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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