Testimonies of 2009

Chan, Timothy

2009 was an eventful year for me that brought both joy and heartbreak. Through it all, I have learnt a lot as a person, grown spiritually and I even ventured to do some things that I have always wanted to do. However, the most important lesson to me is to trust in the Lord in all circumstances, knowing that God has a plan for my life to prosper and not to harm me and that He is always in complete control of all things. I realised how blessed I am in my life despite all the obstacles that I had to face and overcome. Being in the body of Christ is a blessing; the love of my family, having my physical needs taken care of and even every breath I take is a blessing.

Looking back, although I did not get to University after graduating from JC, I thank God that His grace has seen me through many years of good education. As things turned out, the Lord was actually showing me the path to fulfil my real passion and I believe He has paved the way forward. I am excited with God’s plan for me. I knew that I had to go out and make things happen and to take chances in my life in order to be able to achieve the greater reward outside of my comfort zone. So, meanwhile, during this gap year, I took up chess seriously and participated in the ASEAN Paralympic Games and various international tournaments. I actively kept in touch with friends through social networking sites and thoroughly enjoyed the times I got to hang out with them. I ventured on nature walks round the entire island of Singapore with my Dad. I started swimming again, something I have not done for a long time after my spinal surgery. I also started vocal lessons, a passion I have always kept in my heart, but now a reality.

The year past was an important milestone for me spiritually. I finally took the step of faith to go through baptism during Easter. I then took up a daily Bible reading plan, to learn more about God’s word. To date, I have read through the New Testament and half-way through the Old Testament. I also make an effort to talk to my friends about Christ. I am willing to be God’s instrument to reach out to those who have yet to know Him.

Summing up the year 2009, I thank God that He has blessed me more than I can imagine. Certainly, there were discouraging moments and disappointments, but I have in turn been drawn closer to God. I am filled with anticipation and look forward to even greater blessings in 2010 as God’s plan further unfolds for me.

Gan Han Sing

“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” Proverbs 22:7

When we started our business in 2005, our vision was huge: it still is, we want to be the pioneering dog day care in Asia, which really adds value to our customers and be able to contribute to the community. I had also commit to the Lord during K9 Kulture’s inception, that I want this company to be a ministry He can use.

The 1st 2 years was a lot of hard work: Seok Hwee and I usually wake at 4:30-5AM and go to bed at 12-1AM. There were a lot of sacrifices. We rented out the comfort of our home, much to the protest of Isabel, and rented a house and the living conditions were Spartan; we lived in a single room in the house, the living hall and the garden was the dog day care area, the other rooms were offices, gym room and our helper’s room. I was still holding onto my full time job as an engineer; juggling the work commitment was extremely tough for us; we did not have our usual parties and holidays for those 2 years. However, the Lord honored our effort, and He blessed the business: we grew from 3 dogs a day when we started to about 26-28 dogs a day within a year.

We had since moved out of the house to a 60,000sqft area in the Bukit Timah zone with an average of 70-80 dogs in daily attendance. As we grew, we struggled with how we are going to finance the growth. We thought, to grow: financially we will need capital injection: we started to look to the banks to borrow money; the banks were resistance to lend us the amount we asked for due to our short track records, but a finance company was willing to work with us for a bridging loans. By then, we had van loans and other payments plans. It was really stressful. The Lord was quietly speaking to me about the issue of borrowing, and Prov 22:7 was in my head; but I was greedy for the growth, chose to ignore His prompting. He uses other mentors through their books and podcast to communicate: I read and listened about the wisdom of frugal management by Warren Buffet, Larry Burkett and Dave Ramsey. I chose to tell myself, we are small and we need the capitalization; after all, this is how modern business was done, everybody is doing it.

In the meantime, I was also eager to develop programs that are socially beneficial using dogs; one of the programs is to develop therapy dogs to work with autistic children that had proven to be extremely helpful overseas. However, getting a school to work with us is extremely difficult, on many levels, one of them being the logistics. Being a logistics engineer, I tend to see everything as a process, system and supply chain problem; the classic solution to a supply chain problem is to bring the demand and supply points closer to each other. In our case, I thought I had the problem solved when a group of ex-teachers approach us to set up a school for autistic children in our premise.

Now, on hind sight, setting up a school or a business entity, is very different from being a teacher. It requires very different character and skill set in becoming an entrepreneur, having a good idea for a business is only 1% of the entire process, the other 99% involves determination, organizational and negotiation skills, good integrity and creative problem solving skills; and usually it is better to start it on your own and not in a group. That is why 9 out of 10 new businesses failed within 3 years of their inception.

I was very excited about the new school, and was very keen to help them get started. We’d help with some external constructions, connecting them with contractors and making our own resources available to them. Unfortunately, there was disunity within the group, and internal squabbles begin to break down their internal communications, and they started to have problems among themselves. Their poor organizational skills resulted in their failure to obtain the permit approval for their school. We tried to help them to get their permit approve; however, it did not work out. It was a disappointment for everyone. We had only collected the deposit of rental for the 6 months they were there; we offered to return the deposit as we empathized with their struggles. However, the group that was already fragmented turns and blamed us for their problem. We did some self examination and legal counsel, and concluded that we were not at fault, in fact, we had supported them more than we were require of. At that time, we were about to secure a $200K loan with Standard Chartered, by now, the banks were keen to lend us with our good track record and consistent growth; This is when you see the Hand of God moving in. The group of ex-teachers became extremely unreasonably aggressive with us and files a suit against us for $180K. With the suit, the loan approval was suspended as it represents a risk.

I had never been sued in my life before, much less for trying to help someone unsuccessfully. I was extremely hurt, distressed, stressed. I struggled and could not find sleeps for days. I wrestled with the Lord on this, pleading Him to remove the suit, “this is going to destroy the company, Lord; don’t You care??” I finally fell sick for the 1st time in many months. In essence, the Lord did to me what He did with Jacob: He broke my “legs”, and I have to stop. It was then that He is able to minister to me without me running off in a whole different direction,

Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to whose who are called according to His purpose.”

Philippians 4:6-7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer & supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

The Lord is saying to me that if K9 KULTURE is really His, I need to let go, and let Him own it. I became a steward on the day that I recovered and it was freeing. The suit is still active against the company till today. It is not affecting our growth, because the Lord is looking after that, but it is preventing us from borrowing money or obtaining any gearing facilities for the next couple of years.

My Boss had made it clear, we don’t need to borrow money, He is going to provide the funding.

Khoo, Carol

Greetings from JB! The Lord has indeed been merciful to us(Teck & I) through the past year. A verse from Proverbs 29:25 comes to mind, "... whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe."

This verse was manifested on the very fateful day of 12/10(Mon). We were on our way home from JB, and were travelling on the Perling interchange. It was about 2.15pm. Our car was going at the speed of around 80km/h. As we were happily chatting, suddenly I heard a low, loud bellowing sound. We stopped short at our conversation and I asked Teck if he heard anything. As I peered into the side mirror, I saw a frightening scene at the back of our car. It was no more than 50m away.

A huge container truck had overturned and in the process, pushed a car to the side of this highway. There were 6 lanes on this highway. Beyond that, we couldn't see anything because the impact had scrapped the tar off the road and formed a grey screen. I just held onto Teck's hand, asked him not to look back and move forward quickly. I was also saying a little prayer asking God to keep us safe. When we parked the car about 5 min away, we heaved a sigh of relief and thanked God for keeping our car a safe distance from the accident scene. The next day, the Malaysian New Straits Times published a column on the accident. It read, "3-vehicle crash causes massive jam on highway". Although no one was seriously injured, we are still very, extremely thankful.

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