Moving to Sibu - Blessed with a Mother Support Group

20 Oct 2004

15th July 2001 was the day my family of three then (my hubby, my 10-month old son then, and myself) packed and shifted to Sibu. I had a stable full-time, promising career as an IT and Math lecturer back in Kuala Lumpur. Yet, moving to Sibu was a major paradigm-shift for me as that was the turning point of my life in my career shift (from a full time working mum to a part-time working mum), with a sharp salary-cut in my monthly income; from a city-grown woman to a small town occupant. Well, I could still remember my first few weeks in this new place. Errr…. everyone speaks Foo Chow or Heng Hua (at Teku)!!! I was grateful to God that I could still use Mandarin (though not very fluent) as a daily conversational tool. We found out that Wesley Methodist Church is the only English-speaking church in Sibu, besides the Pentecostal churches. So, very quickly, we fit ourselves into Wesley Methodist Church.

One of the Sundays in August 2001, I saw an invitation notice in the church bulletin to all mothers or mothers-to-be who are interested to join a Mother Support Group, and it would be on Saturday afternoons. Being new to Wesley, of course I long for a support group like this for fellowship and encouragement. Without hesitation, I asked Catherine (Mrs Khoo Ho Peng) to introduce me to Winnie (Mrs Tie King Tai) for further information. On the first day of the meeting, I met many mothers who were from West Malaysia. Most of them had settled in Sibu or Sarawak for more than five years. Immediately, I felt belonged to the group. The first book study which we did was “Raising Great Kids”, then followed by “Opening the Spiritual Windows of our Children”.

It has been 3 years since we first started meeting as mothers. Most of the weeks, we studied, shared, prayed and ate. We had many meaningful times together. Being