Visit to China Town - In Singapore

Pork Jerky - Yummy

China Town in Singapore - before the mad dinner time rush.

Our first week has come and gone. The heat has been a struggle, especially in taking the kids out any where. Bathing the kids twice a day isn't as hard as I initially thought. The food has been wondering, but the downside is that I've been eating too much.

OMF International Head Quarters Singapore

Goodbyes at the airport. Thanks for coming out.

Aidan having fun on his first flight

We've arrived at OMF International Head Quarters in Singapore. The flight overall was great apart from when Luca tripped over a man's foot and smashed his face into the side of the seat about 2 hours into the flight. The Air Steward said that there was a deep cut inside his mouth, but it wasn't bleeding too badly. He feel asleep 15 minutes later which I wasn't sure was due to tiredness or from crashing into the seat. Towards the end of the flight he was himself again so we weren't too worried. The upshot of Luca's accident was the the air host/esses were very attentive to us and even took my laptop to business class to be recharged so that Luca could watch more Postman Pat (children's DVD).
Singapore is hot and humid and I'm needing to have a shower twice a day. We are in Singapore for just over 3 weeks for orientation and training before we head to Thailand. Lectures start tomorrow. Sorry no pictures yet.

• Praise God for a relatively good flight to Singapore
• Pray for safety for us and the children while we are here

Less than 24 hours to go!

Saturday 3 March - 3:00pm. Our good friend's commissioning service who are going on the same plane as us. The wife has been finding the prospect of leaving family and friends very tough. She wakes up most morning vomiting. Please pray for them.

Sunday 4 March - 11am: Our last Sunday at our home church, Cornerstone @ North. I prayed before the service that God would help me control my emotions during the service so that we could share properly with the congregation. Praise God that he helped us. But after the service saying our goodbyes. I was an tearful wreck. We are going to miss our home church very much and the fellowship we shared over the last 3 years. Being a new church plant it was great to be able to know everyone in the congregation and thus have a deeper fellowship then perhaps at a larger church. I can't imagine what it was like for missionaries even 100 years ago who didn't have email, skype or even a telephone to communicate with back home and who went with a good chance that they may not make it back home.

Sunday 6pm: Crashed on the lounge. Our son's pretty tired too.

This time tomorrow we should be in the air on the way to Singapore. Have we finished packing our bags? No! (So what am I doing writing on our blog I hear you ask?). This morning we started packing our bags in earnest. We didn't meet our goal of having our bags packed by the end of the morning. I rang Singapore Airlines and confirmed what I read last night on their website that our son has 20kg of check in luggage and 7 kg of hand carry! Great! Also, I joined Kris Flyer the rewards program for Singapore Airlines so that I could check in my internet. Now we already have our boarding pass before getting to the airport. Technology is moving. Rang our other OMF friends going on the same flight to tell them about it so that they could choose seats near us. Excited? Yes, running on adrenaline as we've had late nights all week packing. Scared. Definitely. A bunch of letters just came in the mail. More change of address letters to write. Need to ring the electoral office to see if we need to vote in the upcoming elections. Better get back to packing ....

• Please pray that we don't forget anything important (like my passport) and that things will go smoothly tomorrow.
• Please pray that the children will travel well tomorrow.
• Please pray that I will be able to hold it together at the airport with more emotional goodbyes.
  

Pack & go but what do we do with this stuff?

The packing process continues. Above is where most of our 'stuff' is being stored in the rumpus room of my parent's house. Less than 4 days before we leave and we are still packing boxes to take to my parent's to store. The white bits of paper on each box are the list of contents so that my parents can find things for us if we discover that we need them while in Thailand. That's why the packing this time round has taken so much longer.

But what do I do with these things? Relics from my past. In the middle is a rowing medal which I won when I was in highschool. Do I keep this? I put my rowing medals out for sale at the garage sale but my in-laws thought that I should keep them and took them off the market. The other things are badges which I collect when I was a young teenager on a family trip to the US. Foreign coins and match boxes from Korea ... what do I do with all this 'stuff'!

My visa hasn't come through yet. Hope it comes through while we are in Singapore or our family will have to make a trip out of Thailand and back in to get the visa properly. I sent the documents over 4 months ago! It takes that long to get the visa we want.

• Please pray that we get our visa on time
• Praise God for our parents who have been helping so much while we have been packing and letting us store so much our things at their house

Commissioned!

We were commissioned yesterday at Christchurch St Ives. It was such an encouragement to us to see so many of our family, friends and supporters there to stand along side us and send us off. The song item by Cornerstone North where we have been for the last 3 years was very moving and I couldn't stop the tears from following. We were so thankful to everyone who chipped in to help during the service and for the lunch afterwards. Only 9 sleeps to go!

David Cook preaching on John 1:18

About to have hands laid on us. It was just going to be the ministers, but Lisa asked for family and friends to be invited to as well

In the commissioning service

Lunch servers. Thanks Ray and Wayne.

Enjoying Lunch

Thankyou everyone for joining us for our commissioning and farewell lunch. We hope you found the afternoon of great encouragement to us, as it was for us.

• Praise God that for our commissioning service that it was of great encouragement to us the people who were able to attend.
• Thank God for everyone who helped us on the day during the service and for the lunch.
  

Moving Out

We moved out of our lovely rented house in Croydon Park on Thursday after weeks of packing. We packed and labeled 30 boxes before we ran out of time and started dumping things into boxes even as the removalists were taking our things into the truck. We really enjoyed living in Croydon Park, so close to our old bible college and with our lovely backyard where I started my first garden patch.
After we moved out we had to get the house cleaned and ready for the real estate agent. Above are photos of two people from church who came to help. It was so encouraging to have people from church helping us because we sure needed it. Thanks, Bec, Nat, Ginnie, Keish, Josh, Alistair (Felicity for volunteering her sons) and Luan.
On Saturday we had our garage sale. We sold a reasonable amount of things but still had too many things left unsold. It was hard seeing some of our nice things go so cheaply but getting rid of a lot of things we didn't need was cathartic too.
This is the 'stuff' left over which as you can see litters my in-law's backyard. Hopefully we can sort through most of this and clean up their yard and house before we go in the next two weeks. So much to do ... my head is spinning.

First of many sad goodbyes

Nephew's 1st Birthday Party

My nephew had her first birthday party yesterday which is big in Korean culture. A sad and teary moment was when we had to say goodbye to my brother, sister-in-law and nephew as they are moving to Brisbane on Monday and we won't see them again before we go to Thailand. It was the first of many sad goodbyes.

Photos of people at Cornerstone so we can remember you

Today was our last Sunday at Cornerstone. I was bit incoherent unable to control my emotions when I saw my wife starting to cry while we were sharing with the congregation during announcements. When the minister called me up again later in the service and asked us for our immediate prayer needs, all I could get out was to pray for our quiet-times and the kids. I could have said so much more but I was all chocked up and wasn't really able to put a sentence together.

• Please pray for good and meaningful farewells
• Praise God for 3 great years at Cornerstone and Cornerstone North
  

Crickey! Less than 4 weeks to GO!

• 1 week before we move (and this is what my study looks like! A lot of work in the next week)
• 2 weeks before our commissioning service
• 2 weeks before our Son's operation
• 3 weeks and we will (God willing) be on a plane to Singapore for training and orientation and then to Thailand.

We are getting a little bit stressed with lots of things to do. I organised a mail redirect today, send of a couple of change of address forms. The real estate agent will be coming through any minute with prospective tenants to take over where we have been living.
We've just come back from a wonderful holiday with Rich's family in the Central Coast. This is our two boys with their cousin Esther.

• Please pray for the packing up of the house that it will all get done without too much stress.
• Praise God for the week we had with Rich's family on holiday
  

Parenting Dilemma

These are all the parenting books we have been reading through to gain wisdom in parenting. Is there a more joyful yet frustrating task? We've just completed an 18 week course (2 hours a week), "Growing Kids God's Way" which has been really helpful. This is course developed by Gary & Anne Marie Ezzo whose teaching on parenting have divided many Christian parents and writers. Although 18 weeks was a long time, it was definately worth it, for us and more importantly for our children.

• Please pray for wisdom, patience and grace as we parent our two children, especially with the disruptions which are involved in moving to another country and culture coming up.
  

Summer Camp Memories

TC Treestump 1997 - Star Wars Theme

TC Film Night 1998 - Men in Black

Year 9 Boys 1998

TC male leaders 1998

I spoke at Christchurch St Ives' youth group summer camp on Sunday morning and it brought back many memories from the past (see above). The camp had about 200 kids! Some of the leaders were kids who were in TC when I was a leader - it was a surreal but encouraging experience. May all these kids remain excited about God as they are now.