This is my story - 40

40 – Chinese New Year pastoral visitation

To me, Chinese New Year was and still is a special occasion. It is a time of celebration, reunion, visiting our relatives and friends. It is the custom among the Chinese for the young to visit their seniors and employees to visit their employers. The elderly are specially remembered. We just go and visit to pay our respects, no invitation is required. Officers would go round to visit the Chinese comrades to read the word of God and pray with them.

Shortly after our appointment to the Corps it was Chinese New Year. It was customary for the Officer Commanding and his wife and the General Secretary to visit the comrades of the Corps. So on the first day of Chinese New Year, we took our children to my mother in Toa Payoh as we did not want to take our children round to visit the homes of our comrades. They would feel obliged follow Chinese custom and give ‘ang pows’ (red packets with money inside) to our children. For obvious reasons it would be impractical for us to reciprocate. So throughout our officership we never took our children to visit the folk on Chinese New Year.

We went with Lieut. Colonel and Mrs. Engel to visit the homes of our people in the morning on the first day of Chinese New Year. We were pleased of course for the Colonel drove us in his car otherwise we would have to depend on public transport. We were so new to the Corps (church) and did not know how regularly these folk had been to the Army. After the morning’s visitation, Colonel Engel said to us, “We don’t know who these people are.”

Then in the afternoon the General Secretary Lieut. Colonel Watson went with us on our rounds. Having been here longer she would tell us whom she wanted to visit. This meant visiting the same folk the second time! We had to learn what to do for the following year.

The other Headquarters officers went on their own to visit the folk of both Central and Balestier Corps. Our Public Relations Secretary Major Brian Corfield spent a lot of time during the festive season visiting the donors and friends of the Army.

Lieut. Colonel and Mrs. George Engel were very good soldiers of the Corps. They were times in an emergency when Mrs. Engel would babysit Poh Chin for us. She arranged for the flowers for the hall. They were very humble servants of God and really down to earth.

Their successors were Canadian officers Lieut. Colonel and Mrs. James Sloan a very godly couple whom we respected highly. The Colonel was with me in the same session at the International College for officers in London in 1963. They too were great supporters. I recall during their first Chinese New Year with us, when they heard that I had to take Poh Chin to my mother at Toa Payoh, they volunteered to take us there first and on arrival Mrs. Lieut. Colonel Grace Sloan indicated that she would like to pay her respects to my mother on the first day of Chinese New Year. We were very touched by their thoughtfulness. It meant a lot to my mother who was a Roman Catholic. She was a Home Leaguer at Balestier Corps before the war, but during the Japanese occupation joined the Roman Catholic Church.

Brother-in-law, Mr. Goh Bin Lay used to loan us his second car to do our Chinese New Year visitation. Later on another relative, Mr. Wee Sip Chee also made the same offer for the festive season. He and his wife are not Salvationists, not even Christians, but they have always been good to us and indeed very caring. God wonderfully provided for our needs. We have always proved that when we do God’s will He never fail to provide for all our needs.