Notice the words in bold.
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SECTION: Saturday Special Report
LENGTH: 283 words
HEADLINE: Parents upset at first but came around
BODY:
THERE were quarrels, recriminations and curfews. His parents
slashed his allowance and banned him from going to church. He
resorted to sneaking out from home.
'I felt persecuted,' recalls Mr Tay Swee Kwek, now 22.
The tension began at age 14 when the Victoria Secondary schoolboy
began attending the Shekinah Assembly of God, a charismatic
Christian church.
His family considered themselves Buddhists and his parents opposed
his growing attachment to Christianity.
'Their first worry was I was being cheated and led into something I
didn't understand,' he says. 'The second was that I would no longer
partake in family traditions.'
They were right about the second. He refused to eat food placed at
the ancestral altar and his mother accused him of becoming 'a
religious extremist'. But eventually, his parents came round.
He believes they did so because 'Christianity taught me to
love my parents, to control my temper and be patient and
responsible with them'. And when he was finally baptised last
month, it was with their approval.
His first encounter with Christianity was when friends invited him
to a 'fun-filled' gathering of youths at a church.
Six months later, he was praying at home when he experienced what
he believes was a 'religious experience'. If fun was the bait and
spiritual experience the connection, then 'logic' sealed his
conversion.
'The more I learnt about religion, the more it seemed to me
that Christianity is the most logical religion,' he
says.
In the meantime, he aced his O-levels and did well enough in his
A-levels to gain a place in the National University of Singapore's
medical faculty, where he begins his studies next month.
LI XUEYING
LOAD-DATE: July 15, 2005
