Last Sunday I woke up with a knot in my tummy! It was all because I had agreed to do the Chinese to English interpretation for an old classmate YT who would be preaching in his church that morning.

I have been serving as an interpreter for the bilingual service at a sister church once a month since very early days of my Christian walk. I took a break in the early years of my serving but realised a year later that as a very young and foolish Christian, my decision to stop serving was based solely on my own understanding and not one that was guided by the Lord. Therefore, in the end I surrendered and answered to the calling and returned to serving again until now.

It has been 10 long years since I first nervously took up the challenge and did it all by faith (and still do) but lately, I have started to feel a little stirring in my heart.  I sense that it is time for me to relinquish the role and move on as I know I am experiencing a change of season in my faith journey. 

So last Sunday morning while I was getting ready with that tight knot in my stomach, I was wondering why I put myself through that since I have been thinking of retiring from interpretation altogether and how I managed to say yes to YT whom I had never partnered with before was beyond me.

Although I have been doing interpretation for so long I still have my little challenges; I get nervous before the service, I have apprehension especially when they partner me with a guest speaker, sometimes some words just fail to come to my mind and it can be rather tiring mentally after one session standing next to the preacher doing the interpretation on the fly.

Praise God that the whole session went very smoothly and I thought YT’s message was beautiful and especially touching on Mother’s Day.  The scriptures he used were taken from Proverbs 31:10 – 30 on the wife of noble character with emphasis on verse 30 which says “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised”.  And he ended with Proverbs 22:4 “Humility and the fear of the LORD bring wealth and honour and life.”. In addition, a video prepared by YT with young kids from the church paying tributes to their mothers was simply moving and had brought most of the mothers to tears!

When I reflected on that Sunday morning, what truly touched me in a very personal way was not how beautiful YT’s sermon was (which it was) or how elated he was about our partnership that went better than he had expected (what a relief!) but the sight of the two of us standing at the altar serving the Lord together! YT grew up in a Christian family with his father and all of his uncles being pastors but I was almost an atheist until I was born again 11 years ago. Who would have thought that there would be such a day that these two old classmates would stand side by side in front of the congregation serving and glorifying the Lord together. What a joyful morning that was and what a sight to behold! Hallelujah!