'I will love you until my final breath’: Controversial City Harvest pastor Kong Hee marks 40th anniversary of meeting Sun Ho - Singapore News

SINGAPORE: While the founders of local megachurch City Harvest have run afoul of the law, and one of them was even jailed for more than two years, they appear to have a love story that has endured through the ages.

On Monday (June 1), the church’s pastor Kong Hee penned a loving tribute to his wife on her birthday, which also happened to be the 40th anniversary of the day they met.

He wrote that he knew she was “the one” on the day they met and added that he was hers forever.

“I was a little late to be your first, but I want all of my last to be with you. I love you, and I will love you until my final breath. And in eternity, I will continue loving you every day, forever and ever.

Thank you for being my best friend, my confidante, my lover, and my companion through every season of life. I love you more than words can say, more than life itself.”

On her part, Ms Sun, who also pastors the church, had written in an Instagram post that she and her husband had shared “deep and personal insights” about their 33-year-long marriage during City Harvest’s Bali Marriage Getaway last month.

“We can truly say that we’re even deeper in our connection and love as a couple … we are each other’s safe place,” she wrote.

However, more than a decade after Mr Kong’s conviction in the largest case of misuse of charitable funds in Singapore, comments on his post have been mixed. While some left well-wishes for Ms Sun’s birthday, others brought up the couple’s past.

In 2015, along with five other members of the church’s leadership, Mr Kong was found guilty of misappropriation of over $50 million in church funds. After serving two-thirds of his prison sentence, he was released on August 22, 2019. He was the last of his cohorts to be set free, save for the church’s former fund manager, Chew Eng Han, whose sentence was extended by 13 months after he attempted to leave Singapore via sampan one day before he was scheduled to go to jail.

Ms Sun had left her position as head of the church’s creative department in 1995 to pursue a career as a Mandopop singer in Taiwan, later releasing albums that were distributed in China and the United States. 

She was also questioned in 2010 over the alleged misuse of funds and was given two suspension orders that were lifted in 2013. It was later revealed that church leaders had spent millions of dollars on Ms Sun’s music career in the US. /TISG

Read also: Kong Hee’s reappearance brings megachurch criticism back into focus

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