Of course, I had to find a title with No. 7 on it which is very enlightening to read by clicking here.
21 Aug 2017
This is the every Monday activity I call an online family home evening with my children spread out to as many as 6 locations on some days as they travel too! On Mondays, I would look forward to an email of our 2nd son Woon Shuan serving on a voluntary mission where he earned enough to support himself to serve a calling for our Church who sent him to the London Mission for 2 years. He could do this as he had served the Singapore Army for 2 years where he as well paid as a Lieutenant. I was impressed to share his email on this post.
Hi Everyone!
Many things have happened this week!
On Monday evening, we had a lesson with our Portuguese investigators. At the end of the lesson when we were about to go, they suddenly brought out food!
I noticed that Portuguese love to share food. It's actually part of their culture. My ward mission leader is also Portuguese and after he explained the history of Portugal it made a lot of sense. The oppression they they faced under a dictator in a way made them learn to take care of each other. They actually had a peaceful revolution in April 25 1974!
On Tuesday, we had to drop one of our investigators. He simply did not want to change his ways. It was a very pleasant last lesson where we agreed to disagree. I wish there were more of these than those of people ignoring us. Something I've learned from this person is the danger of replacing repentance with rationalising. He picked the commandments he liked and came up with excuses to not keep the others. I guess he's not quite prepared to change yet. We told him the church is always there, and that he has our phone number so he can always come back whenever he wants to make a change in his life. After we said goodbye, we watched him walk away... and lit a cigarette... :(
On Wednesday we had exchanges! I spent a whole day with Elder Yamada from Japan!
It was so fun to serve with him. He is full of faith and is always excited and positive about everything!
He got along with one of our investigators who's is actually pretty similar in nature!
You can see a little bit of our drawings to explain the different groups of people that were led to America that are mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It's really so exciting to teach people who actually take the time to read!
At the end of the day, we were blessed with Costco Pizza!
The member who got it for us was truly inspired. She normally buys us 1 pizza which is more than enough. Somehow she decided to buy 2 when there were more missionaries because of exchanges! We didn't tell her there were more missionaries!
The day after our exchanges was interviews with President and Sister Stevens!
After looking at the photo, one of the missionaries commented that we're a super district instead of a zone. I found that to be rather true because we're quite few in number. However, we heard that there will be 32 missionaries coming in next transfer! Counting out the leaders in the mission, it probably means almost everyone will be training or follow-up training next transfer!
Here are some of the pictures I took on the train while on the way to interviews at St. Albans:
You know summer is ending when they start gathering in the hay into bales. I'm not looking forward to winter at all!!!
We had a miracle lesson after interviews as one of our investigators who dropped us last week decided to come back. To make it even better, his boss has allowed him to change his shifts so he could come to church for the first time this week!
On Friday, we had a lesson with another one of our investigators. After listening to his life story, it is difficult to not believe that God has led him to the church. He has been coming to church since February. He is waiting for the right time to be baptised... we're working on it!
After the lesson, we had to go to from the chapel to a member's home to do some service. There's another miracle there. As we were waiting at the bus stop, it began to drizzle. As soon as started to rain, a member stopped in front of us and told us to get in. We were saved by that ride! We were completely unprepared for the rain. It was totally sunny that day, and because of that:
Rainbow! :)
My most spiritual experience in the week was on Sunday once again. This is actually related to last week when we learned of a member of the ward who had a strong testimony of the gospel and lived all of the commandments which she knew except one, which was coming to church. What has prevented her is the severe social anxiety she has and it's the worst I've ever seen. We were given permission by bishop to administer the sacrament. She had not partook of it for almost 2 years and broke down in tears when we offered it. We did so, shared a spiritual thought and gave her a blessing. This week, when we went to visit her again, she was completely different. No longer depressed, but bright and full of hope. It was as if there was a glow in her countenance.
This experience reminded me of one of the people I taught a while back. During that time, I saw a gradual change in her which was amazing. This time, I saw an almost immediate change. Partaking of the sacrament renews the covenants that we made at baptism. It is as if we're being baptised again. This experience made it very obvious for me.
Ok, the final news is that our trio is now disbanded. Elder Gato has been reassigned to the Joao Pessoa, Brazil mission. This is what happened on his last day in the England London Mission:
Now it's just Elder Birch and I. It's kind of strange for me having been in trio for so long, but I'm looking forward to the remaining 4 weeks with Elder Birch in this transfer!
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Chong
The rainbow photo of my son above links my mind to some spectacular rainbow photos of my life shared below:
The above double rainbow had to be taken in 2 parts as my camera couldn't take the whole arch of the rainbow seen over the Provo Temple in the summer of 2005. I guess the photo cameras then didn't have panoramic switch for wide angle scene shots nor a built in video capability to capture the whole scene.
The photos below are captured in the Autumn of 2005 in a trip with my daughter to Moab Utah :
Besides photos, I'm glad I became a chronicler to write journals, like this one, on experiences of my life which will include videos too such as the time I could share with my daughter camping in the desert. These rainbow pics was inspired by my son's email home shared above about the miracles on his mission in London and how he saw a rainbow too. As
Sunday 1 Oct 2017
This is the start of last quarter of the year, a critical one for me as is my last quarter to complete the writing of my first book targeted to be published next year. In order to focus time for my book, I have stopped several important things that I do in my life. I slowed down the progress of my Socialpreneur business plans, cut down my trips and time spent in Singapore including my other overseas trips, reduced my writings on blog journals like this one by merely making quick posts on facebook and embedding relevant posts from there to my Body Mind Spirit blogsposts or named Familylane Fastlane Spiritlane blogposts respectively.
Now this blogpost of the Story of 7 was specially created to record unusual coincidental events or those of spiritual nature that can be deemed miraculous that I could share from my life.
A Church meeting ruled by Theocracy and an Apartment AGM meeting ruled by democracy
On this significant day, being a Sunday, I had the feeling that it would be quite a busy day for me to be occupied by two organizations requiring my participation. Firstly I had Church meetings that would start at 9am for Branch Council, followed by further meetings of 1 hour each starting at 10am for Sacrament, Sunday School and Priesthood meetings ending at 1pm. Next was an Annual General Meeting(AGM)of our apartment required by the Strata Titles Act of the country where registration by owners or their proxies would be open at 10am and I assumed that the meeting would begin at 2pm as was the same time in all the past years.
On the Saturday before, the apartment office called me, passing the phone to Mr Philip Yap, the building manager, who asked if I was willing to loan my amplifier sound system for the AGM bringing it early in the morning at 9am or 10am. Now this was an irony as 7 months earlier, it was this same type of general meeting that Mr Philip Yap opposed my sound system, instructing the guards to not allow me to use the power socket points when I voluntarily brought my sound system to be used at the the carried forward EGM meeting then of Feb 19, 2017. Representing the owners of the apartments holding its general meeting, I insisted that this was conducive to be used to facilitate the meeting and boldly plugged the amplifier's cable to the power socket, reminding the guardLis that all members present were owners of the apartments and that Mr Philip Yap and the guards themselves were all employees paid monthly salaries by the owners through the monthly maintenance fees contributed by all apartment owners. After the EGM, Mr Philip Yap began his act of harassing me personally by instructing the guards to clamp my vehicle. (This episode, with others previous and subsequent that followed, has been recorded on this TalkLaneNow public post.)
As Saturday night approached, I decided to go to bed earlier than usual seeing my following day would be full. Live General Conference sessions would be available on the internet for the Saturday morning session occurring in Salt Lake City, the Church headquarters but would be too late for me to watch them in our local time in the middle of our night. This Sunday, being the first Sunday of the month would also be our Fast Sunday so I did fast and pray for the next day tomorrow that all the meetings would turn out well.
I woke up about half past seven in the morning and felt all priority should be given to the Church meetings and when I left the apartment about 8.30am, I told Sam the new office employee that I had urgent and important meetings from 9 till 1pm and could only come back immediately after all my meetings, thinking to bring my sound system in time for the 2pm AGM of the apartment owners.
The first meeting at Church went well. Seen in the photo below is after a fruitful and spiritual Branch Council meeting of heads of all branch leaders led by the Branch President Boyd seated and wearing a coat and tie.
We often hear the Church referred to as a democracy, when in reality, instead of being a church where the body is governed by officers elected by the members, the Church is a theocracy, where God directs his church through representatives chosen by him explained here.
After 1pm I rushed back to the apartment meeting which I referred to as a democracy type meeting when I posted in Facebook a report of the AGM. One can click the blue Facebook icon below to see the entire post including more information in the details that I have added to the comments section of the post.
To my surprise when I went back to the apartment to attend the AGM, I discovered that I had the wrong notion that the 10am registration of voters was only a prelude to the meeting in the afternoon at 2pm. There was food catered to be served before starting the meeting after registration so when I got back about 1.30pm, the meeting was actually at the tail end. I found that the result of the elections was very satisfactory to all the owners who lived in the apartment as they did not like the way Mr Philip Yap ran or ruled the management office as explained in this detailed TalkLaneNow post that I created in Social media. This experience taught me the power of social media to bring justice to the communities of a democratic country where I wasn't even needed in the actual voting meeting itself!
2 & 3 October 2017
Steven Kok in the US saw my 'Democracy is Alive' post and sent me a message below past midnight on my Monday morning. This message became significant to me only a couple of days later on reminding me to relax. Read further below to know why. I found time to watch the recorded General Conference talks and was deciding which Apostle I would listen to as it was late and I just had time to watch and listen to one only. In deciding who to listen to, my mind thought of the Apostle who performed the sealing in Su's sealing to Jay in 2011 who was just newly called i.e. Elder D. Todd Christofferson whose title of his talk was "The Living Bread Which Came Down from Heaven"
After the Sunday AGM and as recorded in my video, the resolution was passed by majority present to give every unit back the one open car park space. However, in the first few days of the new week, I met one newly elected council member who informed me an office staff who had written the minutes of the AGM had somehow change the resolution of the open car park space entitlement to every unit to become not a properly approved resolution in the official AGM but only to be an item proposed and to be decided by the Management Council in their meeting! Now, this was a complete change in words to be recorded in the minutes of the meeting that will be enforced by the laws of the land. I couldn't believe that he could do this as we had a good Chairman in attendance, even the Chief of COB in attendance to monitor the meeting as a representative of the meeting plus my video recording of what exactly happened on that Sunday afternoon. The video was possible as it was one of the last 3 items of business raised at the end of the meeting when I was present in which a proper vote by show of hands was counted with no opposing votes by show of hands, meaning it was a unanimous decision of the AGM.
It was Monday late morning that I heard about the wrongly typed minutes my immediate thoughts were that this must have been a deliberate act of the staff with some collusion with Mr. Philip Yap whom he had reported to previously and had hired him. I decided to walk into the management office to talk to the staff about it on Tuesday, Oct 3 morning. My emotions got the better of me and I roared at him, releasing my frustration over the matter and left the office. As I contemplated over what I did later on Tuesday night and listened to more conference talks online, I felt the need for personal repentance.
4 Oct 2017
Rainbow connection explained!
In the late morning, I walked into the office and apologized to the specific staff for my uproar on the previous day and he too apologized to me for the mistake.
I took photos of the office where members of the council were meeting with staff to continue the follow up of managing the office and doing all the necessary to follow up after the change of Management Council of the Apartment :
This new day of Wed Oct 4th was special as it was the birthday of Su, my 2nd daughter. As I continued to review my journal, I realized the spiritual thread from the last post of this journal that started with my 3rd son's email and his miracles with a photo of the rainbow and my sharing of the rainbow photos of this same daughter when I was with her in the Utah desert in her days as a student at BYU Provo. Then the Sunday night or early Monday morning to listen to that one conference talk by choosing the Apostle that was involved in her wedding in 2011 to hear his words in 2017 that helped me realize of the importance of our Savior Jesus Christ in my life today Here is an excerpt from his talk that touched me :
This suggests the need for a mighty striving on our part. We cannot be content to remain as we are but must be moving constantly toward “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”17 Like King Lamoni’s father in the Book of Mormon, we must be willing to give away all our sins18 and focus on what the Lord expects of us, individually and together.
Not long ago, a friend recounted to me an experience he had while serving as a mission president. He had undergone a surgery that required several weeks of recuperation. During his recovery, he devoted time to searching the scriptures. One afternoon as he pondered the Savior’s words in the 27th chapter of 3 Nephi, he drifted off to sleep. He subsequently related:
“I fell into a dream in which I was given a vivid, panoramic view of my life. I was shown my sins, poor choices, the times … I had treated people with impatience, plus the omissions of good things I should have said or done. … [A] comprehensive … [review of] my life was shown to me in just a few minutes, but it seemed much longer. I awoke, startled, and … instantly dropped to my knees beside the bed and began to pray, to plead for forgiveness, pouring out the feelings of my heart like I had never done previously.
“Prior to the dream, I didn’t know that I [had] such great need to repent. My faults and weaknesses suddenly became so plainly clear to me that the gap between the person I was and the holiness and goodness of God seemed [like] millions of miles. In my prayer that late afternoon, I expressed my deepest gratitude to Heavenly Father and to the Savior with my whole heart for what They had done for me and for the relationships I treasured with my wife and children. While on my knees I also felt God’s love and mercy that was so palpable, despite my feeling so unworthy. …
“I can say I haven’t been the same since that day. … My heart changed. … What followed is that I developed more empathy toward others, with a greater capacity to love, coupled with a sense of urgency to preach the gospel. … I could relate to the messages of faith, hope, and the gift of repentance found in the Book of Mormon [as] never before.”
It is important to recognize that this good man’s vivid revelation of his sins and shortcomings did not discourage him or lead him to despair. Yes, he felt shock and remorse. He felt keenly his need to repent. He had been humbled, yet he felt gratitude, peace, and hope—real hope—because of Jesus Christ, “the living bread which came down from heaven.”
My friend spoke of the gap he perceived in his dream between his life and the holiness of God. Holiness is the right word. To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ means to pursue holiness. God commands, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
Being my daughter's birthday on this day, I made this facebook post which has a video of 2005 edited on this day to what can be viewed today by clicking the video seen below:
