Remembering My Father（B）

Father and I

Since I’m the eldest, father spent a lot of effort teaching me. What I remember most clearly is father teaching me to write essays and submit drafts to the Chinese Daily Paper. They often got corrected and corrected again, until midnight. He also generously bought the whole set of world famous biographies for me to read. He was a former elementary teacher and school principal, so he probably had lots of practice educating children before educating me. So everything the school taught, I already knew! At that age where cram school is the only way to get ahead, I never had to spend a dime to take cram classes.

Father may have been busy, but he still had plenty of opportunities for quality time with his children. Once he took us with him to Nanfangao to visit. I was wearing good-looking hand-me-down clothes mailed from the USA, following the twisting and bending mountain path, gazing at the azure sky and the sea, how beautiful the scenery! When I was in college and returned back to Hualien during summer and winter break, I would wake up at 5 a.m., sit on the back of my father’s little moped and hold onto his waist to go to morning revival. These wonderful times are worth remembering until eternity future.

He also gave me many opportunities for perfecting. One time when I was in high school, he was preparing the young people’s special conference material to show that man is tripartite with a spirit, soul and body; that God’s Spirit first enters into our spirit, then gradually expands into the soul and body. He wanted me to help cut many big, medium and small circles, and they needed to be colored black, white or even gold. We were busy until way after midnight, and that helped me have a clear concept towards God’s economy.

I always obeyed mon and dad, not naughty, did not cause trouble, didn’t talk back, and was willing to help with household tasks. When I was in college, there was a time that, due to a misunderstanding with mother, I gave her the cold shoulder by not writing letters home for a long time. After father found out, he wrote me a very long letter. He explained that mother was once very talented when she was young, she wrote an essay about her being charge nurse and submitted to the Central Daily News. She could also play the piano and had a solid grasp of English. But when she was thirty-five, she got chronic migraines and suffered ever since, making handling the household extremely hard. He wanted me to respect mother and understand that father could not do everything. I was very touched by this letter, and then accepted mother from the bottom of my heart. This migraine of hers was one of our crosses, and led us experience Christ even more. In the last ten years, mother lived in my Riverside home. Keh-Shin and the children all took care of her, that’s the Lord’s grace. That letter of father’s is still speaking.

Several Notable Trivia of Father

A Wonderful Deed

Father went to Taiwan a few years before the KMT and the CCP broke up. He worked, as well as preached the gospel wherever he went. At the time, he was single and his monthly salary all went to a neighboring family of orphans: an older sister, and two younger brothers total of three. Mother said she only knew of father’s wonderful deed when they came to their wedding.

A Hokkien Bible

Due to speaking for the Lord, he had to use the lingua franca of the time in Taiwan, Hokkien, to communicate. I remember that our home has a Romanized pinyin Hokkien Bible. I heard that it was protected by Taiwan provincial brothers, hidden in their homes, when the violence of February 28, 1947 erupted between those who immigrated from Mainland and those that lived in Japan-ruled Taiwan. This shows the effects of his gospel preaching.

A Silken Comforter

When I was little, there was a silken comforter that father brought from his old home in our house. The silk inside was yellow, shiny, and super soft- it was my favorite. When he came to Taiwan at first, the relatives were split between two lands, and no one expected that there would be a reunion for decades. It was very hard for father to communicate with his relatives back home, have to have people in another country to transfer mails for him. During the year we lived in Yilan City, one day, father cried a whole day inside that silken comforter because news came of his father’s death. They could not meet again, and he could not attend the funeral and mourn. How powerless it is with the greater environment so! Just like an ancient Chinese saying: “The tree wants to remain quiet, but the wind won’t stop; the son wants to serve his parents in their old age, but they are no more.”

The Stroke

It was my senior year in college when father suffered a stroke. At that time our family lived in Hualien, he was serving both Hualien and Taitung county alternatively- one week in Hualien, the other week in Taitung. Transportation was very inconvenient, so it was very harsh, he didn’t pay too much attention to diet and he didn’t notice that his body was failing. One day on the train back home from Taitung, he felt something was wrong. At the station one hand went numb. When we got this news, we children were going to college in Taipei. It happened to be around the time of our final exams. We all lived in corporate living in Hall Three of the Church in Taipei. That evening during prayer, my younger brother Chen-Shi announced to our fellow student brothers and sisters that a brother that loves the Lord truly, let woe come or bliss, is ill. We sang hymn 472: “Many crowd the Savior’s kingdom, few receive His cross.” This hymn was truly a great reflection of father’s life. Later, for chronic treatment, our family moved to Taipei. It was Chen-Shi that carried father down the airplane for that trip. I thank the saints in Shipei Meeting Hall (Hall Fourteen of the Church in Taipei) for their service and care. Father and mother lived there for ten years, until father went to meet the Lord.

For the Next Generation, I Wish That They All Know

My goal in writing this is not for a eulogy to my father. There will come a day when we will all go to the Lord, and good if the Lord accepted our deeds, what people say doesn’t matter. But for the next generation, I wish that they all know: How their grandfather loved the Lord and served God; and may they know the real and living God that their grandfather had served; and understand grandfather’s wish through this, that we love the Lord and serve the Lord for generations to come. That all of his descendants would be God’s slaves!

Daughter Maritha Lii (Ming-Shi Lii-Liu)

April 26, 2016