Story of Kwong Ming and Guan Chen

When I first arrived in Sibu we had the number for a lady named Sherry Ong. Some of the other Elders had talked to her husband who was Buddhist, and he gave them her number. They had tried to set stuff up, but only managed to meet with her one time with about two months of unsuccessful attempts between the time that they met her and my arrival.

We decided we would just try by and we did so on multiple occasions. However, anytime we asked to come she said she was too busy and was working. When we asked what her hours were, she said she left at 7am to start at 8am, and she didn't get home until 9pm. We asked what days she had off and she said none. So I verified and asked, 'Are you saying you work 91 hours a week?!' And she said, 'yes'. So we started showing up around 7 PM just to verify. She was never there when we went, but we did meet her two kids.

The first time we met the kids they were super shy. They would just yell at us from the backroom and say they wouldn't come out, so we got permission from the dad to go inside and we went to the backroom to sit with them and play Jenga. Before the game they wouldn't talk to us, but we set it up, explained the rules and started playing and then they joined and finally told us their names were Kwong Ming and Guan Chen. We taught them the restoration that first visit and after stopping by and teaching just the boys a few times, we decided to start stopping by at 9pm to see if Sherry was home. Sherry always ended up arriving half-way through the lesson around 9:15pm, so it sounded like the work schedule she told us checked out. We continued this pattern of stopping by at 9pm each Tuesday and Thursday night teaching really quick before we had to rush home. After about two weeks of stopping by late, Sherry said her father was getting upset and wanted to sleep, so she asked us to come at 7pm on Wednesday. I was blown away, I would've preferred to have been doing that the whole time. Turns out, she has afternoons off Tuesday and Thursday and nights off on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We'd been coming on all the wrong days. She hadn't really been sure if she wanted us coming over at the beginning, so she told us she worked like crazy, but eventually she liked us and we found out her whole schedule and it became way easier to teach the family. About a month and a half after we first met the boys they were baptized. Both of them bore their testimonies after the baptism even though they were terrified. The crazy thing was two weeks after we met them, they came to church. It was a fast Sunday, and I convinced them to go up with me and bear their testimonies. They were both short and sweet. Kwong Ming would say, 耶稣基督爱我们 (Jesus Christ Loves Us), and Guan Chen would say, 耶稣基督保护我们 (Jesus Christ protects us). After the first Sunday their dad stopped allowing them to come for about 4 weeks, so their second Sunday at church was also fast Sunday and they once again bore their testimonies 💪. They came every week after that and were then confirmed in their third fast Sunday, but suddenly Guan Chen was too nervous to bear his testimony which was a little strange since it was his 4th time. But, Kwong Ming still went up there with his beautiful testimony that 耶稣基督爱我们 (Jesus Christ Loves Us)。 At this point the boys are very active and the mother is down to get baptized as soon as she can find other work arrangements. Currently she works on Sundays, so she's unable to come and partake of the sacrament. But, we've been fasting and praying for her to find other job opportunities.