Union of Catholic Asian News, 6 Jan 2009
SINGAPORE (UCAN) -- Ten mostly elderly and illiterate people listened intently to how the Israelites escaped their Egyptian captors after Moses parted the Red Sea.
Jeannie Tien spoke in Cantonese, a Chinese dialect, as she related the biblical story in a small room of Sts. Peter and Paul Church here.
It was a Tuesday evening, the time when Tien, 69, takes time off her still-busy schedule to teach catechism to a growing group of "friends in need."
These are destitute people receiving monthly financial aid and rations from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SSVP), to which Tien belongs. The majority of them are in their 70s and live by themselves in single-room apartments around the Central Business District.
The men were mostly coolies in their youth, while the women were seamstresses, amah (domestic helpers) and samsui, Chinese immigrants who came to Singapore in the 1940s in search of construction and industrial jobs.
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