Christmas used to be a time of panic buying for Benjamin Tan, 47.
Not because he was buying gifts for family and friends.
“During the holidays – Christmas, Chinese New Year – the price of drugs would always go up,” he said in Mandarin.
“If you don’t buy and keep the drugs before Christmas, when the urge to take drugs hits you during the festive season, you would have to pay a lot to satisfy your habit.”
That was Benjamin’s earliest memory of Christmas.
These days, Christmas is still a busy season for Benjamin.
But instead of buying drugs, he is busy baking and selling honey-baked hams. Since 2007 when halfway house Breakthrough Missions started its sale of Christmas hams, he has been the man in charge.
Breakthrough Missions is a drug rehabilitation half-way house for men who want to be free from addiction. The Gospel-based ministry offers a free three-year stay-in programme for up to 70 residents at one time.
Benjamin runs Breakthrough Missions’ kitchen. He shops for and prepares meals for up to 80 people each day, twice a day.
“It’s good for the men to have meaningful work.”
Come Christmas, he has the added responsibility of baking up to 200 hams for sale and delivering them with his team of six.
Pre-Covid, business was brisk with many orders coming in from churches.
“This year, it’s quieter because churches can’t have large gatherings anymore,” he said.
The seasonal offering is among other regular services provided by Breakthrough Missions. They include car washing, book binding and embossing, framing, landscaping and foot reflexology. The ministry also runs a flower nursery, café, gift store and furniture shop.
These services bring in funds to finance the rehabilitation programme which is offered for free. Breakthrough Missions is also a non-profit organisation.
“It’s also good for the men to have meaningful work. They get to acquire skills, be responsible and learn to have positive work ethics,” explained Benjamin.
The idea for Christmas ham began nearly 15 years ago when a former hotel chef brought a honey-baked ham to Breakthrough Missions as a treat.
“I had never had Christmas ham before,” said Benjamin. “I asked him, ‘What is this?’ He told me this is what people eat at Christmas.”
The man then taught Benjamin how to bake the ham so he could prepare it for the residents. After which came the idea to bake hams for sale during Christmas.
The idea for Christmas ham began nearly 15 years ago when a former hotel chef brought a honey-baked ham to Breakthrough Missions as a treat for the residents. The hams help fund the rehabilitation programme in the halfway house.
But their first Christmas sale was slow-going.
“We only had three to four orders. And people took pictures of our ham to complain about it,” said Benjamin.
According to the recipe, the ham had to be marinated and baked. The juices are then collected to make an accompanying sauce.
“I had never had Christmas ham before.”
Said Benjamin: “We took the marinade instead and served it as a sauce. So, it wasn’t cooked enough! But we accepted their complaints and learnt from it.”
There were also complaints about how the hams were packaged.
“We knew people wanted their hams hot. So, we placed them into boxes directly out of the oven. That’s wrong because then condensation forms on the inside of the box.
“When our customers opened the box, the moisture had made the crisp outer skin of the ham fall off. Our hams looked awful! So, we had to learn from that as well.”
Gradually, the team perfected their skill and the orders started flowing in.
“It’s all by word-of-mouth,” said Benjamin.
Benjamin knows something about learning from mistakes and changing for the better. Before he started working for Breakthrough Missions, he was one of their residents.
“I was in the grip of drugs for 16 years,” Benjamin said.
He had a happy childhood until his father passed away from lung cancer when he was 12.
Benjamin had a happy childhood growing up in a kampung. He is six in this photo.
His mother had to work to care for seven children. The family moved out of the cosy kampung home Benjamin had grown up in and into an HDB flat.
“I ended up mixing with the wrong company. I joined a gang. I was looking for a place to belong, to feel accepted,” Benjamin recalled.
Benjamin began smoking, got into fights frequently and eventually dropped out of school. When he was 16, a friend offered him a pill. He took it without thinking, not knowing that it was LSD, a potent hallucinogen.
“I did regret it. But it wasn’t enough to get me to give up drugs.”
That single pill would be a slippery slope to experiment with other drugs and then to years of addiction to heroin.
“Heroin is not easy to shake off. You keep going back to it,” Benjamin explained. “A lot of the brothers who were addicted to heroin have the same experience.”
Benjamin (standing, third from right) during National Service days. He returned to his old drug habit after NS.
In 1994, while under the influence of drugs, Benjamin went into a frenzy and attacked his family with a knife. His sister-in-law was hurt. The police were called.
“In my drug-fuelled haze, I tried to run away and jumped six floors down,” he said.
He was just 21.
Miraculously, Benjamin survived.
Benjamin, at 21. He jumped six floors down in an attempt to escape from the police.
But he broke both legs and was in a coma for four days. Because of that fall, his right leg was badly damaged. Benjamin would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
“I did regret it. But it wasn’t enough to get me to give up drugs,” he said.
Neither was his mother’s disappointment enough to make him kick the habit. Nor the fact that his siblings wanted nothing to do with him.
His drug habit would land him in prison four times. On the fourth time, he was also sentenced to three years for selling fake goods.
It was during that last prison term that Benjamin “woke up”.
“I thought to myself, ‘Will this be how my life would be, always ending up in prison?’
Then he recalled a conversation with a nurse he had met during his hospital stay after his six-storey fall.
“I didn’t know how to get out of it.”
Then, he recalled a conversation with a nurse he had met during his hospital stay after his six-storey fall.
“She shared the Gospel with me and kept saying that Jesus loves me. But I didn’t know who this Jesus was then and I didn’t listen to her,” he said.
God had rescued his body once. God was about to rescue his soul.
Moved by the thought that God loved him and was waiting for him to respond, Benjamin prayed that very night and asked for God to forgive him.
He started reading the Bible the next day.
“I couldn’t read very well but I kept reading the Bible anyway. I would look up the meaning of the words in the dictionary.
“In prison, I became known as the one who carried a Bible and a dictionary,” he said.
In time, Benjamin understood more of what he read.
One verse in particular, John 8:12, encouraged him greatly.
“In prison, I became known as the one who carried a Bible and a dictionary.”
“The verse says that if I follow God, I wouldn’t have to walk in darkness.”
Benjamin realised why he kept going back to drugs. It wasn’t just that the habit was hard to shake.
In prison, there was no access to drugs. “So, technically, you are considered clean of drugs,” he said.
“The problem is that once you get out, you will go back to drugs because there is a hole in your life and you are using drugs to fill it.
“That hole can only be filled by God. Only God can change you,” he said.
While searching for a way to change his life outside of the prison walls, Benjamin found out about Breakthrough Missions which was celebrating its 20th anniversary.
“I saw their magazine while in prison. I told my older sister, ‘When I get out, I want to go there.’”
“It was very different from my days in drugs. That Christmas, all I felt was peace in my heart.”
The day Benjamin was released in October 2004, someone from Breakthrough Missions came to pick him up to begin his three-year rehabilitation programme.
Fresh out of prison at Breakthrough Missions, they were playing a Christian song.
“I don’t know why but it moved me so much, I cried. My tears just flowed,” he said.
Two months later, Benjamin celebrated his first Christmas as a free man. He was free from prison, free from drugs, free from sin.
“It was very different from my days in drugs. That Christmas, all I felt was peace in my heart.”
He was finally experiencing what it meant to have God with him.
God also used Benjamin’s transformation to heal his relationship with his family.
After graduating from the rehabilitation programme, Benjamin found a job with Breakthrough Missions. Through that, he met his wife, Carol, a medical social worker who worked with the ex-offenders living there.
The couple now have a daughter, 5, and a son, 2.
Benjamin and Anna Tan with their children, Daniel and Carol. Benjamin met his wife while working with Breakthrough Missions.
“I paid a great price because of drugs. But God redeemed me. He restored my life and my relationship with my family.”
This is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in Salt&Light.
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