FLORENCE'S STORY - Part 2

Florence's Story - part 2

My children were in school and they were being taught how to hate and to kill Americans. I didn't want them to grow up hating. I knew I had to get them out of the country to a better life. I prayed to God about this problem and asked for His help. A neighbor had arranged for passage for his family on a ship leaving Viet Nam. He had paid a deposit and then found a better passage. He agreed to sell me his deposit so that my children and I could leave. I still had diamonds that I could sell. The cost of the deposit was twenty gold leaves (each leaf worth about $900 US). I got exactly that amount when I sold my diamonds.

My oldest child, Henry, was ten, my daughter Marlene was eight, and my youngest son, Andy was three when we left Viet Nam. For the three day journey to Malaysia, 342 people were crammed into a boat about 60 feet long and 15 feet wide with a very small engine. There was no food, and very little water. A storm came up the night before the last day. The entire boatload of people were in terror crying and screaming. Many were sick and some died. When someone died they were thrown overboard. I prayed. I told God that if this was the way He would take me home, so be it. I slept, a very calm sleep. The next day someone sighted land, and jumped out and grabbed hold of the rope as they walked to shore. We had one tiny suitcase which contained the only possessions we had. I carried my toddler and told Henry to bring the suitcase. He tried to hold onto it, and I told him to let it go in the water. For some reason I thought it would float, and he could use it to help get to shore. We finally did get to land and I realized that my Bible was inside, wrapped in a blue towel! When we opened the suitcase, everything was completely waterlogged, except the Bible. While there was some water damage on the edges, the pages of the Bible were bone dry.
We were settled in a refugee camp in Malaysia which was opened in 1975 for boat people. Conditions were terrible, it was a very dangerous place especially for women. Maylaysian sholdiers beat and raped many of the women. To keep them away, I kept myself unkempt and smelly. Because of mosquitos, many were sick with malaria. An old schoolmate of mine who lived at the bottom of the hill in the camp brought me mosquito netting to protect my children. At Christmastime when I prayed that I would have something special to give my children, that same schoolmate brought me two apples and a handful of candy. I never saw him again.

It was 1978. Some of the refugees had been in the camp for a very long time. Red Cross workers interviewed us. They said that I would be sponsored by a country in the Western world, but I didn't know which one. I prayed that God would take me to live with His family. We were in the camp only eight and a half months when a Reformed Christian Church in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada sponsored me and my children. They were good people, but very strict. They worked hard and expected everyone else to work hard too. They gave us a place to live and twenty dollars a week. That was all we had for food and utilities and everything else we needed. I knew no English and didn't know how I was going to take care of myself and my children. I felt isolated. But I remembered Isaiah 42:3, "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice." I knew that if I trusted God, He would help me. I was encouraged by Romans 8:28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

When I had been in Bowmanville for about three months, I began to show the ladies of the church what I could sew. I began making clothing for them. Then I went to work for a dress shop at minimum wage. I prayed that I would be able to get a good education for my children; I asked God to enable me to earn enough money to do that. A men's clothing store sent the garments that needed alterations to the dress shop. When Jack, the owner of the store, saw the quality of the work I did, he gave me the space above his store for my own shop. I did all of his alterations as well as developing my own business. I worked sixteen hour days. I still do not understand how I could do what I did. We had arrived in 1978 with nothing and by 1984 I was able to buy a house. God is so good!

After I was safely in Canada, I tried to find out where my husband was. I learned that he had no interest in seeing me or our children. He was in Hong Kong, married with a new family. I felt that I was not to have a husband. I didn't want a husband! But God had other plans for me.

In the spring of 1985, Jean Marie Nadeau was working in Bowmanville, Kingston, 125 miles east was his home base, and he was getting ready to leave when he went by Jack's clothing store and saw a pair of pants he liked. He had shopped there often so they had his measurements. Jack's wife said that he could have the pants in ten minutes. He brought them up to my shop expecting the tailor to be a man. I told him they would be ready in ten minutes so he went out for coffee. When he came back he asked me what my husband did for work. I told him I didn't have a husband. He asked for my phone number, and I gave him the number at my shop. He came back a few days later and bought another pair of pants. He asked me out for coffee, but I didn't want to go. But he was very persistant. He sometimes bought pastries at a nearby bakery and brought them up to share with me. He bought five pair of pants and had them all altered. Finally my daughter and her friend, who were by now teenagers, urged me to go out with Jean Marie. I thought about it and the next time he asked me, I asked him, "If you die tonight, where are you going to go?" He replied that he was just asking me out for coffee, but then he said he believed in Jesus and would go to be with Him. I then asked him, "Do you drink?" He said "no", I asked, "Do you smoke?" He said no. I said that was hard to believe, and he said that if I wanted to find out more about him I would have to go out for coffee, so I said, "Okay, Sunday afternoon at two o'clock. And I'll bring my little boy with me." That was the beginning of our relationship.

I learned that Jean Marie had been born again in 1975 - the year my husband left me in Saigon. He had been divorced in 1968 because he had a drinking problem. But in 1975 he became clean and sober. In 1983 when he first moved to Bowmanville, he got down on his knees and told God that he would like to meet a woman who believed in God, didn't drink and didn't smoke. He added, "I'd like to meet an Oriental woman." By 1985 he had really given up looking for someone and had forgotten his plea to God. We were married on February 22, 1986 when I was 38 and Jean Marie was 45. As we said our vows he remembered that he had prayed to meet an Oriental woman who did not drink or smoke. He heard God say, "This is my gift to you my son!" and he started to cry.

My youngest soon Andy is a rebel and as he was growing up, he and Jean Marie often quarrelled. My older son and my daughter got along well with him. In 1990, my son Henry asked to borrow my car to go on a trip to the US for two weeks before his return to college in September. Because he is so dependable I didn't hesitate to say yes. He never returned. I tried to get the police to investigate, but because Henry was twenty-one and an adult, they said they could do nothing. I prayed for him all the time.

In 1987 we had sponsored my adopted mom and my brother to come to Canada to live. The whole time that Henry was missing, my mother was very sick in the hospital. One night Andy and Jean Marie were arguing. I couldn't take it anymore. I yelled at them, "Grandmother is in the hospital dying, and Henry is nowhere to be found. Why can't you guys get along?" My ear heard very clearly a voice saying: "Henry is not yours; he is mine!" I didn't understand then, but later I realized that God was telling me that Henry was with Him.

As my mother was close to death she was struggling and fearful. They called the pastor to the hospital. He read Matthew 11:28-30: "Come to me all you who are weary..." I translated for her from English to Chinese as he read and explained to her about Jesus. My mom stopped struggling and became peaceful. She told me, "Henry is okay." She died on March 17th and we buried her on Saturday, March 20th. The next night, Sunday, two constables knocked on the door and asked for Henry's dental records to identify a body that had been found in a national park in the U.S. We received Henry's remains the following Thursday and buried him next to his grandmother on March 27, 1991. On their tombstone we had engraved Job 1:21: "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."

God is good! Praise His name!