tainan.”

“If there was no ‘Guangyin’, then none of you would have becomes Pastors!”

“The greatest blessing of ‘Guangyin’ was to believe in Jesus, the heavenly boy and son of God.”

My father lost both of his parents when he was young and went to live with his uncle, who already had five children. His Uncle was unable to take care of his brother’s two orphans, so he sent the younger son – my father – to the Tainan County Orphanage in Jingliao. At that time, Pastor Gao had just established the “Taichung Guangyin Kindergarten” and kindergarten age children were invited to join. At that time, my father was young and well-behaved, so he was selected and sent to Taichung Guangyin Children’s Kindergarten. The biggest turning point in his life came through Guangyin’s first Dean, Pastor Lu Chunchang.

My father grew up in the ‘big family’ of Guangyin. He deeply felt that he was raised by God. That he was cared for and blessed by the Heavenly Father. Later, he got to know Lin Zhaoyue, the second daughter of Lin Zongde, a staff member of Guangyin. The two held a wedding service in Guangyin Church on September 28, 1967. The witness was Pastor Gao Ganlin. My father and mother were baptized in Guangyin Church on Easter in 1965 and that was also officiated by Pastor Gao Ganlin. Therefore, us three children, would call Pastor Gao “Grandfather” when we were young and “American Grandpa ” became our family’s nickname for Pastor Gao.

My father had a great business opportunity to handmade quilts but, inspired by Pastor Gao, he instead devoted himself to Christian Children’s Fund for nearly 40 years, serving until his retirement. My father would remind us – his children – and his grandchildren during family worship that without Pastor Gao, there would be no Guangyin, and without Guangyin, there would be no family like us, let alone a family serving Jehovah God. This is amazing grace, God’s will is the best!

On this memorable day, I tell this testimony of my family’s belief just to thank the missionaries for their dedication to bring blessings to Taiwan! Taiwan is really a happy country, a blessing in disguise in the torrent of history. After World War II, groups of missionary teachers from all over the world retreated from China and arrived in Taiwan. From north to south, from east to west, from the main island to the outer islands, you can see the beautiful footsteps of the evangelists every where. If this is not “happiness”, then what is “happiness”!

“God is a Father to the fatherless and an Advocate to the widow in His holy sanctuary.” (Psalm 68:5)

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I wanted to add some clarification, from the ‘高甘霖’ wikipedia page, on all the different Guangyin references which I think Google Translate jumbled a bit.

• The Guangyin Orphanage accommodated orphans ages 3 to 18 . In the beginning, Gao Ganlin recruited some orphans who slept on the streets or at train stations. Gao Ganlin also created the first family-style education system in Taiwan, where twelve orphans lived together as a family, so that the children could still grow up like in a normal family. This system is now imitated by various public and private kindergartens in Taiwan. 
• The Guangyin Kindergarten was a school associated with the Orphanage.
• The Guangyin Nursery specialized in adopting abandoned babies and was presided over by Gao Chunmei (June Straite Graber) for 21 years.

Despite being told to translate from Traditional Chinese to English, Google sometimes – but not always – decided to add German too, translating Kindergarten as ‘Children Garden’. Other times it translated the same differently at different points in the article.