My dad

My father is possibly the oldest player in Sydney to still play competitive tennis in the Badge competition. It has about 500 players across all divisions.

He's 78 years old and still plays tennis two or three times a week.

He's not as good as he was, but then, he was A grade. My guess is, even Kenny Rosewall is a bit slower these days.

Uncle Joe

We had Father's day with my dad yesterday. Our three girls, Fifi, me and he went to yum cha.

He told the girls about Uncle Joe, his mum's brother, who lived with her at Campsie until she moved to Top Ryde. He then moved into the Southern Cross Hotel, a pub on the corner of Princes Highway and Ricketty St in St Peters, and lived there for the rest of his life.

He had been a member of the Communist Party, but it had done him no good at all when he'd returned to China after the communist takeover of 1949. He was treated just like any bourgeouis landowner.

All letters out of China were subject to censorship at the time. My father remembers one of Joe's which started with the words "As a loyal member of the Australian Chinese Communist Party..."

My grandmother had 3 brothers, Joe, George and Rudd (he was the Chinese boxer in Jimmy Sharman's boxing troupe).

Hej Svenska kusiner!

Hej Svenska kusiner! Hur mor du?

I lost a bit of stuff in a hard drive crash, including some e-mail addresses for my cousins. I've now found the addresses again (thanks Ingrid!) so this is a hello to my Swedish cousins.

I used this site to check my spelling of "cousin" in Swedish but it seems a bit limited. What do all you other people out there who are speakers of Swedish and English tend to use for translation?

Feel free to answer in Swedish or English.

Du kan svara i Svensk eller Engelsk! Vi och vår flickarna mor bra; papa också. Hej da!

A great party

My aunt and uncle had their 45th wedding anniversary the other day, so we headed up the M2 and had a lovely barbecue at cousin M's. Uncle and Aunt had been reading my book, Encouragement and were thinking of ways to get my non-christian dad to read it. Isn't that terrific? They felt sure he would get a good dose of the gospel if he actually decided to see what I'd said.

They had decided a 45th anniversary family lunch was a good idea, because Uncle D has Parkinson's and may not make it to the 50th. But they were full of joy as they looked forward to being united with Jesus in heaven, and full of thanks to God for their many happy years. Aunt J said, speaking of Uncle D, "The Lord always gives us the best".

They should've written the book on encouragement!

(This post for you, Rachel! :-) )

More on Sid

Great Uncle Sid, it turns out, had been visited by someone from West 
Sydney Chinese Christian Church who studied the Bible with him regularly.

Eventually he decided to get baptized, and he invited my Dad and my
Aunt and Uncle to be there. (We were in Melbourne at the time).

So he became a Christian in his 80s. Wonderful!

Sid

I preached at West Sydney Chinese Christian Church on Sunday. Afterwards a man said to me "I think I knew your Uncle Sid"—Sid Cheng, who worked for a great deal of his life in the markets, the old Paddy's Market in Chinatown. He lived in Russell Street Strathfield, not too far from the church.

I have great hopes that somehow, in God's grace, he became a Christian before he died. What I do know is that he was reading his Bible regularly, having been prompted to do so by some doorknocking Jehovah's Witnesses. He thought Paul's letter to the Romans was terrific.

You never know, do you, how God is going to work. I doubt that the Jehovah's Witnesses would have been impressed to think that they might have encouraged someone to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord!

Sid was one of nine children. The only one who is still alive is Great Aunt Lily in Guangdong.