Middle of August (A bit of History)

August throws up quite a few surprises. I applied for a writing scholarship ready for next year, but I leave it to the Lord whether I get it or not. It will be in the winter months and I will see whether I can last for a month of the cold a few degrees Celsius. For a couple of days, suddenly the weather changed from extreme heat to cool weather, in the low 20s at night and I am already feeling the chill. I can't imagine living in a cold country, but as they say humans are resilient when we are forced either by design or compulsion, humans normally survive under the harshest conditions.

As a church pastor, I thought my invitations to preach will die down, but I received a few as of late. If my church does not have a Christmas service, I would probably accept an invitation in another far away village. My aim is still the same - to return to 50 out of the 120 SIB interior churches that I had preached in past 31 years. I have done so 5 or 6 times as a fortnight ago I preached in SIB Donggongon that I had previously preached in 20 years ago as the District Superintendent. So in the next 9 years, I have to visit and preach in another 45 churches to make it to 50 churches. 

Tomorrow I shall be sharing at our SIB pastors' fellowship with about 10 pastors in our District. It is a new district broken off from the district KOTA KINABALU which I led for two terms from 2004-2008 before going to Singapore. I just told me wife that if I got invited for my former College's 80th anniversary (2028) I will probably attend as I did in 2018 for the 70th anniversary since I left the College in Singapore to return to Sabah in 2014. 

On Sunday I shall be continuing my series of sermons on 1 Corinthians. I am starting chapter 4 about Paul's unique calling and the secrets of the Lord entrusted to him. There would be three main themes up to verse 8 and then the following week I plan to finish chapter 4 by preaching on the apostolic calling as narrated by Paul in ch.4 and ch. 9 of 1 Corinthians. 

The middle of August throws up a few surprises. Tonight I shall be attending our weekly prayer meeting. Two days ago I attended a cell group meeting and there were 15 youths gathered, as the few adults in the adult did not turn up. But it was a good meeting. I had a chance to share with a couple of our deaconesses in their 30s and one in her 20s about my former ministry as Treasurer-General of SIB. One thought it was easy back then until I told her that I needed to raise minimum RM30,000 per month from no where. It was a work of faith and labour of love. I told them how we raised the salaries of workers by RM100.00 per month while not raising the salary of the Executive. The President got RM1,250.00 and all three of the other executives got RM1,000 per month (no pay rise over 3 years) and our lecturers got RM800.00 from the RM700.00 previously that I got as lecturer before elected as the SIB Treasurer. A pastor with family got RM600.00 and a single pastor or evangelist gets RM400.00. But not everyone got their due because of financial constraints. As Treasurer by the end of the 2nd year of my 3-year term I set up the Interior Pastors' Fund and we topped up the salaries of those in need.