Sg. Maaw or Middle Nang Chong Village has an old wooden Methodist Church called Hock Ming Methodist Church. This church served more than 100 Foochow families from 1927 to the curfew days in the 1970's. Next door to it was the Tiing Nang Primary school which has been closed for several decades . To reach this church many faithful members would walk about half an hour from the river side, if they rowed their own small boats to the Pang Sing Jetty. Those were the days. The late Rev Lau Ngo Kee, before he owned a bicycle, walked from house to house to spread the gospel and to visit the faithful.
When I was young, visiting my grandma here, some of the ladies would tell me that the elders did not need to wear shoes or slippers because they had thick SOLES from going about barefooted. Some of the elders would find carrying shoes or slippers in their hands very troublesome and they might forget where they put their shoes. Apparently in those days shoes were so precious that they were carried and not worn!!
On Sundays the barefooted worshippers would wash their feet at the bottom of the staircase taking water from a water jar. And then they would wash their face and comb their hair. It did not matter if they were sweaty and with hair full of latex from their early hours of rubber tapping. However some faithful did not tap rubber on Sundays.
Rainy days especially Sundays were happy days for them. So Praise the Lord, if Sunday was a rainy day, there would be more in the congregation. Today it would be just the opposite.
..Old photo of the church from a magazine.
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