She hears.

“Pani. PAH- NEE.”

I pointed to my water bottle and said the words slowly, deliberately. Pani means water in Nepalese.

She looked at me, half bewildered, then mouthed, “Pani”.

“She spoke! She said Pani, did you hear that?”

“Yes,” said my missionary friend, who has just brought Alisha and her mother to Singapore again for their follow-up in hearing and speech therapy. “The therapists say she is learning very fast, nearly twice as fast as one normally would.”

I met them at the hospital just yesterday. I looked at Alisha, marveled at the miracle of her regaining her sense of hearing and having a fresh shot at life through your generosity and stood, speechless.

When I first heard of my missionary friend’s request to find a doctor and sponsors to help this 4-year old Nepalese girl with a $100’000 hearing implant operation, my faith was shamefully weak. Why help her? Why so much money and effort for one person? How do we fly her into Singapore, and what about follow-up? Her mother had suffered from a meningeal infection during her pregnancy, resulting in the destruction of Alisha’s cochlear. But her’s isn’t the only sob story-what do you expect me to do?

Sometimes, it amazes me to know the extent that God loves us, and how far He sometimes wants us to go for someone else. Who knows what God can do, when we put in just that little bit of faith, in what seems impossible.

Months ago, when God gave the money I was given for the roadbike I wanted away to her, I am embarrassed to say I was depressed for many weeks after that. Cycling became painful, so for a period I stopped, in spite of my friends’ persistent invitations to train with them, since not cycling relieved that acute sense of longing and struggle to grapple with my desires and God’s.

I shared with my missionary friend how God had orchestrated a beautiful series of events not only to bless me with my new bike, Faith, but with the sponsorship of my next book about Faith, and many lessons of trust, sacrifice and obedience.

We both had a moment of silence, taking in the beauty of all that had happened: Because of Alisha, the bike I originally wanted had to go. Because of that sacrifice and blind act of faith, a sponsor who knew about the case intervened to not only sponsor Alisha but my next book about Faith. Because of this turn of events, my friends and family made the story complete by surprising me with such a beautifully well-fitted, light and fast bike called… Faith, too. This bike is infinitely more meaningful and precious to me than the one I had originally wanted to buy out of self-centredness. It is precisely of this beautiful story behind my bicycle that I go so much faster and have gained so much more motivation and confidence to ride. I got a free seat again to help a friend ride 90km for this Sunday’s Aviva Half-Iron Man race. I’m scared, but I think faith will see us through.

Thank you for your generosity. For those of you who have given sacrificially to Alisha’s cause, know that you have not only given her the chance to hear, but to speak, to learn, to work and to have a chance at a potentially bright future as well. Her teachers say she is so expressive, participative and bright in her class, in spite of her late start in speaking. You have saved her from a lifetime of discrimination, unemployment, and possibly, prostitution too.

Just remember, that whatever you give, will be given back to you in return- in abundance, in grace, more than you could ever ask or think. Perhaps not in the way you demand, perhaps in a painful, longsuffering way, but surely in the best, and most beautiful way, in God’s time.