An Incredible Journey of Love and Faith

When Roy and I got mar­ried on August 6, 1960, we told God we want­ed our home to be used for his glo­ry.  We did­n’t real­ize that desire would open our home and our lives to an excit­ing and incred­i­ble jour­ney of love and faith.

Roy was a mechan­i­cal engi­neer and worked as fac­to­ry man­ag­er for Eaton Cor­po­ra­tion.   He was also active at the Chi­nese Chris­t­ian Union Church in Chica­go Chi­na­town as coun­selor for the boys’ club.  Lat­er, he became chair­man of the Youth Board, a mem­ber of the Board of Trustees, and an elder.  

I was a high school Eng­lish teacher and taught a high school Sun­day school class.  Lat­er, I became a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher, the Sun­day School Super­in­ten­dent, and mem­ber of the Board of Trustees.

Our first oppor­tu­ni­ty to open our home to some­one came when three boys in Roy’s boys’ club woke up one morn­ing and found their father hang­ing from the kitchen door.  He was deep in debt and decid­ed death was the only way out.  Roy brought the three broth­ers to our house and our pas­tor took in their moth­er and sis­ter.  They stayed with us until after the funer­al and after moth­er found anoth­er house for them to live in.

Anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty came when we heard about a girl from Hong Kong.  She was study­ing music in Boston when she found out she was preg­nant.  She did­n’t know how she was going to pay for doc­tor or hos­pi­tal bills. She did­n’t want an abor­tion because she was a Catholic.  Roy flew to Boston to meet the girl and found her eyes red and swollen from cry­ing.  He offered our place until she had her baby.  We did­n’t real­ize she had emo­tion­al prob­lems.  She had a ner­vous break­down as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in biol­o­gy in Wis­con­sin because she could­n’t meet the high stan­dard she had set for her­self.  Her par­ents came to take her home to Hong Kong.  My obste­tri­cian was asso­ci­at­ed with North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty and told me there was a spe­cial fund to help for­eign stu­dents who were preg­nant.  She also offered her ser­vices for free.  When my doc­tor found out this girl had emo­tion­al prob­lems, she sug­gest­ed I go to the  labor room with her to keep her calm dur­ing her labor pains so that she would not have anoth­er ner­vous break­down.  We had also referred her to a Chris­t­ian agency for coun­sel­ing about what to do with her child.  She insist­ed she was going to keep the child even though we told her it would be very dif­fi­cult for her to sup­port her­self and her child and con­tin­ue her edu­ca­tion.  As the time for the birth of the baby arrived, she kept say­ing she would kill her­self and the baby if she couldn’t keep the baby.  There­fore, she was placed in the psy­chi­atric ward after she had the baby.  Mean­time, she received a let­ter from her sis­ter that she was get­ting mar­ried.  There­fore, she decid­ed to go home to Hong Kong.  The Chris­t­ian agency asked her to sign a paper to release the baby for adop­tion if she did­n’t return.  The agency also warned us that we might nev­er hear from her again because she would block out this trau­mat­ic part of her life.  We nev­er heard from her again.  How­ev­er, we learned from friends in the Boston area that she had returned to school there.

There were two Kore­an teenagers who attend­ed Faith Bible Church which was our church in Des Plaines.  While they lived in Korea, their father was killed and their moth­er could­n’t sup­port her four chil­dren.  There­fore, she sent the two old­er ones to live with her hus­band’s broth­er, wife and son.  These girls were used like ser­vants.  They cleaned house, did laun­dry, took care of the yard, shov­eled snow, and helped with the cook­ing.  They also had part time jobs and went to school.  When their uncle got drunk, he became ver­bal­ly abu­sive and even threw things around.  The girls decid­ed to run away from home.  They went to the par­son­age.  Our church work­er who was liv­ing there for the sum­mer called us to ask what he should do.  The two girls stayed at our house until we talked to their aunt to ask what they should do.  They refused to return to their uncle’s home.  Their aunt was a nurse and knew there were some apart­ments near the hos­pi­tal where she worked.  She was able to get a part time job at the hos­pi­tal for the old­er girl and they lived there until they grad­u­at­ed from high school.  Then they moved to an apart­ment near the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Chica­go cam­pus.  The old­er one com­plet­ed her major in eco­nom­ics and the younger one went to the Art Insti­tute to major in dress design­ing.  The younger girl is mar­ried and has three chil­dren.

Dur­ing the Viet­nam War, we heard on the radio a plea for spon­sors for Viet­namese fam­i­lies. We called to say we would be will­ing to become spon­sors.  Then we received a let­ter that said they had a 17-year-old girl and her 16 year old broth­er who were dif­fi­cult to place in a home because most fam­i­lies want­ed lit­tle chil­dren.  Roy flew to the refugee camp in Arkansas to meet the two teenagers.  Roe’s heart went out to these two who were liv­ing in a long Quon­set hut with many oth­er fam­i­lies and with only sheets hang­ing from the ceil­ing to sep­a­rate them from the oth­er fam­i­lies.  The girl stayed with their belong­ings because peo­ple were steal­ing things.  Her broth­er helped as trans­la­tor because he spoke Eng­lish, French, Viet­namese, and Chi­nese.  We found out this boy was 19, not 16 years old.  His par­ents had lied about his age so that he would­n’t be draft­ed into the Viet­namese army.  Our house was checked by the state to see whether we qual­i­fied to become fos­ter par­ents.  The girl went to the high school near our home and the boy start­ed at a junior col­lege.  We found out he didn’t have the required math and sci­ence cours­es from high school because he had attend­ed a French lan­guage school and a British busi­ness school to avoid study­ing math and sci­ence.  The junior col­lege had him study these class­es as part of their GED or high school pro­fi­cien­cy cours­es before they start­ed him on col­lege cours­es.  He lat­er trans­ferred to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Chica­go cam­pus and grad­u­at­ed with a com­put­er sci­ence and math major.  He got a job with All State Insur­ance Com­pa­ny.  His sis­ter lived with us for three years.  After high school she also went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Chica­go cam­pus.  She planned to become a phar­ma­cist but failed the entry test.  There­fore, she changed to com­put­er sci­ence and got a job with IBM.  Both of them became Chris­tians through the Can­tonese fel­low­ship group at the Chi­na­town church.  The girl is still active there.  Her broth­er is mar­ried and has two boys.  His fam­i­ly is involved at a Man­darin church in the sub­urb.  How their par­ents got out of Viet­nam and were reunit­ed with their six chil­dren is a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of God’s pro­tec­tion and grace.  How­ev­er, it’s too long to describe here.

There was a doc­tor from Bei­jing who drove his fam­i­ly in a u‑haul truck and towed his car from Orlan­do to Chica­go. Friends in Orlan­do told us about when he would be arriv­ing in Chica­go and where he would be liv­ing.  On that day, we drove around that area of Chica­go and saw a u‑haul truck. The doc­tor and his fam­i­ly had just arrived. Roy helped him get his car off the trail­er.  After they fin­ished unload­ing the truck, he took the doc­tor to return the truck and trail­er.  We returned the next day to take the boy to school.  We were told he need­ed a phys­i­cal check up before he could start school.  We went to the Chi­na­town church to ask a friend there for a name of a doc­tor.  She sent us to a clin­ic not too far from the church where they had a Can­tonese speak­ing doc­tor and a Man­darin-speak­ing doc­tor.  This fam­i­ly now lives in Ohio.

One cold, icy win­ter day in 1993, there was a 42-car pile up on the Kennedy Express­way near Addi­son St. in Chica­go.  Only one per­son was killed in car #7.  She was the wife of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Chica­go cam­pus grad stu­dent from Bei­jing.  He had just grad­u­at­ed from the uni­ver­si­ty and was going to start work­ing on Mon­day. To cel­e­brate the cou­ple went shop­ping for a CD play­er.  She died and he was rushed uncon­scious to Illi­nois Mason­ic Hos­pi­tal with severe inter­nal injuries.  When Roy read about the acci­dent in the news­pa­per, he felt com­pelled to find out where the funer­al was going to be.  His broth­er had a florist shop in Chi­na­town.  Roy fig­ured some­one would order flow­ers from him for the funer­al.  He asked his broth­er to call him if some­one ordered flow­ers for the Pan fam­i­ly and tell him where the flow­ers were to be deliv­ered.. When Roy went to the funer­al, he met the par­ents of the hus­band.  They both taught at the top engi­neer­ing school in Chi­na.  It was in Bei­jing.  They had bor­rowed mon­ey to pay for their plane fare to see their son.  Roy won­dered how they were going to pay for their son’s hos­pi­tal and doc­tor bills.  He decid­ed to go to the var­i­ous Chi­nese church­es to appeal for finan­cial help for them.  Roy also found out that the pro­fes­sor and his wife were plan­ning to take the bus from their son’s apart­ment at 31st street on the south side of Chica­go below Chi­na­town to the hos­pi­tal on the far north side of the city.  He offered to dri­ve them to the hos­pi­tal.  When their son regained con­scious­ness and was final­ly allowed to recu­per­ate at home, Roy drove him and his par­ents to his apart­ment and car­ried him up to his 2nd floor.  Moth­er stayed to care for him but father returned to Bei­jing.  This boy’s com­pa­ny kept his job for him until he was able to start work.  He has now remar­ried and has two chil­dren.

     Roy got an unex­pect­ed and shock­ing phone call one day.  A Chi­nese woman from Shang­hai who had just arrived at O’ Hare Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Chica­go need­ed help in locat­ing her son who was involved in a car acci­dent.  He had grad­u­at­ed from Trin­i­ty Col­lege in Deer­field, Illi­nois the year before and left for Mis­souri for grad­u­ate study.  He was return­ing to Trin­i­ty Col­lege for his friend’s grad­u­a­tion and was going to pick his moth­er up at O’Hare air­port.  On his way, he fell asleep at the wheel and his car went into the medi­an strip and direct­ly in the path of a semi-truck which was just pass­ing anoth­er car.  He and his pas­sen­ger were killed instant­ly and then his car burst into flame.  The police called his res­i­dence in Mis­souri and his friend called a teacher at Trin­i­ty Col­lege to meet his moth­er at O’Hare.  When moth­er asked what had hap­pened to her son, the teacher found it very dif­fi­cult to tell her that her son was dead.  When a Chi­nese cou­ple at Trin­i­ty Sem­i­nary heard what hap­pened, they imme­di­ate­ly called Roy to help this moth­er.  Roy called the State police to find out where the acci­dent had hap­pened and where they had tak­en the body.  When Roy talked to the funer­al home, they asked the moth­er to fax to them per­mis­sion to cre­mate the body.  Roy asked where they were locat­ed so he could pick up the ash­es.  He also made flight arrange­ments for moth­er to go to her son’s res­i­dence to pack his belong­ings.  Moth­er asked Roy to go with her.  Roy had no time to pack because he left imme­di­ate­ly with moth­er.  After he picked up the boy’s ash­es, Roy drove his moth­er to where the acci­dent hap­pened.  Then Roy took her to her son’s res­i­dence to pack his belong­ings.  She gave his clothes away.  Roy flew back to Chica­go.  We met the boy’s father when we went to Shang­hai.  He is a pro­fes­sor at a uni­ver­si­ty in Shang­hai.  He told us how God had pre­pared them for their son’s death.

1989 was the turn­ing point in our life.  My dad had said he want­ed to go to Dis­ney World.  Since he was 88 years old, Roy sug­gest­ed he go before he got any old­er.  Roy want­ed this trip to be more than a vaca­tion at Dis­ney World.  He prayed that God would use this trip for his glo­ry.  When we went to the Chi­na Pavil­ion at Epcot, we went to the gift shop there.  Roy saw an old­er Chi­nese sales clerk with the name tag “Peter”.  He told the man that Peter was a good name.  Did he know the mean­ing of Peter?  The man replied, “The Rock.”  Roy asked how he knew that and Peter said he was 3rd gen­er­a­tion Catholic.  Since Peter became busy with some oth­er tourists, Roy looked around for some­one else to talk to.  He saw a girl by the Chi­nese dress­es and she was­n’t busy.  He start­ed talk­ing to her and found out she was from Hangzhou.  He asked how long she’d been in Orlan­do and what she had seen in this area.  Her answer was typ­i­cal of those with­out a car. She had­n’t gone any­where. He asked,  “When is your day off?”  Her day off was after we were to leave Orlan­do on Fri­day.  He told her that we were going to Cypress Gar­den the next day and if she could arrange some­thing to go with us to call us.  He gave her our phone num­ber in Orlan­do and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to have her call us.  She had swapped day off with some­one else so she was able to go.  Roy tried to talk to her about becom­ing a Chris­t­ian dur­ing the water ski­ing show but she was not inter­est­ed in the show.  Through this girl we were intro­duced to some oth­ers from Chi­na.  Roy felt he should fol­low up by phone these peo­ple we met.  He also flew to Orlan­do a few months lat­er when he learned there would be new peo­ple com­ing from Chi­na.  When he was intro­duced to them, he asked whether there was any­thing he could do to help.  Did they want to buy Chi­nese gro­ceries for their din­ners or did they need any­thing from Wal-Mart?  Did they want to go sight­see­ing on their day off?  He grad­u­al­ly gained the con­fi­dence of peo­ple and word got around that Uncle Roy real­ly wants to help peo­ple and does­n’t expect any­thing in return.

After sev­er­al years of fly­ing or dri­ving to Orlan­do, Roy began to feel we should move to Orlan­do because God want­ed him to reach out to these peo­ple from Chi­na.  They were here for only one year.  This was a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk to them about spir­i­tu­al things while they were here in the U.S.

In May 2000 we moved in to our new house in Orlan­do.  We had it built accord­ing to the mod­el of a house with 4 bed­rooms upstairs and a mas­ter bed­room down­stairs with liv­ing room, kitchen, fam­i­ly room, and a long patio area for a ping pong table and a long kitchen table for many guests.  We planned to invite many peo­ple to our home from Epcot.  Also, many peo­ple told us they would be vis­it­ing us since we lived near Sea World, Uni­ver­sal Stu­dio, and Dis­ney World.  We even bought two sofa beds to have addi­tion­al bed space.

We found out very quick­ly that when we reached out to help peo­ple, there were many, many ways to help espe­cial­ly those who did­n’t have a car.  A girl from Hong Kong had bad skin aller­gy so she made an appoint­ment to see an aller­gist but had no way to get there.  She called us to ask whether we could give her a ride to the doc­tor’s office and back.  Anoth­er girl sprained her ankle when she missed the last step of her stair­way.  Her friend called us to ask what she should do.  We sug­gest­ed she ask her super­vi­sor at the Chi­na pavil­ion where she should go and we would dri­ve her there.  Anoth­er girl need­ed a ride to take a test to enter a grad­u­ate school.  One thing that many of them want­ed to do was to take the dri­ving test.  In Orlan­do they must first take a 5 hour drug and alco­hol pre­ven­tion class, then a writ­ten test for learn­er’s per­mit and final­ly the road test.  Rather than take peo­ple one at a time, Roy sug­gest­ed that a group go togeth­er.  Anoth­er way to help was Epcot work­ers often get home from work at 10 pm and then must pre­pare din­ner for them­selves.  Roy invit­ed indi­vid­u­als for din­ner or a group of them for dim sum din­ner.

As we sought to share spir­i­tu­al truth with these peo­ple from Hong Kong and Chi­na, we learned what Mis­sion­ary Paul meant in I Corinthi­ans 3: 6 to 9  “I plant­ed, Apol­los watered but God gave the growth…He who plants and he who waters are equal and each shall receive his wages accord­ing to his labor.  For we are God’s fel­low work­ers.”  A girl from Hong Kong did­n’t seem to be inter­est­ed in spir­i­tu­al things when we talked to her.  After she fin­ished her one-year con­tract with Dis­ney, she went to Eng­land to com­plete her edu­ca­tion.  She met some Chris­tians who invit­ed her to a retreat.  She accept­ed Christ there.  She sent an email to us to let us know what hap­pened and thanked us for intro­duc­ing her to Jesus Christ.  We should not be dis­cour­aged if we don’t see many peo­ple accept Christ.  God wants us to be faith­ful whether we are plant­i­ng spir­i­tu­al seed or water­ing which is help­ing oth­ers to grow spir­i­tu­al­ly.

Anoth­er thing we are learn­ing is when God has his hand on a per­son, He will bring oth­er Chris­tians into their lives.  When the girl from Hangzhou asked us to be spon­sors for her hus­band to study at Tempe, Ari­zona, we said, “Sure!”  Roy flew to Ari­zona to meet him and to talk to him about becom­ing a Chris­t­ian.  He said yes to be polite because Uncle Roy had come so far to talk to him.  God knew his heart.  He brought anoth­er Chris­t­ian to his dorm and he went to church with him.  When his wife was able to join him in Tempe, they moved to an apart­ment com­plex where a Chris­t­ian cou­ple had Bible study in their home for peo­ple who had to work on Sun­day.  This cou­ple is now in Texas and they have a lit­tle boy.

Roy vol­un­teered me to tutor two teen-aged acro­bats from Hurbe who per­form at Splen­did Chi­na theme park in Kissimee.  I teach them Eng­lish on Mon­day, Wednes­day, and Fri­day from about 8pm to 9 or 9:30pm.  Anoth­er thing that hap­pened was when we took friends to Ani­mal King­dom, Roy walked over to the Asia sec­tion and talked to a girl from Thai­land.  On her day off, he invit­ed her to our house and to din­ner at the Ori­en­tal Seafood Restau­rant.  He asked her to invite her friends.  One of her friends had a room­mate from Tokyo, Japan who was grad­u­at­ing the same day as a friend from Chi­na so we went to their grad­u­a­tion.  Roy offered the 2 girls a ride home.  The girl from Thai­land had to hur­ry home to go to the air­port to meet some of her friends.  On our way, we stopped at McDon­alds to get her a ham­burg­er.  After we dropped her off, we took the Japan­ese room­mate to Siz­zlers for a break­fast buf­fet to cel­e­brate her grad­u­a­tion.  She lat­er called for a ride to the post office to mail 4 box­es to Japan.  When her par­ents came from Japan the next week to go on a Dis­ney cruise, we picked them up at the air­port and drove them to the Poly­ne­sian Resort Hotel where they were stay­ing.  Anoth­er day, we went to Ani­mal King­dom Lodge with a girl from Hong Kong.  Roy start­ed talk­ing to a boy from Botswana who had come just a month ago.  Because he used to be a guide at a wild ani­mal reser­va­tion, he was hired by Dis­ney to talk to the guests at the lodge about the wild ani­mals and also hold sem­i­nars on the African ani­mals.  Roy invit­ed him to our home for din­ner and also took him to and amuse­ment park called Old Town and to Splen­did Chi­na.

Get­ting involved in peo­ple’s lives is very reward­ing but when the phone rings too often for help, Roy gets tired of run­ning around and begins to feel he is being tak­en advan­tage of.  Our home has been very busy with friends, rel­a­tives, pas­tors, and mis­sion­ar­ies along with Epcot peo­ple stay­ing with us.  We even had 2 girls from Hong Kong stay with us for 2 weeks after 9/11 ground­ed their plane to New York and Cana­da.  They final­ly flew direct­ly home to Hong Kong.  We feel like we’re run­ning a bed and break­fast place.  When we get tired, we are remind­ed of Gala­tians 6: 9 “And let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a har­vest of bless­ings if we don’t get dis­cour­aged and give up.”  We remind our­selves that the rea­son we moved to Orlan­do was to serve oth­ers.  We also trav­el to get away for a while.