Once, Pastor asked me, “Are you afraid of dying?  Where do people go after death?”  I realised that I was perturbed by this for many years.  I was fifteen when my mother suddenly vomited non-stop.  She was admitted to the hospital and was diagnosed with lung cancer.  It had metastasized to her brain.  My entire family was devastated.  My father and maternal grandmother were shuttling frequently to the hospital and grandmother was crying all day long but not in front of my mother. With these unforeseen circumstances, the previous oblivious and carefree me became increasingly jittery when I witnessed my mother turning more skeletal and tormented by cancer.  The grief-stricken expression on both my father’s and grandmother’s faces added to my jitters.  I was really saddened but I did not know what to do.  After two years of battle, my mother passed away.  This was when I became paranoid and worried for myself and my family members.  I did not want history to repeat itself.  At one point in time, I was obsessive-compulsively washing my hands and I did not know why I was behaving that way.

In the past year, again, I lost two of closest relative: my mother-in-law and my dad.  I recalled that two days before my mother-in-law passed away in NUH, my fourth uncle and aunt visited her.  In the midst of the gospel sharing, she suddenly called me, “Yong Li, give me your hand.”  I was stunned and stretched my hand out to her.  My mother-in-law grasped my hang tightly and said, “If you believe, I will believe too.”  My father’s episode also lingered in my mind all the time.  I picked up a phone call from my sister informing me that my father was in critical condition.  When I rushed to him at the hospital, he was unconscious.  I whispered into his ears that there is a loving God almighty and he had to trust Him.  I told my dad that God will take you to heaven where there is no pain.

In the process of believing in the Lord, I gradually experienced the peace and joy I had been seeking for.  I know that I am a sinner but the Lord Jesus will not despise me.  I asked Jesus to be my personal Saviour, and let me grow in the Lord and that I may please Him.

Every time when I sing the hymn “O Happy Day,” I would burst into tears when I thought of my father and my mother-in-law, and my relatives, I pray in my heart and wished that they are all happy in heaven!

I am very grateful that I can be a Christian.  I thank our Lord and our Heavenly Father. I thank our Pastor, Tree of Life Christian Church and every brother and sister in Christ!  You are like my family.