Last weekend was Father's Day, and many of us took some time off to honor our dads.
Being Asian, many of us really get tongue tied when it comes to expressing our love to our Dads. It was relatively easier when it came to writing love letters to our mums, but as our Dads are usually more conservative and known to be people of fewer words - expressing our love seemed a even more daunting task.
To help our youths honor our dads, we decided to get them to make personalized trophies to their dads. It was a project where each dad would get a trophy with the words "TO THE BEST DADDY IN THE WORLD", coupled with a personalized inscription for each dad.
Some of the youths really profited big time from the exercise!
- 2 youths got an immediate increase in their allowance
- 1 youth got an increase in allowance and extra money to buy a guitar as well
- 1 youth saw the change in his father's heart and got him to come to church, on the same weekend.
- 1 youth who got saved for less than 6 months, saw the favor of God upon her life - She immediately plucked up her courage to tell her parents that she was now a Christian, and she even got permission for herself to get water baptized this coming July. PTL!
For myself - I gave my trophy to my dad as well. He smiled and said Thank You!
Not too much of a response - but it was a big breakthrough for a Chinese man in his 70s.
Sometimes, our dads might not say or do much, but we must understand that they come from a more traditional background, and they do not know how to respond to our acts of love.
Just as we have problems saying "I love you" to them, they face the same difficulties expressing the same 3 words to us!
However, that does not change the fact that they are still very important people to us, and how we must always honor them. Things will change, as we keep on expressing our love to them!
1 Comment:
Well, old-fashioned dad-son combos can communicate quite a lot - including gratitude, camaraderie, etc - without being too loquacious about it. Shrugs, nods, grunts, shoulder-punches: These can be invested with a lot of meaning over the years.
Which isn't to say that coming out and expressing yourself to the utmost isn't a bad thing. It's just that, sometimes, quite a lot can already be said without saying anything...
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