I Am an Ezer: Wai Jia, Singapore
Hello, my name is Tam Wai Jia. I “divide . . . bread with the hungry” (Isa 58:66). I am an ezer.
While in high school, Wai Jia learned about the plight of the poor first hand when she went to Cambodia. “I was heartbroken,” says the Singaporean medical doctor.
A year later, she spent six weeks in Nepal with an orphanage ministry. “I learned that orphans, too, have dreams like us,” she says. “They also want to become change-makers.”
Upon returning home, Wai Jia worked on Kitesong, alyrical picture book that she penned and illustrated abouta child looking for her lost dreams. It raised more than$110,000 for the orphanage in Nepal.
After Kitesong, the “big dreamer within a little child”wanted to do more; but she faced a road block when she had to go through counseling and treatment for anorexia and depression.
In addressing her own fear and insecurity, however, the then medical student learned precious new lessons about the “orphaned heart.” This led to her second book, A Taste of Rainbow. “I wrote it to raise awareness of eating disorders and mental health among youth,” says Wai Jia.
Meanwhile, God continued to develop in the young woman a heart for the destitute, hungry and poor through mission trips to Nepal (twice again), China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Africa.
Be it in cosmopolitan Kowloon, Hong Kong, or the slums of Smokey Mountain in Manila, Philippines, she would look for opportunities to stop, dress wounds or buy a meal for the needy.
Though she’s a medical doctor, a promising profession inSingapore, Wai Jia and her OMF missionary husband, Cliff,have one ambition: to live a simple life and be ready for wherever God calls.On their wedding day, 28 October 2012, she launched her third picture book, I Love You, to help raise funds and awareness for people trapped in human trafficking.
Hello, my name is Tam WaiJia. I “divide . . . bread with the hungry” (Isa 58:66).
I am an ezer from Kitesong
For more of Kitesong, visit www.kitesong.sg