It began with a casual chat between two Secondary 5 classmates.

“We were not that close, but we shared the same birthday. So that was the only conversation we had,” said Ng Zhong De, 35.

The next thing he knew, his classmate was inviting him to a church youth group meeting. Zhong De declined. But every Friday after that, the boy would call him with the same invitation. This went on for months.

“I got a bit fed up. Just to shut him up, I said ‘yes’,” Zhong De recalled.

He had also heard there were “a lot of girls there”, which helped him convince a group of his friends – about eight to 10 boys – to go with him to the meeting.

That decision, made when he was a 17-year-old, would forever change his life.

No meaning in life

Zhong De grew up in a family of a different faith.

“They taught me that when I die, there would be 18 levels of hell, that there was reincarnation and that if I didn’t do good deeds, I would become a cockroach,” he recounted. “But I couldn’t make sense of life after death.”

In secondary school, Zhong De did well enough to be among the top three in his cohort and won Edusave awards every year. But no matter how well he did, he couldn’t find meaning in life.

“My parents are typical Asians. You do well, no comments. Don’t do well, a lot of comments.

“In Secondary 3, something broke. I thought: ‘Why study so hard? My parents are indifferent anyway. If I die tomorrow, I become a cockroach with no memories of this life. Everything I gain in this life would then be meaningless.’”

In Secondary 5, Zhong De (top row, second from left) accepted an invitation to visit a youth group in church. That decision changed his life.

So Zhong De stopped trying. His grades plummeted. He spent his time at pool halls and movie theatres, and became “half a delinquent”.

“By Secondary 5, I was quite empty inside even though I had a lot of friends. I couldn’t answer the question, ‘What is the meaning of life if I was going to die anyway?’”

Openly anti-Christian   

Zhong De also became “openly anti-Christian” and verbally abusive towards the Christians in his school. He had developed a resistance to them after a close friend became a Christian and turned “very weird”.

Zhong De (first row, extreme right) was against Christianity in his teen years because his close friend became one and turned “very weird”.

At the time, Zhong De admitted that he was a “gangster wannabe” with a dirty mouth.

“He started to oppose the things that we did. When we talked about girls, he would be very offended and would tell us not to do it.

“He would say, ‘My Father doesn’t want me to do this.’ I thought he was talking about his biological father, but he was talking about his heavenly Father.

“After awhile, I got very fed up with him. By the time I was 17, I was very anti-Christian and I always made fun of my friend openly in my class.

“The other guy who asked me to go to church probably targeted me because I was the last person anyone would think to become a Christian.”  

A void filled  

It was a surprise to everyone when Zhong De returned to the youth meeting the following week – this time with a smaller group of about four to five friends.

“I don’t know why. There was just something that drew me,” he said.

At that second meeting, there was an altar call. The friend who had invited him to church asked to pray for Zhong De.

“I said, ‘I don’t need any prayer.’ But he pulled me to the front.

“The moment he put his hands on me to pray for me, I started breaking down. I was crying so badly that my mucus all came out and I was on my knees.

“My friends who came with me were having a good laugh behind me. But I just kept crying. I couldn’t control it.”

Zhong De did not know it then but, looking back, he realised that it was the Holy Spirit touching his heart.

Then the guest speaker asked if anyone would like to accept Jesus.

It was a small gathering of some 70 people and Zhong De was one of a few newcomers in their midst.

“Everyone looked at me. I was very stressed. So, as a people pleaser, I raised my hand. And they said, ‘Okay, you accepted Christ.’ It was pure peer pressure,” he admitted.

That was how Zhong De ended up at the Centre of New Life, with a youth leader assigned to follow up with him.

It was the community in church that drew Zhong De (middle row, seventh from the left) in.

Though he had accepted Christ out of peer pressure, he found a warmth in the church community that he had not expected.

“When I went to church, I had an emptiness, a void in my heart. I had grown up with low self-esteem and an inferiority complex. I just wanted to belong.

“At the youth group, I experienced a lot of warmth. In church, everybody asks about your day, we have dinner together. I had never experienced this kind of community before. That kept me going back.”

Another persistent friend

When Zhong De was serving his National Service, he stopped attending the youth group after a number of leaders left following some internal issues.

“There was a Youth Ministry one Saturday and the next Saturday, there wasn’t. With no more youth service, the bulk of us left.”

After a year away, Zhong De (top row, second from left) returned to the community he loved.

One week turned to many. The longer Zhong De stayed away from church, the harder it was for him to return. He never thought to go to another church because starting over with a new community just seemed too difficult.

Before he knew it, he had been absent for a year.

Then he got a message from a young adult in church who had befriended him when he was a youth. The young man used to give him a ride home from church meetings because they lived near each other. He would also invite Zhong De to play board games with his cell group.

“He told me there was a church camp and asked, ‘Do you want to come?’ We hadn’t spoken for a long time, but he offered to pay for the camp and settle the plane tickets and everything. All I needed to do was pack my clothes and show up.”

So Zhong De went.

“It was awkward at first. I saw all these familiar faces whom I hadn’t spoken to in a long time,” he said.

But during service and worship each day, he was moved. “I remembered what I had lost and realised I really missed this. It felt like I had experienced a glimpse of heaven on earth.”

Zhong De got baptised shortly after that. More than a decade later, he is set to be a Pastor in that same church.

Zhong De (back row, third from left) with the youths in his church.

His has been a journey paved by persistent friends who pursued him with God’s love, and gave him a chance to encounter Christ and experience his community.

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