We’re into the second week of school. We’ve got Bruce Thompson teaching on the Divine Plumbline.

As staff, we are required to lead small groups on Thursdays and meet one-on-ones on Tuesdays. That started this week.

We had our one-on-ones yesterday afternoon. It was somewhat a challenge trying to work out a schedule that would allow James and I to meet with 4 different people and make sure our children were all looked after. I have two one on ones, Emily and Ginger and James’ is Stuart and Greg. Em and Stu are married with 2 kids and Greg and Ginger have a baby. Finally we managed to work out something and it turned out really well!

James went fishing with one of the guys while I stayed home with one of the girls. When Sophie woke up from her nap, James watched her while I went walking with one of the girls. We walked and talked for 1 hr! It was so good! I could feel my heart being pumped! But it was so cold! When I got back, James went to meet with the other guy.

James has also been given the responsibility of leading meditation on Wednesdays. Sharing and teaching on meditation and spiritual disciplines has been on James’ heart for a long time. He’s really excited about it yet bit fearful at the same time. I thought he did pretty well this morning as a first timer!

It feels really good to be supporting each other and doing this as a team. We’re doing really well, praise God and things are good. I’m so glad we are here. We’re hanging onto God and He’s been so gracious to us. It’s stretching at times but God’s been giving us the grace and strength to press on.

Pls pray for us because the weather is keeping us down. It’s really quite cold. On certain days I’m sure it’s below 10 degrees. All three of us have been sick, getting better but still not fully well. But it was quite a miracle because I managed to lead base worship on Monday with a sore throat! I couldn’t sing the night before and then suddenly I could sing! It was really quite amazing.

Oh yes! Another testimony! We left our guitar, our nice Korean made Takamine in Vanuatu because the base didn’t have one and we sensed that Father wanted to bless them with it. But this time round, James and I are leading worship almost all the time. Before worship on Monday, Riwai, one of the staff was just chatting with me and we started talking about guitars and I just casually said, oh yes I should start praying for a new guitar. That afternoon, Claire, our friend who visited us in Singapore told us she got us one! Someone had blessed her with it and she knew exactly who to give it to (hee, because we’ve been using hers all this while!), US! Yep so we’ve been blessed with a second hand guitar but it’s lovely!!! It’s so precious because it’s a gift from God and our friend. Before a word is uttered, you know it, Lord. ? Sometimes we don’t even know what we need but God knows. It’s so precious to know that.

We’ve been quite busy since the new DTS has began. It’s really a lot more work than we expected! James also fell sick and subsequently Sophie and now I’m not well too. But still we’re keeping well and it’s probably because of the change of weather. It’s really cold!

This DTS comprises of 8 families – 3 American, one Swedish, one Singaporean, one Austrian, one Swiss, one British.

James and I are in charge of Worship and Meditation sections of the school. Plus other creative things like the noticeboard and decorating the cross.

The students have been really open and God is already doing intense ministry in some of the lives of the students. We’re looking forward to what the Lord is doing amongst us.

To help the students get to know each other, we organised a cafe nite last Friday (see photo).

Over the weekend, we went for a break and did some sightseeing. See flickr for pictures.

Dearest Sophie,

We’re back in Matamata. Most things are familiar to you and you’re settling in really well! Time is passing fast and you’re turning 3 in 2 months!

Happy 2 yrs and 10 months!

Love
Mummy

We’ve got our own little cottage on the base. Previously as students, we lived in a unit with an attached room and bathroom and a kitchenette. This time round as long term staff, we’ll be living in a cottage.

It’s SO NICE!!!!!!!! It’s got such a vintage look. Check out the wallpaper and all. So so quaint! I like! It’s even a little bigger than our 3 rm flat back home. We’ve got 2 bedrooms – one for Soph and one for us. A backroom that James uses for his study. A shared bathroom. A living cum dining room.

Best part? I see mountains and cows from my kitchen window. Makes washing dishes a whole lot more pleasant. Not so nice part? I can hear cows mooing when I’m sleeping. Serious, like right outside my room. Not funny.

We are slowly settling down and buying stuff to make our home even more homely. U know the usual maggi noodles, oyster sauce, soya sauce, rice etc.

Things have been quite hectic because we need to get ready for school. The next day after we arrived, we had team meetings. I’ve already cooked fried rice for 40 and James had to cook soup for lunch today too. But it’s been really stretching, yet fun at the same time and we’re enjoying ourselves.

This is going to be an exciting season for us as a family. Pls pray for us as school begins tomorrow. Rain on us Lord!!!

We’re back on the base!!!! Yipeee!

We had a great flight from Brisbane to Auckland. As usual, our little one soaked up 3 hours of Playhouse Disney. I’m so happy that Air NZ shows Playhouse Disney as compared to SIA that shows Nickalodean. But still prefer the service on SIA. Ok short flight, can’t complain!

Actually, after 3 hrs of tv, Sophie knocked out when we were collecting our bags. Not a bad thing considering we had to get 9 pieces of lugguges through the declarations etc… We managed to bring in everything and we also didn’t pay for extra baggage on route to Auckland, phew!

Our base registrar Malcolm came to pick us up at the airport. So nice to see a familiar face. We decided we had enough travelling and living out of suitcases so we did not stay a few days in Auckland this time round and came directly to the base. The ride was only 2 hrs and Sophie slept thru.

This is our new home for the next year. More photos to come…. check flickr.

This photo was taken on the Tues morning we left.

Oooo I so miss my family.

We had a really good time with them the past week. My bro and sis in law took some time off to take us to the Gold Coast for about 3 days. My sis was on hols. We checked into a really nice apartment with 3 bedrooms and an amazing sea view, right in the middle of Surfers Paradise. It was so fun. I think the last time we had so much fun together was in 05 when we went to Sydney and Gold Coast, before Kel and CY got married and before we had Sophie.

This is even more fun, with 2 kids in tow! Janice and Sophie has so much fun together.

The only thing was Daddy wasn’t with us. Hee… but we spent his money! He made us. I guess that was his way of being with us. Oooo and he also called us twice a day to "hang out" with us. Hiak hiak..

I had such a good time catching up with my bro n sis in law. Thanks guys for letting us use your room, that was so sweet. Really appreciate you guys. We’ll see you in a year!

See you friends. Gonna miss you all so much!

We’re now in Brisbane to visit my bro and sis with my mum, dad is working in Brazil.

Totally enjoying the time spent with my family. So happy.

We’re all heading to the Gold Coast tomorrow for 3 days! So glad that we made the decision to make a detour to Brissy before heading to NZ.

Sophie’s been such a che che. She’s always watching out for Janice. She was playing with Janice yesterday morning on the floor. When I took her away to eat her breakfast on the high chair, Janice started crying. And Sophie said, "I think she needs to see me." Hahahah… It’s true, whenever Janice sees Sophie, she’s happy.

Daddy we miss you!

Rev 12:11 says this:-

"They overcame him (the enemy) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death."

God’s really been so good to us and we want to testify to that.

Firstly, we are so thankful that we got our NZ working visas in record time! Less than 10 days! It’s amazing. We were planning to submit our visas in NZ before we left for Vanuatu. However, when we went all the way to Hamilton (1 hr from Matamata where we lived) to the NZ embassy, they told us that they couldn’t promise us our visas in time before we left for Vanuatu and we needed our passports to travel, etc etc…. long story and finally James felt the Lord saying to wait so we didn’t submit it in NZ.

Turns out that it’s so much easier to do it back here in Singapore. In fact, on the NZ embassy Singapore website, I found out that they actually state that they understand the urgency of the visas and they try their best to get it proceesed in 10 days if all the supporting documents are in place. Singapre my homeland, I love how efficient we are! Also turns out that they needed more supporting documents etc Certificate of No Criminal Record (ya, we now certified we got no criminal record, don’t scared), Marriage Cert (which was stuffed somewhere in our backroom in our old house!) and even our DTS cert! Soooooooo thank God we did it here, if not, it’ll have been a hassle trying to find these documents while we were in NZ.

So yes! We got a three year working visa for NZ as missionaries! Woo hoo! Praise God!

Secondly, YWAM is a faith-based organisation which simply means it’s fully volunteer work and we do not receive salary. We have to raise our own support. Actually we learn to trust God to raise our support. So by faith, James and I decided to draw up a financial plan to work out how much we will need a month (minus our outreach fees which are one offs). So we came up with a figure C. We know that our rental income will provide us with figure A so we had to trust God for the remaining figure B (A+B=C). The amazing thing was as we were sharing with the church abt what we were going to do, they decided to adopt us as Missions Associates, as part of the missions department. In this scheme of support, they work out a sum to support missionaries with a sum for adults and a sum for children. When they gave us the acceptance letter and told us the amount, we added up the figures for 2 adults and 1 child, it was exactly, guess what?, figure B! It was such a God moment for us. God knows our every need and He who calls, is FAITHFUL.

We are really thankful for the signs that God is with us and He is going ahead of us. We are also so thankful for all the support from our family and friends in terms of friendship, prayer and even financially.

As most know, we’re preparing to return to Crystal Springs YWAM base in NZ to serve for a year. In fact, we leave tomorrow night!!! We’ll spend a week in Brisbane with my mum, bro n his family and sis and we’ll fly directly to NZ after.

We’ve been so busy doing stuff and meeting up with people that I haven’t had much time to write a significant blog post about this. I prefer to update our friends face to face so this post is primarily for our family and friends overseas.

YES! We’re going back to NZ!!!!

We really like it there and we wanna go deeper as a family in knowing and serving God.

We’re going to serve as staff on the next Family/Crossroads Discipleship Training School (DTS) this July and Family Ministries School (FMS) in Jan next year. In each school, the lecture phase runs for 12 weeks and then the outreach phase runs for 4-8 weeks. As staff, we’ll be required to be responsible for one-on-ones, small groups, leading worship and intercession and the usual work duties and base maintenance. Normally in each school, the staff to student ratio is 1 to 2. James and I will probably be assigned 1 or 2 students as one on ones. The base is very family friendly so James and I can serve at the same time while Sophie is in daycare in the mornings and occasionally in the afternoons.

Please keep us in prayer as we enter into this new season of our lives serving as a family. We are really excited. More stories in the next few posts.

For more info about Family DTS and FMS, look here.