11/11/2024: In loving memory of dear Uncle Moses as he was known to many. A special man of God, and another great pillar in the community and body of Christ. Uncle Moses often interacted with me on Facebook with warmly personal comments, well wishes, blessings, prayers and encouraging interactions, so I’ve decided to direct my eulogy to him personally, trusting that in Christ, he will be able to perceive all that I am saying to him!
Dear Uncle Moses, we miss you already! It seems like it was only yesterday that you’d chatted with me on one of my FB posts and I can still see your cheerfully smiling face in my mind’s eye, as we happened to bump into each other and talk for a few moments on a Saturday afternoon at church when you were there for a choir practice with the Steadfast Association.
We were very shocked and saddened indeed, when we heard of your sudden passing on 11/11/2024 which has left a perceptible void in the midst of all the many people who knew you, and whose lives were touched, brightened and enriched by yours! Our love and prayers go out to your beloved family, especially Aunty Christine, Joel and Julie. And we grieve the loss of your presence together with them. Although we’re also thanking God for you and we rejoice for your sake that you are now victorious, and resting in peace and joy, in the glorious eternal fellowship of our Lord and Saviour, where suffering and pain have become a thing of the distant past.
And our sadness is soothed by the comfort and knowledge that you have now joined the great cloud and company of heavenly witnesses who are cheering the rest of us on in our pilgrim’s journey here, until that glorious day when we will all be gathered by our Lord and Saviour to meet each other again at last, in the courts of our Heavenly Father, Lord God and King, to sing eternal hallelujahs together to the only Wise God our Saviour, as fellow members in the great heavenly choir that will encompass and number the multitudes! Indeed, I’m thankful to have this most appropriate and beautiful image to have and to hold of you, because we all know how you loved praising God and
being in church praising God with others, and we know how you loved the choir (especially those of us who got to have you as our choir conductor).
Pastor Ronald read Psalm 146 (NLT) and spoke wonderfully well of you and of our God on the first night of your wake services when my hubby Kok Shen and I were there. You would have been tickled pink I think. He said and I think all of us who knew you can attest to this – that you were a people person, not just professionally, in the running
of your own consultancy in the training, leadership and development of people, but also in church and personally. As for me, I would say you were a warm, welcoming, kind, caring, enthusiastic and encouraging person, gracious and effusive in your praise and support of people. And you were really fantastic in rallying and bringing people together, and making us feel like part of a family, as you did with all those who, like me, were blessed to have sung in the choirs led by you, which included heartwarming outings and home fellowships. Those were wonderful days and we have not seen the likes of you in our church for a long time now.
I count myself blessed and want to thank you too, for not only being our lovely choir conductor, but also for being one of our very encouraging senior friends, and even more specially, for being the honourable MC at our wedding – we were privileged and grateful indeed, to have had you doing that for us. Some other heartwarming memories I cherish are from the years when I was the editor for Wesley Tidings, our church magazine, and you used to send in articles to me every now and then, many of which were your testimonies, while others were articles about some church events that you were a part of and occasionally a tribute to a church senior who had passed on. Hehe, and all these were filled with many exclamation marks and praises to God, just as Joel, Pastor Ronald and others like me have noted, you loved saying “Praise the Lord” and you loved accompanying it with many exclamation marks!
Moving forward to these more recent years, I will always appreciate how you made it a point to connect and chat with me on many of my FB posts, and occasionally on WhatsApp too – always encouraging me with well wishes and prayers for my mum especially when you saw the posts I wrote about her, as well as birthday wishes and
wedding anniversary wishes for hubby and I; and sometimes also conveying your appreciation for me and sending me encouraging messages when I shared my testimonies and stories. Something I must highlight too is that I noticed how supportive you were of your son Joel, from your appreciative thanks and very positive comments to me whenever you’d see my FB posts about us bringing my mum to his restaurant.
I am so so glad too that you managed to make it back to physical church again this year. For one of Kok Shen’s fond memories of you is that of seeing you faithfully at church every Sunday without fail (except during the Covid years). And it fills me with great joy to have been able to reciprocate with encouragement to you and to be the one who
encouraged you to come back to church physically after your absence during that time. I was especially pleased also to have been able to be the one who welcomed you back that first Sunday when you finally returned for the first time in 2024!
Now, coming back to your wake service on Tuesday night – your son Joel and the Steadfast Association paid you a lovely tribute too. I can imagine your delight and how you’d have loved and enjoyed the tribute by the Steadfast Association choir with a poem written and recited in your honour together with their singing of 2 songs, as well as all the other songs all of us sang during the service. These songs were all so familiar and beloved by me too, because of my days of singing in your choir when those were the introits, anthems and benedictions which you’d lead us in during our regular Sunday services, such that I know them by heart despite years of not having looked at those song sheets. Now every time I hear or sing these songs – “All Heaven Declares”, “Because He Lives”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Now Unto Him Who Is Able To Keep” and many others, I will think of you and picture us singing and praising God together!
I know that the little that I have written about you could not possibly do justice, to the great, warm and lovely man that you were, as well as the great life that you have lived, so I thank God that He, our Maker, our Loving Heavenly Father and the Omniscient Master Scribe Himself, will have taken note of and recorded every beautiful detail about
you and your life lived in Christ as His beautiful creation, faithful witness and enthusiastic messenger.
Ok, Uncle Moses, I’m just going to finish by saying farewell to you for now. Although, while this may be the end of my written tribute to you, it is by no means the end of our remembrance of you. We will surely continue to remember and treasure all the connections and interactions that we have had with you over the span of more than 20 years.
Until we meet again on that fine and glorious day, to join you in doing what you love best, which is also what I love best, in the great heavenly choir singing eternal hallelujahs and praises to our Lord and God who alone is worthy of all honour, glory and praise – now, with every breath in all the days of our lives on earth and then, forevermore into all eternity in His Presence!
