Finding a voice and vocation in a new land
People
‘Singing in the choir makes me feel like the universal church truly is one,’ Elena Chua Maexin tells The Southern Cross.
When Elena moved from Penang, Malaysia to Adelaide in September 2024, she didn’t just cross countries — she carried faith, family, and song. In Penang, family life was of the utmost importance. It still is.
Her family found their spiritual home at Aberfoyle Park’s Church of the Nativity, part of the Holy Family Catholic Parish. For Elena, the parish is more than a place of worship. When they first arrived, the community wrapped its collective arms around them.
“It’s been like a family to us,” she explains.
There, Deacon Tee Ping Koh — also from Malaysia — and Fr Paul Mwaura, who welcomed Elena’s brother as an altar server, played key roles in helping them settle, providing the kind of quiet, practical support that transforms a foreign place into a home.
Elena’s Catholic faith was not something she discovered later in life; it has always been at the centre of who she is. Her family lived only a five-minute walk from their parish church.
“The first time I ever left home on my own was because I didn’t want to be late for Sunday catechism. I ran out the door before my mum could stop me.”
Prayer and church ministry shaped daily life.
“My parents prayed with us every morning on the way to school and every night before bed,” she says. “My grandparents were very active in the Society of St Vincent de Paul, and we would help pack biscuits for hospital visits.”
Despite being a very quiet and shy child, plus not being able to sing, Elena felt drawn to serve in music ministry from a young age, beginning in the children’s choir before joining a Latin choir for youth and young adults in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Penang.
During a student exchange at the University of Birmingham in 2022, distance from home became an invitation into a deeper spiritual life. “I never felt alone, because Christ is with me.”
She joined the Catholic society, participated in faith formation, volunteered with the homeless through Society of St Vincent de Paul and of course sang in the choir.
“In the UK, I started attending daily Mass at the university chaplaincy in between or after classes. I fell in love with it. Who wouldn’t? It’s truly Heaven on earth,” she says.
Elena likens Mass to a wedding banquet.
“When we, the ‘brides of Christ’, receive Christ in the Eucharist, it is the consummation of His infinite love for us.”
Upon arriving in Adelaide, Elena naturally returned to music ministry. Last July, she started the Choir of the Immaculate Conception at Nativity Church.
“I consecrated myself to Jesus through Mother Mary on that Feast Day through the group at the Dominican parish, Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Prospect last year and thought it would be good to dedicate the choir into the hands of our Lady who honours our Lord the best! Even if we fall short, we’ll just trust that Mother Mary is directing the angels to sing with us.”
What began simply – Elena, her brother and dad singing, with her mum playing the organ, has steadily grown. Today, the choir includes around 15 members, mostly Flinder’s University students, alongside little kids and parents. The choir sings Latin chant ordinaries, English hymns and sacred music with a focus on reverence and congregational participation.
“Music lifts the liturgy. It’s not a performance,” Elena says. “Singing is praying twice!”
She has witnessed what she describes as “the Holy Spirit working” within parish life: fuller pews, adult baptisms and confirmations, and more parishioners stepping forward to serve.
Behind her active involvement in parish life lies a deepening love for quite contemplative prayer.
“I would sit alone in my room before the crucifix, pondering and simply gazing upon Jesus,” she says. “Sometimes, as I look into the eyes of our Saviour, or maybe Him looking at me, all sounds of the world fade away and even my thoughts become still. I am left with a deep peace and gentle joy.”
Every Tuesday night, she also joins young adults from around the diocese who gather at St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral for Mass and an hour of adoration.
“For us to be able to be charitable to others and do God’s work, we first must receive Him. We can’t share what we don’t have.”
Working as a chemical engineer in air-conditioning research and development for the past 1.5 years, Elena sees her career as entirely God’s providence. She received the opportunity through connections formed while volunteering at a Vinnies shop. She says: “In the workplace, you can evangelise colleagues, not always through words, but more so by your actions.”
Her faith shapes her goals, her choices, and the way she moves through the world. Like many young Catholics, Elena stands at a crossroad of possibilities: religious life, marriage, or any other path that God might have in mind.
Her first stay at a convent in the Philippines at age 17 first awakened the possibility of religious life. “The sisters were so joyful,” she recalls. “I remember golden rays of sunlight shining through the windows of the convent and thinking: ‘This could be it.’”
Since then, discernment has included silent retreats, the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, spiritual direction, prayer and conversations with different religious communities.
“To be fulfilled, we need to know what our purpose is in this life, and we can only know that through the Creator” she says.
A good friend says his greatest fear is not knowing and therefore, not doing God’s will” but as St John Henry Newman says, “I may never know it in this life, but I shall in the next”.
Amidst the fog of earthly life, we can only continuously seek Him and humbly surrender our all to the Lord. “I’m still not certain where God is leading me, but I know right now, He has little missions for me in Adelaide: running the choir, organising prayer hikes, assisting with parish youth events such as Alpha, and accompanying friends in their faith journeys.”
Echoing the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, Elena says simply: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to Thy word.”
