Dinner and a Prayer Request
I came for dinner, I left with a prayer request.
Had dinner last night with Diana CY. :) It was randomly arranged and we went to a random place that i read about on ieatishootipost.blogspot.com. It was here:
Don't u dare mistake it. This is not just a normal Western food stall with a cheesy name. It's a place that really warmed my heart.
Me and Diana CY made the 20min walk from Redhill MRT to this place for our dinner. To our delight, we found it relatively easily, and settled down for our meal of pork chops, steak and good ol' sugar cane juice. Neither of us knew we were gonna be in for an extraordinarily warm and fuzzy evening.
It all began when me and Diana CY decided to pray and give thanks before we ate. After my pained attempt to pray in Mandarin, we opened our eyes to a loud 'AMEN!' from the auntie manning the stall. It was so loud, I was stunned for a moment and so was the daughter of the auntie who was hanging around. The daughter embarrassingly asked her mom 'myyyyy.. what u doing??' and mommy just replied in a jolly manner:' They were praying ma. and they said amen, so i said AMEN with them lorh!'
Oh the bliss of JOY! :)
She casually asked if we were Christians, and I said yes, after which she proceeded to have a chat with us. I complimented her food (my goodness the pork chops rocked my socks, the steak brought us to a palatable peak.. that rhymes!), and we had a chat. I asked her about her stall, and of course, in sync with what I had heard, their practice of hiring ex-substance abusers at their stall.
She talked about all the ex-abusers who had come to work for them, many of whom had stopped because they couldn't take the toughness of helping to run a Western food stall. She related the story of one of them, who had random friends appear to find him at the stall, and how he eventually sank back into the drug scene. It seems that many of them have worked here, but one by one they have left. Uncle Eric, the owner of the stall, is a part-time counselling-helper (i hesitate to call him a counselor for protection of the counseling profession) at Breakthrough Missions, a halfway house for Chinese substance abusers. It is from there, that he recruits these men to work for him, tattoos included, once they finish their 2 year rehab program.
Uncle Eric in the white singlet :)
I was touched by how a small ordinary business is turned into a ministry for those who need a 2nd chance. In all her sadness at how many of her workers turned back to drugs or stopped working, auntie kept saying in great joy 'Pray for us.' or 'We can only pray for them'.
She was so happy, her eyes were gleaming each time she talked about how God has blessed her humble stall. She kept telling me how happy she was that some of the other Breakthrough brothers had learnt how to make honey-baked ham even better than Uncle Eric's and how they also made coleslaw better than his too.
Diana CY and myself sat there for a good half an hour observing the stall. It was a neverending flow of business, a neverending flow of busy-ness. But frankly, in that busyness, some lives were being touched and impacted for the better. There was so much more in that little stall than pork chops and steak.
Wow. How we can touch a life and impact it.
If only we tried.
I came for dinner. I left with a prayer request and a fuzzy heart.
'Auntie, we make a move first ok?'
'Yup, take care. Pray for us.'
Had dinner last night with Diana CY. :) It was randomly arranged and we went to a random place that i read about on ieatishootipost.blogspot.com. It was here:
Don't u dare mistake it. This is not just a normal Western food stall with a cheesy name. It's a place that really warmed my heart.Me and Diana CY made the 20min walk from Redhill MRT to this place for our dinner. To our delight, we found it relatively easily, and settled down for our meal of pork chops, steak and good ol' sugar cane juice. Neither of us knew we were gonna be in for an extraordinarily warm and fuzzy evening.
It all began when me and Diana CY decided to pray and give thanks before we ate. After my pained attempt to pray in Mandarin, we opened our eyes to a loud 'AMEN!' from the auntie manning the stall. It was so loud, I was stunned for a moment and so was the daughter of the auntie who was hanging around. The daughter embarrassingly asked her mom 'myyyyy.. what u doing??' and mommy just replied in a jolly manner:' They were praying ma. and they said amen, so i said AMEN with them lorh!'
Oh the bliss of JOY! :)
She casually asked if we were Christians, and I said yes, after which she proceeded to have a chat with us. I complimented her food (my goodness the pork chops rocked my socks, the steak brought us to a palatable peak.. that rhymes!), and we had a chat. I asked her about her stall, and of course, in sync with what I had heard, their practice of hiring ex-substance abusers at their stall.
She talked about all the ex-abusers who had come to work for them, many of whom had stopped because they couldn't take the toughness of helping to run a Western food stall. She related the story of one of them, who had random friends appear to find him at the stall, and how he eventually sank back into the drug scene. It seems that many of them have worked here, but one by one they have left. Uncle Eric, the owner of the stall, is a part-time counselling-helper (i hesitate to call him a counselor for protection of the counseling profession) at Breakthrough Missions, a halfway house for Chinese substance abusers. It is from there, that he recruits these men to work for him, tattoos included, once they finish their 2 year rehab program.
Uncle Eric in the white singlet :)I was touched by how a small ordinary business is turned into a ministry for those who need a 2nd chance. In all her sadness at how many of her workers turned back to drugs or stopped working, auntie kept saying in great joy 'Pray for us.' or 'We can only pray for them'.
She was so happy, her eyes were gleaming each time she talked about how God has blessed her humble stall. She kept telling me how happy she was that some of the other Breakthrough brothers had learnt how to make honey-baked ham even better than Uncle Eric's and how they also made coleslaw better than his too.
Diana CY and myself sat there for a good half an hour observing the stall. It was a neverending flow of business, a neverending flow of busy-ness. But frankly, in that busyness, some lives were being touched and impacted for the better. There was so much more in that little stall than pork chops and steak.
Wow. How we can touch a life and impact it.
If only we tried.
I came for dinner. I left with a prayer request and a fuzzy heart.
'Auntie, we make a move first ok?'
'Yup, take care. Pray for us.'
hey liren! this is the 1st time i visited, no secret. hehehe. anyway, i have been to that stall! at henderson right! my church staff love the pple there. hehe.