Khanh Ho runs a business with her brother called RC Toy House, selling remote-controlled helicopters, trucks, cars, etc.  In 2007, she graduated Fuller Theological Seminary with an MA in the School of Intercultural Studies.  Khanh is Chinese, born in Hong Kong, and immigrated to the US at the age of 5.   Her hobbies include volleyball and trying new things and her favorite food is Italian, particularly pasta and lasagna.

Have you always known that you would end up in business?

Definitely not.  I attended Bravo Medical Magnet High School, thinking I was going to pursue a degree in medicine.  But I got burnt out, and then soon after, I came to know Jesus.  In college, I had Christian discipleship through InterVarsity, learned a lot about the Bible through the inductive method, and then sophomore year at Urbana, I realized I was going to Fuller seminary.  Ultimately, I just wanted to live for Jesus and serve Jesus in whatever way I could.  At that time, I thought the best way was to get trained in the Bible and serve Him through missions.

Fuller gave me a really awesome perspective on missions, but afterwards, it wasn’t clear to me what I should do.  My brother asked me to go to Hong Kong to find toy suppliers.  At first I refused him but I ended up going for the free trip to Hong Kong.  I ended up getting supplier contacts for a bunch of toys, and from then on, I learned a lot about business:  how to do negotiations for the company, how to make a deposit for the toys, how to clear customs, how to import, how to build a website, how to do customer service, and I ended up starting the business with my brother.  Since then, it’s been growing, growing, and growing until now.

How do you see business becoming God’s calling for you?

Never in mind would I have considered myself a business woman.  I had zero desire to do it, and I felt at odds with the idea, especially when I had gone to Fuller thinking I was going to do something in world missions.  For a few years, I was doing business but in the back of my mind, I was wondering what God was up to.  I didn’t have any models on integrating business and faith, and I didn’t even know where to find it.  Later, I found this organization at the World Christian Conference called REP (Repurposing Business – Transforming Society) which is part of The Institute.  The founder, Brett Johnson, has a business, pastoral and missions background.  He’s been preaching on integration, and how all these things can become one — that you’re Christian 100% of the time, rather than a Christian at church, but a non-Christian at work.  I went through their training, which gave me a paradigm of how I can integrate my faith with my business.  I even went to Capetown, South Africa with REP, where one of the business clients hired a part-time pastor for his business and held prayer meetings in the office and meeting rooms, and I got to hear his story which gave me perspective on my business as well.  So I hired a friend to pray for us regularly and I’ve been praying for the business too.  We’re still in the journey of figuring out how to integrate our faith in our context.

What advice would you give to women who are trying to discern their vocation?

Something I’ve found to be helpful for myself and others is a hybrid of what Bobby Clinton taught in his Lifelong Development course and what l learned through my pastor.  It’s an integrative way to analyze your life, and I’ve done it many times.  Take a piece of paper, about 2 pages long, and make a timeline from the time of your birth up to the present, and put increments for every age.  In this timeline, make different strands, like an education strand, a family strand, a spiritual strand, etc., and write down all the significant events/experiences on each respective strand, including traumatic events.  Through this exercise, I have found that self-discovery is really amazing.  People don’t realize how much they already have within them and what God has already spoken to them.  There are usually many clues pointing to the passions and gifts of each person and where that may take them in the future.  This exercise helps to give you a concrete diagram of where you’ve been, where you are, and help you see where you may be headed in the future.

Interviewed by Joy Wong