Paul Lam was in the throes of financial ruin in 2007 when his skin began flaking off so badly that his wife had to follow him around with a vacuum cleaner to clear up after him.

There was no reprieve, no matter what they did or who they consulted. “Whenever I took the medicine, rashes came out all over my body,” he remembers. “My skin was like one degree burnt. My neck was swollen.”

He did not realise God was decidedly in pursuit of him.

He drank. He played mahjong. He quarrelled with his wife. Life was one bad day after another.

But God was out to save his skin – and his life.

In the past

The pre-believing Paul, now 57, was a successful businessman with a garment factory in the Maldives. Born in Hongkong, he subscribed to superstition and wore amulets of various kinds to ward off evil.

His wife, Vanessa Ong, now 49, was a feisty Singapore-born girl who’d quit school at 16 to work and help support her two younger sisters. Once a Christian, she left God when her father abandoned the family.

The Lams married in 1999 and will be celebrating their 20th anniversary this year.

Vanessa’s entrepreneurial flair led her to start a pedicure business called Voxy, which soon expanded from Singapore to Tokyo, Jakarta, Bali and Bahrain. It also had an affiliate, Voxy Nail Academy.

The couple lived the high life, counting a semi-detached house in Singapore and a penthouse among their assets, three cars and enough cash in the bank to always fly first-class whenever they travelled.

“We didn’t feel any need for Jesus,” Vanessa says. “Our hearts were quite dead.”

Then came the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, when they were in the prime of their lives. It was to prove a watershed event for them personally.

Paul’s garment factory in the Maldives was hard-hit and forced to close. He looked to a pharmaceutical venture in Afghanistan to recoup his losses, but that investment fell through.

They had to sell off all they owned to settle their debts, and he returned to Hongkong, moving in with one of his sisters.

A high fever hit him in September 2007, which added to their unravelling. Doctors could not identify the cause, and the array of steroids prescribed left him with a “needles poking the head” sort of pain and side effects like the skin-flaking rash.

Vanessa sold her business to rush to his side. “We hit rock bottom,” she states plainly. “The life that we lived – we were right at the top, then we hit the valley, till we didn’t have a single cent with us. No money in the bank.”

Divine intervention

One day four months later, in January 2008, “I ate a lot of porridge,” Paul recounts. “Porridge has a lot of sugar (content), but I didn’t know.”

He didn’t even know he was diabetic. “I fell asleep,” he says. In fact, he had fallen into a coma.

Save for the maid, no one else was home. Paul’s brother-in-law happened to be gripped by an urge to visit him – unexplainable, since he did not get along with this particular sister whom Paul was staying with.

He found he couldn’t wake Paul up, and called for an ambulance.

His intervention turned out to be uncannily timely and absolutely God-inspired. Warded immediately in the Intensive Care Unit, Paul was comatose for two days with dangerously high blood sugar levels.

When eventually he came to and was recuperating, his brother-in-law visited again – this time with a Chinese pastor who shared the gospel. Paul readily accepted Christ, for the simple reason that he just knew somehow that “God saved my life”.

Over the next three months, the rash left him and his skin was restored to health without medication.

Rashes rendered Paul’s skin red and flaky, but it was miraculously healed after he accepted Christ.

Watching these miracles unfold before her very eyes, Vanessa’s backslidden heart was healed as well. “I never thought of Him until Paul fell ill, then I remembered He was there, waiting for me,” she says.

“Though I left Him, He did not leave me or forsake me at all.” (Hebrews 13:5)

When Paul confessed apprehensively to her that he had accepted Christ, “at that moment, I told myself: ‘Lord, I am coming back to You now’.” 

Their spiritual awakening seemed complete, and they recognised the dawning of a new beginning.

Renewed life

Without knowing what was ahead of them, Paul and Vanessa moved back to Singapore. The global financial crisis of 2008 gave them the opportunity to buy a five-room HDB flat below valuation.

“The seller left behind a TV, a fridge and a washing machine for us – all favour from God,” Vanessa says. “From then till now, He has never failed to provide.”

They also went church-searching and joined Faith Community Baptist Church. “Every Sunday at church I cried my heart out for more than a year,” Vanessa recounts. “There was so much healing, restoration and reconciliation with Jesus.”

Always mindful of the saving grace of God in their darkest moments, they shared their testimony openly and extensively. Friends found their newfound faith in stark contrast to the Lams of the past, whom they knew to be anti-Christian.

To love and to cherish: The new life in Paul and Vanessa’s marriage is a gift of God.

But the couple has never looked back. They continue to serve in various ministries, including security (bag checking) before church services and ushering.

Vanessa leads a cell group and is involved with Alpha at FCBC. She has also joined Touch Community Services as a fundraiser in response to a call of God. “He wanted me to serve His people through this organisation – the poor, the widows and the orphans (James 1:27). God has gifted me with a sharp business acumen and He knows I can apply it at Touch.”

Paul, who now drinks only on special occasions at home and has stopped playing mahjong, has made a career switch into real estate and spends much of his time ministering to foreign workers from Malaysia and China.

Vanessa speaks lovingly of how he has really changed. Where once he was in the habit of using vulgarities, he no longer speaks a single foul word. “He dotes on me more (now),” she smiles. “Even out of his inconvenience, he will pick me up, run errands for me, buy me food.” 

Blessed to have been used to lead many to Christ, they are especially grateful for the conversion of family members, including Paul’s parents before their passing, his two sisters, Vanessa’s mother and second sister.

Paul reflects: “He allowed us to go through valleys of darkness (Psalm 23:4) and later find Him at the end of the tunnel, so that we can stand to testify of His goodness today.

“All things may have seemed bad at that time of suffering, but today when we look back, it happened for us to testify for Him.”