HE VERY  SOILED CANVAS BAG SITTING on my Hong Kong office desk that Monday morning looked nothing at all like an answer to prayer. Ugly and unidentified, it seemed like yet another nuisance to endure as I struggled to learn my new role as ADRA’s country director for China.

I studied the plastic tie that choked the neck of the bag, searching for some clue to its origin. Finding none, I began asking coworkers up and down the hallway if they knew anything about my mystery bag. For all they knew, it had emerged from the ether. Having little time for distractions so early in the work week, I grasped the bag by the neck so I could move it onto the floor. But the old and dirty bag was heavy—very heavy. Using both hands, I finally hoisted it off the desk surface, mentally calculating that it weighed a minimum of 35 pounds.

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God’s Thousand Ways

With one hand now under the bag, I could clearly feel and then see the outlines of coins inside the canvas. Slowly the thought emerged in my Monday morning haze: There is a bag of money on my desk! With a new sense of urgency I walked through the entire office complex asking if anyone knew anything about the bag of coins on my desk. Finally I knocked on the door of Bob Folkenberg, Jr., then Global Mission coordinator of the union, and asked him about the bag.

Flashing a broad Carolina smile that seemed to say “It’s your problem now,” Bob told me that the bag had been dropped off by a pastor who had just left Hong Kong. Years earlier, when there was no ADRA office in Hong Kong, it had been entrusted to his care; and not until the pastor was cleaning out his house to move back to America had he remembered the soiled canvas bag. Bob smiled again. The money, he said, was for ADRA to use for whatever it needed.

Seed Money
I headed back to my desk with a big smile on my face. I knew exactly what I wanted to use the money for—I would use it to help ADRA get started in China. For months I had been praying that God would help us find funding for all the ambitious ADRA projects we hoped to start in China. With another staff member I had mapped out a series of urgently needed projects and, amazingly, managed to arouse a high level of enthusiasm and backing from the Chinese government. We could operate in China. All we needed now was some initial funding to start projects so that we could build credibility and donor support for our efforts to help the millions of extremely poor and desperate in China. We were on the verge of making a difference—if only we could find seed money.

As I walked back down the corridor, I tried to guess how much money might be in the bag. If the coins were all mixed, then I guessed it could hold as much as 20,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about 2,500 U.S. dollars. The sum was small compared to what we needed, but every bit helped. Back at my desk, I cut the plastic tie off the neck of the bag and eagerly opened it.

It was one of those deflating moments that dreamers often experience. The bag was entirely filled with brass 50-cent pieces! Glancing quickly at the contents, I estimated there were about 2,000 coins in the bag, or HK$1,000, roughly US$125. It was a pittance compared to what I’d hoped for.

A second look revised my estimate still further downward. The coins weren’t 50-cent pieces, though they were roughly the same size. I pulled one out and looked at it closely. It said “Ten Cents” and bore a 1980 date. I groaned. My treasure hoard was really worth only about US$25! When one of my coworkers passed my door a moment later, I held up the unfamiliar coin and asked him what it was. Like Bob, he smiled broadly and waved his hand at it. It was the old-style 10-cent piece, he said. Stores wouldn’t accept it; I would have to take it to the bank and exchange it for usable currency.

A Collector’s Item?
I sighed again and stared at the bag. I didn’t need more busywork just then. Being a practical man, I decided that taking the bag of coins to the bank would make a good job for my assistant, Rachel Phoon. But while explaining the errand she was to run, I was suddenly struck by a new thought. I pulled one of the 10-cent pieces out and looked at it more closely.

The coin wasn’t old—it still had Queen Elizabeth II on one side and clearly had been struck when Hong Kong was still a British colony. Even after just a few months in Hong Kong, I knew that people in the city collected coins bearing the queen’s image. My family had already saved several dozen such coins that we had found in circulation. My pulse quickened as I realized that the coins could be worth a bit more than face value to coin dealers.

Quickly calculating what the coins would be worth if they were valued at, say, 50 percent more than face value, I asked Rachel to call some coin dealers and tell them about our find. Perhaps some dealer would like to buy them all in one lot. Patiently Rachel pointed out the obvious: we didn’t actually know how many coins we had.

For the next half hour we counted the odd 10-cent pieces on the surface of my desk. There were 2,917 of them. It would need to be a very hungry coin dealer.

Rachel went back to her desk to call city coin dealers, but returned a few minutes later with discouragement etched on her face. “The coins aren’t worth anything,” she announced. She explained that the one coin dealer she phoned had abruptly ordered, “Don’t waste my time,” and hung up on her.

Not willing to give up too quickly, I urged her to call another dealer. A few minutes later she was back at my desk, this time with a big smile. “I think the coins might be worth something,” she said. “This dealer asked me a lot of questions about them, and now he wants me to copy a coin and fax the copy to him.”

Glad for a glimmer of good news, I quickly calculated how much the bag of coins might be worth if we could get, say, 75 Hong Kong cents for each of them. I asked Rachel to prepare a fax asking for bids and to send it to a number of local coin dealers.

How Much Do We Want?
A few moments later Rachel was back. “Scott,” she said excitedly, “I really think these coins might be worth something! A coin dealer called but refused to say how much he would pay. They want to know how much we want for them.”

Now fully engaged in what had seemed a nuisance just moments before, I concluded that the best way to see how much the coins were worth was to take a few and visit a coin dealer in person. Rachel informed me that the majority of coin dealers in Hong Kong were all located in one building. As we traveled, I dreamed some more: What if the coins were worth, say, as much as HK$1.75 each?

Just before we arrived at the coin shops, Rachel stopped me in the street. “You really should let me negotiate, Scott,” she urged, “because you are a gweilo [“ghost-face” or foreigner]. You don’t know how to get the best price. Let me do it.” I thanked Rachel for her concern but declined the offer, determined to show her what five years in Mongolia had done for my negotiating skills.

We stepped into the first coin shop in the building. Rachel spoke in Cantonese to the proprietor while I surveyed the shop. What I saw excited me. One wall was entirely taken up with rows and rows of jars filled with coins. One of these rows was entirely made up of 10-cent pieces like ours, going all the way back to the 1950s and ending at 1979. The pieces from the 1950s were worth a considerable amount, while coins from 1979 were selling at HK$10, or about US$1.25 each. I quickly estimated that if that was the retail price, we might sell our coins for as much as HK$5 each. The new value for the contents of the soiled old canvas bag could be HK$15,000. Things were really looking up!

A few more moments of study brought another realization. The shop’s 10-cent pieces were worn and dirty, while ours were more or less uncirculated. I was determined to negotiate well.

Rachel broke off her conversation with the shopkeeper and turned to me. “He wants to see the coins,” she said. I pulled an envelope out of my pocket and poured 18 of the coins on his counter. He picked up one of the coins, grunted, and tossed it back, then spoke a few words to Rachel. “He wants to know how much you want for them,” she said. I pursed my lips and squinted, then held up four fingers. “Forty dollars each,” I said. Rachel relayed the price, and the coin dealer squinted his eyes. “OK,” he said.

I was stunned. As I counted the crisp bills the coin dealer handed me, I also did some quick math. At 40 Hong Kong dollars each, the coins were worth more than HK$115,000 or nearly US$15,000! My head spun as we walked out of the shop. But I was brought back to earth by Rachel addressing me with a stern look on her face. “That dealer cheated us!” she insisted. “He didn’t even try to negotiate. Those coins are worth a lot more than forty dollars!”

“All right,” I relented. “Let’s settle this by offering more coins at a higher price and seeing how much we get.”

Higher and Higher
I pulled a second envelope of coins out of my pocket, and we went on to the next coin shop. I dumped the coins on the counter and watched carefully as the proprietor’s eyes grew large with astonishment. Eagerly he asked how much we wanted. I held up two fingers. “Two hundred dollars each,” I said. The proprietor was nodding his head in agreement when another man leaned over the counter and spoke quietly to him. After their brief conversation, the proprietor smiled broadly at me and shook his head. The coins were worth about $40 each, he said, since that is what the first shop paid for them.

Unwilling to acquiesce, we negotiated hard, coaxing the price ever upward. Finally the dealer bought them for $120 each. I was floating on air!

Rachel was still unsure that we had found the best price, even though the supply in our pockets had run out. We randomly selected a shop on the second floor and offered to sell the dealer 10 coins at HK$250 each. He tried to negotiate, but not very vigorously. He was willing to buy at HK$250 each. At that price, I thought, amazed, the total stash of coins could fetch nearly US$95,000!

It took Rachel and me two more days to put together the full story of the coins. In the end we had to enlist the help of a university professor, since the coin dealers were quite naturally not eager to talk about whatever they knew. It turned out that 24 million 1980 Hong Kong 10-cent pieces had been minted in England, but none were ever put into circulation. Even as they were being minted, the crown colony of Hong Kong was deciding to move to the new, very small 10-cent coin still being circulated.

Despite the change in official policy, some of the new coins slipped into circulation. In 1992, we learned, a 1980 Hong Kong 10-cent piece set a Hong Kong record by selling for HK$10,000 (US$1,250) at an auction. Since then more coins had surfaced. But before we showed up with our hoard only an estimated 350 coins were known to exist, the best selling for some US$300 or more.

I shook my head in disbelief and dismay when I found out what the coins had really been worth. Now the knowledge that there were so many coins on the market would drastically lower the price—and we had even sent a fax to some dealers! In the end, though, I knew we had taken the best and most honest route.

Realizing we couldn’t get a good price from coin dealers any longer, I contacted Christie’s auction house and was referred to its coin subsidiary, Spink and Son of London. Spink accepted the coins for their prestigious Spink Hong Kong Coin and Note Auction, and even agreed to sell them without commission since ADRA is a charity. We had no idea what the coins would bring—some people said HK$20 each and some said HK$200 each—but I knew the Lord had put them in our hands. Whatever we got for the coins was what we were meant to have in order to get ADRA started in China.

Tracing the History
It was surely faith-building to see evidences of God’s provision at work, but my curiosity demanded more. I started to ferret out the trail of the coins, and what I found amazed me. Back in 1980, when I had left the Adventist Church and was planning a lucrative and self-centered career at IBM, the Reader’s Digest subsidiary in Japan decided to send out hundreds of thousands of letters all over Japan asking people to buy the magazine. Marketers at Reader’s Digest decided that a good way to get people to open the piece of mail would be to glue a coin to the letter and let the coin show through a little window on the envelope. In preparing the mailing, they discovered that it wasn’t legal to use Japanese coins in this manner in Japan (just as it isn’t legal to use U.S. coins in this manner in the United States), but that they could use the coins of other countries for this purpose. Thus they contacted the Hong Kong office of the Reader’s Digest and asked them to send over dozens of bags of Hong Kong 10-cent pieces. According to those I spoke with, each bag was obtained new and sealed by the bank, and each bag contained exactly 10,000 coins. Each coin was worth just over one U.S. cent. Somehow—and no one knows how—there was one bag of unreleased 1980 10-cent pieces in the lot. The rest were all 1979 coins.

Saved for God’s Work
The coins were glued on the advertisements and inserted into the envelopes in Japan and sent out. However, it turned out that there were more envelopes than address labels, so the leftover letters with coins attached—2,917 of them—were stored in a box. In the mid-1980s—when I was an ocean away and had come back to the church and was marrying a fine Adventist Christian woman—the Reader’s Digest decided to close down its Japan office. In the process of closing down, the box of letters and coins was discovered. Someone suggested contacting an organization called ADRA, known for collecting coins for international assistance projects. Japan’s ADRA office readily agreed to accept the coins, and a number of high-school students were drafted to help pick the thousands of coins off the letters to which they had been glued.

The ADRA director happily took the coins to a money exchanger, only to be told that it was impossible to exchange them because they were no longer in circulation in Hong Kong. He was advised that he could take them to a bank in Hong Kong and exchange them for currency, but since the coins were of nominal value, it was best not to bother with them at all.

Crestfallen, the ADRA/Japan director pondered what to do. He didn’t feel that he could simply throw the coins away—they had some value, after all, and ADRA had been entrusted with them. Finally he decided to give the coins to the regional ADRA office in Singapore and let them exchange the coins on some future trip to Hong Kong, if they could. This was easier said than done, though, since the bag of coins weighed 35 pounds. That meant the airlines would charge more than the face value of the coins if they were included as checked luggage!

Finally, after two or three years, someone managed to take the coins to Singapore as carry-on luggage. However, since there was no ADRA office in Hong Kong at that time and since the coins were of nominal value, they sat in the Singapore office for eight years. Finally they were lugged to Hong Kong by the good-natured chaplain and pastor of the Hongkong Adventist Hospital, Dan Neisner.

Dan never did get around to exchanging the coins, though he fully intended to. Each time he thought of them, it seems, the Lord distracted him. Eventually the coins were forgotten in a closet. It wasn’t until Dan was leaving Hong Kong for the United States in the summer of 2000 that he came across the bag of coins again. He recruited Bob Folkenberg, Jr., to carry them to me—at exactly the time they were needed.

Perfect Timing
When our 2,900 1980 Hong Kong 10-cent pieces went on the auction block in November 2000, I waited with a special mixture of faith and curiosity to see how God would bring this remarkable chapter to a close. The auction house’s check to ADRA said it all: more than US$21,000 was paid for those “worthless” coins that had cluttered my desk that Monday morning! ADRA/China had its seed money. And from that incredible providence many thousands of people will be fed and sheltered and loved in the name of the One who gives all good gifts.

As I look back over the time and the circumstances that finally brought those coins to my desk, I continue to be awestruck. The Lord knew ADRA/China would need those coins, and He knew just when they would be needed. He was putting His plan into effect—when I was out of the church, when I was pursuing my own dreams—and He was watching over that stained canvas bag at the same time He was guiding my less-than-righteous life. I was humbled by this demonstration of how He had fit me into His plans, and I still am.

“Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing,” Ellen White wrote more than a century ago.* Those words now ring in my life with a new and joyful vibrancy, for I have seen that His powerful hands are full of blessing for those who commit themselves to do His will on earth.

*Ellen G. White, The Faith I Live By, p. 64.

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Scott Christiansen is the Adventist Development and Relief Agency/China director in Hong Kong.