From The Heart Of The Calvary Care Home Administrator

Below is the main article in the Calvary Care Home (CCH) 10th anniversary newsletter:
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It has been almost one year and 4 months since I started serving in the Calvary Care Home. Starting from a part-time volunteer, I then became a full-time volunteer, and finally in view of urgent need accepted the job of home administrator. As a volunteer, I had several roles – that of caregiver, tuition teacher, an outing driver and first responder to emergencies. Now as Home Administrator, the tasks have additionally included regular meetings with CCH workers, volunteer caregivers and the CCH boys.

The Care Calvary Home has had some interesting success stories in 2009, just as with other years since its birth and continued existence. No matter how difficult the challenges, with God nothing is impossible. One of the joys for celebration was the success of the study programme. Three of the boys who sat for the UPSR exam and who were closely tutored achieved extraordinary results. Matthew Lee, who was in the second last class of his school was most outstanding, scoring 2As (Mathematics and English), 3Bs (Malay writing, Comprehension and Science). He certainly surprised his teachers at the SRJK© Kek Seng, having been a below average student since Standard One. David Rajoo scored 2As (English and Malay writing, 1B (Science) and 2Cs (Mathematics and Malay comprehension). Luke obtained 2Bs and 3Cs.

A tremendous blessing in 2009 was the wonderful response and continuing effort of several faithful volunteers. Sis. Lim Lee Sah, Bro. Joseph Lim, Sis. Jothy Bai and Sis. Annie Choo (and daughter Adrienne) invested much time and energy helping with the character-building of the boys, as well as blessing them with food, recreational outings and free tuition. Their commitment and devotion towards care-giving certainly contributed greatly to the wellbeing and happiness of the CCH kids.

In combining the tasks of a part-time administrator of the Calvary Care Home and a full-time secondary school teacher, I realized the limitations and constraints of doing so. This led to much prayer over several months and finally God blessed us with a suitable candidate for a full-time administrator. Our prayers were answered with Bro. Mohan Nanoo‘s arrival. His previous experience at care-giving and supervision of the boys of the Salvation Army Home presented credentials appropriate for managing CCH. He is an affable person to work with and it is most encouraging to note that he shares the same sense of aspiration for the betterment of the CCH boys, and places mercy above discipline. For a start, he has been assigned the job of assistant administrator. With the present complement of befitting CCH helpers and devoted “full-time” volunteers under the leadership of Reverend James Krishnan, we are confident of greater realization of our vision for Calvary Care Home.

I firmly believe that mentoring each and every youngster at the Calvary Care Home would greatly benefit their emotional and intellectual development. It is my prayer and desire for 2010 that we would be able to assign a responsible and spiritually-mature mentor for every one of the Calvary Care kids. Children need the personal attention of a loving and caring “parent”. Significant improvements in behaviour and attitude are clearly evident in those boys who received personal mentoring. There is an apparent need to be creative and address the unique personality of each child. We need also to recognize that each child is different and requires a different approach in character-building.

2009 has certainly been a year of tremendous blessings for CCH! We now have a fair complement of CCH helpers and extremely dedicated volunteer caregivers. We are inspired and ready to face the challenges of 2010 with the influx of new ideas. We wish to express out most grateful and sincere thanks to each and every individual and organization, as well as Calvawrites, for your continual support of Calvary Care Home through donations, sponsorships and other forms of contribution. May God bless you abundantly for your deep sense of compassion and caring for these underprivileged children.

By Albert P
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(The administrator with his one shoe missing at CCH)

(The administrator was wearing a slipper to temporarily replace the missing shoe at CCH)

Joseph's Breakthrough In Cooking

When Joseph was on Christmas holiday at Calvary Care Home (CCH) last December, the new cook Matha had not yet come in. So I sometimes volunteered to cook. One day I noticed an overripe pineapple in the kitchen. I decided to use it, capsicum, tomatoes and a whole chicken cut into pieces to cook a sweet sour dish for lunch and delegated Joseph who was offering a helping hand. The result turned out so successful that the CCH boys could not wait until dinner to have the second round of the meat. They finished all the leftover chicken for snacks while watching a movie on DVD in the afternoon!

At Montfort Youth Centre where he was under a vocational programme and residential care, he was trained to help in preparations of meals. This month, Joseph was around for another three-week break. Knowing that I would come to CCH the following Tuesday, he was happy to be in charge of the dinner that night so that I had a chance to taste his cooking again.

When I arrived that afternoon, he was planning to cook a better version of the sweet sour chicken. He needed chili sauce but the new bottle was kept in the store room. Only the worker Mohan was holding the key. Joseph and Isaac asked me if I could telephone him to come over to open the room. Not wanting to either disturb Mohan or disappoint Joseph, I said to this youngster, "You just take whatever you can find in the kitchen. A real good chef is one who can survive in any situations and use any ingredients around him to cook something delicious. I'm sure you can do it."

He was willing to take the challenge, so I went to the dining room to help other boys with their homework. When it was over seven o'clock, Joseph proudly presented his cuisine

and his sous-chefs Luke and Daniel.

Not only the dishes, nicely decorated on top, were appetizing visually, the taste was also very good. Since the portion was just enough to be shared by all of us for a single meal, we could only look forward to his next cooking with the secret recipe again. At the table, I kept giving compliments to Joseph. He was glad to have tried something different after my encouragement earlier.

I hope that this breakthrough in cooking was just the beginning. When Joseph experiences more breakthroughs in other aspects of life, he will be able to achieve his potential better.

Outing To The Swimming Pool

The Calvary Care Home (CCH) children are blessed with a pingpong table and a small football field in the Care Home. In the afternoons, they play table tennis and badminton. Until higher fences are fixed, basketball and football are not encouraged due to the previous incidents where the big heavy balls either hit the neighbours' windows or broke the Care Home's lamps.

While Matthew was happy with pingpong, Daniel and Luke with badminton, Paul and David's preference was actually swimming. They told me that when Fei Gin used to drive them to a private swimming pool at Bukit Beruang for free swimming sessions and lessons. After her, Albert P also brought the boys there a few times and even swam with them. Later, when he was stressed up running between his school and the CCH, the boys had no chance to step into the swimming pool for the whole year of 2009.

As I joined in as a "full-time" volunteer, Albert continues to focus on his study programme with the boys while I help to run some "feel-at-home" programme for them. After I knew their wish to resume their swimming sessions, I had been bringing up the matter every time I had a discussion with Albert about the children's weekend activities. As he was very occupied by his work in school especially in January, we never fixed an exact date. Two Saturdays ago, we almost made it. But on the eve only I was informed that the boys were invited to a wedding ceremony at church the next morning. David was disappointed that this swimming outing had been postponed again.

Last Saturday morning, they had to attend school for a replacement class. So I went to CCH only after 2pm. Joseph who was studying at Montfort Youth Centre was back to spend his three-week break there. Albert and I were supposed to bring the boys for a short outing. As we were thinking where to go, I reminded him again of the swimming so that he contacted Fei Gin to find out what time free entrance to the swimming pool was available.

When David heard that, he said, "The Uncle knows me. When he sees me, he'll let us go in."

Fei Gin confirmed that we could go there at anytime. So David, Paul, Daniel and Joseph happily packed their towels and swimming trunks. Luke only had short pants. Isaac thought he would use the fitness equipment there. John was not interested in swimming but still joined all of us who left with two cars.

Joseph was the only older CCH boy who jumped into the swimming pool.


Then I noticed Daniel

and Luke

were a bit reserved at first. But once they paired up,

two wrestling stars were born!

Among the CCH boys, Paul no doubt cared his appearance most. Even when I called him for a quick photograph session, he did not forget to immerse his hair in the water to make it stylish before posing in front of my camera.

My eyes had been searching for David. After awhile, I finally recognized this future Michael Phelps with his goggles who was swimming like a fish.

He was very keen to perform for me a water ballet with a leg

and both legs.

When he partnered with his brother,

another wrestling game started!

The CCH boys were no longer swimming. Instead, they treated the pool as a wrestling ring where they were practising different types of grappling techniques

to gain a physical advantage over their opponent.

Their clinching and pinning in the water began to attract the pool owner's attention. Two times he blew his whistle and called David's name to stop them when he judged it dangerous. After some time, the boys seemed to be out of energy for wrestling

but they still enjoyed very much staying in the water after one year's absence from the swimming pool.

Unfortunately, Albert needed to leave early that day. So he suddenly made an annoucement beside the pool. Everybody heard "Attention please..." and temporarily paused to seriously listen to Albert who said with his grave voice, "We're leaving in ten minutes, please get ready..." until he repeated that "this is to the Calvary Care Home boys only". When other swimmers realizing that they were not concerned, they went on with their activities.

Even though the outing only lasted about an hour, the boys were back to the Care Home satisfied. I was very glad that after "pestering" Albert for weeks, we finally managed to fulfill our promise to the boys.

A Genuine Befriending Experience

Last year, as a few befrienders were leaving the ministry, I suggested to Sis Karen L that our team be merged with the ushers' team. After all, the main difference between the two ministries was that the befrienders had to approach new faces to pass them a form to fill in, to collect it from them later and to invite them for a cup of tea after the church service. Chances were rare that the new visitors would go to the front lounge to let us "interview" them.

My feeling that a befriender could do more than shaking hands and smiling to new comers grew stronger especially after reading an RLM blog entry. There was a good example of a befriender who was willing to "walk with the befriendee through thick and thin, educating and instilling in the befriendee the Word of God whenever he/she (the befriender) could find the opportunity." I was not ready to do so, but I was willing to do extra miles of what I had been doing to new visitors at Calvary Life Assembly (CLA).

As a result, after serving more than one year in this ministry, I officially resigned from the post. The reason was not that I no longer enjoyed welcoming people at the entrance of Calvary Life Assembly (CLA). On the contrary, I wanted to be a real befriender by reaching out to a person outside the church building.

God placed XR in my heart. Bro Bob had been bringing her and her Filipino colleagues to the Sunday service since last November. As a Chinese national, her English was limited to understand well the sermon in English and to communicate with other English speaking people in the church. When I first befriended her at the church canteen, she was very glad to chat with me in Mandarin.

When we met at CLA another time, I was having a cough. So was she. As I was also busy with other matters, we had a brief conversation and I passed to her the Chinese version of "Our Daily Bread". The following weeks, she did not go to church as Bro Bob was away to the Philippines for holidays, and I was not able to fetch her due to my busy programme at Calvary Care Home. So I only kept in touch with her by telephone. Early this year, when Bro Bob was around again, she still did not turn up at the church service. Then only I learnt that she had still not recovered from her cough for more than a month, even after going to the Alor Gajah hospital.

I offered to bring her to the hospital in Melaka town. Before we fixed a time, her employer had arranged her for a check-up at Mahkota hospital. I finally dropped by in Alor Gajah following week to visit her after the working hours. She looked a bit pale despite her smiling face. She had been diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB), a disease which had been causing her chronic cough, fever, weight loss, etc. She did not want me to approach her too long by fear of infecting me.

After the diagnosis, she was immediately stopped by her factory. When I first knew her, she told me that she was planning to go back to China for the Chinese New Year break. But this time, she was leaving Malaysia for good. The next Wednesday, she went to the hospital again to get two-week medicine. Her Filipino colleague Steven had purposely taken leave to kindly accompany her the whole day. I managed to meet them in town and brought them to a money changer to change her two-year salary into Chinese currency to bring back to her home country.

Thursday, I went to Alor Gajah to visit her for the last time before her flight back to China the next day. We invited Steven to join us for lunch. One of the dishes we ordered to eat with rice was cooked with chili powder. XR who had grown up with spicy food could no longer stand it due to her weak pulmonary system. She coughed very badly and could hardly swallow anything but water. So we requested the restaurant to pack the leftover food for her. And I sent them back.

I felt honoured when she said to me, "I wish I had known you earlier." I thank God for moving me to befriend XR during the final months of her stay in Malaysia and pray that she will continue to let Jesus, our best befriender and healer, to open her heart and heal her lung.