I knew Mr. Yip through a church member whose father happened to be receiving treatment at the same medical facility.  Since then, every time I visited our church member’s father, I also visited with him.  Whenever I visited him, I would sing, read the Bible, and pray for him.  One day he made the decision to be a follower of Christ and told me he was ready to be baptized.  So, he was later baptized in a local Chinese church.  How amazing God’s grace is.

Mr. Yip’s parents migrated from China to a Portugal’s colony in Africa.  So, he was born, raised, and met his wife in Africa.  He told me that his family enjoyed a good life there.  When Portugal left the country, fearing for their lives, he and a score of Chinese immigrants also left.  First, they landed in Portugal, but later he and his family settled in New York, before they finally moved to L.A. to retire.

For the longest time Mr. Yip was not a Christian.  But in God’s time and in His way through providence we call, “happened to be,” he finally met Christ.  He happened to be in the same medical facility.  This brought to memory how our daughter came back to God’s fold.  That evening, over dinner I shared with her that during my trip to Indonesia someone had told me that he and his wife were preparing a home for Santy and me.  She told me it was that conversation that deeply touched her heart—she saw how much God loved us!

I shared with her that good news because she happened to ask me, “Papa, what’s the high and low points of your visit to Indonesia this time?”  And we happened to be having dinner together.  “Happened to be” is God’s divine appointment.  We cannot plan it or prepare for it because we have no idea when that appointment will be and how that will look like.  We can only choose to live in God’s will.

Pastor Paul