When the meeting was over, David and Daniel left with Adrienne's car to play badminton with her friends. As we were planning to bring the rest of the boys, except for Isaac who would rather stay at CCH, for an outing somewhere, Albert suddenly received a call from someone telling him that forty of them from Muar were going to pay a visit to CCH and they were arriving very soon! The notice was so short that Albert had to ask the boys to immediately shift all the chairs from the dining room to the living room. Then he quickly recruited Luke to take over together Daniel's role as a floor sweeper saying "This is my home. I want to keep it clean!" in the CCH 10th anniversary drama.
A bus and a car stopped outside CCH. When I received this group of visitors from the town where Dad had grown up and lived until he graduated from the secondary school, I had a sense of closeness to these Muar folks who spoke Mandarin with a familiar Johorian accent.
As soon as they settled down in the living room, the "Albert Talk Show" began. The CCH administrator introduced himself, me and the boys in Mandarin.
The audience seemed to be very impressed by his opening monologue, like the crowds who were amazed at Jesus' teaching at the mountainside.
The celebrities were supposed to be the CCH boys. However, Isaac and John had disappeared upstairs; Luke did not understand a single thing due to the language barrier; Matthew as usual was too shy to release a sound when facing strangers; Only Paul uttered a few sentences in Mandarin. So the visitors focused on the "talk show" host. From their eyes which were full of admiration, I had the impression that we were running a care home of eight hundred children instead of eight, out of which only three boys were physically present right in front of them.
Since the end of last year, Albert had never failed to publicize his beloved Matthew's achievement in the UPSR (primary school national examination). He also tried to describe his foster son as a boy who treasured his speech like gold. As he could not remember the exact Chinese words,
I had to intervene. Surprisingly, this home administrator who had been speaking English most of the time in his daily life managed to explain, with a Chinese proverb which literally meant "to cause one's seven holes (eyes, nose, mouth and ears) smoky", how Matthew sometimes made him angry.
I also gave a brief complementary presentation of CCH. Finally, the representative of the Muar group was offered a chance to tell us about them.
Not belonging to any association, they had been gathered as friends and families to see visit tourist spots, orphanages, old folks homes, etc.
Not only they gave cash donation to CCH, they also brought packets of crackers and drinks to the CCH children and blessed each of them with a RM20 angpao! Albert also received a lovely hand made card thanking him for taking care of the children. As the CCH boys' pocket money treasurer, I found an extra bank-note of RM5 inside one of the red packets later when I was going to keep all the money together. Had we left for the outing earlier, we would have probably missed the blessing of our wonderful neighbours from Muar who had the heart for the underprivileged community.
After the group photograph session, these caring people returned to their bus and car just on time, before a heavy rain fell instantly.
God had again performed a miracle to CCH. Nothing would please Him more than His children always having 100 percent faith in Him .
1 comment:
Lee Sah, Calvary Care Home will continue to live on "100% faith" in Jesus.
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