For Mothers Day, On Sunday, May 9 in the 2nd Pandemic year of 2021
The above photo was taken in the year 1982. This was not long after I had finished my 2 year voluntary mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quite a mouthful to name the Church so Mormon was the nickname the world used to identify the Church! It was actually quite a very unique first date for Geok Lee and I. I consider the feeling of us to be together was due to our Faith and not Fate as I'm Mr Logical as far as my mind is concerned to separate the true meaning of fate which means that everything is predestined without a freedom of choice as opposed to faith that has no preconceptions which is a plunge to the unknown.
I had truly never dated anyone prior to being married as I was too focused in my education, my indoor and outdoor sports plus my focus on work responsibilities at whatever level it was given to me during my lifetime! So this first date with Geok Lee was really faith based for one, she joined the Church way earlier than me as a young woman in Singapore while I only joined when I was reaching the adult age of twenty-one where I was distance apart in Australia! Two, she felt as I did that there were many coincidental occurrences to bring us together like when she opened the door at the chapel one Sunday when I was in Singapore and there I was standing in front of her dressed as a full time missionary Elder. Thirdly Singapore wasn't the country I would spend most of the two years for my mission as the plan as a Malaysian was for me to serve my own country as visa would not be required for me to have extended stay.
Toward the end of my mission, I had a short time in Singapore where I would be involved in training new incoming missionaries. My Singapore companion who had just finished his two year compulsory National Service to his country and chose to serve a mission for the church, was invited to her home for dinner. I had to tag along and this was the first time I noticed her to have stronger impression. As the Church culture for Men was traditionally in the US with Mission, Marriage and Education as their culture, I was completing my mission, already had my education and next was marriage, I secretly took down her phone number to follow up after I was released. I didn't feel uncomfortable doing that as writing down numbers to follow up later has always been the routine of a missionary!
My story now will shift to my mother. I never learned about her courtship with my father. They were both born on the island of Penang and were married when they were both sixteen! Life was definitely not a bed of roses for them. Born in the twenties growing up under colonial rule of the British, my father, from the Hakka heritage spoke fluent English who worked hard to win scholarships to serve the British government. My mother who is from the Hokkien/Fukien clan, had to enroll in English classes and was quite fluent when I was born to remember she loved to sing old English love songs together with some of her friends who were wives of other men who were also academically well qualified under the British rule. I remember parties organized for my siblings when they were older where friends came to our home to dance Cha Cha, Rumba and Foxtrot!
My mother raised seven children and being the youngest, I was also the luckiest who didn't go through any world wars to suffer the hardships like my older siblings and could learn how to dance when I was much younger! I would follow her to the wet market in Bukit Bintang when I was older that doesn't exist today. taken over by malls, hotels and offices today. There is a large open market that is more popular than the large enclosed market building that exist in the Pudu area today not far from Bukit Bintang which has become very cosmopolitan today.
She would drive me everywhere when young including following her to meet many of her lady friends who have moved with their husbands to Kuala Lumpur too for better prospects, some of them were from Penang too.
Coincidentally Geok Lee was also the youngest of seven in her family. Her parents are from the Hainanese clan who first migrated to Singapore from the island of Hainan. We both had a strong passion for family history work. As she had studied the Mandarin language in Singapore, she greatly assisted me in tracing my family history roots that goes back to the year AD 1300 in China. The following is an extract of her own writings of our experience together:
"Some time in the year 2003, Sun Fu and I made a trip to Singapore. I felt the need to look up an aunt of my whom I believed might have the genealogical record of my father's ancestors. Her late husband was the uncle whom refused to let me have a copy of the genealogical record about 25 years ago when I was working with the Genealogical Society of Utah during my high school holidays. Many attempts had been made since by my brother Roy to obtain the records. This time I arrived at my aunt's home quite late at night. She was alone and her son and daughter-in-law weren't home yet. We chatted a little and I found out that she had a photo-copy of the record and was willing to give to me. She explained that the original record was kept somewhere and it would take too much effort for her to locate it. I was more than delighted to have the copy! One of my uncles had taken the trouble to hand copy with Chinese brush from the master record that is supposedly still kept in Hainan Island today. In those days (before WWII), many of my Dad's cousins decided to migrate to Singapore and Malaya in search for better life. They needed the genealogy to continue in a foreign land and had take the trouble to hand copy and create one for their descendants in the new homeland. I am glad they did, even though they were not from my father's direct line, about four generations back they would have shared one line. So I was elated to go home with whatever was in my hand that night.
Life got busy and the incident was almost forgotten until I was attending a family history fireside at Church one Saturday evening months later in 2004. I became very motivated when I spoke to Brother Chin from Hong Kong after the meeting. When I went home that night, I tried to locate the long forgotten record but was unable to find it. During the subsequent weeks that ran into months, I looked around the house in places where I thought the record might have been kept. On Sunday, 13 June, the records surfaced when I was clearing some papers from the table. I was eager to get all the children in bed that night. I knew I had to spend some time alone to read through those complicated Chinese characters. By the time I set down in my bedroom, it was midnight and everyone was sound asleep. It was to be a night that I will never forget.
The pages were written and photo copied in such a manner that got me really confused. In my heart, I pleaded for divine guidance to help me understand what I was reading. Soon, I was able to solve the puzzle and things began to make chronological sense to me. About fifteen years ago, a good friend of ours, Richard Ang, made a special day trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur with the sole purpose of teaching me how to extract useful information from Chinese genealogy. I was able to do quite a bit of family file for Sun Fu's family with Richard's help. Now I was on my own and I needed someone to help me. It is hard to relate the incident without having tears welling up in my eyes. Sun Fu was fast asleep but I felt at that time that someone else was with me in that room. I was guided by it and my mind became very alert. At that point, I felt the overwhelming need to kneel in prayer--for I knew a heavy responsibility had befallen upon my shoulder. I soon found myself writing on family group sheets those names of my forebears. By the time I was done it was 4am in the morning. I felt I had taken a very long trip back in time.
End of July this year, I was eager to bring these record to the Hawaii Temple to have ordinance done for them. However, things were just beginning! Sun Fu, Su and I went to the temple on 27 July and found out that more ground work needed to be done before the list of names could be made "temple ready" for ordinances. Because these names were in Chinese, they had to be entered in the latest PAF5 faimly history computer program using the Chinese version. I was disappointed for a few seconds, but was not totally disheartened. On that same day there was a group of 300 visiting Chinese students who were converts to the Church while overseas and now living in China. Among them 40 had limited temple recommend to do baptism for the dead. That morning would be a busy day for the Hawaii Temple. Others may see this as a co-incidental occurrence, but to me, it bore much significance. My heart was filled with hope for the Chinese people and many who are on the other side of the veil who were eagerly waiting for work to be done for them. I silently acknowledged the responsibility that would be mine to be part of that great work.
Since no one in the family history center in Hawaii could use the Chinese PAF5 program, I decided to give it a try when we visited Salt Lake City. On Friday, 30July, I met up with Melvin Thatcher, whom I worked for during my high school days. Its a long way from years gone by! I now have as many children as he has!
Mel introduced me to Grace Chen who's a missionary devoted to Chinese family history serving in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. I spent the entire afternoon learning the PAF5 program, asking endless question about the program and about what I was reading from my family genealogy. Understanding the old Chinese genealogy required more than what my 10 years of Chinese school education in Singapore had taught me. I am forever grateful that my first exposure to such records came early in my youthful years while working for Mel and further guidance was given me by Richard Ang. Another important person that I met was sister Chen Mei-gui in Taipei Temple May 1990, when I brought Sun Fu's family file to her. With all these extra foundation work, I was able to work with much ease with sister Grace Chen and I must say I learned even more from her this time around. Other than receiving help in extracting names and deciphering dates and events, I came to understand the things that took place in some of my forebears' lives. I had come to know a great deal better about my distant past and felt the aspirations that my late father had for his children and grand children. Coming from a line of scholars, my father naturally had great hopes that at least one of his seven children would be a scholar. He had lost both his parents within one week when he was barely 11 years-old. Education was prematurely cut short for him. In my memory of him, I could still see how he would self-taught himself English after work late into the nights. His diligence inspired me to excel in school.
The hours spent with Grace Chen was most rewarding. I managed over 20 names that afternoon. Some may think this was no big deal, but learning how to use the graphic tablet was quite tricky. I must thank my husband for keeping me abreast with computer technology all these years and thank my parents for giving me a Chinese education. Grace was being so thoughtful when she saw my eagerness to continue the work with her assistance. She agreed to meet me the next day even though it was her day off. I went through the entire process of extracting information, entering data to submitting PAF File online to the Hong Kong Family History Center for temple readiness with Grace by my side. The sad news here was I would not be able to get the ordinance work done during this trip. But I was not particularly disappointed. I knew some time in the very near future, I would be enjoying another family file experience because of the current unforeseen delay.
My next destination after Salt Lake City was Seattle. My brother Roy, was eager to see what work I had accomplished. When we sat and went through the things that I brought along, our attention now was focused on a photo copied page of genealogy that Mom had brought home from her trip back to Hainan Island. She only made copy of the page where my grand father 's name appeared and that was enough for me for the moment. There was another piece of family group sheet that I made for my paternal grandfather. This information became really valuable now because it was through my late father's narration that these information were collected. We made the decision then to put these names into his computers using the PAF5 program that we brought from SLC. It was really tricky to get the thing working and we finally roped in the help from Pricilla's sister-in-law, Joyce Lau. Speaking to Joyce on the phone, I did not know who she was and I asked some silly question like, "Are you Asian?" When I finally realized she was the same Joyce who came to the Seattle airport 21 years ago with her then 4 small children to pick Sun Fu and I up, and whom we had corresponded every year since, I was both filled with embarrassment and joy! She is one amazing woman. Not knowing how to write Chinese character had not hindered her from doing the Lau family's genealogy. She had set up her own computer at home with the PAF5 program and was ready to teach me how to use it. She came to Roy's home that morning and spent over an hour to finally get the laptop to work with PAF5. There was no graphic tablet, but we use the touch pad on the laptop. The whole thing turned out to be a great blessing in disguise. I carried the computer with me and worked in the car when we were driving to do some sight-seeing. Sun Fu's friend from the Toast Master, Lianne, was with us and she was all eager to go out and see the city. Sight-seeing amazingly became unimportant to me during this time when I felt the great urgency to complete both my paternal and maternal grand parents' family file. At the end of the whole exercise, I had entered 10 male and 15 female names. We were ready to go to the temple the next day to do the work--but first we must visit the family history center to get the names temple ready.
Sun Fu, Priscilla and I visited two different family history centers on Aug 5 morning. There were no one in the first who could help us get the names temple ready so we headed out to the second one. We made a phone call just to check that there will be someone there who could help us. We were lucky to get Bro. Dick Coltrin. He agreed to stay longer than his shift hours to wait and help us with whatever question we might have. It turned out to be a very exciting experience for me. Everyone who helped me in the center that morning were not supposed to be there but by some chanced arrangement, they changed their schedule and were there for me at the right time. When I went there with the laptop and my diskettes, we found out that the computer systems could not read any Chinese characters. The contingency decided upon was for me to reenter all the names in Hanyu Pinyin (or Romanized Chinese). Fortunately, there were only a total of twenty four names and I did it in about an hour's time. Finally we had the diskettes to go and we headed out to pick Roy up from his office at Merrill Lynch and then to the Seattle Temple. There was no time for us to have a proper lunch and the apples, banana and mixed nuts turned out to be life-saver for the day!
At the Seattle Temple, we were obviously late. The workers had been waiting for us and we eagerly handed our temple-ready diskette so they could print out the pink and blue cards. Alas, only some of the names could be read by the computer! This was unbelievable! We had come a very long way to get stuck again. In my heart, I uttered a plea with Heavenly Father to clear the way for us. Again, by some miracle, the worker managed to fish out the information from my back-up diskette. The temple-ready process had to be repeated again using her computer and were we glad to see the cards finally coming out from the printer!
Finally we were at the baptism font. Roy performed the baptisms while Sun Fu, Priscilla and I acted as proxy. The joy I felt that special day goes beyond my ability to express. This much I can say, the work we do for our kindred past is real.
In retrospect, the other group of names that I sent to the Hong Kong Temple were also baptized on the same day, 5 Aug 2004 in the Hong Kong Temple. It was done without my prior knowledge. There must have been a reason for the urgency that I felt during the past few months and in particular, during the short 3 days I spent in Seattle. I am glad I responded to that feeling. The work still continues, much, much more is needed to be done. This experience had helped me gain a new perspective of the gospel. The work for our forebears is real and their influence can truly be felt even beyond the veil."
Women especially Mothers are indeed very special if not "A Many-Splendored Thing" indeed. Their love, patience, sacrifices and ability to give birth and care for children long after birth is amazing.
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