67: Christian Encounter

Today my dad is very nervous, coz he has invited some friends in the PTA to treat them a dinner at home. My dad is the Chairman of the Parent-Teacher Association of the school of by brother.

He has day-off today and he go swimming in the morning and work in kitchen in the whole afternoon. Today is so hot that everyone must be keeping sweating all the day. Since he is sweating in the kitchen for the whole afternoon, the dinner tonight must be very important for him.

At about 7pm, our guests arrived! There are 4 persons, including my brother’s classmate, his parents and the teacher who is responsible for taking care of the PTA. We chat for a while and they ask me a lot about my work. They are very curious about how long the working hour is, whether I can go home to have dinner, number of staff in my Firm. Yes, it is understandable as the mum of my brother’s friend is a personal secretary in a CPA firm and we shared a lot about our works.

Before dinner starts, the teacher leads us to pray. It’s my first time to listen to someone praying at my home! Sounds very interesting and warm. During the dinner the teacher shares much of his personal experience and he also had failure in his studies before and has worked for more than 10 years before joining the school. He must be trying to use his true story to encourage the 2 students in the dining table.

After finishing the dinner, the teacher and parents who are all Christians, dad and I continue to chat around the table and the 2 students are playing around the computer. I do have impressive feelings on something they have come across during the chat:

1. Parents are just keeping the children on behalf of the God.
2. Parents should not apply their own dreams and thinking on their children.
3. Parents should not force their children to do something they could not achieve in their childhood.
4. Parents should not only look at the bad side of their children and should say more what they appreciate to their children.
5. Parents should make their love able to be felt and responded by their children.
6. People should express their love towards others in the most simple and straight-forward way.

And many others … …

Before they leave, the teacher leads us to pray again. He asks what our wishes are and I say good health and smooth work, and he tell my wishes to the God. Still thinking why he is so kind-hearted.

The parents also talk about what they have changed after becoming Christians. The Mrs suddenly say, for the incident last night (I dunno what it is), if it were in the past, we would definitely blame each other and lose temper, but we have not last night. We have “he he & ha ha” to each other and that’s it. They have become more peaceful in terms of temper.

In my opinion, it is not the religion itself that has changed them. The real driver of change is their awareness of how they behaved in the past is not as appropriate as how they behave now. They now have reflection and are prepared to change for the better.

This is a good experience to meet Christians at home. They are very nice and supportive. Anyway, this Christian Encounter is a memorable experience.