Vivi Goh was at a loss as to what to do. Like a man drowning in quicksand, her husband, Vincent Quck, was being sucked back into a life of crime.

It began with illegal betting, loanshark activities and club vices – anything that could earn him a quick buck. Then she found out that he had started trafficking drugs. 

“He was getting in deeper and deeper. It’s very scary one, that kind of life,” said Vivi. Their three children at the time were all under five years old.

No amount of talking, scolding, threatening or pleading on her part could make him stop.

“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to help him. He also didn’t know how to help himself,” she said.

So Vivi did the only thing left that she could. She prayed: “God, please let my husband get arrested.”

Slowly slipping

When she first met Vincent in church, she knew that he was a former drug addict and gang member who had been in and out of jail four times.

However, she believed that he had firmly put his days of crime behind him, seeing that he had accepted Christ in prison, completed the programme at Christian halfway house The Hiding Place and found a stable job as a youth worker.

They later fell in love, bonding over their similar family backgrounds and sense of humour. She loved the chemistry they shared. He appreciated the care and dedication she showed him.

After over a year of courtship, the pair, who by this time were in their 30s, decided to get married. “I went ahead with it because I believed that everybody deserves a second chance,” said Vivi.

Despite his criminal past, Vivi decided to go ahead with her relationship with Vincent because she believed everyone deserves a second chance.

They wed in 2014 and their first daughter, Valora, came that same year. Their second daughter, Valerie, was born three years later.

Life for the Qucks became busy – she with taking care of the children and he with the new logistics business he had set up.

The business was doing well, but it came at a cost. Vincent was clocking in 16-hour work days and often spent his nights entertaining clients in clubs.

Gradually, his relationship with God took a backseat.

Vivi found out to her disappointment one day that her husband had picked up smoking again.

Then he started coming home from parties drunk on Saturday nights, though he knew they had to wake up early for church the following day.

Vincent was slowly slipping, but it was a lie he chose to believe that cemented his fall.

The lie that cost him

One day at work, Vincent’s friends invited him for a weekend trip to Johor Bahru to drink and party. He badly wanted to relax and unwind after a long week, but also knew that going meant he had to skip church with his family.

Standing at the crossroad of this decision, he heard  “a voice, very clear, speaking to me”, recalled Vincent, now 46.

“It said, ‘You are doing okay already what. You are not involved in crime, you are not taking drugs, you have a family, you have a business, you are doing very well. Why you make yourself so mafan (troublesome)?

“‘Why should you live a double life? Saturday you drink, then Sunday you have to wake up (to go to church). Just don’t go to church lah. Don’t need to act.'”

Looking back, Vincent added: “The moment I listened to that lie that said ‘You are okay already’, wah, that was the time I fell.”

He called his wife and told her that he would not be making it for church that Sunday. In the weeks that followed, he stopped going entirely, leaving Vivi to bring their children to church on her own.

Walls closing in 

Following that, Vincent’s fall back into crime was swift. Caught up in the partying lifestyle, he started to mix around with bad company. “I started to compromise,” he said.

After selling his business to his partner due to a disagreement, Vincent used his free time and cash to open an illegal soccer betting website.

However, the business soon ran into trouble and the cash he got from selling his logistics business, along with all other savings he had, dwindled.

From being able to provide more than enough for his family, he found himself struggling to pay the bills that kept piling up.

“Very stress already lor, like sinking sand. That time I was very proud, very arrogant. I tried not to admit the defeat. I never discussed with my wife to say that I cannot already,” he admitted.

Constantly “fire-fighting”, he agreed to vices including loansharking and illegal betting: “Anything I can grab for money, I just do because I was desperate.”

The couple quarrelled day after day over their tight finances and Vincent’s shady dealings, though he never went back to taking drugs.

At the time, their third child, a son named Vernon, had just been born.

Vincent and Vivi during their younger, dating days.

“More expenses, more problems, a lot of doctor appointments,” said Vincent, adding that he sometimes missed those appointments.

“Then she will call me, scold me, then we will fight. I feel like this family 太多麻烦 (too much trouble) already lah.”

“I just wait to be arrested, or to die”

Desperate for money, and feeling like he had fallen too deep into crime to get out, Vincent started trafficking drugs.

Afraid of implicating his family, he stopped coming home. Instead, he would put the drugs in hotel rooms, park his car at carparks and alleys to sleep, fearful that he would be caught in possession of the drugs.

Whenever he dealt drugs, he would meet buyers at the highest level of a multi-storey carpark. “They ask me why. I said, ‘If the person who comes is not you but CNB (Central Narcotics Bureau), I just jump.’

“I had those kind of thoughts. It was like all the walls are collapsing already.”

Aware that Vincent was not in a good place, the late Pastor Philip Chan from The Hiding Place, which Vincent once attended, called repeatedly to check on him.

However, stricken by guilt, Vincent stopped answering his calls. When Pastor Philip sent him text messages instead, Vincent blocked his number.

Concerned, Pastor Philip asked another pastor to check in on Vincent. Vincent still remembers answering the call while driving.

“How far are you?” the pastor asked him.

“Very far,” Vincent replied shortly.

“Can you come back or not?” the pastor asked.

“Cannot.” Then he hung up the phone.

Said Vincent: “It was like no turning back already. I just wait to be arrested, or to die. No hope already.”

A wife’s heartbreak

Left to juggle full-time work and a household of three children on her own as her husband sank deeper into crime, Vivi, who works in sales, nearly went into depression.

“I had a lot of negative thoughts and emotions. I was disappointed by what he was doing. Then all the bills – I needed to find money,” she said.

Reserved by nature, Vivi kept everything to herself as she did not know how to share what she was going through with friends or family, and feared that they would not understand even if she did.

She stopped going to church because she struggled to answer well-meaning people when they asked her about Vincent. “I don’t know what to say. Then when I start saying, the emotions come and I will want to cry,” said Vivi, now 43.

It was an extremely lonely time, and the only person she could turn to was God.

“For me, die die I need to trust God because I believe that only He can help me. Whenever I feel emotional or sad, I’ll listen to worship songs. After I talk to Him, I feel a sense of peace,” she said.

By God’s grace, the couple now enjoyed a restored marriage.

Asked why she decided to stay in the marriage, she replied: “Because of the three children. I don’t want them to grow up in a broken family. And I believe that this marriage is God-given.”

But sticking it out was far from easy. Absolutely helpless about her husband’s situation, and knowing that he too could not help himself, she prayed for his arrest.

A wake-up call 

Three years after Vincent’s descent into crime, God’s answer Vivi’s desperate prayer came, tempered with grace.

While out on an errand, Vincent was approached by seven plainclothes police officers – he had a record for being aggressive toward law enforcement – and arrested for his involvement in loanshark activities.

“I was relieved,” admitted Vivi.

After years of running, Vincent came face-to-face with God in lock-up.

The moment his handcuffs came off in the jail cell, Vincent suddenly saw the words “The Hiding Place” flashing in his mind’s eye. Then a verse from the Bible – John 15:5 – came to mind.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.“

“That time, I remembered it as, ‘Apart from me, you become nothing’,” Vincent recalled.

It was a wake-up call and a rebuke: He had gotten himself into this position, hurting his wife and children in the process, because he had believed he had rebuilt his life on his own strength.

Over the next week, with no one else in his cell, he was forced to confront all that he had done. “I talked to God the whole seven days,” he said.

As he reflected, Vincent also realised how gracious God had been to him, as he had not been arrested for a more serious crime like drug trafficking, which would have kept him in jail for more than a decade, given his past record.

Convinced that he needed to reset his life, he called Vivi and asked her to bail him out so he could return to the The Hiding Place.

She was reluctant: “I didn’t want him to come out to create more trouble.” But after Pastor Philip told her he was willing to take him in, she agreed.

A second chance

In the next five months at The Hiding Place, before serving his 14-month jail term, Vincent was given a second chance – in life and in marriage.

But there was much undoing to be done.

“That time I was still very proud and arrogant. I still felt that the whole world is the wrong, I’m not in the wrong,” he said.

He recalled ranting to Pastor Philip for four whole hours, blaming Vivi and everyone else for all that had happened.

Throughout those four hours, Pastor Philip listened patiently before telling Vincent just two things: “Go read the Word of God, and pray.”

“Really meh? Pray?” Vincent thought. But since he had nothing else to do in the halfway house, he heeded Pastor Philip’s advice. It would prove valuable.

Contrary to the halfway house’s regulations, Pastor Philip allowed Vivi to visit Vincent every day because he knew that it was vital for the restoration of their marriage.

Every evening after work, she would drive to Jalan Lekar, where The Hiding Place was located then, and have dinner with her husband.

After dinner, they would take a walk and talk about their family. Most evenings did not end well. Vincent admitted: “I was still very arrogant. I will quarrel with her, I will scold her and ask her to go back.”

During his night-time devotion, however, God would rebuke Vincent as he read His Word and spent time with Him in prayer. “I would see the bad things in me and reflect,” he said.

The next evening, he would apologise to Vivi, who had by then learnt how to let her husband’s harsh words roll off her back.

“But two days later, I will scold her again. Then God scold me again, and I’ll pray and say sorry,” he said of the work God was slowly doing in his heart.

Said Vincent: “This was the time that, piece by piece, He stitched our marriage up nicely.”

His change in attitude and demeanour did not go unnoticed by Vivi. When she brought their children to see him on weekends, she also found that he was more present and involved with them.

Family first: Today, Vincent finds joy and contentment in spending time with his family, including his children (left to right) Valerie, Vernon and Valora.

And as Vincent spent more time with his Christian brothers in the halfway house and his family, he realised that these relationships were what he truly treasured.

Determined to have a fresh start, he deleted his Facebook account, which he used to keep in touch with old friends and carry out vice activities.

Since then, he has not looked back.

Tasting the goodness of God

The fact that he was given a second chance – by God, by his wife, by Pastor Philip – was not lost on Vincent. In fact, he counted this as his first personal encounter with God.

“Prior to that, I had a very secondhand faith. You ask me to pray, I pray. I see you do, I do. But there is not really a true encounter, no relationship,” he explained.

He is grateful for God’s grace in allowing him to reset his life at the “cost” of only 14 months, the length of his jail term. “If (my prison term) was 14 years, how to reset?”

In a video he showed Salt&Light of the day he came home to his children after his release in 2020, his younger two children, then two and three, were wary of him and unwilling to approach him for a hug.

“I will never forget that moment where Valerie and Vernon nearly could not remember me,” he said. By God’s grace, their relationship has since been restored.

“It’s really because of His mercy and grace. Or else, where would I be right now? Despite me being unfaithful to Him, He is still faithful to me,” he said.

“Because of my encounter, I know that Jesus is real. Once you taste that honey is sweet, no one can take that away from you,” he added.

Vivi, too, has experienced God’s faithfulness through this ordeal.

“Die die must trust God,” she said. “He may not immediately grant me what I want exactly, but He will guide me through it.”

Finding joy in a simple life

In the last four years since his release, Vincent has kept on the straight and narrow by learning contentment.

“Last time I tried to chase all the things – you drive a Mitsubishi, but you want a Lexus, you want a bigger house,” he said.

“Even though now, (money is) left hand in, right hand out, I still feel very happy. I feel at peace. It’s a peace that the world doesn’t provide.”

Now a sustainability and recycling consultant at an e-waste recycling company, Vincent lives a simple life. He goes to work, and comes home to spend time with his wife and children, now 10, seven and six.

On weekends, he and his family go to church before spending time with the brothers at The Hiding Place, who keep him accountable in his daily Bible reading. He is also involved in prison ministry.

“It’s very routine, but I find joy in this routine,” he said.

His marriage, which is in its 10th year, has also come a long way. By Vivi’s account, Vincent is more grounded, less arrogant, a better husband and more present father.

Second chance: According to his wife, Vincent is more grounded, less arrogant, a better husband and more present father today.

“I’m still a work in progress,” admitted Vincent, who is grateful for his wife’s faithfulness to him despite his flaws. “She hated what I was doing, but she never hated me.”

Like any married couple, they still have moments of conflict. But they have learnt to bear with each other’s shortcomings and agree to disagree.

“That’s relationship lah, because we want the best for our family, our work, our God,” said Vincent.

“At the end of the day, we still kiss and make up.”

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