The building looked like a dream.
Steel beams. Sunlight pouring through wide windows. Rooms filled with color and possibility. What was once an abandoned warehouse now stood as the NewFrame Leadership Academy — a school built not just for education, but for transformation.
At 21, Daniel Cruz-Ng, now legally and lovingly the adopted son of Edwin and Grace, stood at the podium during the dedication ceremony. His voice carried strength, but also humility — the voice of a young man who had walked through fire and come out refined.
“This isn’t just a school,” he said to the crowd of students, parents, and donors.
“It’s a launchpad for the world-changers God is raising — kids who were once told they’d never become anything, but who will now rewrite the future. I know, because I was one of them.”
The school offered tech skills, spiritual formation, creative arts, emotional healing, and entrepreneurship — all grounded in biblical values. It was free for orphans, foster youth, and underprivileged teens, funded through donations and partnerships Edwin had cultivated through the years.
Each classroom was named after a biblical overcomer:
Joseph. Esther. Ruth. Paul. David.
Grace designed the quiet spaces — rooms filled with natural light, worship music, and journals for students to pour their hearts into. She called them “Rooms of Release.”
Edwin mentored the tech faculty, bringing his cybersecurity expertise into classrooms and one-on-one mentorship sessions.
More than anything, they knew this wasn’t their work.
This was God’s blueprint, entrusted to their family.
Daniel’s heart burned with vision.
He dreamed of satellite campuses.
He dreamed of international partnerships.
He dreamed of kids from broken homes becoming missionaries, founders, inventors, pastors, and teachers.
But even as the vision expanded, Daniel never forgot where it started.
One night, he walked through the now-empty NewFrame House — the original building where he first found belonging.
He paused in the hallway, running his hand across the wall.
He remembered Edwin’s voice.
Grace’s evening prayers.
The nights he cried himself to sleep, wondering if he was worth anything.
But now… he was helping others believe they were.
That same week, Grace found out she was pregnant.
It was unexpected — a miracle almost twenty years in the making. She was in her forties, past the “usual” age for motherhood, and yet God whispered: “It’s time.”
Tears fell as she held the ultrasound in her hand, sitting beside Edwin on their worn couch.
“I thought I had already raised my son,” she said.
Edwin smiled and held her hand.
“God’s not done writing our chapters.”
They named the baby in their hearts before they ever saw her face:
Judea Grace Ng.
A name that meant “praise from the land of healing.”
The news spread fast.
Daniel cried when he found out.
“You’re going to be an incredible mom again,” he told Grace, hugging her tightly.
“And I’ll be the best big brother in the world.”
Edwin laughed. “And probably the most overprotective one.”
At the school, more students continued to enroll.
A boy named Zion who had run away from three foster homes.
A girl named Hope whose mother was in rehab.
A pair of brothers who had never known their father.
To each of them, Daniel would say:
“You’re not your past.
You’re not your pain.
You’re a child of purpose.
And we’ll walk with you until you believe it too.”
One evening, as Edwin walked through the academy halls, he paused at a mural painted by the students.
It showed a tree growing from a shattered heart.
Its branches stretched toward heaven.
Birds flew from the branches.
And carved into the trunk were the words:
“From brokenness, we rise.”
He stood there for a long time… and wept.
This was it.
This was what the years of sacrifice, waiting, and obedience had led to.
Not fame.
Not recognition.
But fruit — fruit that would remain.
Legacy is not built in a day.
It’s written in quiet yeses, long seasons, sacred waiting, and holy ground.
Edwin and Grace once dreamed of healing one child.
Now, through Daniel Cruz-Ng, they were raising a generation._
And Daniel — the boy who once feared he’d never belong —
Had become a man who built homes for others to belong in.
