When Michelle Chan was 30 years old, life was all she had hoped for.

It was 2001, and the Malaysian journalist-turned-documentary filmmaker was working with the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in Virginia, USA.

Having found a space that combined her passion for God, missions and communications, Michelle thrived at work and in ministry.

Then one day, God spoke.

He asked her to leave her “perfect”life behind, move back to Malaysia and care for her ageing parents.

“I truly wrestled with His command. I did not want to believe it,” Michelle, 53, shared over teh tarik at a café a short drive from her family home in Petaling Jaya.

“I grew up in a dysfunctional home, so obeying the call to come home and care for my parents was not an easy choice.”

But she knew in her heart that she had to obey – especially after Michelle’s manager at CBN offered to cover the cost of her plane ticket home.

“I knew it was God because my manager had recently taken a 20-hour drive from Virginia Beach to Dallas to save on the airfare. For her to sponsor my ticket had to be God’s leading,” Michelle recounted.

After a fortnight of prayer, she resigned from her dream job at CBN, packed her bags and returned home to a new job as her parents’ full-time caregiver.

Rescued out of the pit

Taking care of her parents was a full-on task. Her mother required special care and both parents suffered from various ailments requiring stints in and out of the hospital.

Unable to work a traditional 9-to-5 job, she began freelancing as a writer to support herself and stay mentally active.

Fresh off a “mini-break” in the form of a six-day staycation, Michelle has learned the importance of God-mandated rest.

But as days turned into months, and then years, the stoic woman found herself questioning her purpose and existence.

“There was a season that was especially difficult, and one night I thought, ‘Let me look up symptoms of depression.’ I went through the list, and ticked every symptom off one by one. I had them all,” she shared.

But that was when God revealed to her the power of prayer.

At a prayer conference in Kuala Lumpur, Michelle began to cry uncontrollably as soon as her knees hit the floor. An overwhelming desire to pray earnestly began to stir within her.

After the conference, she and a friend committed to get up at 5am every morning to pray. “We were so gung-ho (enthusiastic) that we started the next day!” recalled Michelle.

That was June 27, 2015, the day Michelle’s ministry of prayer began. It has not stopped since.

Close to a decade on, Michelle still wakes up at 5am every morning with a few others to pray.

Through prayer, she has found not just strength for each day, but new perspectives as she sees her life and the world through God’s eyes.

It is prayer that has kept Michelle faithful in caring for her parents over the past 23 years.

Her daily routine includes her morning devotion, breakfast, chores, market runs, clearing emails, lunch, cleaning up, reading and praying with her mother, and dinner. In her pockets of free time, she does some freelance work.

“This schedule will be tweaked to accommodate clinic, hospital or social visits. Also, whenever I am on duty at the church altar or the National Prayer Altar,” she said, referring to prayer ministries.

The road to a restored relationship with her parents continues to be a slow and tedious process, “marked by some victories, frequent near-misses, failures and bouts of despondency,” she shared honestly.

But through it all, God has never forgotten nor forsaken her, she testified.

Trained by God for a special task

Close to two decades after quitting her job in obedience to God, Michelle learnt that He wastes no sacrifice.

In 2017, several friends invited her to climb Mount Murud, also known as the Prayer Mountain in Sarawak.

On that trip, she bumped into a friend, Bishop Hwa Yung of the Methodist Church in Malaysia. Michelle thought it was a random encounter, but God had divinely orchestrated the meet.

Three years later, her phone rang.

It was Bishop Hwa Yung, asking if she would consider working with him to document the Ba’kelalan Revival in a book.

The Ba’kelalan Revival of 1973 and 1984-1985, although lesser known than the Bario Revival, was a significant event that occurred when the Holy Spirit fell on the Lun Bawang tribe in Sarawak.

Little did she know that the years of caring for her parents had been the training ground for the task that lay ahead. “Most of the interviewees are in their eighties, and managing seniors requires some skills,” she said with a grin.

For starters, these Lun Bawang elders were fatigued and frustrated. “When I received the call in 2020, I thought I was the fourth writer to take on this project. When I got to the ground, I found out I was the seventh,” Michelle said.

As eyewitnesses, they had painstakingly recounted their experiences only to be disappointed when the projects had failed.

“Each of them had to be persuaded to come on board in unique ways. But God orchestrated every encounter and I put into action the skills I’d learned from caring for my parents to read their non-verbal cues, build rapport and win them over,” Michelle shared.

God works all things for good

Michelle completed her interviews in March and April 2022 (due to pandemic-related delays). Within a month, the first draft was complete.

In November 2023, Revival in Ba’kelalan: Discerning God’s Purposes for Today, was launched.

The book is a layered testament of God’s desire to reveal Himself through every willing heart, from the Lun Bawang tribe in Borneo’s highlands to an obedient writer who exchanged her dreams for His all those years ago.

“It tells only a part of a much bigger story, but the message is ultimately that the Spirit of God has not stopped working to bring revivals in our land,” Michelle said with conviction.

After several attempts, the Ba’kelalan Revival story has finally been preserved in a book by Michelle and Bishop Hwa Yung. “It tells only a part of a much bigger story,” she said.

These days, Michelle’s schedule is full. She is currently working on a series of documentary scripts for a Christian organisation. It almost seems as though God has brought her full circle into media and missions once again.

And yet, Michelle has not forgotten her primary calling of caring for her elderly parents.

Though she wrestles with desiring freedom and her own life, she is learning that it is not about what she wants.

“It’s about God’s purposes and what He’s doing in my family, my church and my land. I’ve discovered that when I surrender to His leading, He has the freedom to move in all three aforementioned areas,” she explained. 

By the grace of God, the gritty task of caring for our elderly parents can be made appealing when we recognise that it is God’s calling on our lives, she reflected.

“I’ve got to head back now to prepare lunch for them,” she said after finishing her second cup of teh tarik.

And off she went – full of purpose.

To purchase Revival in Ba’kelalan: Discerning God’s Purposes for Today by Michelle Chan and Hwa Yung, click here.

RELATED STORIES:

“To you it’s suffering, to them it’s love”: Caregivers join Salt&Light Family Night for tips on staying strong and sane

“I realised caregiving is an act of worship”: Nurse who spent 20 years caring for mother and husband with stroke

A difficult privilege