FGC Sunday (2nd August): My Father Preaches For the First Time

It was bound to happen sooner or later. It happened last weekend and it was interesting. My father came back to sort out some family matters and is also on his way to Korea for more ministry. Arrived on Saturday morning and as we talked on the one-hour drive back to Selayang I asked if he or my mother would like to preach in my church. For a while my father and mother had a toss-a-coin situation on who would preach. But I guess my father cannot resist the offer.


It was mid-term break so many of the MMU students were back in their hometowns. The remnants were pleasantly surprised that we had a guest speaker. One of my leaders (Melisa Ann) was also visiting family in Penang that particular week, so I did not get the exact number of people in attendance. But I think that for the first time in over a month, our attendance dropped below 40. I believe there were about 35 members last Sunday.

Even though many were missing from church, we still had our usual quota of guests. Fonie's two sisters were in town visiting. I guess it was visit-your-family week at FGC. There were also other guests that week. I feel that the church is still not ready for new members, we are still in an "incubation" period. But as I pray and meditate, it is becoming clearer what I believe is God's will for the church. Keep praying with me that the leadership of the church will be able to be sensitive to God's voice. Soon we will have to come out of our comfortable incubation mode and begin to move forward.

My father spoke about Abraham and the altars he built from various passages in Genesis. Rev. Yee Tham Wan reminded all of us that we need to continue to push ourselves in our journey with God. No matter who we are we still had room to grow.

It was also communion week so it was also a first as I served Holy Communion to my parents. I am still kind of in a daze and disbelief as I thank God for his grace, that he would use me to pastor a church. I will have to continue to grow in boldness and confidence as I minister but still keep that sense of reverant fear and priviledge for being granted such a great responsibility. At the moment it is still a shoe too big for my feet, however I want to push myself more and more to make sure I grow, and consequently because of my growth the church will grow as well.

Shekinah Community Center Sunday (July 26th): Prophetic Conference, Ipoh

So I went missing for the whole of last week. I was attending a prophetic conference in Shekinah Community Center (SCC), Ipoh, a.k.a. the mothership. SCC is my church's mother church.

I was initially quite reluctant to go, firstly, Ipoh was supposed to be a small town, what could Ipoh offer that I couldn't already get in KL? Then there was also my thing about the "prophetic". Many times I just substitute prophetic with pathetic, it really didn't help when I was trying to pay attention during the conference, everytime the speaker said "prophetic", my mind automatically switches it to "pathetic". It was really funny, to me, only. A real inside joke.

So I mentally prepared myself for a week of boredom. I was prepared to fast internet, stay indoors if there weren't any place to go, and bear a week of pathetic conference. I gave up on my "P" night on Monday and left before I could catch up with anyone, I only met Ke Xin when she came earlier to twist perm my hair, but you would have already had your share of that story by now. I left my wife, daughter, friends, and internet at home and headed due north for Ipoh.

Drive alone was nice, quite therapeutic and cleansing in a way. Music blasted from my aunty's new speakers as I drove her car. I arrived slightly late and had to find the church. For a brief moment I thought my GPS got me to the wrong place, but a brief call to Pas. Henry confirmed I was in the right area. The place was littered with pubs, cafes, cyber cafes, hawkers, and even discos (some dodgier than others). During the duration of my stay I have cristened that area where SCC was located as "Sodom and Gomorrah". I figured this shouldn't be as bad as I have initially prepared for. Worse come to worse I could camp it out in the cyber cafe.

Conference already started and the prophet-speaker already has begun the seminar. I see two familiar faces, Pas. Sam (from Baguio Philippines), and Pas. D'ton (from Bangkok, Thailand). I met them earlier in the week for a dinner on the day of their arrival, I also previously met them during my trip to Bangkok. We were going to be roomies throughout this conference.

The conference was great, for me I was reminded that I need to sharpen my spiritual gifts and not just rely on physical ministry. Many of the supernatural things can't be explained or understood so I just have to trust God when it comes to those things.

During the conference the speaker prayed for the manifestation of "golden glory" and true enough gold dust started appearing on people. Pas. Nagu, being Indian (dark skinned) was the most obvious of all, his face and hands was sparkly from the gold dust.

It is interesting why God would do something like this. I guess he's God and he's just showing off. It's just fantastic when God decides to show off a little... fantabulous!

There were also people who were healed, especially those with backaches due to uneven legs. We (the participants) would pray for the legs to be lengthened and true enough legs were lengthened. Then back problems just went away, it was a miracle. Of course there was also prophecies that were made.

The conferences were held during the night so days were free. So we had time to do some shopping. I spent most of the day with the foreign pastors. Being the local, I showed them around and basically played their host. If gained nothing else from this trip, the friendship built would be well worth the effort.

During one of the days, Pas. Henry brought us all up to Cameron Highlands for a cup of tea. The foreign pastors were also here for a meeting with the various national youth directors. Vietnam and Cambodia could not make it, but Philippines and Thailand was present, and guess who represented Malaysia?

Meeting lasted about 15 minutes, and time to travel to Cameron Highlands from Ipoh is just over 1 hour. Then the rest of the time we had tea and goofed off.

Other days I spent getting to know the people of SCC as well as getting to know the area around the church. Of course the eating was one of the highlights, for me it's the fellowship around the table.

I was supposed to head back straight after the final session late Saturday night, but I finally decided after much deliberation that I would attend the worship service in SCC. It was great getting to see how things are done in the main church. I was introduced to the church, and as expected, people were fascinated at me. I know I'm not the stereotype pastor, in fact, I'm quite the opposite. My newly permed hair got even more stares. But I am happy that people don't immediately recognize me as a "pastor". I'm just a normal guy that loves Jesus and want to serve him. I do the work of a pastor, but I don't want the "stigma" that comes with being a pastor. Christians and non-believers alike often act differently (and many times weird) when they realize you're a "pastor". Pastors are just people like you and me trying to make the most out of our lives. Anyway I was introduced to SCC.

After Sunday service I had the privilege of having lunch at Howard Leow's house. Howard studies Artificial Intelligence in KL and attends our church whenever he's around. He was going to hitch a ride from me back to KL so his mother invited me over to have lunch at their home. It was a great experience for me. They were real village folks and I had an authentic Hakka meal that is rare in KL, even though I myself am a Hakka. I had the chance to embaress myself with my horrible Hakka.

I left Ipoh with a very different perception of the place then when I first came. Ipoh is ready for harvest. So many young people so near the church there, SCC needs a youth worker badly. SCC is right at the heart of the hotspot, less than 100 meters away young people meet up to eat, play, and party. Someone just needs to invite them to come eat, play, and party in the church! God please send more workers, workers who can understand and meet the needs of these young people in Ipoh! I desperately want to go back to Ipoh, but next time I want to bring a small team along with me and try to make a difference there. It will also be good bonding time for me and my small team of ministers. For now I consider this more of a recon trip. People in Ipoh get ready, I'm coming back for you soon...

I arrived in KL at 4:30pm, just in time for futsal. Perfect way to cap off this fantastic week.

Mothers' Day

Kinda late now I know, but I have always maintained that this blog lives for my life and not my life living for my blog. So if there is "living" to do, I'll do that first, my online life takes a backseat to my real life. In case you didn't know, I have a life.

As (almost) all other church, we had a good Mothers' Day celebration. I managed to put together a very nice gift package for the moms in FGC. I'm proud of it and won't mind getting something like that for fathers' day next month, the free movie passes take the cake (*hint hint*). Apart form that there was also a cosmetic voucher from MakeUup. My friend will be bringing some products to FGC one of these weeks and you can all check it out then. Otherwise, check out the site and make your order there. I also want to thank Jackie for her help in getting very nice freebies from Giant/Guardian. The moms were all buzzing about how nice the gifts were.

Pastor Nellie Chan spoke very motherly about mothers and children, and even as a father I felt that I had to apply what was preached to my life. I have to learn to enjoy Mikayla more now. Joash who came along initially as his mom’s driver for the day worship led. Ken Chung came along with him to play the keyboards. Both of them have been inactive in their own worship ministries but they too enjoyed ministering that morning. It was a good time of worship, Joash, Ken Chung and the rest of our worship team did a good job. I hope the atmosphere of worship in our church will continue to build up momentum. I’m looking forward to more vibrant worship sessions. Coming Sunday we will be having a worship team meeting to meet and just discuss briefly about the ministry.

After the service I spent some time jamming with Jay Sern and Jee Hor, and when they left I experienced my first time alone in the church. It felt weird being in my own church and feeling kinda off. Anyway I did some stuff, tidied up and left to spend some time with my mother in-law. I had my lunch at church so I missed the Vietnamese lunch with the family but I was there for cake at sister in-law's place.

When we got home the house phone rang, normally only a few people call our house phone: the bank (or sales people from the bank), various other sales people, my Aunty Kim Mooi’s family (who lives nearby), or my parents calling from Baguio. It was my parents.

This year I decided to do something for my mom even though she’s in Philippines. Previous years we occasionally bought her something, but this year I decided to call up my good friend Brian Lopez in Baguio and ask him to help me buy some flowers for my mom. That was what happened and I heard from my father that my mom was moved to tears because of the flowers. The grandmother (and grandfather) then spent close to an hour, maybe more than that on Skype talking to Mikayla, Melanie, me, and Elroi.

After the Skype session, since it was mothers’ day, I went to make dinner while Melanie went outside to play water with Mikayla. Mikayla really enjoys it. As I was preparing dinner the house phone rang again, this time it was Aunty Kim Mooi, she asked us over to her house for Bah Kut Teh. We packed some of our half cooked stuff and walked over to her house for their mothers’ day dinner. So that was mothers’ day all day.

Here are some sights and sounds of our mothers’ day…

Joash worship leading, I was playing lead guitar which is a first for FGC

Joash using my beautiful guitar, that's why he did such a good job

Worshipping through our giving as well

The kids wishing the moms

Guest speaker: Nellie Chan

Pas. Nellie spoke of how mothers build their children's lives

I heard what was spoken and decided that I too had to put to practice what was preached

The lunch I didn't have, but I'm glad to be able to spend time with the church members

Mikayla unwinding by reading a good book

Mikayla getting wet and dirty before her shower

Ready, aim, fire!

Here's the video of the kids' mothers' day greeting. Could not get camera turned on in time for Nicole and Jonas, but I did get Brighton. I'm waiting for the day when Mikayla I can see Mikayla doing something like this, she's so cute, she'll melt my heart. Yes, I'm biased, But Mikayla is the cutest!

Here is an interesting video I found on Youtube, I would like to dedicate this to my mother, Mikayla's mother, my mother in-law, my step mother in-law, and all the other "mothers" that God has placed in my life... God bless you all.

PowerShot SX110 IS

Some of you might have noticed an increase in pictures in my blog. This is because my parents gave me a superb digital camera for Christmas. The camera is too good for this site, if I really want to show of the quality of the shots I'll have to sign up for Flickr or Picasa of something else, but here this is all you get.





The camera is a cross between an actual SLR and a compact camera. But the camera has been set up so well that some pro photographers like Prakash, Kenneth Hiew, and Elroi (my brother), have been very impressed by it. They are particularly impressed by the macro shots, which is like a microscope I tell you! The camera has what I call a noob mode and also has manual mode where all there are enough settings for any pro to make a very decent shot. On top of that, it's all wrapped up in a reasonably small size (compared to DSLRs), it fits in the same pouch as Canon's compact models.

The zoom too is to boast about, 10X optical zoom. Not a fan of the image stabilizer though, it gets in my way more than it helps. The metering is also not helpful when I use the flash. That one will require a lot of guesswork and even more time with my camera to get familiarize and get that shot. But for now I still blame myself for being untrained with cameras, but I thank God (and my parents) for giving me this camera. It has allowed me to experiment and better understand what a camera is all about.

So if you all appreciate the new look of the blog (with way more pictures), you know where the pictures came from. For one, I know Melanie is enjoying taking pictures, and yes, even videos of Mikayla, and when Mikayla grows up, she will realize that she has lots of high quality shots to choose from for her wedding day slide show. I know, that's kind of far off, but parents are paranoid that way.

Scenes from Baguio

Here's more on my recent trip to Baguio. Yes, I know you all prefer pictures to words so here's a lot of pictures accompanied by just enough words for you to know what the pictures are about.

"Isdaan", meaning fish (pronounced as is-da-an), is a floating restaurant. It's a real tourist place so if any of you are planning to visit my parents in Baguio I'm quite certain you'll be recommended and/or brought to this place. Prices are kind of "touristy" as well, although it is worth the one-time experience.

Flying to Clark Field via AirAsia we left our home in Selayang at 4:30am, hitched a ride from our aunty Kim Mooi to Sentral Station, took a bus to LCCT, then went through the whole flying thing, then another 1 hour van ride before arriving at this oasis-like restaurant at about 1:30pm. The restaurant is along the route to Baguio. Here's a good place to take a lunch break.

Food is good, do not miss out on the liempo here. Liempo is marinated pork, much like char siew but juicier, sweeter, tastier, and way fatter. The barbecue (inihaw) stuff there is good, so go with those, but also look out for "black rice", which is rice cooked in squid ink.

Not just a lunch break, but also a photo break. After a good meal everyone's more willing to show that teeth are not just for chewing. Filipinos (a.k.a. Pinoys) love taking pictures, so at places of interests there are always scenes set up for photos.

Mikayla followed her grandparents over to Baguio about 10 days earlier, this was the first time Melanie and I are away from Mikayla for an extended period of time. Melanie misses her sorely while I thoroughly enjoyed my break. It was very much needed for both of us. When we got to Baguio a full 4 hours later, we find Mikayla sleeping, she has grown more hair. She still remembers us of course, but was kind of confused. She had that look of what-are-you-doing-here on her face. Melanie quickly rebonded with Mikayla while I was still trying to extend our break from each other.

This trip was about my father's inauguration. So after a full day of travelling the second day was all about the graduation and inauguration ceremony. There was quite a Malaysian contingent there. I guess it's safe to say that AG Malaysia is standing behind my father and mother. Rev. Ong Seck Leang, the general superintendent of Malaysia was there; Rev Chris Pak and Rev. Chin Keng Leong were representing the AG Malaysia's World Missions Department; Rev. Lim Yeu Chuen was there as part of the APTS board of directors representing Malaysia.

Apart from Malaysians there were AG leaders from all over Asia Pacific gathered on that mountain. All were there showing approval and support for my father's appointment. The graduation ceremony was first to go. Dr. Wonsuk Ma was the speaker, he spoke a message that I felt was prophetic. Then the inauguration commenced. The ceremonies were very solemn and "proper", but count on my dad to break the ice. He cracked everyone up with his comment about Academic Deans being likened to a terrorist.

Of course he got down to business announcing to everyone present his plans to occupy APTS, to make full use of the APTS facilities. That much I can remember, he did mention few other things but that was the main gist of it.

The faculty, staff, alumni, and board or APTS pledged their help and support to their new president. The president then pledged to do his best with God's help.

Of course being pentecostal there was prayer with the laying on of hands. Rev. Ong Seck Leang was there to lead the prayer of dedication for the new president and his wife (a.k.a. my parents).

And of course being Asians there was the makan time (a.k.a. kain time, the pinoy version of the same thing). There was time to meet and catch up with some people that we have met there in our past visits, those who were still there at least.

The AG World Mission Department chairperson (Rev Chris Pak) and WMD committee member (Rev. Chin Keng Leong) flew in on the same flight we did but were due to leave the next morning. It was in and out for them.


Next day we had the best burgers for lunch - Hotshots. Those who have been there will know what I'm talking about. The pizzas there are good as well, but for me, the burgers take the cake. By the way there is also a nice cake place there as well, but still, the burgers take the cake.

Seriously, next time I'm going to try to tapau these babies. But nothing beats eating them while they are hot off the grill (not boiler, not hot plate, GRILL, you can taste it!). Great burgers eaten outside in the mild mountain weather with such a beautiful backdrop makes it a perfect lunch. I'll be dreaming of it till I'm there again.

Yes, if you follow me there, I'll make sure we get us to the Filling Station then you can taste the burgers yourself and find out what the hype is about.

Day 4 started with a luxuriour brunch at The Manor. The exclusive resort is relatively cheap, but nothing beats staying on APTS. The view in APTS is just as good but is less crowded and even more exclusive.

Like other tourist locations there were also many photo ops at The Manor. This is the view from The Manor's observation deck.

Melanie never ceases to amaze me the way she sacrifices for Mikayla, seriously, she's making me look bad...

Well we have been to Baguio enough times to have seen all the sights. So most of our time was really spent shopping and just hanging out in places like the Filling Station. We also made sure we went to the local wet market and bought us a great stash of very fresh seafood. Yes, fresh seafood up in the mountains at prices you won't believe! Baguio is an hour away from the sea and we had oysters, muscles, clams, and prawns so fresh and big they beat KL's Japanese restaurants! All that at the price that is really just loose change! We were initially worried that the seafood were not fresh or clean and did not go all out, but after this experience, next time we have to go a bit further with the seafood.