Led by the Spirit to find people to teach

As we focused on our goals that we had set, I believe we became more effective and felt the Spirit guiding us on a daily basis. My missionary journal is filled with many accounts of the Spirit guiding us. Here is a page taken from Day 50 of my missionary journal dated Wed 24th Sept 1980 :

“This morning, the headlines in the newspaper rang out about the war between Iran and Iraq. Everyone is talking about it and in the afternoon papers, apparently the largest oil field in the world found in Iran was destroyed. The tension in the Middle East has been mounting since the revolution in Iran last year and the capture of 50 American hostages by the Muslim rebels. Now the Muslims are fighting among themselves and the world is alarmed because of the oil supply.

We continued to do our missionary work, bringing glad tidings of good things and if anything, the unrest in the Middle East has stepped up our efforts even greater. In the afternoon, after visiting Chris Lee just around our area, we were walking home when it struck my mind to visit Diana, a sister of a member Stella from England, introduced by Ho Siew Yin, a local member. Somehow the address no 20 SS2/68 came clear to my memory even though we’ve only visited the place once and I could never remember countless addresses we have. We did find the house easily and found Diana home who said that Stella just came home last night. We were excited with the news and arranged to see her at 10.30am the next day.

In the evening, we had planned to visit Paul C.T. Neo, a gentleman we had met one day at lunch sharing the same table. We were waiting for a bus to go to his place at 5 SS1/25 and I had only guessed where his road would be. We were waiting for a bus no 239 and when it came, it just passed us by because the light illuminating the bus number was too dim and we missed it. We therefore had to catch a taxi and lucky thing we did because the road we were looking for was quite the opposite to where I had planned to search. The taxi was going along the road and I just told it to stop. We got out of it to look for No 5 and behold, we had stopped right in front of it. Paul was just getting out of his house to his sister’s place and we talked with him inside for awhile. We successfully made an appointment to see him on Friday at our place. From there he dropped us by car at SS3 area to check other referrals. By this time I didn’t know where we were or how to get back by bus. We ended up walking 3 miles home and it took us 1 hour. We didn’t mind as our spirits were high this evening!”

Well we didn’t progress far with Paul but Diana Toh’s visit became significant as not only was she taught and baptized but we were referred to her family in Ipoh and baptized her parents and another sister. They were part of the many people I had the opportunity to teach and baptize which created the brand new Ipoh Branch in the country. Details of this account will be related in the Ipoh Story!

There were other occasions when the spirit prompted us where to go and who to find. The most notable to me was that of my friend and old school mate named Yeong See Loong (Marcus). As I was called to serve on a mission in my own home, I had often pondered and prayed, before arriving home, for guidance as to which of my friends should I approach to share the gospel with. I indeed have many friends but Marcus’ name just popped up at the top of the list.

However with all the training and set up time spent in the early part of my mission, I had totally forgotten about Marcus. Then on the morning of Day 121 of my mission on 4th Dec 1980 the spirit prompted me to act. In the morning I had the task of deciding how to spend our time in the city as we had no appointments for the entire day. I suddenly remembered about Marcus whom I remembered worked at the South East Asia Hotel in the Jalan Raja Laut area. We drove there and as we got to near the hotel, we had to make a U turn at the road we were on to get on to the right side of the Hotel. Lo and behold , as the car got onto the other side, Marcus just happened to walk right by us and I called him. It was a surprise for both of us. He was just having a break and so we went to a nearby coffee shop to have a drink and talk. I found him to be the same nice chap that I had always known. Elder Soon felt he was a choice spirit to be taught the gospel.

Marcus told me he had met my father some time ago and asked about me. My father warned him that I would soon preach at his door ! Marcus wasn’t discouraged one bit by my father and seemed ready to hear the fullness of the gospel. He accepted our invitation to attend our branch Christmas party and from there we started teaching him till he eventually got baptized followed by his sister and another brother!

No comments: