Lunch date with a mother-like figure 💕

This is Pastor Gloria, one of the pastors in my church whom I have known for 19 years.

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU ABOUT THIS GEM IN MY LIFE

Pastor Gloria has been a crucial figure in my early 20s. I lost my mom when I was 22 years old to liver cancer and since then, Pastor Gloria was like a mother to me. Nope, we did not do anything "official" to this relationship but it was just organic through lots of reciprocal communication and mutual relationships. I am very open to her, never holding back when sharing anything, and I will always listen and heed her advice because she's such a role model in many ways. One of the greatest coincidences is that she shares the same birthday as my mother, my mother being one year older. WOW, I will always remember both of them.

She has been with me through many challenges in my life and I will always call upon her when I need counsel and prayer support. Without fail she will always be there to comfort, encourage and pray for me. I couldn't ask for more. She is someone very firm and grounded in her relationship with Christ, someone that you can really count on, who is very prayerful and loves Jesus.

I have the privilege to be very good and close friends with her whole family. It's not one of those shabby and shallow relationships, but we have gone through so many things together in many ways that make these relationships super precious to me. During the early 2010s, I was in full-time ministry at church and had the opportunity to travel to various places in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore with Pastor Gloria and her husband, Pastor David whom I love and respect very much. My time with them just made me understand the person they are even more, and it helped increase my love and respect for them. I think there's a special spiritual bond when we do ministry together because we're open to the Spirit to serve the body of Christ.

So, when we met today for our lunch date, we had a good 3 hours of just sharing, and talking about God and His goodness. I am always reminded of God's faithfulness and sovereignty when we get time together. Our lunch was at this new cafe in Taman Melawati called SSC, a very small cafe that serves very interesting local food.

Here's sharing with you what we had:

I ordered the Signature Soy Sauce Chicken Leg Noodles. I must say, it was pleasantly delicious. Not overpowering and the chicken was very tender.

Pastor Gloria had Laksa. I did not ask how was it as we were too caught up in our conversation but it looks good!

This is something special here. Their cakoi! Usually, it is just plain cakoi to be dipped in hot coffee but this cafe serves 3 different types of cakoi with different fillings. We ordered the Signature Chilli Prawn version. Goodness, gracious! It was amazingly delicious! The prawn was well cooked in sambal. I thoroughly enjoyed this!

For drinks, I ordered Cham (a combination of milk tea and coffee) requesting for a less sweet version, and boy was it good! Just the perfect sweetness. Pastor Gloria had the Winter Melon drink and she said it was good.

This is how the exterior looked like. I did not take any interior shots because we started talking and couldn't stop :)

That's me! This lunch is actually to celebrate my birthday. For whatever reason, I have many requests for meal time to celebrate my birthday. I rarely get many gifts that's because people who know me knows that I like quality time ;) Anyway, Pastor Gloria said this after taking this shot, "you all very smart ah, take photo and tilt your head a little so don't look fat". haha! YES! That's right!

Here's a series of photos I was trying to take of Pastor Gloria for my Instagram. I wanted a photo of her not looking/smiling at the camera.

The first photo that was taken. I almost posted it then she said "my mouth!"

So I said ok, let's take another one and she decided to start chewing her biscuit 😐 and she said "cannot! I am chewing"

So this time instead of candidly taking, I directed her to "pose". I said, don't look at the camera, look at your drink, don't chew! YAY! We finally got it. She said "why cannot look at the camera?", I said "boring la... like this nice ma" haha! I am very cheeky, I know.

I celebrate this beautiful and precious #GEM in my life! Thank you Pastor Gloria, I am who I am today because of you ❤️ I treasure and cherish every important relationship that I have because I feel blessed to be placed in the midst of all these wonderful souls.