Our journey at a glance
It’s been a year since we opened up our home to youths. Thus far, we have welcomed into our home five youths, boys and girls aged 18 to 22 from different backgrounds, most with mental health issues and without conducive homes to go back to.
Before we got married, we talked about offering our home as a place to bless others, knowing that this home that we have is a blessing from God and it is only right for us to share this blessing with others. So when the opportunity came for us to open up our home to youths, it was very natural for us to agree to do so.
Our initial concerns and assumptions
When it was finally time for us to meet our first youth, one of us actually hesitated due to worries about safety as he was a boy. A myriad of concerns was raised:
Will he be violent? Will we be safe at home, particularly if only one of us were at home with him? Will he follow the rules that we set for him? What if he was considerate and wanted to obey the rules but was peer pressured by friends who wanted to crash at our place without permission or even steal from us?
These were a few of the many questions that were raised by ourselves and people with whom we shared our dream with. We had no answers and knew that the only way was to take the plunge into accepting him in.
When we welcomed him in, our fears were assuaged when we saw that, unlike our preconceptions of troubled youths, he was a very mild-mannered boy. He was courteous and overwhelmed when we first walked him into his room. He looked strangely at the queen-sized bed and remarked at how he has never slept in such a big bed before. When talking about the air-conditioner, he also said that his room at home never had an air-conditioner. He was very appreciative and thankful for a place of his own where he could rest in without disruption and disturbance.
When explaining the ground rules of the home, he was agreeable to them and during the few times when he accidentally broke them, we would remind him and he would always be apologetic and agree not to do it again. As agreed, he never invited friends over to our home and simply sought a place to rest and recuperate
Our fears were never realized and it helped us realize that, while there is a spectrum of attitudes and habits of troubled youths, more often than not there exists a gap between our fears and preconceptions and the actual condition of our youths. This experience helped us to open our hearts to welcoming more youths and be more willing to avail our space for this ministry.
Preparations and living together
Preparing for the arrival of each youth is very similar to how we prepare for guests to stay over in our home – cleaning the room, making sure the bedsheets are ready, making sure there is space in the room to hang clothes, preparing a set of toiletries and towels etc. Before the arrival of each youth, we as a couple talk about ground rules that we want to set. The ground rules are usually very simple – 1) for the youth to keep his/her own living area clean, and 2) for him/her to always be open and honest with us.
We kept these ground rules up to today. And we modified them as we went along with each youth. We learnt over time that due to the personalities and capabilities of each youth, we need to always be flexible and adjust the ground rules accordingly. Actually these are not really “ground rules” per se, but more about involving each youth in the matters of the household. As each youth stays longer with us, each of them is gradually “promoted” from being a guest to being a part of the family. They participate in washing their own laundry, washing their own toilet and sharing the dishwashing load. We share our lives together as we live together – we frequently spend common time over meals, talking about our preferences for things in life in general, sharing our thoughts on deep life topics, and coming up with jokes for each other (a sense of humour is very important to sustain this ministry!).
One challenging time we experienced was when we found out a few times that our youth was smoking in his room and this created a stress point for us as we did not like the idea of confrontation. We eventually gently talked to him about it and were surprised to see him being very apologetic about it. He later explained himself to say that he would smoke when he felt stressed and in the past, he would go down to his void deck to smoke with his friends, but as he was unable to find company in his new “home”, he smoked in his room to quickly destress after a mentally challenging day. We found through this episode that empathy for these youths is so important. Sometimes we are quick to judge because of behaviours we deem undesirable, but it is so crucial for us to look beyond these behaviours to understand how and why they come about.
In living together with these youths, we have learnt to accept “messiness”, in terms of finding the balance of how things should work everytime we have a new youth move in with us, and of course, coming to terms with the fact that dirt and disorganisation are inevitable realities and these are elements that make a home warm and “human”.
Through opening up our home, we have also learnt to trust more. We learn to trust these youths as they are worthy of our trust, and in receiving our trust, it helps them to grow and mature as individuals. Most of all, we learn to trust that this home is ultimately not ours, even if we lose something of value or if plates, bowls and electrical appliances are broken by our youths, we will still be taken care of by our Provider at the end of the day.
It’s been a rewarding journey and we never regret going on it, knowing that each youth who came through our home has benefitted in some ways. Here’s a quote from a letter that one of our youths wrote to us when he moved out:
“No amount of words can describe how much gratitude i have for you guys. To open a space in your house, in your life for someone like me. I have enjoyed my stay at your place. It became a place of rest, of solitude for me to think and ponder, to heal and learn. God has blessed me with the chance of meeting you guys. He has blessed me with what warmth feels like and although it was weird at first, it feels as if I have actually become part of the family. Thank you for taking care of me when the world was dark and gloomy when I could not find a glimmer of hope, you guys became my ray of silver lining…”
Jon and Phoebe's thetomyumkongs journey. 