Valerie is no stranger to Christianity. After all, she is a fourth-generation Christian in a household that has faithfully served the Lord since the days of her great-grandparents. Her father, Henry Heng, recounted his early days as a Christian — where most members of Mount Carmel, his family’s home church, at his age were first-generation Christians, he was already the third.

“My dad was a second-generation Christian and a John Sung convert. We attended Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, and for several years since I was six, I would walk a mile to Sunday School each week. At home, it was just as eventful. Besides having a consistent family prayer meeting every night, it was also a centre for Life Church English Service which was held each Saturday for over 10 years since the 1950s. Most of what I knew about Christianity in my formative years, therefore, came from home as much as it came from church. Finally, I accepted Jesus as my saviour in my teens. As a result, my daughters, Stephanie and Valerie, also grew up in a Christian family."

Her mother, Margaret Heng, a third-generation Christian, shared her experiences growing up in a Christian household in Malaysia:

"As kids, we had to attend Chinese worship service and my father, a church elder, was very strict with us. He made us pray and memorise Scripture in Chinese which I hated. It was torture. Thankfully, in the 1950s, missionaries from Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) came to Batu Pahat and set up an English service which I attended. Thereafter, many English-speaking missionaries and preachers visited and made a huge impact on us teens. By God’s grace, I finally accepted Christ as my saviour during Rev Antonio Omeo’s gospel campaign when I was 14."

The Phua Clan (Valerie’s Mom’s family) : still encouraging each other in the Lord today.

Valerie never told her parents these struggles. She felt she would let them down by breaking the chain of intergenerational faith. She did however, confide some of those thoughts to a few friends in her CG. Their answers did not always satisfy her but they continued to pray for her. 

Finally, years later, she experienced a breakthrough when God spoke personally to her and assured her in a way only she could understand. She caught a glimpse of His heart of grace and mercy and saw no condemnation. Having tasted and seen God’s goodness, she longed for her children to experience God in the same way and so like her parents before her, she brought up her four children going to church.

Valerie’s son, Zachary, is 17 this year. It’s 2021 and we live in a digital age surrounded by technological distractions permeating our everyday lives. Zachary also belongs to a generation that actively challenges the established order of things, including religion.

“Growing up as a Christian, it felt like I was just going through the motions. Church didn’t really appeal to me, as it usually meant I had to wake up early while my friends got to hang out or sleep in. God was just an afterthought throughout my life. In fact, church was really boring and I just couldn’t pretend.”

Having gone through her own faith crisis, Valerie knew that faith was not something she could force upon her children. She empathised with Zach’s struggles and his doubts, and shared some of her own experiences with him. Yet, at the end of the day, she knew that encountering God is a journey walked alone and she prayed with all her heart that God would pursue Zach and capture his heart. The same CG friends who prayed for her struggle rallied to pray for her children.

At the end of 2019, in his frustration and disillusion, Zach prayed for a sign during Youth Camp. He shared,

“I told God, if You’re really there, give me a sign I cannot miss. After I said those words, my youth pastor got up and did an altar call and through the words he spoke, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God was calling me. As I stepped forward, I felt an indescribable sense of joy, and a feeling that I had finally arrived home.”

Zach gave his heart to the Lord and was baptised in December 2020, with the extended family present to witness. Valerie knows full well that the Christian journey is a long and arduous one. Making a decision for Christ is but the first step. Along the way, there are pitfalls and dark valleys and “the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, waiting for someone to devour.” However, at the end of the day, she knows that her four children are in the Good Shepherd’s hands. She can trust His heart of grace and mercy to bring her children home and with fellow travellers in CGs pacing with words of encouragement and powerful prayer, there is joy in the journey.

Benjamin is an avid writer who takes great joy in helping people tell their stories to the world, and in doing so, hopes to illustrate how God tirelessly works in the lives of ordinary men and women.