In memory of my earthly father... he was a man hardened by experience!

At the last caregroup meeting we were encouraged to share what we felt were memories (good and difficult) of our earthly fathers and I shared with the group how I had learned to catch flying foxes and land crabs from my father. I also picked up some of my gardening habits from him as I watched him churning the vegetable plots behind our house in Christmas Island back in the 60s.

I also recalled one very scary experience when we went fishing out at sea when the shear pin on the propellor shaft of the outboard motor of the sampan broke and we had no spares and it was getting dark. As I looked around me (I guess I was only eleven or twelve then), I noticed that we were at least five kilometres from the beach where we were to land. Although we were only 200 metres from the cliffs, the very thought of strong undercurrents carrying our drifting sampan and dashing the boat against the rocks was scary and to top it all, we DID NOT have life-jackets and I cannot swim. So scared was I that when the adults decided to pick up the oars and start to row, I joined in and doubled my efforts.

I had always held up my father as a hero figure in my life and that incident had strengthened my impression of him on my mind. To watch him staying calm and collect then was awesome. I guess he could have been through worse situations before when as a teenager of 17 or 18 he decided to run away from the Japanese Imperial Army when they invaded Guangtong Province where he grew up and then again about a year later when he had to flee from Phuket to Sumatra when the Japanese came south into peninsular Malaysia. Eventually he ended up hiding from the Japanese Occupation Forces in a rubber estate in Selangor. Sumatra also was not safe for him as the Japanese Army also invaded the island.

So my father had led a life of struggles to better his lot and those initial years in South-East Asia as a teenager away from his beloved mother were important moulding years in his life and he would tell me many of these stories whenever I was with him. And because of those experiences, it was difficult for him to accept the gospel initially. His life had been one of No. 'I' and to believe that Jesus had died for him and that through faith he can receive eternal life was too simple for him. He could not accept the fact that everything that is needed for salvation had already been DONE on the Cross when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died for us.