March 2010 Jess' job

Jessica Purchase has the amazing ability to warm any heart. She is naturually warm. She can disarm anyone with her smile. I once saw her disarm an entire battalion of North Korean troops guarding a nuclear facility.

So it did not surprize me that the lady she met on the bus ending up chatting to her and then introducing her to the headmistress of a school down the road who offered her a job almost immediately. Jess was working in tandem with God.

It began as a substitute post for one day. Then it became a week of relief teaching. Then a month and then a permanent contract.

However, all that glitters is not gold.

It became clear to us that we had landed in a carefully constructed trap. The details are of no consequence. However, we were not unaware of the schemes of the enemy. Before we knew it we had got into a position of some danger. We had to get out before the noose was tightened. By the grace of God we made it out with no damage and all in tact.

Some jobs are just never meant to be. That was one of them.

Jess breathed a sigh of relief on two fronts. The first was for the reasons above. The second was because of the impact the full-time job had on the children. We had just arrived. Mother and daughters were all disorientated. To have separated them both was more than could be beared.

The entire experience of a mother working full-time with young children sent in motion a chain reaction of thought in my mind. What is God's plan and purpose for wives and mothers and work? What is the Christian response to mothers working? What did Singapore society think of the same? It piqued my curiosity. Although the job ended in semi-failure I knew enough to know that somehow God was trying to teach us something and make us experience something about the plight of the working mother. My gut feeling is that those two months of Jess' work will rank as among the most signifcant of our lives in Singapore. I am convinced to this day that God led her there, to demonstrate something, that we might extract some jewel of truth and wisdom.