Last year, as a few befrienders were leaving the ministry, I suggested to Sis Karen L that our team be merged with the ushers' team. After all, the main difference between the two ministries was that the befrienders had to approach new faces to pass them a form to fill in, to collect it from them later and to invite them for a cup of tea after the church service. Chances were rare that the new visitors would go to the front lounge to let us "interview" them.
My feeling that a befriender could do more than shaking hands and smiling to new comers grew stronger especially after reading an RLM blog entry. There was a good example of a befriender who was willing to "walk with the befriendee through thick and thin, educating and instilling in the befriendee the Word of God whenever he/she (the befriender) could find the opportunity." I was not ready to do so, but I was willing to do extra miles of what I had been doing to new visitors at Calvary Life Assembly (CLA).
As a result, after serving more than one year in this ministry, I officially resigned from the post. The reason was not that I no longer enjoyed welcoming people at the entrance of Calvary Life Assembly (CLA). On the contrary, I wanted to be a real befriender by reaching out to a person outside the church building.
God placed XR in my heart. Bro Bob had been bringing her and her Filipino colleagues to the Sunday service since last November. As a Chinese national, her English was limited to understand well the sermon in English and to communicate with other English speaking people in the church. When I first befriended her at the church canteen, she was very glad to chat with me in Mandarin.
When we met at CLA another time, I was having a cough. So was she. As I was also busy with other matters, we had a brief conversation and I passed to her the Chinese version of "Our Daily Bread". The following weeks, she did not go to church as Bro Bob was away to the Philippines for holidays, and I was not able to fetch her due to my busy programme at Calvary Care Home. So I only kept in touch with her by telephone. Early this year, when Bro Bob was around again, she still did not turn up at the church service. Then only I learnt that she had still not recovered from her cough for more than a month, even after going to the Alor Gajah hospital.
I offered to bring her to the hospital in Melaka town. Before we fixed a time, her employer had arranged her for a check-up at Mahkota hospital. I finally dropped by in Alor Gajah following week to visit her after the working hours. She looked a bit pale despite her smiling face. She had been diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB), a disease which had been causing her chronic cough, fever, weight loss, etc. She did not want me to approach her too long by fear of infecting me.
After the diagnosis, she was immediately stopped by her factory. When I first knew her, she told me that she was planning to go back to China for the Chinese New Year break. But this time, she was leaving Malaysia for good. The next Wednesday, she went to the hospital again to get two-week medicine. Her Filipino colleague Steven had purposely taken leave to kindly accompany her the whole day. I managed to meet them in town and brought them to a money changer to change her two-year salary into Chinese currency to bring back to her home country.
Thursday, I went to Alor Gajah to visit her for the last time before her flight back to China the next day. We invited Steven to join us for lunch. One of the dishes we ordered to eat with rice was cooked with chili powder. XR who had grown up with spicy food could no longer stand it due to her weak pulmonary system. She coughed very badly and could hardly swallow anything but water. So we requested the restaurant to pack the leftover food for her. And I sent them back.
I felt honoured when she said to me, "I wish I had known you earlier." I thank God for moving me to befriend XR during the final months of her stay in Malaysia and pray that she will continue to let Jesus, our best befriender and healer, to open her heart and heal her lung.
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