Her road to Christ was so unevenly paved that to this day, Pastor Wu Xia begins her testimony by saying: “My mother sacrificed me for her healing.”

To her, that stark statement sums up the painful reality of her childhood in Minqing County of Fuzhou, China. It was a season of life when uncertainty, she says, was the mainstay.

Now a mother of three, Wu lives in Singapore, serving at Pasir Panjang Hill Brethren Church in the Chinese ministry. She also runs family-related courses in her community.

A living sacrifice

She shares: “When I was 17, my mother had a weird illness. Even today I still do not have a clue what it might have been – whether it was physical, psychological or spiritual. I was too young then to discern.”

Growing up in uncertainty: Ps Wu Xia (left) as an 18-year-old with her mother in Minqing County, China.

The symptoms ranged from tightness in the chest, to apathy and lethargy. She often needed people to remain by her side for company, even as she burst into bouts of complaining and rambling.

Wu speculates that the “illness” may have had spiritual roots, as the family had a record of dabbling in divination and fortune telling.

Her mother eventually went to a local church at a neighbour’s invite, accompanied by Wu.

“Two months in and there was a huge difference. She no longer needed constant medical attention, and her outlook on life improved significantly.”

Wu was not yet a believer, but she kept her mother company while the latter spent extended hours in praise and worship every night. “We would finish dinner around 6.30, open up the hymn book and sing until around 9.30 before we called it a night.”

Over time, Wu herself started going to church. First she found herself socialising in the sanctuary, then she was volunteering – whether to teach singing classes or water the church’s crops.

One night, she had a strange dream in which she saw herself preaching confidently behind a pulpit. When told, her mother’s nonchalant response was: “Oh yes, of course! I consecrated you to God.

“I told Him: ‘If You heal me, I will give You my daughter.’ ”

Wu recounts: “I was outraged on the outset. How could she do that to her daughter? I empathised with Isaac in the Genesis account.”

The encounter led her to reason: “My mother is selfish and unreasonable, that is an established fact. But is God the same? I needed to know. I needed to know if God was like my mother; I needed to know if God was worthy of giving my life to.”

Seeking God

To find answers, Ps Wu launched into an intense study of the Bible. “Every day before daybreak, I would pack my bag with my Bible, a notebook, a pen, a full water bottle, and a handful of steamed mantou. I would head to church, then I would return home for dinner.”

She read while standing upright, and “when I got sick of standing I’d sit. When I got sick of sitting I’d kneel.

“Stand, sit, kneel; stand, sit, kneel … it probably had something to do with my stubborn nature,” she chuckles.

She admits that reading the Bible was nauseating at the start, but in the same breath she says: “It felt like my first love with God; it was very intimate. I would tell God that I did not understand a passage, and overhear some members of the pastoral team discuss it in the hallway, or have that same passage explained in service that very weekend.

“That is a very personal experience, and no one can take that away from you.”

Learning to pray

Her first prayers were a simple “chit-chat with God”.

“I had no idea how praying worked, but I started pouring out my emotions, no matter how trivial. Things like: ‘God, I can’t understand this passage’; ‘God, I don’t feel too good in this part of my body’; or even, ‘God, my mother is so annoying sometimes but I know I am not supposed to be angry at her.’  

“Initially I wondered if this God also disregarded my feelings but over time I realised that He holds my hand through the journey, step-by-step, with me.

“I began to understand that He cares about my feelings and my thoughts. He gives me time, He gives me space, He gives me surprises, He gives me growth.”

Net worth: $2,000

For further growth’s sake, Ps Wu considered travelling to Singapore to attend Bible college. But to do so, she would have to resign from her church – a decision she eventually made, even though she could count as a triumph the move from her first congregation of 2,000 people to her second, which was 17,000-strong.

Peace and goodwill to all: Ps Wu Xia (left) with a church mate, preparing to give out food to the community around PPHBC last Chinese New Year.

“I was prideful,” she says. “I was young and trusted. I had more than my peers. The senior pastor entrusted the most crucial of tasks to me. I felt like I could do everything.”

“So, I decided to cut my ties and break away clean.”

The humbling began the moment she arrived in Singapore. All she had, money-wise, was $2,000. “I thought that was enough for me to survive.

“All my friends in Singapore thought I was mad: ‘How can you not be worried, with only $2,000 on you, to study here?’ ”

Providentially, however, a friend introduced her to a local church that hired her as an intern. She was given an allowance and an EZ-Link card. Her air tickets for home visits back to China were even sponsored.

Close friends and relatives found ways to supply her school fees indirectly. Wu also earned a small income by voicing Chinese audio recordings for a missionary project.

Nonetheless, she confesses: “I was suddenly a nobody. I started to doubt my worth. People used to feed me praises, affirmations, and tangible worth constantly.

“Suddenly I had nothing. my identity collapsed within itself.

Walking back from lunch at Upper Paya Lebar Road one day, feeling depressed, she wondered: “God, do You still want me?” and recounts hearing a voice speaking to her from within her: “Wu Xia, when you work, I look at you in a certain way.

“When you are not working, I still look at you in that same way – I see you the way that you are: Precious.”

She shares: “Something clicked in me, and I never looked back at that cloud of depression again.”

Declaring that she is now seldom anxious, she says: “If I know for a fact that I am under His wing, of course He will protect me, what do I have to fear?”

Referencing the changes that the Covid-19 situation has brought about, she elaborates: “God does not give us problems too difficult to solve.

“He gives me a little more than I can handle. What I do not already know, I learn.

“I had no idea how to record (sermon videos) at home. I knew neither how to edit, nor how time consuming video editing was. It certainly did not help that I was a perfectionist.

“Back in Fujian’s Bible college, one of my lecturers used to repeat this adage: 大事化小事，小事化无事，无事不找事，遇事不怕事*. Fear not, deal with them as you go. Once He deals with it for you, you’ll find yourself a little stronger than before.”

A year into the pandemic, she continues in her efforts to encourage the more resistant to try out Zoom services even though there are complaints from her congregants. She still seeks out new media to connect with people via WhatsApp daily devotions and YouTube links.

She even ventures offline by dropping groceries at some of the elderly members’ homes.

Reflecting on her journey thus far, Wu comments: “One gift of grace I constantly receive is correction. When my thinking falls short, He always finds a way to correct the way I think that helps me walk out of my situation.

“He sees not the work I do, but the me who does the work, no matter how difficult things may be.”

*The saying roughly translates: Whittle big problems down into small ones, whittle small problems down into none, where there is no trouble do not seek trouble, where there are troubles do not be troubled.

This interview was conducted in collaboration with Alpha Singapore. Alpha is a series of sessions exploring the Christian faith, run all around the globe. Everyone’s welcome. To find out more, go to Alpha Singapore’s Facebook page.

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