This trip to Malaysia is primarily to see my mum & my siblings and Doreen her sister in August 2022. It is a 21 hours’ flight from New York to Singapore, and then another 1 hour flight from Singapore to Kuching. It has been already more memorable than any other trip.

It was very important to see my aging mother in her 80’s, and was encouraged to spend much time with her. Her constantly caring of my siblings and I and her grandchildren is amazing. Probably having been a widow for so many years, her emotional attachment to her children becomes more acute than most parents. All her children loves her very much, my special thanks to my brother Julian & family who takes care of her and live with her, and also my sister Jaime & brother in law Teck who loves & looks after her!

This is mum passing masks to me from a distance. Mother’s love!

The trip to visit Kota Kinabalu has been most memorable and very different. This is the church Doreen & I planted over 20 years ago in KK, Sabah. In fact, the pastor of this church over the last 20 years or so since we left for the States is Dr Anthony Ng, whom I led to Christ in University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) back in late 90’s. They remained close to me over these last 20 years much to my joy. Every year we have been visiting and I have been preaching there.

This year it’s different. The night before the worship Sunday service, on Saturday morning, I got a positive result for Covid. My heart sank, as it would mean I could not go to church to preach and meet with the brothers and sisters in Christ personally. I texted Anthony the result and said that I may not be able to preach on Sunday. Then after an hour or so, he texted me back and asked me if could do a zoom preaching? My heart leapt, of course!

Saturday morning and afternoon I was feeling fatigue and feverish. I took 2 panadol and by evening I was about ready to go! I pulled out one of my better sermons I preached in LIALC church in Long Island, and I tweaked it to better suit the congregation here due to translation and hence term time constraint. Also I made it more focused and accurate. I felt good about it. By Sunday morning, it was a blast! I enjoyed it so much; I knew the Lord spoke to his people!

Here is such a good picture of my family with the KK folks.

Just such a memorable time.

I also did a leadership session with the church when I shared about Pauling’s theology on the new covenant and what it means to us.