EASTER AND MY FAITH: A TIMORESE STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Karen Liew. She works in an IT company and worships at Wesley Methodist Church with her husband, Tzin Yih, and their 17-year-old son, Matthew. She loves to read, normally two at the same time (one in Chinese and one in English). She is also mum to three large black cats. Just one cat short of being a crazy cat lady.

I am a volunteer with the St Paul Methodist School (SPMS) Digital Tuition programme. And as Easter is around the corner, I gave my student this writing assignment. May you be blessed by Pedriana’s personal reflection on Easter.

Hi, my name is Pedriana. I’m 13 years old. I study at SPMS. My Daddy is a pastor and my Mom is a teacher. I have two siblings, Joshua and Joel. Joshua is 11 years old and Joel is a 1-year-old baby. We live in Dili, the Capital of Timor-Leste.

I was born into a Christian family and my father is a pastor. So I grow up learning and knowing about Jesus through the preaching and devotion that we do every day. I read the Bible at home and I also join in the church’s activities and fellowship. In my school, we learn God’s word every day as we do devotions before we start the day and end the day with prayer. Every week, we have a new bible verse to study. Every Friday, we have praise and worship time and our principal, or sometimes other people, will share God’s word with us. We also have other activities like Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade where we go camping. Through all these, I get to know more and more about God every day.

Christians celebrate Good Friday and Easter because we want to give thanks and to remember what Jesus has done for us. It is all about how Jesus sacrificed Himself and replaced us in dying on the cross for our sin and to give us freedom. Man sinned against God and gave away the authority to rule over the world to Satan in the Garden of Eden. But because God loves the world so much, He gave Jesus to die on the cross for us. The Bible also says that the wages of sin is death, so Jesus came back as man and as God to die on the Cross. He has taken that authority from Satan and now He rules over the heavens and the earth. And He has overcome the power of death so now we are free.

That’s why Christians celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ because it means a lot to us. If Jesus didn’t die on the cross and rise up from the dead, we would not know the truth and we will die because of our sins. So, we want to give thanks and worship Him because He deserves it.

To me, Easter is a day of victory because Jesus rose up from death.

In Timor-Leste, different churches celebrate Easter in different ways. In our church, we gather together with our Christian family to worship and praise God. We can also bring our new friends or family to church to know the truth about Jesus. The pastor will share the Gospel and sometimes the kids will perform a dance or a drama. Each family will cook some food and bring it to the church, and we will eat together to celebrate Easter.

This Easter, I invite you to consider how you can be involved in serving the nations. I first heard the term “Digital Missions” from an article similar to this that was published in the Methodist Message. After reading about the home-based tutoring programme with SPMS in Timor-Leste, I felt that it was something I could do.

When I attended the first briefing for volunteers in 2022, I had some doubts as many of the volunteers were current or retired educators, and I was one of the few non-teachers in the group, with zero experience in teaching. But I prayed and asked God to lead me, guide me and enable me despite my inexperience and lack of qualifications.

I was assigned to tutor two sweet 13-year-old girls in English. I found them to be more mature than most 13-year-olds I know and it was a great pleasure to interact with them. I am no teacher and have no “syllabus” to follow so I had to pray and seek God’s help to show me what to do each week.

So, what did we do? We read books – both fiction and non-fiction, and discussed the characters and the plots. “My girls” are interested in Science-related topics so we explored the solar system, marine biology, space travel, women scientists, and sharks. For some reason, all three of us love reading and learning about sharks!

We read passages from the Bible and we prayed together. We had great fun playing online word games. We talked about life in Timor-Leste, life in Singapore and in essence, established a relationship. I believe they were able to trust me enough to share their concerns so I could pray for them, their families, and even their pets!

Did they learn something from me during these months? I certainly hope so, but I was also greatly blessed by them. During these weekly sessions, I learnt so much from them, not just about Timor-Leste but also their perspective of the world and not to take simple things like internet connectivity for granted. They taught me about hard work, perseverance, patience, and creativity.

Every week, I would have an interesting or funny story to share with my Small Group (SG) in church about the latest session with “my girls”. This eventually led to our SG sponsoring one non-residential and eight residential students in TimorLeste. Our SG is no stranger to the Student Sponsorship Scheme (www. mms.org.sg/sss) in MMS as we have been sponsoring 16-17 students from the Methodist School of Cambodia since 2000. Most of the children were in primary school when we started the sponsorship, and we have seen them grow up over the years. Two of the little boys are now young men in University!

We are so proud and privileged to be able to journey together with the children as they mature and grow in wisdom and stature. And I am glad to have the opportunity to be more involved in missions through tutoring “my girls” in Timor-Leste! May you find your own way to bless the nations with all that God has blessed you with!