Chen Cheng Mu Huang

Mourn our mother, Mrs. Huang Mu Chen Cheng (Mu Chen Yong) First of all, thank you all for coming and accompanyinng our mother for her final journey. Thank you for praying for her soul, and thank Legion of Mary sisters who have been visiting our mother on a regular basis.

I'm sure we all want to know what kind of person our mother was.

Common description for a good wife and mother--intelligent and capable, excellent in cooking, financial management, and housekeeping--does not match well with our mother.

Our mother was an ordinary mother. We never cared about what food she liked, or what kind of flowers she loved. She did not have big accomplishments, nor did she have any outstanding son or daughter, and she had never shared with us any great principle or philosophy.

So, let's talk about the relationship between our mother and our heavenly Father today.

In the year 1955, our mother and our father--Mr. Huang Wei San from Linqing, Shandong--met in Taiwan, got married, and settled in Taipei. The home in Taiwan where I lived for seventeen years was next to a church. Above the church entrance a sign read, "Jesus is Lord, God loved the world." Every time I passed by, I would recite it aloud. -------- Please look at this picture. My mother was pregnant with me, standing in front of the church entrance. The picture was taken by my father; the background was always important whenever he took pictures. And when I discovered this photo and found "God loved the world" in the background, it seemed our father had already foreshadowed our life path.

When I was young, I learned these nice songs from Sunday worships--"Lord in My Heart, I'm Not Afraid", "Jesus Loves Me". Even now we can still sing them. The highlight was the evening evangelical event during summer holiday; we all looked forward to it. Our mother would have helped us wear neatly, then elder sister led us to go listen to God's Words. The most exciting part was that after the event each of us got a piece of candy. You could say that I grew up in eating church’s candies. Early on, big brothers and sisters over there had been telling us: Jesus Christ makes the lame walk, the blind see, and the dead alive. I didn't remember much else, but these ideas were deeply rooted in my heart. Although I questioned them sometimes, my love towards the Lord grew gradually till my son, Ryan Jinyi Lin and I were baptized in 2007.

Thank you, mother, for preparing us early on, so that we could respond to the Lord's calling when time came.

After started schooling, there were various fund-raising from time to time at school. Every time when I told my mother about donating, she always replied, "Definitely! We should contribute!" Since all five of us children were in school, the donation was usually not much, but mother taught us to have a heart to help others.

Mother was born in 1928, Rizhao County, Shandong Province, the home of a landlord. At the time, she already had four or five brothers. She was the long-awaited baby girl, so you could imagine how much love and attention she had got. Despite of that, she was very humble at home. She had never yelled at her husband or her five children, let alone hitting us. It's a shame that I myself didn't do a good job at these two things. When my son, Ryan, was young, I often lost my patience at him.

Mother had a total of five children, in this order--three girls, Huang Lu , Huang Sheng, and Huang Kun; two boys, Huang Pi and Huang Lei. I'm her second child, and in my memory there wasn't much interaction with my mother. During my adolescent years, my rebellious act was to hide behind closed doors and threatened not to have dinner. My mother, who was busy with all the housekeeping work, would always at the end gently ask me out to eat. Although mother didn't have much formal schooling, or any training in child care, when I needed her she would be there for me and provide the attention I needed.

Mother never showed off the achievements or performance of her children, and yet quite easily accepted our failure. After I finished my last year study in the School of Pharmacy, there was a lot of pressure for internship, and I was testing my mother, "I don't want to study any more." And mother replied without hesitation, "Sure, come move back home." Since that moment, I finally understood my mother, that “I didn't need to be a star to be in her show”, and her love would not change because of my success or failure. This also puts my own education on Ryan to a shame.

The love that my mother displayed made it easier for me to accept God's unconditional love.

Since my mother was bedridden, I made two requests to God. First was to give my mother, who was close to being in vegetative state, three more months of life, so that I would have courage for another funeral arrangement again. Mother stayed with us for another year and a half. When I returned home on the night mother had left this world, I suddenly realized what God's will was. Heavenly Father understands our weaknesses much better than we do.

Second request was to let my mother to leave peacefully. People in vegetable state often have organ failures when near the end. If mother's lungs had got weak, it would be painful to hear her suffering from breathing difficulties. If we were to accept doctor's suggestion of feeding morphine, mother would be peaceful but her lungs would get weakened, and this is almost like euthanasia and we cannot do that as her children.

On October 3rd, when helping mother to turn over, I found that she was staring at me with her gentle eyes, but I didn't take it seriously at the time. That night, while accompanied by my brother Huang Pi, mother passed away peacefully in her sleep. After the medical staff and my brother had left, and since Father had poured oil on mother several times prior, I did not bother anyone else. Together with my son we two put on holy scapular for mother. We lit the candles, prayed the rosary, and were extraordinarily calm. We then removed mother's pajamas and changed clothes for her and stayed with her.

Mother was baptized and became a Catholic with joy on Easter 2008, by Father Chen Feng . In the early morning of October 4th, 2011 she rest in peace and finished her worldly journey set forth by heavenly Father. She was eighty-three. Mother, we thank you!!

Second daughter

Sheila Sheng Huang

10.13.2011