Two Christmases ago, David Loh and his then-girlfriend now wife Esther Chua decided to do something radical. Instead of hosting a party for family and friends, they decided to host one for total strangers. David issued an invitation on his TikTok account and received nearly 300 responses.

David (left) and Esther (right, fourth) and their guests at the Christmas party for the lonely. Actress Rui En (left, second), a personal friend, dropped by to lend her support.

“During Christmas, the lonely get lonelier and the suffering suffer quieter,” David, 29, told Salt&Light.

“We just wanted to love people who were lonely and didn’t have anyone to spend Christmas with.”

There was no plan to evangelise, just a desire to love.

Those familiar with David will hardly be surprised. The manager at Christian artist Patrick Bezalel’s art gallery is known to go up to strangers to give a word of encouragement, share the Gospel or simply to pray for them, anywhere and everywhere.

To David, coffeeshops, the streets of Bangkok, Disneyland, bus stops, taxis, even petrol kiosks are all fertile ground for God’s message of love to be sown.

Once, on the way to church, he stopped a stranger who was limping, to pray for him. On his honeymoon with Esther, 28, early this year, he shared the Gospel with a waiter even though they were hurrying to catch a bus. While standing outside a store with Esther a few months ago, he stopped a woman walking by to tell her God loved her.

David noticed this boy had been sitting in the sun for a very long time, looking very sad. He went up and talked to him and discovered that the boy was stressed out about his exams.

But this young man who is so passionate about sharing the way to eternal life was once ready to “give up on life”.

Welcoming a lonely heart

David was 17 when he experienced his first heartbreak.

“It hit me pretty hard. I was very lonely, broken and sad. I felt like my life was colourless, nothing more to look forward to in life.”

In that state of despondency, he decided to “give Jesus a shot”. A friend was inviting another friend to church and David asked if he could go as well.

David at 17 when he decided to give Jesus “a shot”.

He was not unfamiliar with Christianity. His parents had sent him to a Christian student care centre when he was in primary school.

“When I entered the church and met the people, I felt they were very nice. The atmosphere and culture of the place were very different from what I had known. Coming to a place where people openly showed love and care, that did something to me,” he told Salt&Light.

So he returned week after week because he was “hungry for God and wanted more”. Within a year, he was singled out to be a youth cell group leader.

A Friend in the field

Leadership turned out to be much more difficult than David anticipated because he was so new to the faith.

“When I became a youth cell leader, there was typical teenager drama. I was left feeling rejected and alone, convinced that the people in church were the same as the people outside.”

Right by where David lived was a field about the size of five soccer pitches. One night while walking by it and feeling particularly rejected, he decided to go into the field to “spend some time with God”.

“It was so dark. I wanted to wallow in my self pity there. I was a bit dramatic like that,” he said wryly.

As he lay beneath a blanket of stars, he had an epiphany.

“I realised how small I was in the universe and yet God still loves me. So I asked God to show me a shooting star and He did. I asked Him to show me another and another. By the end of the night, it was 6am and I had seen seven shooting stars.

“In that moment, I knew that God saw me, saw my loneliness. In the dark, God loved me and spoke to me.”

From then on, David would go to the field every night with his guitar to worship God and talk to Him.

“In that field I found Jesus. Not a historical figure, not a religious figure but a Friend, a God who knew me and loved me in a very personal way. And I have tried to be a better friend to Him ever since.”

David was not alone anymore.

Beginnings of a street evangelist

Two years later when he was 20, he had another encounter that would point him to a new ministry.

“I was watching a YouTube video of street evangelist Todd White. He was going around preaching and praying for the sick, and people were healed on the spot. You could see people being moved to tears. There was something in there that was like, ‘Wow! If this is real, I need to experience it.’

“Something in me came alive. This is the thing about calling. When you see someone operating in that grace of the calling in which God is calling you, it stirs something in you. Deep calling to deep.”

So David started to pray for anyone he saw whom he thought needed healing.

He was buying shoes at this man’s store when he noticed that the man had a leg condition. David then prayed for the man.

David holding up a sign at a Bangkok market offering free healing. He was moved to boldly offer to pray for healing for people there.

“I was just trying it out to see if this is real, like a kid putting God to the test. I probably prayed for 100 people and 100 didn’t get healed.”

But he remembers the first person he prayed for who did get healed. It was a teenager David saw at a shopping centre who was limping along with a pair of crutches.

“I ran to him and said, ‘Can I try to pray for you and see if it works?’ At that point, he was sitting down and I prayed for him but didn’t have the guts to ask him to check if he was healed.”

The boy was waiting for his parents to pick him up. When their car arrived, he stood to walk to them. That was when he realised that there was no more pain in his leg.

“After you see the first healing, you forget about the 100 who were not healed. I thought: If this is real, I want to spend the rest of my life doing this.”

A ministry in healing  

Over time, David learnt to let the Holy Spirit lead him, like the time he was at a bus stop and the Holy Spirit prompted him to go to a coffee shop nearby instead. When he got there, there was only an elderly man who was blind in one eye.

The man told David that he had lost his right eye in an accident two years before and David asked to pray for him. But after praying three times, nothing happened. So they just exchanged contacts.

However, a week later, the man asked to meet David. His right eye was starting to see some light and he was also experiencing less pain in it. When they met, David prayed for him again. Again, nothing happened. Despite persisting for 20 minutes, healing did not take place.

Recounted David on his Instagram post: “Puzzled, I asked the Holy Spirit, ‘What’s up?’ He simply said, ‘Share the Gospel.’”

David did not think the man would respond because no healing had taken place. But he obeyed nonetheless and the man ended up praying to receive Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. Today, he sends David Bible verses and apologetics articles regularly.

On another occasion at a coffee shop, David saw a man limping to his car and the Holy Spirit told him: “This one.”

David prayed for him and the pain in his left leg completely disappeared. The healing opened the door for David to share the Gospel with the man who prayed to accept Jesus.

Said David: “People say I have the gift of healing. I say, ‘How do you know?’ They say, ‘Because you pray for people and people get healed.’

“I pray for 50 people, three get healed. Is that the gift of healing? Maybe if you prayed for 50, you might get 10. The problem is that you don’t pray for people.”

Taking the Message virtual

Because his faith is a large part of his life, David had always talked openly about it on his social media accounts. But during the COVID pandemic, he became more intentional about it, encouraged by his spiritual parents Patrick, his employer, and Patrick’s wife Lily.

Now David shares not only personal reflections but also sermonettes, prayers and testimonies of his street evangelism encounters. Most recently, he put up a post praying for those who had trouble sleeping.

The Instagram post that prayed for those with insomnia. Screengrab of David’s Instagram post.

“I felt God say, ‘Post content on this.’ I knew this would be content that would not do well, naturally because it was nothing fancy. But because I felt the nudging from God to do that, I did it.

“After I posted it, there were a lot of people ministered by it and I was surprised.”

In these last few years, David has become even more convinced of the power of social media to take the Gospel beyond church walls. Preaching the “same God in different settings”, the good news not only has a wider reach, transcending space, it also has greater permanence because the message stays online forever.

He tells Salt&Light about a girl who had tried to kill herself. She did not succeed and ended up in the hospital instead. There, she decided to give God another chance and began looking for a church. But the thought of stepping into one alone intimidated her. She decided to scroll through TikTok instead.

“She came across my account and reached out to me and my wife. We brought her to church.”

Another person, a teenager, was going through a very difficult time. He chanced upon David’s social media account and reached out. They started communicating online.

“After that, when he was more open, we met up in real life. Now he is in church serving,” said David.

“People follow people, not church accounts. We might be the only contact point between them and God.”

Which is why David is very careful about what he posts.

David’s social media is a mix of reflections about the Christian faith, his experiences praying for people and sharing Christ on the street, and short teachings.

“My first thought is not: Will this bless people? My first thought is: Am I promoting myself? Is this out of the flesh? I check my intention first. I don’t want to post something with the intention that it is about me even though it might bless people.

“The most important thing is purity of heart before God. Right before I post, especially the healing content, I am always in a fear and trembling mode. My wife and I always pray before.”

Opening doors in the real world

His online sharing has blended seamlessly with his face-to-face outreach efforts as well.

“I am at the age where all my friends are getting married. At the past few weddings, people will ask me, ‘Your thing on IG, is it real?’ I wasn’t the one who initiated it but I ended up telling people about Jesus.

“This is the power of the media. The world is watching and you are sowing seeds of faith.”

David’s popularity on social media made it possible for him to reach out to people for the Christmas party in 2022.

It is also because of his online presence that his Christmas invitation two years ago received such a resounding response. At the two pizza parties that eventually came out of it, there were people of various ages.

“They shared openly what they were struggling with. They were being vulnerable. People were tearing, hugging and we were all strangers. It encouraged a lot of people.”

Though they never shared their faith at the party and never intended to, one of the attendees said to them at the end it: “I know you are a Christian. The way you love people is so genuine. Which church are you attending?”

The couple are still in touch with a few of the people from the parties.

More importantly to David, his initiative inspired others to organise parties for the lonely as well. The ripple effect is exactly what he was hoping to see because if one couple can do this, imagine what many couples can do?

“Christmas is a time where you should see Christians in the streets as well because that is where the people are.”

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