Books ¢ Jason Woo is Communications Executive at MCS Comms. / Artworks courtesy of Singapore Centre for Global Missions
Making missions a vision for children Daniel could not wait to tell the story of his recovery to others. As he shared his story, some who had knowledge of sorcery told him, “Even if you had died after two weeks, your God is still a great God, because this type of sorcery is so powerful that the day it hits you, you will die! - Clean Hands, Pure Hearts and Beautiful Feet, p69
The team that produced Clean Hands, Pure Hearts and Beautiful Feet
Planting the seeds of The Great Commission
example, a troubled man who was rescued from a suicide
When Joseph Schooling won Singapore’s first Olympic
attempt, to a life and death battle with indigenous
gold medal in swimming in 2016, it set off more than just
occultic practices. In all these stories, the overarching
a wave of euphoria in the country. The young swimmer’s
theme is God’s love and ability to save.
life story and how he managed to make his personal childhood dream of being an Olympian a reality also
Lawrence hopes that through the book and its stories,
caught the imagination of Bishop Kuan Kim Seng of The
children and even adults in local churches would
Diocese of Singapore.
appreciate that there are many Singaporean missionaries who are no less on fire for the Lord than their foreign
Bishop Kuan made a phone call to Lawrence Ko, the National
counterparts who often headline Christian news from the
Director of the Singapore Centre for Global Missions
mission field.
(SCGM), who was quickly convinced of the need to instil God’s vision for missions in the minds of young children—
Hands to write and illustrate the stories
to create the same kind of drive in them to spread the
When Lawrence embarked on this idea to publish a
Gospel as the one Schooling had with his Olympic pursuits.
children’s book about missions, the first task was to find a writer. SCGM had not published such a book before.
That is how the idea of publishing a children’s book with true stories from the mission field was conceived.
Flora had served for a year as part of a missionary team on board a ship with OM Ships International (a maritime
First published in 2017, Clean Hands, Pure Hearts and
outreach organisation). When she returned to Singapore
Beautiful Feet features 10 stories in a 120-page hardcover
in 2016, Lawrence happened to be preaching at her home
book. It contains the accounts of 10 Singaporean
church at Bedok Lutheran Church. Their chance meeting
missionaries serving God and spreading the gospel in a
kickstarted the project, which became the 34-year-old’s
plethora of mission fields from the Amazon jungles in
first foray into writing for a young audience.
Bolivia to familiar countries like Hong Kong and Japan. It proved to be quite a challenge but the process of The stories are about the experiences that the missionaries
recording the stories and meeting with the missionaries
have encountered in their respective fields, experiences
were memorable experiences for her.
that children in Singapore would seldom encounter. For
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METHODIST MESSAGE April 2022
