I’ve had a lot of time to think about this day, and how I would attempt to describe my father and his life. To be honest, he was always a bit of a mystery, even to us. Unlike my mom, who’s an open book, my dad was fairly stoic when it came to his inner thoughts and feelings. As a father and as a minister, he dispensed plenty of wisdom, but the cost of being the one other people look up to for guidance was that he was seldom able to show any weakness or vulnerabilities himself. Up until he got sick, his life was governed by a sense of duty toward and responsibility for others – as an eldest son, as a head of household, and as a pastor.

My dad was born in China in 1944 and moved to Hong Kong when he was 5. My grandfather, or 爷爷, was an American-educated lawyer and my 奶奶 came from a distinguished family, so there was a lot of expectation placed upon my dad to be a role model to his three younger siblings. After the family immigrated to the U.S. when Dad was 18, he was the one who got up... Read more at the crack of dawn to shovel snow so that 爷爷 could drive to work at the Pentagon. A few years later, my dad and his brother Paul were left alone in the country when the U.S. government dispatched my grandfather to Taiwan. Although 爷爷 left money for tuition, Dad never touched the funds in that account and instead supported himself through part-time jobs while studying electrical engineering and math at the University of Maryland. When I asked my dad why he chose those subjects, he said he had been told those led to the most stable careers. That was my dad: someone who viewed his life choices more as a matter of pragmatism than preference.

After graduation, Dad worked as a civil employee in the U.S. government, just like both of his parents did. This was a tradition he tried to pass down to me. Whereas other Asian parents are always nagging their kids to go to med school, my dad never stopped urging me to check out and apply for the listings at USAjobs.gov.

As you’ll see in the slideshow after this eulogy, my dad was very handsome when he was young, and although I don’t know if he was actually cool, he looked very cool. As a good-looking, well-educated young man who had a stable job, served in church and spoke perfect English, I’ve been told that my dad generated plenty of interest from various Chinese Christian young ladies up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but he was always oblivious to their intentions. By his mid-30s, he was an old bachelor – all of his younger siblings had long been married, and he never even had a girlfriend.

So 奶奶’s older sister Gloria – my 二姨婆 – got involved. She lived in Tokyo and was a leader among the Chinese international students at her church, and there was a woman in the fellowship who was my dad’s age, also unmarried, loved the Lord and was incredibly beautiful. This is how my parents met – through the active intervention of multiple members of the family - and they were married in 1980.

Thus began the “family man” chapter of my dad’s life. By 1984, he was married with two kids. I remember a few years ago, maybe just before I started my own family, I asked my dad if he’d always dreamt of being a husband and father. I think I was fishing for some nostalgic compliment about how we were an answer to my dad’s prayers. But instead, Dad said, “No, I did it because 奶奶 said so to and this is just what people do when they reach a certain age.” Again, pragmatism over preference.

But I think in the past month, as my brother and I have combed through photographs and home videos and old emails and journal entries, maybe that was my dad’s blunt honesty – or maybe it was his dry humor. What we do know is, whether he did ever fantasize about having a family or not, the fact is that he showed up for us. He took us to places we would enjoy, like science museums and bookstores, and he spent his money on things that would enrich us, from educational computer games to children’s literature magazines to a whole piano that he brought home when my mom was still only pregnant. When I was in high school and forgot all about a big scholarship application until literally the day it was due, he drove to the airport post office that night so that it could be postmarked on time. When I was preparing to leave for a summer missions trip in college, he drove all the way from San Diego to Malibu and back in a single day just so he could bring me a Bible to take with me. And when I moved to New York for graduate school and was very confident as a 21-year-old adult who did not need any parental handholding, my dad flew out with me anyway and comforted me all week as I instantly was terrified of being left alone in the big city.

Dad didn’t really have any big hobbies - he wasn’t a sports fan, he couldn't tell the difference between a good movie and a Steven Seagal movie, and he was not very political. But his one lifelong passion was serving God. Even when he was still an engineer, his major extracurricular activity was church service – mowing the lawn as the youngest deacon at his church in Rockville, or serving as an English/Cantonese/Mandarin interpreter at retreats around the country. When he was in his mid-40s, he began to hear a call from the Lord. Many people in this situation choose to postpone full-time ministry until after retirement from their secular careers, but Dad told Mom that he felt the urge to serve while he was still in the prime of his life. He told her that if he waited, he was afraid he might “miss the last train.”

So with Mom’s blessing, Dad enrolled at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, spending the week in Mill Valley and driving 50 miles back across the Bay to be with us on the weekends. After he graduated, we moved to Houston and spent four years at Chinese Christian Church. My dad also served as pastor at Christ Church of the Bay Area, Charlotte Chinese Baptist Church, Chinese for Christ Church of San Jose and First Chinese Southern Baptist Church of San Diego, and we are thankful to the brothers and sisters from those congregations who have joined us in person and on the livestream today.

Dad was a pretty charismatic preacher – he had a gift for languages, he was very smart, and he had a nice deep voice – but especially over the last month, what I’ve learned from the beautiful stories that various people have shared with me is that some of his most profound impacts in ministry may not have been at the pulpit but were in much less visible areas. Helping undocumented people at the border with their paperwork, establishing a late-night fellowship for restaurant workers so that they could have Bible study after the restaurant closed, visiting terminally ill patients as a hospital chaplain and inviting international students home for dinner – these were just some of the people Dad was passionate to serve.

My father experienced many trials in his pastoral career, and his communication, administrative and leadership style could be frustrating to some. He didn’t like explaining himself – which meant his decisions and thought processes could be hard to understand, both in his personal life and his ministry. But while being a P.K. taught me that people are fallible - Dad included – my father taught us, through his response to adversity, that the Lord is always faithful. It is because of Dad’s wisdom and our Heavenly Father’s grace that we never turned away from God, even amid tribulation.

Just before he turned 65, my dad began exhibiting symptoms of what was soon diagnosed as Parkinson’s Disease. In hindsight, he was wise to obey the Lord’s call when he did, because he would have been unable to enter the ministry in his retirement age. Instead, the last 15 years of Dad’s life were a slow reversal of everything that had defined him up until then. It was a deconstruction of his own strength, his own talents, his own autonomy. But all the way to the end, even as his cognition faded in and out, his heart remained with all of us: He was constantly asking me to reach out to both his literal brothers and sisters, who preceded him into heaven, as well as those from past churches to see how they were doing, and when I wasn’t around, he would “talk” to my brother and I at the dining table, as if we were still kids living at home.

I want to close on a story that explains how much my father meant to me. About four years ago, amid the thick of the pandemic, I was having a really hard time. I don’t remember what I was depressed about, but whatever it was, I was on the outs with pretty much everyone I was closest to: my mom, my brother, my husband. My dad’s Parkinsons at this point was already pretty advanced, and he was usually too tired or out of it to talk on the phone. But one night, both of my parents were on speaker phone with me when I was at a particularly low point and my dad, out of the blue, asked me, “How are you feeling?”

That’s all I needed to burst into tears, and while my mom was having trouble understanding whatever was going on, Dad didn’t need any explanation. “Rebecca and I, we’re the same,” he told her. “She feels things differently. She processes differently.”

It has been in the loneliest times in my life that I’ve felt closest to my father. Somehow, he knew exactly what to say. “I wish I could hold you in my arms. Just imagine that I’m holding your hand, okay? Can you feel it? Can you feel the warmth?”

And I could. This is what I wrote in my journal afterwards: “Sometimes, all you need is one. One person in the entire world cut from your cloth, one person to know and love you and not expect anything from you. One person who simply wants you to know: I care. I understand. I’m here. And just when I needed it the most, my heavenly Father restored my earthly father, if only for this crucial moment, and gave him the vision and words and clarity and physical and cognitive acuity to be 爸爸 again.”

I’ve had a lot of time to wonder what my dad’s life means, what story God is telling through his journey. When he pledged himself to full-time ministry, he pleaded to God, “I will serve you with all my heart, all my strength and all my mind. I will take care of your house. Please take care of mine.” And indeed, my dad became the foundation upon which our family – which started out as single income, immigrant wife, two young kids – has been so abundantly blessed. Yet there were times during the last 15 years in which I questioned if maybe this prolonged trial of illness and caregiving we were all under was because of some lessons that God was trying to teach us, and that maybe we were all simply suffering the consequences of our failure to understand. But from the moment Dad passed, all of us – me, my mom, my brother – have been filled with the absolute certainty of God’s goodness in our lives, my dad’s included. He once told me that he thought one of God’s final acts of mercy in life is how you’re called home: preferably painlessly and peacefully, at home in one’s sleep. As it turned out, this was the ending the Lord chose for my dad’s time on earth: with my mom by his side, his body spent, his soul at rest.

In other words, upon reflection I have no doubt at all that God loved my dad. And not because of my dad’s goodness or his talents or his service, but simply because that is who our Heavenly Father is. One who knows us and loves us because of His grace. If that is the ultimate testimony of my dad’s life, then I believe it has served its purpose. Read less

I’ve had a lot of time to think about this day, and how I would attempt to describe my father and his life. To be honest, he was always a bit of a mystery, even to us. Unlike my mom, who’s an open book, my dad was fairly stoic when it came to his inner thoughts and feelings. As a father and as a minister, he dispensed plenty of wisdom, but the cost of being the one other people look up to for guidance was that he was seldom able to show any weakness or vulnerabilities himself. Up until he got sick,... Read more his life was governed by a sense of duty toward and responsibility for others – as an eldest son, as a head of household, and as a pastor.

My dad was born in China in 1944 and moved to Hong Kong when he was 5. My grandfather, or 爷爷, was an American-educated lawyer and my 奶奶 came from a distinguished family, so there was a lot of expectation placed upon my dad to be a role model to his three younger siblings. After the family immigrated to the U.S. when Dad was 18, he was the one who got up at the crack of dawn to shovel snow so that 爷爷 could drive to work at the Pentagon. A few years later, my dad and his brother Paul were left alone in the country when the U.S. government dispatched my grandfather to Taiwan. Although 爷爷 left money for tuition, Dad never touched the funds in that account and instead supported himself through part-time jobs while studying electrical engineering and math at the University of Maryland. When I asked my dad why he chose those subjects, he said he had been told those led to the most stable careers. That was my dad: someone who viewed his life choices more as a matter of pragmatism than preference.

After graduation, Dad worked as a civil employee in the U.S. government, just like both of his parents did. This was a tradition he tried to pass down to me. Whereas other Asian parents are always nagging their kids to go to med school, my dad never stopped urging me to check out and apply for the listings at USAjobs.gov.

As you’ll see in the slideshow after this eulogy, my dad was very handsome when he was young, and although I don’t know if he was actually cool, he looked very cool. As a good-looking, well-educated young man who had a stable job, served in church and spoke perfect English, I’ve been told that my dad generated plenty of interest from various Chinese Christian young ladies up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but he was always oblivious to their intentions. By his mid-30s, he was an old bachelor – all of his younger siblings had long been married, and he never even had a girlfriend.

So 奶奶’s older sister Gloria – my 二姨婆 – got involved. She lived in Tokyo and was a leader among the Chinese international students at her church, and there was a woman in the fellowship who was my dad’s age, also unmarried, loved the Lord and was incredibly beautiful. This is how my parents met – through the active intervention of multiple members of the family - and they were married in 1980.

Thus began the “family man” chapter of my dad’s life. By 1984, he was married with two kids. I remember a few years ago, maybe just before I started my own family, I asked my dad if he’d always dreamt of being a husband and father. I think I was fishing for some nostalgic compliment about how we were an answer to my dad’s prayers. But instead, Dad said, “No, I did it because 奶奶 said so to and this is just what people do when they reach a certain age.” Again, pragmatism over preference.

But I think in the past month, as my brother and I have combed through photographs and home videos and old emails and journal entries, maybe that was my dad’s blunt honesty – or maybe it was his dry humor. What we do know is, whether he did ever fantasize about having a family or not, the fact is that he showed up for us. He took us to places we would enjoy, like science museums and bookstores, and he spent his money on things that would enrich us, from educational computer games to children’s literature magazines to a whole piano that he brought home when my mom was still only pregnant. When I was in high school and forgot all about a big scholarship application until literally the day it was due, he drove to the airport post office that night so that it could be postmarked on time. When I was preparing to leave for a summer missions trip in college, he drove all the way from San Diego to Malibu and back in a single day just so he could bring me a Bible to take with me. And when I moved to New York for graduate school and was very confident as a 21-year-old adult who did not need any parental handholding, my dad flew out with me anyway and comforted me all week as I instantly was terrified of being left alone in the big city.

Dad didn’t really have any big hobbies - he wasn’t a sports fan, he couldn't tell the difference between a good movie and a Steven Seagal movie, and he was not very political. But his one lifelong passion was serving God. Even when he was still an engineer, his major extracurricular activity was church service – mowing the lawn as the youngest deacon at his church in Rockville, or serving as an English/Cantonese/Mandarin interpreter at retreats around the country. When he was in his mid-40s, he began to hear a call from the Lord. Many people in this situation choose to postpone full-time ministry until after retirement from their secular careers, but Dad told Mom that he felt the urge to serve while he was still in the prime of his life. He told her that if he waited, he was afraid he might “miss the last train.”

So with Mom’s blessing, Dad enrolled at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, spending the week in Mill Valley and driving 50 miles back across the Bay to be with us on the weekends. After he graduated, we moved to Houston and spent four years at Chinese Christian Church. My dad also served as pastor at Christ Church of the Bay Area, Charlotte Chinese Baptist Church, Chinese for Christ Church of San Jose and First Chinese Southern Baptist Church of San Diego, and we are thankful to the brothers and sisters from those congregations who have joined us in person and on the livestream today.

Dad was a pretty charismatic preacher – he had a gift for languages, he was very smart, and he had a nice deep voice – but especially over the last month, what I’ve learned from the beautiful stories that various people have shared with me is that some of his most profound impacts in ministry may not have been at the pulpit but were in much less visible areas. Helping undocumented people at the border with their paperwork, establishing a late-night fellowship for restaurant workers so that they could have Bible study after the restaurant closed, visiting terminally ill patients as a hospital chaplain and inviting international students home for dinner – these were just some of the people Dad was passionate to serve.

My father experienced many trials in his pastoral career, and his communication, administrative and leadership style could be frustrating to some. He didn’t like explaining himself – which meant his decisions and thought processes could be hard to understand, both in his personal life and his ministry. But while being a P.K. taught me that people are fallible - Dad included – my father taught us, through his response to adversity, that the Lord is always faithful. It is because of Dad’s wisdom and our Heavenly Father’s grace that we never turned away from God, even amid tribulation.

Just before he turned 65, my dad began exhibiting symptoms of what was soon diagnosed as Parkinson’s Disease. In hindsight, he was wise to obey the Lord’s call when he did, because he would have been unable to enter the ministry in his retirement age. Instead, the last 15 years of Dad’s life were a slow reversal of everything that had defined him up until then. It was a deconstruction of his own strength, his own talents, his own autonomy. But all the way to the end, even as his cognition faded in and out, his heart remained with all of us: He was constantly asking me to reach out to both his literal brothers and sisters, who preceded him into heaven, as well as those from past churches to see how they were doing, and when I wasn’t around, he would “talk” to my brother and I at the dining table, as if we were still kids living at home.

I want to close on a story that explains how much my father meant to me. About four years ago, amid the thick of the pandemic, I was having a really hard time. I don’t remember what I was depressed about, but whatever it was, I was on the outs with pretty much everyone I was closest to: my mom, my brother, my husband. My dad’s Parkinsons at this point was already pretty advanced, and he was usually too tired or out of it to talk on the phone. But one night, both of my parents were on speaker phone with me when I was at a particularly low point and my dad, out of the blue, asked me, “How are you feeling?”

That’s all I needed to burst into tears, and while my mom was having trouble understanding whatever was going on, Dad didn’t need any explanation. “Rebecca and I, we’re the same,” he told her. “She feels things differently. She processes differently.”

It has been in the loneliest times in my life that I’ve felt closest to my father. Somehow, he knew exactly what to say. “I wish I could hold you in my arms. Just imagine that I’m holding your hand, okay? Can you feel it? Can you feel the warmth?”

And I could. This is what I wrote in my journal afterwards: “Sometimes, all you need is one. One person in the entire world cut from your cloth, one person to know and love you and not expect anything from you. One person who simply wants you to know: I care. I understand. I’m here. And just when I needed it the most, my heavenly Father restored my earthly father, if only for this crucial moment, and gave him the vision and words and clarity and physical and cognitive acuity to be 爸爸 again.”

I’ve had a lot of time to wonder what my dad’s life means, what story God is telling through his journey. When he pledged himself to full-time ministry, he pleaded to God, “I will serve you with all my heart, all my strength and all my mind. I will take care of your house. Please take care of mine.” And indeed, my dad became the foundation upon which our family – which started out as single income, immigrant wife, two young kids – has been so abundantly blessed. Yet there were times during the last 15 years in which I questioned if maybe this prolonged trial of illness and caregiving we were all under was because of some lessons that God was trying to teach us, and that maybe we were all simply suffering the consequences of our failure to understand. But from the moment Dad passed, all of us – me, my mom, my brother – have been filled with the absolute certainty of God’s goodness in our lives, my dad’s included. He once told me that he thought one of God’s final acts of mercy in life is how you’re called home: preferably painlessly and peacefully, at home in one’s sleep. As it turned out, this was the ending the Lord chose for my dad’s time on earth: with my mom by his side, his body spent, his soul at rest.

In other words, upon reflection I have no doubt at all that God loved my dad. And not because of my dad’s goodness or his talents or his service, but simply because that is who our Heavenly Father is. One who knows us and loves us because of His grace. If that is the ultimate testimony of my dad’s life, then I believe it has served its purpose. Read less