Good Start

It's always good to have a good start to the New Year. My neighbour called and took me out for morning tea and knowing him I know I would be in for some drive here and there. He is a businessman and everywhere he stops he seems to know many people. After ngau chap noodles in Inanam  he took me to one of his landed properties where he built a "rumah walit" (to harvest bird nests). It was a massive 3-storey building, much bigger than those I saw in Pitas a year ago. He asked me to pray for his worker who could be in his late 50s but his face had aged due to hard labour. I was told he struggled with alcohol and his wife had just suffered a stroke. He is Hakka and I spoke to him in my halting dialect. But when I prayed I used Malay, a language which he understood as I was not proficient enough to pray in Hakka.
Then I was taken to his relative's house. His cousin-in-law also suffered a stroke 18 months ago but on his way to recovery and I had conversations with him in Cantonese and English. He spoke English well and when I was asked to pray in Cantonese I politely refused and said I would pray in English. It is a good start to the year being able to accompany my neighbour for 5 hours and prayed for two families in different parts of KK. It is good also to see how non-believers lived their lives. Many of them are decent people, hard-working and my neighbour's relative lived in a bungalow but in a good spirits conversed with me, a stranger. I had pity too on my neighbour's worker. Often people drown their sorrows in drinks. Even the rich said they could not sleep at night (Eccle). But the poor's lot is harder. Labouring for 8 or 10 hours a day for a pittance, just to survive in this unforgiving world but God is good and I believe in 2019 as Paul says in Ephesians and Titus we must be zealous for good works and that our light may shine so that the world sees our good works and praise our heavenly Father.