If God’s willing by the time you are reading this Santy and I will have been in Jakarta, visiting my mother who suffered a stroke several days ago due to a blocked artery in her brain that caused her blood pressure elevated.  By the grace of God her blood pressure has now come down to a normal level.  Thank you for your prayers and for giving Santy and me time to visit her. We’ll return home on July 15.

The past couple of months we have weathered storm after storm as some of us had to be temporarily and painfully separated from our loved ones. So much to do and so much to process but your support and prayers have made a big difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters who are grieving.  They know that they are not alone; you show up in prayer or in person to let them know that you are there for them. So, thank you for your love and support to them.

Last week we celebrated Father’s Day.  For some, it’s a day that we look forward to but for some, it’s a day that we wish we could just skip it.  There is nothing to celebrate!  The reason is because being a father is intricately connected to our children, and sometimes it is not easy to feel good about us as fathers or about our children.  We do not expect much from them and we try to be as reasonable as possible but so far, we have not gotten anywhere.  As ordinary men who happen to be fathers, we’re disappointed, but we keep it inside because we don’t want to discourage our children even more. 

Parenting is a complex process; as a young father I thought I knew how to raise children based on what I had learned in school.  Well, it turned out what happened at home was not as simple as I thought.  Raising children is not like raising chicken on a farm; there are a lot of unknown factors. So, here is what we must do: stay with and for them. Don’t walk back; don’t walk away; the Lord is not finished yet.

Pastor Paul