The Easter 2017 Story that started on April Fools day of April 1

1 April 2017


One could click the above icon for comments, 2nd from bottom left, to read all the comments in the above facebook post itself on your device or computer. You can also read the specific comments I would highlight embedded below :


I've have copied the contents of the above last comment to paste below for ease of reading :

Sun Fu Chong Oh It's 6 am already in KL on April 2 now and I didn't sleep another night! In US time is still April 1 and I found the answer!!!! There were some clues. Here goes - First Peter Chen I noticed liked this post. His part in the clue is found here - (https://goo.gl/TSaasT) where he played a part to help me in my family history research on Hakka people! 

Next clue is in the same journal post but another part about a "Gordian Knot" I felt again on April 1 morning where I couldn't write when I felt I couldn't sleep found here - (https://goo.gl/TVusve). 

Then just last night before midnight Msian time of April 1, I was chatting with Stephany Kum who is a good friend of Joyce Ngu, being new members in our KL branch church conversed with me about her going to clean graves on Sunday, April 2nd with the family to remind me it is "Qingbing" Chinese festival which is in remembrance of the dead! It reminded me on Friday evening where I spent time with the Elders at Church and Twin Towers(https://goo.gl/ePUAzl) that one of them told me there was a new Easter Video that is cool I should check out and here it is - (https://goo.gl/iAqxMw)

Another clue is a member from another branch Caryn Chin Huei during the week was telling me about her 2 good male friends living together in PJ who seem to be talking about spirits or ghosts in their apartment! She felt it strange or scary herself when she was there so my advice told to them was to move out if they weren't comfortable and she should avoid visiting them herself too in the apartment! So here is the conclusion: 

As I heard the opening talk on April 1 of the live Church General Conference morning session talk today(Msian April 2 Sunday), by Elder Henry B Eyring (a Princeton and Harvard grad - 
(https://goo.gl/epbASB), it woke me up that it was strongly about the Savior but it was also about family history work or genealogy too which is about people who have died. All Mormons know we are the only Church in the world who have saving ordinances for the dead, not just cleaning graves by Chinese belief, but is a modern revelation through Joseph Smith that resolved the issue of how those who never heard of Christ before can also be saved due to post-death proxy temple ordinances that we do for the dead to fulfill the law that all man needs to be baptized to receive salvation that Christ provides. 

Another clue was my sharing to Joyce Ngu one morning when I woke up to tell her I heard someone shout to wake me up, kidding that it was a ghost!!! So the main conclusion why I couldn't sleep that whole night which is not normal as I can sleep if I want to under any condition in my past 58 years of my life, is it is a strong prompting from spirits of the other world, most likely my ancestors, that I need to submit their names to the temple for proxy baptisms for them which I delayed because my wife who passed away in 2012 was the one who helped me translate the old Chinese 'Zupu' or family book of my great grand father with ancestral names that go back to thousand of years, which I did try to get help from some members like Ng Li San in Melaka but distance was the problem. 

The family history and China information started as long ago as 1982 recorded here (https://goo.gl/IGpKYK) and interesting for me that it has led to me finding out the China people with their long history and philosophy are here today in Melaka shared here recently (https://goo.gl/1dLVUn

Sorry for this long comment which serves as a journal document for me in my continued spiritual life which has to be renamed to be politically correct sometimes in our modern world as "Serendipity" or in my journals as "The Story of 7" shared here - (https://goo.gl/sOAaMX) As a professional Chartered Accountant, I guess I turned my detailed documentation training for accounting documents to be used by my life experience documents or journals!.

Apologies again for using this comment box which can today be embedded in my blogger journals as I have done for my 1st quarter journal of 2017 found here (https://goo.gl/OmuYqi) This very comment post is embedded in my 2nd quarter journal of 2017 found here - (https://goo.gl/NXNud4)


How I would contextualize the above series of events to know of its meaning for me personally will be soon shared later below this journal post.

6 Aug 2017
Fast Sunday at Church in KL branch

Since I was called to serve as the branch mission leader (BML) in Kuala Lumpur branch, I continued to experience many spiritual moments while in the service of my fellow men. On this particular Sunday, many of our experienced American expat members were starting to return from their summer vacation with their families. As BML, I would usually be in the Gospel Principles class with investigators and newly baptized members who attend this class for a year before advancing to the adult Sunday school class. But while the expats were away, I started attending the adult Sunday School class to give support to the small numbers in attendance. The Elders had been assigned to teach the small group in the past few weeks but on this particular day, with a larger group, no teacher seems to be in attendance. I saw the Elders in the hall way but they said they were not assigned. I went to the Branch President Woodford and he just remarked: "Why don't you teach the class?"

So I walked back to the class and explained that I would teach the class after talking to the Branch President. I asked which lesson number were we covering and an expat lady, who was the teacher I believed who had just come back after her vacation but she didn't seem ready to teach the class. I therefore continued and sought the cooperation of all the class members, who were mainly experienced seniors to participate.  I started to click the Gospel Library App on my iPhone to see the following on my screen :




I had no time to prepare the lesson but relied on the experienced senior expat members to help the class move along as I facilitated by assigning members to read relevant scriptures. I would further give comments as led by the spirit. A quick read of the manual online before I started helped me to understand that the topic was on building the temple in Nauvoo at a great sacrifice required of the saints at that time. It was also about temple work or family history. I was to help the class members appreciate the sacrifice for those who are dead to receive the saving ordinances of the gospel through ordinances in the temple. As family history and temple work was something that I had received much inspiration and revelation about during my life time, I had enough experience to share and encourage the class members to pursue doing the work that the Lord wanted the Saints to perform. 

It was then that a favorite scripture came to my mind of 1 Neph 3:7 which reads, "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them." I recall that I stumbled trying to quote it verbatim from memory and the sister whom I believe was the teacher of the class who had just come back, mentioned it was the scripture referenced by Elder Henry B. Eyring in the last conference talk. When I checked with her to confirm that it was the exact conference talk that I had listened to on April 1 recorded above which had become a special experience or personal revelation that I had received. Then somehow I tried again to quote verbatim and I did it perfectly to my joy as one who admits having a poor memory since young who needed much repetition to remember anything haha. Computers and social media is a great augmentation of my mind to recall anything due to ease of access, especially with smart phones, as long as there is a link I can click on it similar to what I often provide in my online chronicles!


I doubled checked Elder Henry B. Eyring's conference talk, by clicking the link given above (https://goo.gl/epbASBto make a screen-shot of the part of the conference talk that referred to
1 Nephi 3:7. It was interesting to note, after the scriptural reference, that even during the time Elder Eyring was a student, probably in the 60s, he already knew a man "who worked for one of the largest computer companies in the world", to recognize the power of computers that we are enjoying today.


13 Aug 2017
Linger-Longer Sunday with food to eat after Church


Yes interesting that it is only a week after the Sunday we fasted and on this day there was plenty of food and yet the same verse of 1 Nephi 3:7 rang again in my ears!

Our branch president Todd Woodford gave his last official talk as the President of KL branch as he is being transferred to Oman for his work, leaving in a couple of weeks time. His example has touched many in the branch as I could feel the spirit which brought me with tears and a few others too I noticed! In his closing testimony, he referred to the scripture at 1 Nephi 3:7 and even tried to quote it with the right meaning but not verbatim as I had done the previous Sunday!

I had to capture this photo with him as I recall that we never had the chance to have a photo together. I asked my housemate to join me too as we both really appreciate this humble servant of the Lord!

I noticed that his wife was standing close by and I wanted her to be in the pic as well in remembrance of the day she helped me with booking my airline ticket to the US when her husband and I, at their home sitting on the same table were trying to solve my problem of not able to get my visa card accepted online to book my most important reunion trip ticket to the US in the summer of 2016. She was all quiet as she observed how we both struggled, to try my card first and then her husband's card which also failed, to finally suggest to us to try this other online site and it worked immediately. She then confessed she has been dubbed with the name 'travel agent' by her family members and others who know she does online bookings very often and competently! If you read the link above about this special trip, you would know why I am so appreciative of her and I'm glad I have a photo of both of them with my short narration here in my chronicles that will forever be kept in cyber space or my Consciousness!

14 Aug 2017
Family Home Evening on Monday Night


It's a spiritual night with a lesson with fun and games every Monday for the Single Adults. Click here for more pics. The arrow is showing Dane who was just baptized on the previous Saturday and is riding high!

Interesting that there was a challenge to see who can turn to find the scriptural verse 1 Nephi 3:7 the fastest and the Elder won! I didn't suggest this scripture but the judge did in dark shirt!


MY CONSCIOUSNESS

One can see that the writing in this blog post reflects the Consciousness or Awareness that I have in life with even those in the afterlife! When I strangely couldn't sleep for a night or two, as shared at the top of the post above, I turned to my Consciousness. This being the spiritual blog that I record my spiritual experiences, one can see how I could contextualize the series of events to find meaning in what could be a spiritual message to me. I systematically recorded the paragraphs above with the use of a number of hypertext links to eventually derive a Context that could give me a rationale or reasoning as to what could be happening. The Context that provides us meaning usually comes from our values, our beliefs, our knowledge, our feelings and a lot from our past accumulated experiences that are stored in our memories. This may explain why different people may go through the same thing yet may derive a different context that gives them a different meaning of their experience altogether which will manifest different reactions from each individual.

Now let's touch upon the most important part of my CONTEXT and my CONSCIOUSNESS which I have been simultaneously writing about in my Mind blog as well, covering viewpoints of science and spirituality. Let me explain without too many distractions of links, as used in the above paragraphs, particular at the very top extracted from my facebook comments, which I normally like to use when I am writing online. The reason why I use what is called hypertext links in the HTML language of the world wide web is that it is very useful for me to use them as references to more detailed information stored in my brain acquired from various sources or experiences that led to the overall composition of my writing and flow of information that I am trying to share. In other words, I have learned how to use modern technology to augment my mind's capabilities so that I can be more competent to accomplish more than if I had not the benefit of these modern tools, broadly referred to as Information Technology today.

CONTEXT FROM MY LIFE 

I know I was blessed with a good education from the start of my life due to the values and beliefs of my father who started life in poverty but worked hard in school to receive scholarships to become a professional land surveyor. I know that he had artistic talents in watercolor painting and was good with his hands in carpentry too. He could create innovative items of furniture like making tables from a sliced tree trunk polished to show its attractive natural designs and could build shelves using his system of wooden joints with oblong poles and screws. He was also a gardener and maintained his potted plants and orchids well.

Being the youngest of 7 children, where my 4 older brothers were all well educated too due to the leadership example of my father, I was blessed with the additional examples of each one of them as well. Besides their success in academic studies, they were also good examples in how they raised their own family with their own rationale of living a good productive life. In short, our family had everything to create happiness in life. We just did not have a practical or common religion to follow. Each was left on his own to choose for himself with the result that only the women like my mother or oldest sister would follow the traditional religion of idol worshiping. Some of the wives of my brothers accepted Christianity but the men generally were not spiritual and can be considered secular in nature in their Consciousness and behavior.

I was raised as a filial Chinese son though in a more modern setting of being born in a country that inherited the British educational system and Consciousness. As my father had worked for the British government besides being sent to England to qualify as a Chartered land surveyor, our family enjoyed a modern culture in our home where I had grown up picking up my father's self-disciplined and routine manner of accomplishing daily tasks more specifically seeing him file documents nightly into properly indexed paper files or folders. Another brother was highly influential to me in helping me to have a good study system and even gave me pocket money incentives for the number of A's I could bring home from my important examinations!

When I turned a teenager entering middle school or secondary level of education in the Malaysian terminology, I began to blossom like a rose not only in academic performance but in sports and social life too. I was involved in diverse sports of Karate, basketball, soccer, hockey etc where I can claim today that I can play any sport with a ball! I could qualify to be in the pure science stream studying the subjects of physics, chemistry, biology and modern as well as additional math. I was a happy teenager feeling on top of the world. My parents never had to worry about me nor did I have to worry about them.

In the social aspect of my life, I had the freedom to go out with my friends, come home late at night etc. I made sure they knew who were the people I mixed around with and they were always good people to this day who remain my lifelong friends. I liked the integrated system of the school that I was in. Not a private school for the rich only but it was a semi-government school belonging to the Catholic Church. So I got to mix with the rich and the poor students of all races and religions. There was no favoritism of any nor discrimination either. There was a brotherhood feeling and meeting together years later, one can feel that the bond is still there.

This social life of schoolmates later expanded to a very much larger circle of friends that came from my connections to many other interest groups I was involved with in my adult life supported by my increased mobility that soon became borderless over time. With my increased connections with more people in diverse fields over time, I could feel my Consciousness never stopped growing. By my continuous writing of journals till my senior years, I could have better context of my myriad of experiences so that everything became more meaningful to me besides being useful.

EXPANDING MY CONSCIOUSNESS

My curiosity led to constant questions from me to adults in my early life. Family members would become frustrated when my 'why' questions became excessive. It turned out that when I applied my 'why' questioning to things I was learning in school, it became a plus factor for me as I began to learn things not for the purpose of passing exams only but I sincerely wanted to know the reasoning or rationale behind everything I was learning. This habit followed me to this day where realizing that I was a slow learner or reader, once I understood something, I would never forget it. My reasoning and logic was stronger than my memory to recall facts and figures. Also technology caught my interest and with the system of learning I had developed, I could harness it to augment my mind to expand my Consciousness in leaps and bounds, becoming a Superman metaphorically speaking. The work of my writings in my online journals is reflective of my growing Consciousness. Knowing how to use Social Media like Facebook, Linkedin, WhatsApp, Twitter etc helped me to continue to connect to more people whereby in sharing with each other our Consciousness, the interpersonal process of the human mind is fully tapped to enhanced the flow of information and energy for both parties.

My influential brother further encouraged me to travel when I was in my teenage years, suggesting I should explore India. When I was about 15 plus, my grandma took my nephew and I along on a bus tour from Penang to Bangkok in Thailand, going as far north as Chengmai. I didn't find Thailand much different from Malaysia as it was just more crowded with more temples and slightly different cuisine but was still a developing country too. I didn't think India would be too different from Malaysia where we also had strong local Indian culture as part of the multi-racial composition of the country. With the savings from the rewards from my brother plus other savings, I calculated that going to Europe by Aeroflot via Moscow from Kuala Lumpur and following a hitch-hiker's guide book of where to stay to live with just 5USD a day would be a better and affordable alternative than visiting India. I wanted to see the famous Eiffel tower of Paris, the Lourve museum for the Mona Lisa painting, London bridge, the Lakes and Alps of Switzerland, ruins of Pompeii in Italy etc. I soon found myself on the plane to start my journey by the Eurail train from London that was cheap in the winter time and covered about 11 countries in 21 days. Timing was ideal as it was December 1976 and I would start my university in Australia only in February the following year. I made this trip to the northern hemisphere knowing I would most likely be isolated in the large continent of Australia in the southern hemisphere during in my University days. I revisited Australia in 2014 and covered a bit of my European adventure recorded in this journal.  It was a spiritual trip for me and another is the trip to China found in this journal. US trips to Salt Lake City have always been spiritual for me and my family shared in this journal.

SpaceTime-Travel seems to be happening in this post as links to my other journals as above can bring one to different time zones and different countries as we touch upon the topic of travel. This very post itself started in April 2017 and was continued in Aug 2017 but what date is this very sentence or paragraph you're reading now typed on? The clue is given when SpaceTime-Travel was mentioned as this is a Consciousness terminology covered by this new journal of mine that was created for the purpose to pin down the meaning of SpaceTime. Click here to find this new journal post to see a Space-Time stamp I've incorporated to know what date was the post created and we will know roughly the date this post is updated since reference is made to it on this paragraph. This is the time-stamp seen, "(Time of writing: 12 Mar 2018, Space: blogger post in Singapore)"  So it has to be at least 12 Mar 2018 when the SpaceTime-Travel post was first written. The exact day is actually 4 days later on 16 Mar 2018 when I'm about to leave Singapore and I am wanting quickly to finish this post so let me continue.

Travelling to Europe and later to Australia for my tertiary education expanded my Consciousness not only in seeing the famous sites that were tourists attraction in Europe but meeting the people that were there too where some were foreign Australian travellers too! There were definitely fewer Chinese then in the year 1976 but if one were to be in Europe today in 2018, there would be thousands of Chinese people mainly from mainland China due to the big change in the economic status of the country.  I had greatly expanded my consciousness as early as 1976 and never stopped since then as I have visited to date just over 30 countries while my school mate working in the world bank in the United States have travelled over 80 countries as per this video recording made a year ago.

What I got as a boost to my Consciousness in my travel to Europe and very soon to Australia is I began to feel and know the Caucasians better as many Australians were migrants from Europe too. Walking on the ruins of Pompeii that where the whole city was destroyed in AD79 due to the eruption of Mt Vesuvius was another booster to my Consciousness to walk in the preserved ruins to know that people once lived there. It did something to my Spirit, again referring to the afterlife people! All the while history didn't mean much to me as a pure science student who later switched to business and the accounting field. But I've never forgotten what I had memorized for my history classes in lower middle school that William the Conqueror crossed the English channel in 1066. However I didn't feel anything about what I knew even when I was in London as maybe I had stayed only in the city to marvel that I was in Oxford Street to see the large departmental stores and went to the West End district where there was a sign, "Carnaby Street Welcomes the World" Thanks to technology I could find this mentioned in the era of 1970s from this site.

In visiting all these cities of Europe, I didn't feel the spirit that religion was important though I visited some of the largest or most beautiful old Churches I've ever seen like St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. I did run into some Christian groups in the streets who pass flyers and seem very modern with roots from the US who would convert people on the spot to accept Jesus and sing songs. I was familiar with the St Peter's Cathedral in Vatican city as I was from the Catholic school where no one really taught me what the whole religion was about except I knew their Cathedral was a holy sacred place for worship.

It was not until I was coming to become a legal adult of 21 years of age while almost completing my tertiary education in Australia that I became satisfied with revelations from the spiritual world that my family really didn't have as they were more traditions or practices that they followed without much deep understanding. How I acquired the missing part of my life that my family members could not provide me has been clearly chronicled in this Spiritlane-blog that can be read from the beginning by clicking here.

So with the Spiritual part of my life taken care of by accepting the Mormon teachings, the Body part or feelings of my life continued to grow optimally to create more meaningful human relationships, eventually leading to the creation of my own large nuclear family with many other long-lasting and meaningful friendships. Last but not least, my active enquiring Mind never ceased to find answers to my questions of everything around me. I became optimal in learning multi-disciplines that enabled me to synergize with many individuals, organizations, and communities to achieve breakthrough performances in different fields. These were recognized by the public or appeared in the printed press, book publications, and social media news today as shared here.

In many ways, I became more aware than most people going through the same life phases to create my own CONTEXT and meaning for my own CONSCIOUSNESS. For greater understanding of the Scientific and Spiritual understanding of this subject, you can continue to another blog post of mind that is best suited found here.


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