The Story of my Christmas

At the end I had to say goodbye to my son 24 hours before he had to return to Auckland. For the first time in my life on Christmas midnight I drove through the darkness of the Ranau-KK road in less than 1.45 hours. I had prayed before hand and told my son about it for fine weather. Fine weather it was. There was hardly any mist or fog which is usual during night time and the night was clear as the moon shone behind my back as I drove. As there was no street light all the way I had to rely on my highlight but by 35km all the way to Tamparuli I followed a car in front of me driving at about 80 to 90 kms an hour, just the kind of speed I fancied. That car was my angel and it led all the way down the valley of Tamparuli onwards to Kota Kinabalu. Waking up before 5am I prayed for my breakfast meeting with my brother at Sutera Harbour. I was overjoyed to hear that he and his family attended Christmas service at SIB Skyline church located at the hotel precincts.
So most of the breakfast discussion centred on the origins of Christmas and the history of SIB. After breakfast I dropped by to see my father and later went back to the city to change Ringgit to NZ currency at 2.96 exchange rate. Tell me Malaysian economy is doing well and I cringe when the strength of our Ringgit is the worst performing currency in Asia. But God is good. The preacher lives by preaching the gospel and I had about 10 different invitations in the month of December which helped off set some end of the year spending. Obviously I had to put off attending an academic seminar in June 2016, which money I had saved up but now spent for my son's return tickets. Incredibly my son was with me most of the time except once. He went with me to all the villages of Ranau as I had a preaching tour in the past several weeks. From house to house, from village to village and in the city of KK I had preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today's service was attended by my good friend from KK, the KK city mayor. It came at an opportune time and I asked him for a favour and he duly obliged by the grace of God. The Datuk mayor and his wife graciously hosted me to lunch and we had a wonderful time of fellowship. We even talked about a possible trip together to Turkey and Greece sometime next year.

One memorable experience over this Christmas  season is how much the rural folks had taken on this Christmas tradition with open house graced by the pastor's presence and the Word of God preached before feasting. I had to come back to Ranau leaving my son with his mother in KK because I had a meeting I couldn't refuse or reschedule.  It was an old friend who had risen to become the permanent secretary at one of the government's ministries. It was as well I went because I would have missed a great opportunity to preach Jesus to his family and relatives that numbered more than 100 adults and children. This has been the story of my life, at least in the past couple of weeks (photo, youth leaders, from left to right standing, engineer, pharmacist,  medical doctor, my son, 3rd year engineering student, school teacher, engineer).