My brother sent me a youtube link for a SOBEM video featuring my ordinary parents in a story of extraordinary faith, from ordinary beginnings doing amazing things for God today through various career changes and living a life full of blessing and faith, doing something to further God's Kingdom.
The link below opens in a new window:
Showers of Blessings Evangelical Mission - Kathleen and David Story.
At the start of the video, I'm thinking, of course I know everything there is to know about my parents. I'll watch it cuz, ya know how often are parents on TV. SOBEM is a weekly Christian documentary featuring stories of people (usually Chinese because the show is Cantonese). It's aired Saturday afternoon 4pm on every Chinese TV station in Canada maybe beyond. It's a short episode less than 20 minutes. It's a simple story, a love story, some regular trials that couples go through, career changes etc. so it's encouraging because I got to see how God is a part of it through it all.
I'm so proud of my mom because she is the Senior Executive in Operations of a Chinese Christian Nursing Home called Wing Kei in Calgary. The Nursing Home is a huge building just outside downtown Calgary, home to lots of seniors in various stages of health or mobility, but there are Chinese speaking nurses and volunteers and they serve Chinese foood, and it's a happy place. You can see and feel God's presence, it's just awesome to see volunteers, well doing Jesus' work. Anyway what touches me the most is that although this is a multimillion dollar structure now with lots of funding from the Alberta government and all that, I actually remember my mom being part of the early beginnings of getting the whole project off the ground, from inception, to design, deployment (building) and expansion. In my eyes she started on the project as a volunteer, secretary or project planner, fundraiser all rolled into one and that was 16 years ago! When someone takes a shovel and they dig the first dirt for a new building, well there's just so much that happens before that ceremonial moment. Anyways that part is cool.
They also talk about my parents history in Hong Kong, how they met in the church as teenagers. My dad goes to Texas Christian University to study Geology and my mom goes to UT in Canada to study Computer Science. They get married, finish their Masters, move to Calgary, have kids, my mom leaves her full time career in IT (that was pretty amazing at the time) to be a Stay at Home Mom. It's many years later and I'm 14 when my mom goes back to work in a different field as a medical secretary, very humble beginnings.
My dad's career as a Manager of Heavy Oil Development at Norcen Energy was a really big deal back then. So he's my age and he's like a "Director". Someone was very hardworking! Of course with the boom and bust of the oil industry in the 80's my dad was part of the fall out. Imagine losing everything you ever worked for up until this point in your life. What do you do? Well he had to start over with new work to support the family. Of course we're kids, we don't know or understsand any of this. We still have everything we ever need, and God provides. Dad talks about his new job as the guy doing roof estimates for insurance claims. I actually remember it was a "good" year one year because of lots of hail damage. Later he was part of a start-up company that provided cheap long distance calling buying time from carriers (must be DSL). Then he found something more Geology related in doing oil field maps, but still in a very junior role given his previous senior rank. It`s been 16 years I suppose and he`s been at the Oil and Gas Inquirer, a premier oil industry publishing magazine selling expensive ad spaces to the oil industry suppliers. It`s a good magazine with lots of industry related articles. Anyway I`m so proud of my dad too because he just never gave up, he just kept getting back up no matter what. He was adaptable and willing to try really new things to provide for the family of four kids. In the documentary, they interview his boss. It's kinda cool hearing the boss say nice things about my dad, and also seeing my dad wearing a suit, sitting tall at work.
They went through so much in their marriage. My siblings and I have seen alot of fighting. Don`t fight in front of the kids, well I guess my parents forgot to read that part in a parenting handbook LOL. Married for nearly 39 years now, I think they`ve been through everything. I`m just so happy seeing how happy they are now. They are living the life now, grandkids to visit, and taking cruises and tour vacations throughout the year.
It`s a simple story but when it`s the story about your own parents and see how God has been there this whole time, along with some amazing quotes from my little brother. It`s just such a good reminder that God is good. I hope to have that kind of encouraging story to tell my kids (not necessarily on TV) but a legacy of faith.
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