Kay and I have had the privilege of enjoying Chinese New Year in several nations. Of course, living in the Bay Area of California with its sizeable Chinese population, the annual celebration ends with a huge parade on the last Saturday night in San Francisco. Perhaps one half million view the annual parade live and a million more on television.

In Vientiane, Laos, we hardly knew who was of Chinese origin until Chinese New Year arrived, and then the shops and stores in Vientiane that close for the holiday were revealed as Chinese.

In Thailand your eyes were opened to the power of the Chinese when you realized that most of the major building of huge buildings, complexes, and shopping malls were mostly built by Chinese with Thai names.

In Indonesia the Chinese population was to blend into the Indonesian society by taking a forced Indonesian name and giving up their family heritage name.

In Cambodia the Chinese society tried to blend into the Khmer Culture and yet still celebrated Chinese New Year.

Here in Taiwan Chinese New Year is the biggest event of the year. One of the most outstanding things about Chinese New Year is the focal point on a family event. To miss the annual New Year's Eve dinner with the family is a major, almost unforgivable, mistake.

For Christians this New Year's celebration can be a very trying situation as the normal Chinese family expect the believer to enter into all of the historical cultural family practices even though they are opposite of the Christian's current value system.

For this reason we need to pray more earnestly for new Christian believers during the Chinese New Year.