Growing up, it was hard for Christopher Chan to enter, leave or move around in his three-room flat at Circuit Road.

Every nook and cranny was filled with plastic bags and random items that his single mother, who battled depression, refused to discard. 

The uninhabitable state of the flat Christopher grew up in.

His two sisters eventually moved out of the flat, leaving Christopher to care for and financially support his mother.

Being short on money, he worked in a hardware shop after secondary school hours. The then 14-year-old also joined a secret society to collect protection money from the brothels in Geylang.

Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of life, Christopher battled with anxiety and depression from a young age.

Young Christopher with his sister and mother

To fund his education, he signed on for the SAF-ITE sponsorship and served as a Commando for five years. He was attracted by its sizeable pay and allowance.

But he was still severely depressed.

“Once, I almost unhooked my parachute during a jump to try to end my life but backed out to avoid being downgraded and losing my allowances as a result,” said Christopher, now 27.

Christopher served as a Commando for five years.

When he left the army, Christopher started a minimart business in Aljunied. It had always been a childhood dream of his to run his own business.

Though he worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, his business still failed. Within two years, he had lost at least S$60,000 of his savings to the business.

Christopher (second from right) with some of his partners and part-timers in front of the minimart.

To cope with mounting debts, he worked at a second job at nightclubs and drank heavily – unaware that alcohol deepened his depression.

Christopher (first from left) with his drinking friends.

At home, his mother’s hoarding had reached a critical point. The flat was uninhabitable – Christopher was forced to sleep in the back of his minimart.

Christopher grew up living with a mother who was a hoarder. Eventually he moved out to sleep on the floor of his minimart.

His personal relationships also suffered. He became paranoid after one girlfriend cheated on him. Last year alone, he ended three relationships.

“I knew I needed help, but instead of seeking medical advice, I self-medicated with my mother’s depression medication, which only worsened my suicidal thoughts,” said Christopher.

He tried to hang himself under the expressway

In 2023, he attempted suicide seven times, including overdosing on pills, trying to drown himself and trying to hang himself in his minimart.

Fortunately, he did not succeed. Instead it landed him in hospital and the Institute of Mental Health.

“I grew up knowing God, because my mum brought me to church when I was young. But I stopped going to church during army days. Last year, I couldn’t feel God’s presence in my life. I felt that He had abandoned me because of all the problems I was facing,” Christopher told Salt&Light.

Last year, he wanted to drown himself in the Singapore River. In the nick of time, he remembered his good friend Joel, who is now a pastor at 3:16 Church. Pastor Joel prayed for him and invited him to church that Sunday.

Joel (left) taking a selfie with Christopher when they were much younger.

“The sermon topic that day happened to be on depression, and I felt God was speaking to me. I felt less alone,” said Christopher, who subsequently joined a cell group in the church.  

During that time, his doctor had increased his medication after he landed up in IMH for two weeks after another severe episode.

Despite the heightened dosage, Christopher continued to feel deep depths of despair.

The day after he attended a rock concert and listened to depressing lyrics, he was filled with such distress that he took a metal chain from his minimart and made his way to an expressway to hang himself.

He sent a farewell message to his close friends and family. To his two closest friends, he sent them a rough location of where he was.

“I was determined to die. But I thought if it’s God’s will for me to live, they would find me,” he told Salt&Light.

It was his way of testing God as he knew there was a very slim chance his friends would be able to find him since the expressway was 500m long and one needed to cross an overhead bridge to get from one end to another.

Additionally, one of the two friends he had messaged was not even in Singapore, but working on an oil tanker near Africa.

Under the expressway, it was pitch dark and all he could hear was cars zooming past.

Christopher hooked up the chain, wrapped it around his neck and lifted himself off the ground. It choked him so badly that he could hardly breathe.

Just then, his phone rang.

It was Nicholas, his friend on the oil tanker thousands of miles away. “Brother, don’t do this to me,” Nicholas begged. He had managed to get reception and called Christopher’s phone.

Hearing his friend’s plea, Christopher wavered. He was the one who had brought Nicholas to Christ during their secondary school days, and he did not want to stumble him by taking his own life.

Christopher (left) and Nicholas in their school days.

He was slowly losing consciousness, but he mustered his last ounce of strength to yank the chain off his neck. He cried out loud as his limp body dropped to the ground.

After some time, Christopher saw a light.

It was not Jesus.

It was the light emanating from the mobile phone of the other friend he had messaged: Nathanael, his cell group leader.

Despite not knowing his exact location under the expressway, the cell group leader had somehow managed to find his Christopher.

“I was about to give up the search,” Nathanael admitted. “But my Pastor Kevin (Zhang from 3:16 Church) encouraged me to pray, so I asked God: ‘You are the One who would leave the 99 for the one, so show me where the one is.'”

Immediately after his prayer, Nathanael was shocked to hear a cry in the dark and he found Christopher.

Christopher was sent to IMH.

The turnaround

At IMH, Christopher tried to hang himself again, this time using blankets. He also tried to climb up the false ceiling of his ward to get to the roof to jump.

His attempts were noticed and foiled.

His sister and church members gave him books to read and prayed for him during their visits. Christopher was also prescribed medication.

After two weeks, he became better.

“It was like I suddenly woke up, mentally. Everything became clear,” he told Salt&Light.

“But IMH felt very draining for me. In prison, at least one knows the length of one’s sentence. In IMH, there is no definite release date,” he explained.

To while away time, he gave some of the elderly patients massages.

During his fourth week there, a fellow patient asked him and a friend for help. One of the two lockers at his bed remained locked though the previous patient had already been discharged. This man wanted to use it to store his books.

Christopher’s friend Joseph toyed with the lock and randomly tried the number combination “677”.

To their surprise, the door of the locker opened.

In the locker was a black Bible.

Joseph took it out the Bible and flipped it open. Strangely, it opened to page 677.

To his amazement, Christopher noticed that Psalm 67 was printed on page 677.

“God must be speaking to me,” Christopher remarked, as he lifted the Bible and read the Psalm aloud.

The verses read: “May God be gracious to us and bless us…so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.”

The word “salvation” really spoke to Christopher.

“I realised that God was with us in IMH and that He wanted me to make His salvation known to the patients there,” said Christopher.

He continued reading aloud Psalm 68, which was on the facing page. When he got to the line about God being “a father to the fatherless”, Joseph interjected.

“I think God is speaking to me too. I lost my father to suicide as few years ago,” Joseph exclaimed. Joseph himself was admitted to IMH after a suicide attempt.

Christopher and Joseph fell to excitedly discussing the astounding way in which God had chosen to reveal Himself to both of them.

“What are the odds that the number combination of the lock, the Bible page in which he unintentionallly flipped to and the number of the Psalm on that page being the same? It was logically impossible. It had to be God,” said Christopher.

So, he made a bold proclamation: “For every day that the devil kept me in IMH, I vowed to bring one person to Christ.”

The next day, Christopher approached the other patient who had asked him for help to open the locker.

“He had witnessed all the miraculous things that happened with the locker and Bible. So, it was easy to bring him to faith,” Christopher said.

The second day, he noticed another patient who was “like a parrot” – he repeated whatever that he heard. That patient had not walked in three months and even had to pass motion on his bed.

“I thought since he kept repeating, why not get him to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer after me?” Christopher recalled. “So he did so, but of course, I doubted whether he was sincere in saying it or not.”

To his surprise, the following day, that patient miraculously got out of his bed and started walking on his own.

“He also took the Bible that we found and wanted to read it. He refused to give it back,” said Christopher.

Over the next two days, Christopher brought two other patients to faith, including a patient with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who would not look anyone in the eye.

Finally, Christopher was discharged.

In the four days after Christopher encountered God through the Bible from the locker, he succeeded in bringing four patients to Christ, even though he also received many rejections. 

In those four days, he also started a daily prayer meeting that grew from three to eight people. Making use of the long queue that formed daily to collect medication, Christopher gathered them to pray in one corner, and the prayer group would be the last in the queue, having prayed.

“Through this, I realised that God is not looking for ability but availability. Even at my lowest in IMH, God used me to bring the Gospel to patients there,” said Christopher.

God used his struggles for good

His battle with depression and admission to IMH helped him empathise with his mother better. It was also during his time in IMH that God showed him that he possesses the gifts of salvation and evangelism.

“What the devil meant for evil, God used it for good,” Christopher noted.

He recalled a particular dream he had while he was still suicidal in the early days of admission into IMH.

In the dream, he and three of his secondary school friends were trapped in an escape room owned by an evil landlord. They were left to kill each other, until a sole survivor emerged from the room.

Christopher thought it was just a nightmare. But the next day, a nurse informed him that he had three visitors waiting for him. They were the same three friends who featured in his dream the night before.

As the trio had arrived close to the end of visiting hours, the nurses had left the area and locked the door. Christopher realised that he and his friends were now locked up together in an area, just like in his dream.

But instead of battling, Christopher used the time to tell his friends about the dream he had as well as the supernatural encounters he experienced with the locker and Bible. He testified to them of the God who had revealed Himself to him.

“They were all not believers then,” he said. “Today, one of them is a Christian and another is attending a cell group. Instead of mutual destruction, we chose to bring life and freedom to each other.”

He added: “God is working. We just need to plant the seeds.”

Since his discharge from IMH last year, Christopher has been rebuilding his life. He sold off his minimart business, had his home cleaned up and moved back in with his mother.

He now works as a supervisor for retail chain Muji and has found new purpose in various forms of service to others.

Christopher works as a supervisor in Muji.

He evangelises to Myanmar migrant workers around City Hall on weekends and visits an orphanage in Batam every month, bringing gifts and sharing God’s love with the children.

Christopher visiting children at the Batam orphanage.

Christopher giving out Burmese tracts to Myanmese workers at City Hall.

Meanwhile, he continues to hear the good news of how some of the other IMH patients whom he once shared the Gospel with are now faithfully walking with God.

“For some of them, I did not manage to get them to say the Sinner’s Prayer with me or follow up with them thereafter on whether they are attending church.

“But I realised that all God wanted me to do in IMH was to plant the seeds in their hearts, and He watered the seeds and handled the rest.”

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