A Portal to Hope

By Sandy Ho-Lam

As an ESL teacher, I have wrestled with the question of how to become Jesus’ hands and feet while students seem to come and go through a revolving door without any chance of building long-lasting relationships. Then one day, things started to change.

A student, one day, said: “Sandy…I have a lot now, but what is life really for? What’s the point?” This caught me off guard. A few months later, I noticed another student who had looked worn out all week. So I asked him if he was okay. He replied, “I didn’t sleep. I drank all night. I am an alcoholic.” I was in shock again. Neither time did our conversations last longer than five minutes. I felt useless.

I was confused. After years of waiting for opportunities, I had gotten complacent and resigned.  So when these encounters happened, I was dumbfounded. What’s worse, I felt like I had failed God. But God had used this time to strengthen my faith and reshape my perspective. And then he showed me what hopelessness may look and sound like in my students. He was not asking me to fix them; he was asking me to look and listen. Just noticing and acknowledging my students’ needs was enough for them to see a portal to hope. 

I started seeing how much I could do by just being myself, the Daughter of the King, and continued to show love. I started checking up on students, new and old. A text/email here and a note there. Gradually students began responding beyond courtesies, sharing the heavy life issues they were facing—a divorce, an estranged relationship with kids, a sick parent, family quarrels over money, etc. Some began asking me to explain to them about Christianity, the Bible, and church. They wanted to know my thoughts. They were asking for the portal.

I gradually realized that in the years I’d been teaching, my students had seen me as a human being with faults and pressures like them, not just a teacher. Every time I used my own life examples to explain the past tense, the simple passive, or an idiom, they felt a connection.  They saw something different in how I lived life—even though I had never mentioned God in our lessons.  

Being an ESL teacher presents great opportunities. But first, I had to learn to see Jesus where I worked. I needed to practice “stillness” to find Him. I had to be okay when God “held me back” or when students left, never to be heard again. This way, I would know when to speak up, when God opened the opportunities. 

We can be that portal so that students can cross the bridge that is Jesus Christ to living life with Hope. Considering the few hundred students I have come into contact with over the years, only some have come to know this portal and a few have crossed the bridge. A handful are learning to be portals themselves now. Our journey with them continues on. Let’s continue to learn to be still, and remember to love them. Let’s continue to be this portal to Hope.