“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God.’”
It was the Bible verse I read one morning during my devotional time on the dining table in Ginger's home. It was the most direct way for the Lord to tell me that He cares. I deeply felt His love through this verse,but it was immediately followed by these thoughts: What if people do not obey. What if people do not follow through. It is so easy to grasp and believe a promise when one is helpless. There is home to go back to, there is still hope.
The beginning months which led to a year in this new country was made easier by Ginger, an American missionary, who opened up her home for me to stay by God's grace and mercy. It was not at all easy for her to accommodate a total stranger like me without ever knowing the duration of my stay and degrading on my part as I allowed myself the decadence of enjoying my stay at the expense of others worrying about my means of livelihood.
The English Bible Study class that the church offered me to lead once a week every Friday night was the best part of my stay. It was attended mostly by non-believers who need a group to practice their conversational skills with. What better book and what better characters to talk about but the ones in Bible stories. We had a wonderful four years together. We still have reunions until this day.
The Lord my God sustained my stay with grapes that have fallen. In my case, the grapes that have fallen were the adult students who needed their lessons at their convenient time, anytime during the day or night.
It all started with sensitive people who have a compassionate heart. The daughter of a beauty salon owner, hired me to give their employees English lessons at 11:30pm right after they closed shop. It was purely a job created for me, which I have to refuse after 3 classes because the girls were really too tired for it after a hard day's work.
The Lord my God made my heart leap for joy and it is thankful each time I went to the fields for my gleanings. Sometimes they were grapes to sustain me for the day,and sometimes they were wheat that I could store.
The wheat that had fallen were the precious times I had with Doctors' wives and businessmen's wives who needed one on one lessons, for varying reasons like not being able to find learners with the same level or people who are too shy to speak out in a group. There was a time when I found a little basket of grapes on my doorstep. A manager who came all the way from Taipei, who needed to do work presentation for a meeting abroad and a government employee wanting to make presentation for visiting foreign delegates.
The Lord my God made my heart content working on a piecework basis. He made me enjoy walking the distance to the fields for my gleanings of grapes and wheat. I was into these gleanings for two years. A doctor friend from home once advised me to go home if I do not earn NT$80,000 a month in Taiwan. I did not tell him that I have nothing left of the NT$20,000 I brought with me. I did not tell him that I have to walk to stretch a remaining NT$200 until I am able to glean a harvest of wheat that I can store. No one around me can relate to the kind of lifestyle I was enjoying then. My Father in Heaven has asked me how much in terms of money I could account for the pure joy of loving the work I was doing. He wanted to know how much in terms of money I would be willing to sacrifice for the satisfaction of owning and managing the time He has alloted me.
The Lord my God talks to me and to His voice only will I listen.
In the beginning I was deaf-mute because of the language barrier,
then I was deaf-mute because I needed the silence to hear His still small voice.
Friends that I had acquired along the years had their good intentions.
"How can you live on your own?"
"You do not have a steady income."
"How can you afford your rent?"
"Do you know you need NT$30,000 deposit just to apply for a telephone?"
"How do people get to you without a telephone?"
"Why don't you just humble yourself ..."
By the third year, I was accomodated my own space for a very small token at someone's upper room. It was a place I called my abode with an adjoining room for my workspace. It was in this place that I continued to glean from evening till past midnight. There was a group of accountants who came for their lessons after working overtime. I would go home from a 5:00pm to 9:00pm regular teaching class to wait for them to arrive some time around 10:00 pm and sometimes later.
My home abode and my work place was situated in two parallel streets with the Lio Ho Night Market intersecting the two. It is the busiest street in the city from 4:00pm to 4:00am. One can never tell the time of day walking along the brightly-lit street at any notorious time of the night. It was a five-minute walk from home to the school. It was my kitchen for two years.
It was in this place I called my workshop where The Lord gave me a vision of a mission. A mission of creating a curriculum tailor-made for each individual student. A vision to make people learn to read, so they would love to read so they would read to learn and hopefully, someday to read the Words of Their Heavenly Father.
I have long stopped worrying about people who do not obey. For He had showed me how He can make people do as He wishes. Whether the person knows Him or not, for He is our Creator.
The wheat that had fallen were the precious times I had with Doctors' wives and businessmen's wives who needed one on one lessons, for varying reasons like not being able to find learners with the same level or people who are too shy to speak out in a group. There was a time when I found a little basket of grapes on my doorstep. A manager who came all the way from Taipei, who needed to do work presentation for a meeting abroad and a government employee wanting to make presentation for visiting foreign delegates.
The Lord my God made my heart content working on a piecework basis. He made me enjoy walking the distance to the fields for my gleanings of grapes and wheat. I was into these gleanings for two years. A doctor friend from home once advised me to go home if I do not earn NT$80,000 a month in Taiwan. I did not tell him that I have nothing left of the NT$20,000 I brought with me. I did not tell him that I have to walk to stretch a remaining NT$200 until I am able to glean a harvest of wheat that I can store. No one around me can relate to the kind of lifestyle I was enjoying then. My Father in Heaven has asked me how much in terms of money I could account for the pure joy of loving the work I was doing. He wanted to know how much in terms of money I would be willing to sacrifice for the satisfaction of owning and managing the time He has alloted me.
The Lord my God talks to me and to His voice only will I listen.
In the beginning I was deaf-mute because of the language barrier,
then I was deaf-mute because I needed the silence to hear His still small voice.
Friends that I had acquired along the years had their good intentions.
"How can you live on your own?"
"You do not have a steady income."
"How can you afford your rent?"
"Do you know you need NT$30,000 deposit just to apply for a telephone?"
"How do people get to you without a telephone?"
"Why don't you just humble yourself ..."
By the third year, I was accomodated my own space for a very small token at someone's upper room. It was a place I called my abode with an adjoining room for my workspace. It was in this place that I continued to glean from evening till past midnight. There was a group of accountants who came for their lessons after working overtime. I would go home from a 5:00pm to 9:00pm regular teaching class to wait for them to arrive some time around 10:00 pm and sometimes later.
My home abode and my work place was situated in two parallel streets with the Lio Ho Night Market intersecting the two. It is the busiest street in the city from 4:00pm to 4:00am. One can never tell the time of day walking along the brightly-lit street at any notorious time of the night. It was a five-minute walk from home to the school. It was my kitchen for two years.
It was in this place I called my workshop where The Lord gave me a vision of a mission. A mission of creating a curriculum tailor-made for each individual student. A vision to make people learn to read, so they would love to read so they would read to learn and hopefully, someday to read the Words of Their Heavenly Father.
I have long stopped worrying about people who do not obey. For He had showed me how He can make people do as He wishes. Whether the person knows Him or not, for He is our Creator.
