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Tag: Missions

Dr Doug Leung and his ministry

24 February 2011 blogpastor Leave a comment

It was nice to have Dr Doug Leung around. He had sold a very successful dental practice in Boston and started Medical Dental Community Groups (MDCG) aimed at meeting felt needs of the poor. He had been around in Cebu to train a mission team prior to training our team. He trained us how to do dental sealants in a whole day! Then we had practice with some of the young guys in the center.

The next day, we went to a public school and helped about 100 students. They came in groups of manageable size. First they received a talk on dental care and decay prevention. Then they went into a group where someone would share the good news using the “evangelicube” – a method of sharing the gospel using something that looked like Rubik’s cube.

Then they came to us and had their teeth mapped and the lower molars without cavities sealed. We created a makeshift dental clinic: chairs, tables, pillows, headlights….but the sterilizing of equipment and safety precautions were tight. We each worked with someone who had experience and Dr Doug and Dr Marianne, a local dentist, walked around and coached us.

We were also dumbstruck by how decayed and devastated the teeth of these young kids were! I remembered in the 1960’s the school system in Singapore had this mobile dental clinic bus and I had my teeth regularly checked.

An Sen and An Wen the young adults in our team took to the ministry with enthusiasm and confidence. But we were not far behind in energy, but slower and tiring earlier.

We all felt a new respect for dentists and the backbreaking work they do. They deserve the fees we pay them.

Cebu mission: between death and decay

18 February 2011 blogpastor 9 Comments

The visit to the Tomoy dumpsite gave me some anxious moments. There was an ominous feeling of what laid ahead, but I resolved to face it as it came. After donning rubber boots, we walked across muddy fields to the outskirts of the Tomoy dumpsite. There the Grace Community Empowerment ministry had started a preschool for children to learn phonics and Jesus. These children lived with their families in shacks along the edges of the dumpsite. They presented a few worship songs for us in English.

There we met a heroic girl, Marisa, who had deformed legs. She had to cross a canal on a styrofoam float, and walk with her butt and hands across dirt and mud, to get to school. The ministry is building a hut next door for her and her family so that she would not have to make those hazardous trips to school.

We ourselves had to balance precariously on a makeshift styrofoam “boat” to get across to the dumpsite. The canal was dirty brown and we were shocked to see children taking a dip in the stream of bacteria.

The suish of soft mud, the stench, the shock of seeing children scavenging among heaps of grabage grated at our conscience. We wanted to escape to a mall, but this was a mission trip! The discomfort churned in the stomach. Angry when you think of the super-rich politicians. Pity for the powerless and impoverished reduced to such humiliation. Only Christ can fix this, I thought, and we are his hands and feet.

Pastor Manny brought us to the home of Marisa. Instinctively I avoided looking into the eyes of poverty, and stayed a safe distance, as though poverty was infectious. Looking around was easier than trying to make a personal connection with them. He told us that Marisa’s brother was malnourished and the center helped nurture him with a special formula food. He grew bulk after some months and he was sent back home. We took pictures of him with his brother and mother. How were we to know he would be declared dead in the hospital the next day? There was nothing to indicate that his life hung in the balance that day. Between death and decay is a bottomless pit called despair, and I was there, and I had felt its merciless grip.

When I returned home the first thing I wrote in my Facebook was: “Every Filipino politician should work and stay overnight with a poor family living in a dumpsite before taking the oath as President or governor or mayor or senator or congressman.”

And maybe so should pastors and missionaries.

Singapore Christian Canaan Church: a happy servant church

15 November 2010 blogpastor 2 Comments

New media connected

“I have read his blog. Then we became friends on Facebook.” That was how Pastor Richard Wong introduced me as the guest speaker in his church. New media is changing the way the world and the church works. More often than not people may meet online before they meet physically. This has been very much my experience in the last two years. We knew each other from afar and off-line, but recently we had lunch and we hit it off and shared our lives easily.

Servant leader

Richard is hungry for the spirituals and yet is down to earth and a good administrator. He has been pastoring the church for close to two decades and still remains hopeful and enthusiastic. He sees himself above all as a servant. This serving heart has been his hallmark since the days of his youth, and it has been imparted to the church too.

Moving along

The Singapore Christian Canaan Church had come a long way from conservatism to Third Wave openness. This year they were moving into healing. This is a church of about 200 over and they have a building and worship team I envied. The worship team comprised half Filippinos and half locals. The elder Steven attributed their improvement to the training implemented by the youth and worship pastor.

A happy church

About 30 of the integrated congregation are Filippinos, mostly from the professional and service industry. The rest were mainly locals from youths to adults in their 50’s. The church was a family church: warm, welcoming, hospitable and all-embracing. This is their great strength: the love, unity and happy family feel was palpable. The congregation responded easily and positively to the message I preached, “The Church of the Prodigal Son.” This is a word I have been bringing everywhere I can as I feel it is a word in season for the church.

Art in the church

At the entrance to the worship hall, I caught sight of a large painting the size of a large notice board. This was evidence of how adventurous this church is. The pastor told me the painting was done by a Japanese couple, during an art rendition at the Good Friday service, as the congregation sang two songs in worship of Jesus the Lamb of God.

Missions impact

Later Richard and his wife Josephine brought us out for lunch at Sushi Teh in the City Mall. Never did I know a relatively new mall existed in Little India, other than Mustapha’s. We talked about the missions work of the church in Bangladesh, Chiangmai and Sulawesi. We talked shop and about our families. It was wonderful to know how God worked in the world. Many are the risks taken but the Lord watches over His people.

We reached home after 3pm, satisfied and glad to have the privilege of serving the Lord and this happy church.