A Sweet Experience Brought About by Carelessness…
Sister YT: In 2010, I had just come into the Lord's recovery, and in every respect I was still a little child. It was the first time I went to Taiwan to attend the New Spring Chinese-speaking conference. (Thinking back now, I considered myself even then to have already "seen the big world.") But at the time I did not even know what kind of occasion a conference was; I only knew, in high spirits, to follow the brothers and sisters to Taiwan to blend.
Just as the train was about to reach Hong Kong, I suddenly discovered that my travel document had expired! Anxiously I asked the brothers and sisters traveling with me what to do. None of them knew how to handle it… In my haste, I made an international call to ask Sister Rufeng, who was still in Taipei, for help.
Sister Rufeng: When I received the sister's phone call, I was burning with anxiety, and I immediately contacted Brother Yongchang (永昌) of Hall Fifteen in Taipei. After he understood the situation, he told me to contact Brother Wu Yucheng directly. I felt very apprehensive, and also that it was too presumptuous, because I did not know Brother Wu at all; and I was only a little sister—was it not rather improper to call a leading brother's cell phone directly in the middle of the night? But Brother Yongchang confidently gave me Brother Wu's cell phone number and told me not to think so much, but quickly to solve the problem for the sister.
With a heart full of trepidation I dialed Brother Wu's number, and the call was soon answered. I truly felt indebted—I could tell from his voice that I had awakened the brother from his sleep. The brother concisely and clearly told me how to handle the matter, gave me the name of the responsible brother who would receive her in Hong Kong, and also wrote down the sister's name and flight number…
Sister YT: Sister Rufeng called back to tell me Brother Wu's answer, and I felt a little more at ease. So, in the one-accord prayer of the brothers and sisters, I arrived in Hong Kong. The brothers and sisters serving in Hong Kong quickly helped me get my document in order, and I flew smoothly on to Taiwan.
To my surprise, I had just stepped off the plane and was still curiously looking around when I heard, far off, a voice calling my name, having searched all the way to find me. The voice was very resonant, yet with a touch of weariness. When Brother Wu came up to me, I stared at him blankly, puzzled—how could anyone in Taiwan know me? And I had never met him; who was he? Only afterward did I learn that he was the very Brother Wu whom Sister Rufeng had turned to for help the night before.
Brother Wu was like a kind father and like an elder brother. He confirmed again and again that the matter of my travel document had all been settled, and then he took out his name card and charged me, "Here, if you have any difficulty at all, you can call me." (That name card is still kept to this day in the side pocket of my camera bag.) Having made everything clear, Brother Wu hurried away.
In the blink of an eye, ten years have passed! Brother Wu's voice, his movements, and his expression as he spoke at the airport are all vivid before my eyes.
Now, in the Lord, under the laboring leadership of the elder brothers, we too have gradually grown up. The hymn says that the brothers and sisters surround us like a cloud. But to me, the brothers and sisters are more like precious stones, one after another, that have been shining in my heart all along; and Brother Wu Yucheng is one of them, forever treasured in our hearts, shining upon me.
Sister Rufeng: From childhood to adulthood, in all the big meetings, as long as I saw Brother Wu's tall and sturdy figure directing things on the scene with composure, there was a kind of steadfast, expectant joy. In 2017, before the graduation meeting of the Full-Time Training, the whole class took its graduation group photo. We lined up in good order, all standing on the choir risers, waiting. When the door of the deacons' room opened and Brother Wu came out leading the teachers, suddenly I saw that life has weight! When Christ is formed in a man, the glory expressed from the depths of that man can by no means be compared with any vainglory on earth.
The Lord has taken away the one He regarded as precious. Though we are reluctant beyond measure, we know that we have been called in one hope, and we shall at last be reunited before God. The most practical way to cherish Brother Wu's memory is to pursue the publications well (which makes me think again of this "super salesman" of the Book Room, who at the end of every meeting would go up on the platform and eagerly cry out to promote the publications), so that the words of the ministry may be richly constituted into us. Only thus will we not fail him, who all his life, for God and for us, served and labored to the point of exhausting himself.