A mark in history

“A federal judge on Friday ruled in favor of Missouri in the state’s $24 billion lawsuit against China’s Communist Party that accused it of hoarding protective supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.” (Fox News, March 7, 2025)

April 19, 2025, the Whitehouse updated its Covid page.

To follow these developments will likely lead me to dark places.
So, I’d stop here.

But this recalls the most rewarding and satisfying association with a few colleagues during those days of masks, sanitizers, work-from-home and, even shut down.

Perhaps It might aptly return to the end 2019 TV celebration of PRC when the Leader wished the nation a great 2020.

In that TV gala, nothing was said about what was exploding in Wuhan.
The entire nation celebrated.

Partially damaged picture of Dr. Li Wenliang on the wall poster. (PetrVod, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

But Dr Li Wenliang of Wuhan was at the same time already warning people about the disease which bit him.
Then he was shut down.
Soon, the nation was doing pretty much what they had done during the early days of SARS, snapping up vinegar and Banlangeng, a herb supposed to be useful vs contagious disease.

Hong Kong meanwhile having learned from SARS, also began bubbling preparatory actions.

Soon the entire population in HK was queuing round the block for masks, hand sanitizers, and Panadol. 

Cases popped up.
Some deaths too.

For a while relatives and friends overseas airfreighted masks over to Hong Kong.
But soon the traffic reversed when overseas cases shot up all over.

In HK things got more intense.
Daily TV briefings.
Travel restrictions.
Quarantine of two to three weeks for patients as well as for residents returning from overseas.

Anyone who was in HK then must recall the movie-like scenes with lingering fear.

Right in the middle of this scary movie, something worth remembering took place.

History.

No exaggeration.
Just like that—zoom!
History!

Literally ZOOM.

Without this software we wouldn’t be able to make history.
As it turned out it really was history.
A mark in history.
At least in the history of Group Bible Studies in Hong Kong.
Maybe even in the operation of Hong Kong churches: From physical in-person multiple group meetings to all on-line.

In a week.
Converted without missing a beat.

Only our organisation was able to continue.
Even bigger organisations had to stop.

Before Wuhan, churches in Hong Kong primarily held physical worship services, fellowships, seminars, and Bible study groups.
Hardly any church had on-line worship services.
Definitely no on-line fellowship and Bible Study Group.

But when HK government began to ban social gatherings except for conducting business, church meetings were the first ones to go.
Although initially there were debates about whether church meetings qualified as business, soon the less than courageous church leadership one by one made the safe decision to pull the plug of all sorts of gatherings.

Hong Kong SAR government hope do not gathering banner 12-04-2020 (LN9267, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

We were immediately dumped into a situation that was close to hopeless.

We were a small outfit running, amongst other things, a Bible Study program that operated on groups of Christians meeting and receiving lectures weekly.
The format was like that of the world famous Bible Study Fellowship, except ours was in Cantonese.

At that time we were doing quite well.

My memory is fading but roughly we had about 1000 people meeting weekly in 10 church locations.
And these centres might be studying different books each quarter.
Each week they needed study questions before their group meetings.
Then they would get the lecture notes and listen to the lecture.
The same routine repeated weekly within a quarter.

Even in physical meetings, the logistics of getting the study questions and the lecture notes to ten centres were challenging.
Overlaid on that three different lecturers had to travel to these centres to lecture in person.
Practically none of the team could afford to be sick!

Now suddenly Government ordered no meetings!

Everything must be done on-line, or not at all.

Others chose that route.
Not us.

We could too have given up.
Stopped for a quarter until physical meetings would be allowed.

But we felt it necessary for the habit of the groups to be maintained.
So the four staffs responsible rolled up their sleeves.
*  They came into the office during that one week when Government forbad social gatherings.
*  Emailed the thousand members.
*  Set up their WhatsApp groups.
*  Set up Zoom accounts for each small group, and one large Zoom group for lecture. (Initially we tried to save money by using the Zoom 40minute free session but soon gave up and bought them outright.)
*  A colleague offered his personal large Zoom session for the lecture.
*  They emailed the PDF of weekly study questions and lecture notes to each group leader who in turn administered the distribution.
*  Not all people then were familiar with Zoom so we set up a hotline to guide members in using it. One gifted colleague became the designated Hotline Advisor to put members at ease in learning to use Zoom.
*  We made it work and thousand members could have Group Bible Study and fellowship at the time when meeting was prohibited.

Just think the number of calls, emails and WhatsApps my colleagues made.

It’s so gratifying that we had a dedicated team.
They used their IT knowledge to completely convert the entire process from physical materials into PDFs and videos.
They worked that five to ten days between classes (I forgot precisely which month but it happened that there was a break) to turn it into the then innovative e-Bible Study program.

The first in Hong Kong.

The only one without having to stop when Government banned social gatherings!

As a bonus, we realised that our package—PDFs of Study questions+lecture notes+video lectures—could be of use to smaller and less equipped churches for their Sunday School teaching materials.
So we let them use them freely.
We knew they had their hands full just managing to operate on-line worship service!

As if God had foreseen our needs, for reasons other than record keeping, we had been videotaping the lectures in selected centres so we ended up with an inventory to quickly change the book of study to suit.
And thankfully, it must have been the time between quarters when it all came to a screeching halt.

At the time the haste and need for survival occupied our thoughts and we didn’t even pause to pray for divine assistance, nor gave thanks afterwards.

But God showered His grace in spite of our shortcomings.

Now with hindsight, it was nothing short of God’s provision that the kind of dedicated colleagues were all in to make it happen.
It’s time, though belated, to give them the vote of thanks!
For sure, God would remember.

Tsuen Wan West Restaurant prevent COVID-19 1 26-06-2020 (LN9267, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

These colleagues came from as far as Yuen Long, Shatin, Siu Sai Wan, and Shaukeiwan.
Our lecturers came from Aberdeen, Tsuen Kwan O and Shatin.
They were all supposed to be working from home.
But they braved the then scary possibility of infection in public transport, back to San Po Kong office.

Their names though unrecorded, must have been etched in history, or in the hearts of the thousand of Bible Study Group members, who could maintain some semblance of normal contacts and connections at such a difficult moment in history.

And those colleagues who happen to be reading this would sense their commitment and hopefully, satisfaction.
And those Bible Study Group members who had experienced then would also be nudged to give thanks in their hearts.

And that’s all this tiny marker is meant to achieve.