“We are called to mirror Jesus to them”: Missionary, 68, organises her own SG60 project for migrant workers

In early July this year, huge cardboard boxes started arriving and filling up the living room of her mother’s apartment.

The cardboard boxes were filled with items specially selected by Yvonne Huang to bless 1,000 migrant workers this SG60 year.

Huge boxes – filled with SG60 items – for the migrant brothers occupied most of the living room.

Excited at the arrival of the goods, 68-year-old Yvonne opened up the cartons and started packing the items that very night.

Yvonne eagerly packing the gift bags the very night the goods arrived.

Together with her sister and their helper, Yvonne packed 100 backpacks, each containing a wallet, a water bottle and a S$10 cash angpow (red packet) in one night.

The tagline printed on each item read: “SG60: Thanks for being with us”.

The items included in Yvonne’s SG60 gift bag.

The next morning, Yvonne’s 92-year-old mother – who has mild dementia – joined in the packing fun even though her leg was in a cast after a fall. She propped up her leg and got cracking.

At night, the daughter and mother pair ventured downstairs and found 13 migrant workers at a bus stop along Marymount Road. They gave them the gift bags and thanked them for working in Singapore.

Yvonne’s 92-year-old mother chatting with migrant workers as she passed them the gift bags.

Age is no barrier to serving others 

Yvonne belongs to the Merdeka Generation, and her mother the Pioneer Generation. Yvonne chose to celebrate SG60 in a different way than simply sitting back and enjoying the SG60 vouchers gifted by the government, and other SG60 promotions.

In April this year, she started spreading the word and raising funds to bless 1,000 migrant workers. By June, she had successfully raised S$20,000 from 50 of her friends and family members.

The cost of each gift bag is S$20, which includes the S$10 angpow.

She then worked with a supplier friend to source for quality products from China – getting more bang for her buck. The items were customised and shipped to Singapore in early July.

Boxes of the 1,000 bag packs stored in a warehouse in China get ready to be shipped to Singapore.

In just four days after the arrival of the items, Yvonne and her family members packed all 1,000 gift bags and got them ready for distribution to migrant workers. Their intention was to distribute them to the workers working and residing in various areas, such as the construction sites at Marymount Road and the dormitories in Punggol and Jurong.  

All 1,000 bags were packed within a few days.

“It’s SG60 and we (citizens) have been receiving so much. We need to remember our migrant brothers. I hope the gift bags would be a form of tangible encouragement and appreciation to them for their work here,” said Yvonne, who used to be a missionary and counsellor in India before she returned to Singapore in 2012.

“I hope that everyone, especially believers, will catch the passion for thinking about others and organise something of their own, instead of waiting for the Government or the Church to organise something,” she added.

Yvonne was also a former youth and missions Pastor at two churches in Singapore.

She is not a stranger to organising distribution exercises to bless the migrant workers.

“Say No to Christmas presents, say Yes to migrant brothers”

Thirteen years ago, Yvonne initiated a “Bless the migrant brothers” family tradition, in lieu of having their usual exchange of Christmas presents during the festive season.

“I wanted my young nieces and nephews to think about others instead of just thinking about themselves,” said Yvonne, who is single and lives alone.

So, their family collected the money that they had budgeted to buy presents for each other and used the amount – S$1,000 – to bless 100 migrant workers with bags of groceries worth S$10 each.

The tagline for their first project was “Say No to Christmas presents, say Yes to migrant brothers”.  

Her four young nieces and nephew – the youngest being six years old then ­– caught the joy of packing the items.

Yvonne’s nieces happily packing the bags of groceries in their first blessing project.

Then their family drove around looking for migrant workers to bless with the bags.

“It was like a game to see who could spot them. We stopped at all sorts of places; there were brothers who were eating lunch alone on a grass patch as well as brothers resting at void decks and working at the sites,” said Yvonne.

The children thanked and blessed the migrant workers for working in Singapore as they handed the bags over to them.

One of Yvonne’s nieces handing over a bag to a migrant worker.

Yvonne recalled one migrant worker kneeling down to align himself to the height of her petite niece when he received that year’s gift – a box of cookies and towel – from her.

“Their body language spoke volumes about how they felt seen and appreciated in that moment,” she said.

A migrant brother kneeling down to receive a box of special cookies and towel from Yvonne’s niece.

Her nephew, Elijah Huang, agreed.

“Even though the gifts didn’t seem much in terms of value, I still remember how bright the smiles on their faces were which showed me how much the gifts meant to them,” said Elijah, who was nine years old when he first started giving out the bags to the migrant workers.

Being a part of the blessing exercise also led his then six-year-old sister to begin noticing the Chinese migrant workers who were doing some renovation works in her kindergarten. She made the family drive from one end of Singapore to another just so that she could personally hand over the gift bags to the mainland Chinese workers.

Yvonne’s nieces and nephew giving out gift bags to the migrant brothers in their yearly blessing exercise.

“Compassion opens our eyes to others around us. God’s heart is, especially, turned towards the poor among us. It’s a tangible form of care and evangelism. We don’t need to preach the full Gospel to them first before reaching out,” said Yvonne.

An annual act of love 

For almost every year since 2012 when she first started the blessing project, Yvonne has rallied family and friends to commit to the exercise annually.

The blessing exercise in 2019 where groceries were given out in plastic bags.

Over the years as more and more people supported the project, the number of gift bags has grown from 100 to 300 to 500, peaking at 1,000 this year.

Where it used to contain just groceries, the bag now hold items like towels, water bottles and UV protective guards for arms and face as the workers often labour long hours under the sun.

The distribution exercise in 2020 where blue waterproof bags were given.

Establishing longer-term friendships with migrant workers 

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that Yvonne began getting to know more migrant workers personally.

In 2021, she volunteered at a thrift shop run by Cornerstone Community Church at Penjuru Recreation Centre (PRC). It sells highly discounted preloved items to the migrant workers who live in the dormitories nearby.

Yvonne and her cell group friends continued the blessing exercise at Kian Teck dormitory during the Covid pandemic.

In 2022, she also spent a few times a week volunteering as a counsellor to migrant brothers at the St Andrew’s Migrant Worker Medical Centre.

“They struggle with working long hours for little pay, and have similar health and family issues like us,” said Yvonne, who established friendships with a number of them.

Yvonne (far right) brought a group of migrant workers to Chinese Gardens for an outing and treated them to a briyani lunch.

Uddin was one of Yvonne’s new friends. He approached Yvonne for financial help because his wife in Bangladesh had stage 4 colon cancer and needed surgery. He had been working in Singapore for 24 years, and had used up all his savings on radiotherapy for his wife.

Yvonne knew his needs were critical. She prayed for him and also raised S$20,000 for his wife’s surgery. Her cancer has since gone into remission.

Yvonne continues to stay in touch with Uddin and would invite him and a few others to her mother’s place during Chinese New Year.

Yvonne invites her new friends to dinner at her home.

When some of the former youth whom Yvonne pastored joined her one Saturday in July to distribute the bags to migrant brothers at PRC, Uddin – whose dormitory is located nearby – was so overjoyed to see her that he asked her if he could help distribute the bags to his fellow peers.

Uddin (in brown shirt) helping Yvonne distribute the gift bags to his peers.

“We are called to be a mirror of Jesus. Instead of distrusting them and thinking that they may cheat us, get to know them instead. They are people who care as much as – if not more – than us, especially when you read in the news of them being the first on the scene to rescue Singaporeans,” said Yvonne.

Among the many instances that migrant workers have helped Singaporeans is the most recent case of the seven workers who rescued a woman whose car was trapped in a sinkhole along Tanjong Katong South Road.

Yvonne has helped other workers financially: One whose his salary came in late and another who needed help with his wife’s pregnancy expenses.

Yvonne and a group of her former youth members and cell group friend loading up the car with the gift bags before heading out for distribution.

Impacting the younger generation 

Being exposed to such blessing projects since young, Yvonne’s nephews and nieces have picked up her outward-looking culture. They contribute their pocket money towards causes in India and volunteer their time in community and sustainability projects locally.

When Elijah was in National Service, he heard his aunt share about how some families in the Philippines went hungry because they were too poor to afford staples like rice. Out of his army allowance, he decided to donate S$18 every month towards supporting one family there.

This year, Yvonne’s “Blessing the migrant brothers” project continues to see transformative impact on the young.

Earlier this month, Yvonne’s cell group friend Nicole Leung came to collect the 20 bags that she sponsored. She was going to do distribution with her own family members.

“The aim is to help people start their own distribution projects. Like missions, it’s much easier to get people to donate money to a worthy cause than to go out there and do the work,” said Yvonne.

Shortly after, she was heartened to hear from Nicole that her nine-year-old daughter Chloe and seven-year-old son Daniel took money out of their piggy banks to insert another S$10 into each red packet, making it a total of S$20 per angpow.

Chloe taking money out of her own piggy bank to insert additional notes into the red packets for migrant brothers.

“More than that, they also asked their mother if they could write a personal card for each migrant brother,” noted Yvonne.

“They have truly caught the heart behind this.”

Chloe handing gift bags to a migrant worker in her neighbourhood.

 “I hope more people will initiate their own worthy causes this SG60 and get others involved in them, instead of waiting for some top-down instruction to do so,” she added.

Active in mission work overseas despite health issues 

Yvonne shows no signs of slowing down, though she hits her 70th birthday next year and grapples with some health ailments.

She lives with gastrointestinal issues from exposure to contaminated water and unclean food from her long years out in the mission field.

Frequent climbing of hilly and unforgiving terrain in developing countries has also given her severe neck, shoulder and knee pain. Her doctor proposed knee replacement surgery which she has declined.

Last year, a tiny aneurysm was discovered in her brain. Doctors are monitoring its growth.

Yet Yvonne continues to travel to India, Indonesia and Philippines a few times a year to train and minister to their leaders and believers. She also provides member care under non-profit organisation Habibi International to Christian workers serving refugees in the Middle East.

Yvonne (in wheelchair), with her cell group leader Anna, going on a field trip to Iraq with Habibi despite weakness in her legs.

In May this year, she braved steep steps that were cut into the mountainous areas of Banaue, Philippines and climbed all the way up to talk to a mentally-challenged village girl who refused to shower or speak a word.

Yvonne climbing steps in hilly Banaue.

“After we prayed for her and encouraged her, she agreed to bathe and then go with us to a church service,” said Yvonne, who is also the main caregiver to her bed-bound brother who had a stroke.

Yvonne and her brother Calvin.

Rethinking “retirement”

When she was 40 years old, Yvonne recalled sharing her wishes for her golden years while preaching a sermon at Revival Centre Church.

“When I am 80 years old, I want to be like Caleb. Give me the mountain and I will go and conquer it,” she had said then.

Yvonne distributing bags to migrant workers in front of her HDB home.

There is no retirement in God’s kingdom, Yvonne believes.

“Don’t just sit at home counting down your days or waste time completing your bucket list. Stop for the one, whether it be your neighbour or family member,” she urged.

“The fields out there are also filled with (spiritually and otherwise) hungry people. Don’t worry about yourself and allow God’s strength to be made perfect in our weaknesses as we venture out to them.”

RELATED STORIES: 

How a “divine GPS error” led this former seafarer to helm a mission to 2 million migrant workers on vessels

This ministry to migrant workers brings them good food and fun, a listening ear and the love of Christ 

“Why would you do so much for me when I’m just a stranger?”: How these Chinese migrant brothers found a family away from home

The post “We are called to mirror Jesus to them”: Missionary, 68, organises her own SG60 project for migrant workers appeared first on Salt&Light.