Jerusalem
and the Middle East
Church Association

Editorial

Article

Obituaries

PATRICIA KOK 1956-2005

Our Chinese daughter

Tom and Edna Hamblin remember their dear Patricia.

It is with deep sadness that Christchurch, Aden, reports the sudden death of Patricia Kok. She died in an accident on a mountain road in Yemen last August. Witnesses said she just went over the mountainside; the weather was wet and stormy. One thing we know, she would have had a Praise cassette playing, and we like to think that angels bore her home with singing.

Patricia was an outstanding Christian and excellent nurse, her abilities were numerous. God used us to recruit her when we were speaking in an evangelical Anglican Church in Singapore. She had worked in Saudi Arabia before her conversion to Christ, then went back to Singapore to seek other employment, but was reached for Christ through the dynamic witness of the Church of Our Saviour in Queenstown, Singapore. She spoke some Arabic so that too was an advantage, but she took extra tuition to communicate more effectively with the patients in the Christ Church medical clinic.

Patricia was greatly loved and respected by the local Yemeni staff and in the community. She was a brilliant nurse and administrator, and worked tirelessly and cheerfully. In her own free time she taught Yemeni women handicraft work so that they had an outlet of self support, for many were widows. She served in the Christ Church general medical clinic in Aden for four years before leaving to work in the villages of North Yemen.

She was Singaporean Chinese, and a great hostess who would often cook delicious Chinese food for us all. She called us ‘my English mother and father’; we called her ‘our Chinese daughter’ and felt very privileged to do so. We had such a deep relationship and fellowship in the Lord.

Please pray for her aged, frail father and her sister with two children.

Patricia Kok with her 'English parents'