EBWU Conference - Lisbon, Portugal - 10-13 October 2024

Our time with Kong tay GanElisabeth KapsreisterElisabeth Kapsreister

As a young family we lived 10 years in Mannheim, Germany. Our three children were born in this city. We lived in an old 4 room apartment and twice a week it was filled with about 20-30 young people of the Christian Students Organization “The Navigators”. Besides a little reception room, the master bedroom and a children’s bedroom we had a little study room, which was occasionally used as a guest room.

When I was heavily pregnant with our third child, there came this student to us with his story. He was an Indonesian of Chinese descent and that was the reason that he was not allowed to study in his homeland. An uncle was supporting him with his financial assets for a preliminary study in Germany. Now the money was gone, but there were still two more study years to go. Very sad he told us that there was no way then go back to his homeland. The story of Kong touched us deeply and in prayer my husband and I asked our heavenly Father what we could to do for him. The answer came right away: “Give him what he needs.”

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God had spoken so loud and clear to our hearts that we made a leap of faith: we adopted Kong into our family. We did not have much money and we did not have a big house, but there he was. Just four weeks before the birth of our youngest child he moved into our little study/guest room with his suitcase and his bookcase. An exciting time followed. During the following two years we lived together on a very small area where Western European and Asian cultures sometimes stood in much opposition to each other!

Kong graduated with a very good result and is now a successful businessman and father of a family in Indonesia. About his time in Germany he has published a book.

We have remained in good contact and are informed by him of the increasingly oppressive situation for Christians up to date.

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Since China has become a global economic power, the history of discrimination has weakened for Indonesians with Chinese descent, so that residents with this background can study today in their own country. For all of us it has been an intensive period of our life, but we have experienced despite all restrictions, also a great enrichment and we were surprised how creatively and wonderfully God answered so many of our prayers.


Elisabeth Kapsreiter, President of Frauenwerk in Germany.