Acts Chapter 29.  

Have you read it?

Most people stop at chapter 28. After all, that is where the Bible ends the book of the Acts, documenting the founding, building, and acts of the body of Christ, the church, after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But the acts of the Church did not stop there.

Chapter 29 is still unfolding.

At the passing of Hui Chew, the tissue seller who found church in the streets, friends of Hui Chew dived headlong into preparations for his funeral.

Not one had prior experience dealing with the legality of death nor of planning a funeral. Hundreds of text messages flew through WhatsApp that night: Lamentations, documentations; undertakers, funeral parlours; don’t snooze, we need the shoes; racing against the clock to get some clean socks; Hui Chew’s journey to his heavenly home required an outfit that befit; friends scurried, everyone hurried.

Before the clock struck midnight, everything was done, the death was certified, the wake and the funeral arranged.

It was to be a three-day wake, a full funeral and a sea burial, not a perfunctory ceremony dusting away the life of one who had been a gift to many.

That had been Hui Chew’s wish. The friends would split the cost and figure out the rest as they went along.

Despite being homeless and having multiple health issues, Hui Chew yearned to evangelise through his singing. Photo by Chessa Lim.

“Ultimately, we trusted that the Lord would provide,” says Yeo Cheng Yu who, with her husband Abraham Yeo, had taken Hui Chew into their home before his death.

The church arises

God did provide. And more.

The next day, Lincoln Tan, 29, and Spencer Chong, 43 and a part-time guitar teacher who leads worship at his church, put their hands up to provide live music at Hui Chew’s funeral services.

Timothy Anand Weerasekara, 34, saw the need on Hui Chew’s Facebook page, volunteered the audio equipment and himself, even though he did not know Hui Chew personally.

Reverend David Wong of the Mandarin congregation at St Andrew’s Cathedral, who had ministered to Hui Chew at the hospital before his passing, conducted both his wake and encoffin services.

Ng Xiao Yan, 36 years old and a civil servant, jumped without preparation into the job of simultaneous translation at the services because many in the neighbourhood who had known Hui Chew had turned up – and they spoke only Mandarin.

Medical social worker, Chermaine Kumar, who fed Hui Chew for two months while he was in hospital, translated his heart into this picture of the friends who took church outside of its walls and walked with him all the way Home. Photo courtesy of Chermaine Kumar.

Happy Life Group and friends of Hui Chew took turns to keep vigil for three days at the wake, ministering to guests, keeping order at the wake, creating livestreams, videos.

The people who stepped up to help were all highly skilled in their fields, says Abraham. “God did not just send help; He sent the best.”

Suzanna Yean, 54 and the owner of an apparel business, took on the translation of Hui Chew’s book Get Up and Go into Mandarin. Alva Huang had taken seven years of obedience to God to pen the book as a love gift to Hui Chew, who yearned to leave a legacy of himself in a world from which he had assumed he would disappear.

Suzanne was so compelled by his life story she decided to contribute by making his story accessible to more people.

The unsung hero of this story is the lady who took in Hui Chew and his mother when they were destitute and homeless. She would remain anonymous here, but her name has already been recorded in the books in heaven.

A tiny woman with a gigantic heart, that friend housed Hui Chew for 10 years in her space-constrained, one-bedroom rental flat where she lived with her two sons until she could no longer manage the round-the-clock care that would have been necessary for Hui Chew.

It was, in fact, her faithful dedication to Hui Chew that inspired Abraham and Cheng Yu to take him into their own home before he died.

God provides

Meanwhile, the list of friends committed to splitting the funeral expenses kept growing. Then members of the public started to write in to contribute after they found out about what friends were doing for Hui Chew, and that list kept growing as well.

Abraham and Alva with Hui Chew in October 2019.

“I am so touched by this testimony and God’s church in action,” says one of the contributors Shermeen Tan, a 57-year-old educator. “Such a powerful and beautiful testimony. We need to do more of this. God will multiply our five loaves and two fishes and create a miracle like what we have seen through the Happy LG.”

The contributions that poured in from the public went beyond covering the funeral expenses.

The Happy LG channelled the remainder to the friend who had provided refuge for Hui Chew and his mother. Hui Chew had always yearned to provide for the friend, although it was close to impossible with the little he made from selling tissue paper.

With his death, the body of Christ has helped him fulfil that desire.

“I saw the body of Christ rally together to love Hui Chew and fulfil his last wishes. I’ve never really encountered anything so phenomenal,” says Chermaine Kumar, the 29-year-old medical social worker who advocated for and literally fed Hui Chew in the final two months of his life at the hospital.

“It’s so out-of-this-world that it looks like Heaven. I am amazed how God used so many people to provide, love, care for and protect one person,” Chermaine says.

The story continues

The funeral is done and dusted. The grief of loss has begun to seep into the hearts of the friends of Hui Chew.

The friends would be the first to admit that Hui Chew had been more of a gift to them than they to him. His simple faith and gentle ways have challenged and blessed them in many ways and often.

The Happy Life Group treating Hui Chew (in green) to a birthday meal in Nov 2020. It would be his last birthday celebration. Photo courtesy of Abraham Yeo.

That same story has gone beyond the immediate circle of Hui Chew’s friends to knock on other lives.

“The spirit with which the group started has lived on past Hui Chew and has taken on a life of its own – an authentic, safe space for believers and non-believers alike who are all searching for God in their own ways,” says Ben Kinberg, a sales professional in New York who had read the story on Salt&Light and wanted to contribute as well. “It’s beautiful.”

Although Alva is happy that Hui Chew’s story has touched lives, she is sad it had to happen only after he is gone. “I wish he had seen this while on earth. I have a desperate longing for the Church to really strengthen their hands and feet, to go,” she says. “What we have done is not unique, and it shouldn’t be rare.”

As the story of Hui Chew unfolded, more and more tales of deeds prompted by love and faith have emerged.

The Mandarin congregation at St Andrew’s Cathedral’s had been silently supporting Hui Chew financially for a few years. Another friend who met Hui Chew and his mother in the streets 20 years ago, had been in the background ferrying Hui Chew back and forth from the hospital, bailing him out from police custody when he was arrested for his suicide attempts, helping him with immigration issues.

What the body of Christ has done for Hui Chew is “a beautiful thing”, says Reverend Wong at Hui Chew’s memorial service.

Indeed, this display of love and obedience from the body of Christ in the beauty of its diversity and unity shall always be held up as a memorial to the hands that held his, the feet that walked with his, and the love that carried him.

The story of Hui Chew and the Happy LG goes beyond a story about good deeds on earth.

“Everything we do is prompted by the spirit of God and by obedience to the task He has set before us,” Abraham says.

Faith without deeds is dead, but deeds without faith is just as dead. A finite act of good deed done in the name of compassion, even love, can last a day, a month, even generations but it eventually fades away.

Only when the finite offering of five loaves and two fishes are placed into the hands of an infinite God does it stretch into eternity.

Acts chapter 29 is the continuing story of an everlasting God.

He is filling the pages with His body. He is filling the pages with you.