Several years ago, one of our leaders came to me and asked me a personal question.

And really, it's not only a personal question, but nobody ever asked me that question before.

But not only that, I never thought anybody would even notice that.

But since I confessed it to him, I'm going to confess it to you.

And his question to me was very simple.

He said, are you a shy person? And I kind of was taken back. After I kind of hummed and ard and I said,

yeah, as a matter of fact, I am. In fact, when I was a boy, as soon as I heard visitors coming at the door, I ran all the way to the back room and hid.

My father used to try to threaten to bring me out there if I don't come there by myself.

And I know that in some way, at least some of you who would see me standing in public and

speaking boldly and sometimes loudly, and you would think, you know, how can a naturally shy boy

person be in public ministry?

But it is true.

I am far from being outgoing a g gregarious person. I would like to

have been, but that's not my lot in life. And then through a series of circumstances, totally out of my

control, back in my early life, I was forced. I was pushed into doing what does not come naturally to me. Do things that I would rather

not do because given my drudders, I would rather be in the background somewhere. Not only that,

but coupled with that is my feeling, deep feeling, and conscious feeling of my own inadequacy.

I'm continuously conscious of my own weakness and failures and frailties.

I'm also aware of the fact that because of the multiplicities of the tasks that God somehow chose

to place on my plate, I tend to be kind of an absent-minded professor at time.

I can be looking at a person but actually not seeing the person.

I remember somebody was saying to me, said, but you were looking at me. I said, well, that

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