Happenings in the past 48 hours

Oct 4th

Due to constraint of time in the busy month of October for our family, I will first post the graphics below and words will follow, I promise :

Keeping my promise 24 hours later : 

The video above was viewed by me in an unearthly hour some time about 3am on Sunday morning. I had suddenly just woken up in bed to get a thought of viewing the early messages coming from the leaders of our Church during General Conference time in Salt Lake City Utah. The prompting must have come because just the night before, I was consoling a member of our Church who was feeling negative on a recent x-ray made that showed a lump in the chest area. I could feel that listening to too many different opinions of well meaning friends and family members at this early stage of the examination was making this member overly concerned leading to negative thoughts of a doom's day occurrence!

I suggested that since it was Sunday the next day, it may be best to spend time at Church to meditate and pray to feel the spirit of God that may help clear the troubled heart and mind. I also suggested that since this same weekend was General Conference, one could further get revelation from listening to the speakers online who were leaders of the Church whom we call prophets and apostles!

So I woke up in the middle of my sleep to hear the first speaker of the Saturday morning session in Utah time, as in the video above, to talk about his own medical checkup experience! Wow, let anyone tell me my faith is in vain and that miracles do not occur in these modern times and I will refer the person to my story that started 36 years ago shared in the beginning of this same journal that carried on to this day.



  

At a later time on Sunday morning, I found myself at Church to briefly share the above experience at the fast and testimony meeting in KL branch. By 1pm, Church was over and not too long after I got notification that a family hangout had just started and I joined in with my iPad.

It was Su's birthday on Oct 4th, the first of the October babies of our immediate family that we celebrate their birthdays as recorded in this birthday post of the past year. I got to wish Su Happy Birthday right in the Church foyer. She also took time to report on the progress of her baby's development, a girl identified in a recent scan, due to be born in late January next year which could roll over to early February.

Another thing that happened during the Sunday school hour worth noting was that the lesson covered the book of Hebrews as this year we are covering the New Testament. It is interesting to note that the whole world in the Church follows a curriculum well laid out to study all the books or scriptures that we recognize as revelations from God through a 4 year rotation program. Thus as I've been a member of the Church for 36 years, I have covered the Standard Works encompassing The Old Testament, The New Testament, The Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price 9 times in total! All the churches throughout the world are in unison for their Sunday school lessons except that the timing might be off a week or two to teach a specific lesson due to scheduling differences that may occur in each unit of the Church. This may be caused by other special meetings planned by local leaders that may disrupt a Sunday School class by postponing the lesson to the following week.

Organized manuals for Teacher and Students are made available through www.lds.org website or the 'Gospel Library' apps on smart phones or the iPad. On this Sunday, Lesson 37  was a repeat for me as I was in Kuantan earlier in the meeting group there where the leader Duncan Horne had taught a great lesson even though he admitted at the beginning that he was struggling a little during the preparation time as Hebrews in not an easy scripture to understand based on the writings of the ancient apostle Paul. Reading Hebrews Chapter 10 is a good example. But the miracle of having the Spirit of God for a small group of members gathered together in the Savior's name in Kuantan occurred when all of us became edified by the spirit present to make the morning's lesson a great success for Duncan! The lesson became centered on faith and Duncan concluded by sharing that while trying to prepare the lesson, he felt the difficulty or challenge of it but nevertheless continued on with faith to just 'Do It' with the result of turning out a great lesson that he didn't expect! He was elated. I was too and was snapping my digital camera of him teaching and close-ups of his well prepared A4 paper illustrations. Then I suddenly realized I didn't have my memory card on the camera but today I've used my faith to recall the experience to write at least a thousand words to replace a picture that I could have shared here!

Back to KL Church where they were covering the same lesson on the Hebrews scripture and I raised my hand to comment about faith to the same teacher that I had noted in a previous post teaching the Sunday class then as today. I would just share my thoughts as the teachers often asked who would like to share their thoughts in class. I shared the following, " I think faith has more to do with our sub-conscious mind then our conscious mind thus making it more powerful than what the world often teach about i.e. to have a positive mind. For example many try to have a positive mind to change their life but fail because their sub conscious mind containing all the negative memories overwhelms their conscious mind trying to think positively. Faith in Jesus Christ is more powerful as the bible alone records that there are over 300 references of how the the spirit works on the mind which I believe is the sub-conscious mind of Man." To be more complete, I believe it works deep even to the Heart of Man so deeply that just being told to think positively cannot match the power to change the Heart and Mind of Man as it did to me. This I have my own life's experience to draw from so that I have supportive evidence that this is true!

Oct 5

This is the biggest and nicest cake anyone could get for me on my birthday that took me by surprise and it happened on my 57th birthday on this day!

As I do not publish my birthday on social media. Therefore very few people will actually know or remember my birthday except family members or close friends.

Things often happen in a timely way which led to my continuing 'Story of 7' journal post to remember them.

With so many timely things happening within the past 48 hours, the spirit prompted me to shoot out this post on facebook, first with photos only as I can share them faster on photos than writing captions or stories for them.

I receive the cake and card from a Staff nurse friend nicknamed 'Didi' working in a nearby KL hospital who may be an answer to my question of who can be my optimal life long companion since my wife passed away coming to 3 years this November. If I never try I guess I will new know, hmmmm.....a 'What if...?' thought looms in my mind again!

Steven Kok, a friend and former junior staff trained in ITC  who is today a senior IT team leader in the US, at a timely moment chatted with me on facebook. He wasn't aware it was my birthday about his feelings of growing old as he researched on the 12 apostles and first presidency back when he joined the church in '84 to find that all of them have passed on except 1 which is President Thomas S. Monson, the current prophet of the Church. He didn't know about my birthday then nor this post, as per his chat with me below, and shared a song with me which has a nice tune and very appropriate lyrics! 



Post 48 hours comments :

Now in the middle of the year, I was spending time in Kuantan where I had been working on my writings. Jannah or nicked named 'Didi', that I find rhymes to my childhood name of 'Boynie', was invited to make a short trip to Kuantan. Only the house helper was home then as my brother and wife were on a trip to Eastern Europe. 

She got to feel the seaside environment that inspired me in many of my writings here.

By October at this time, the first one in the family to meet this special person in my life was Shuan who came in to stop over a night in KL on the way to Kuantan. I explained who she was and we had lunch with her near the hospital where she worked before we left for Kuantan. Next to get the news personally was my brother when I told him the next morning over breakfast that a young staff nurse friend I was going out with surprised me with a birthday cake and showed him the card I had received. I explained that she was interested to be my life long companion and the writings of her card confirmed it. His response took me by surprise when he asked suddenly, "Can I stand in for you?" I was stunned for a few seconds and then he broke the silence by a laughter to ask if I didn't catch the joke? I responded that it did sound like a joke but I was just taken by surprise that he would crack a joke with me as he was usually a more serious person. I guess that was his humorous way to congratulate me to find a young staff nurse that would be interested in a long term relationship with me.

Shuan had agreed to spend a month in Kuantan from Singapore to be here to accompany my brother as the house helper was returning home for a month's vacation while his wife was away in Australia to be back only later in the month and I had to spend more time in KL for business meetings and following up with my Didi on our future plans!

I made a joke in facebook with reference to these photos published that "...Body Guards deployed for Kuantan VIP from Singapore and China." After all Shuan is qualified Lieutenant trained for 2 years in the Singapore army during his national service.....

... and I am the look alike Red Guard from China!

Back in KL on my first night, I continued to fulfill my business appointments meeting with a business associate and friend from Thailand at a local hotel. I had started to bring Didi out to meet family members, friends and business associates! 

This is the start of our story which 'Didi and Boynie' have termed to be 'The Longest Ride', the title of a movie we had watched independently of each other besides Superman's Man of Steel movie. She just happened to wear a tee shirt of Superman one day, different from the one I had, when we went out to a movie together and I bought one from a stall close by to match hers as seen in the above photo.   This story is to be continued in another post depicting the start of my new life with Didi and how we would embark on 'The Longest Ride' together as we had contemplated it for some time now.

Why are we motivated about the movie 'The Longest Ride' in a relationship? Watch this video below on a research that is over a span of 75 years studying the lives of people.