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.

Pa (James’ dad) has many friends in China so we’ve been having meals after meals. Yesterday night we had two dinners! One of which was a wonderful home cooked meal. It was typical Chinese style entertaining – check out the number of dishes! 10!

This is the home of the son of an old family friend of my father in law. Now we have three generations of friendship. Sophie had so much fun playing with the two kids that she cried when we had to leave. I’m really glad that relationships are very important to her.

I feel a bit sad that in China, since the late 70s, each couple is only allowed to have one child. Must be so tough for some and yet most have gotten used to that and enjoy having only one precious child. On Sunday, I could see the fathers happily carrying their kids and holding hands with them, no matter girl or boy, and enjoying the time they had together. Very precious.

I loveeeee staying with my in laws. This was my lunch for today – garlic prawns, braised beef, stir fried veggies and cold crab!!!

I really miss the great outdoors. Sophie has been wanting to go to the playground but it’s really too hot. I think she misses running around. She’s really gotten a lot tougher… like almost muscular, something that we only realised when we got back and she seems heavier too. And her appetite has increased, always hungry. Oh and she’s very tanned too.

I really think children need to run and climb the whole day. Seriously. I’m not quite sure how to continue doing it here.

Anyways, the best we could do was to go swimming! So we did that today and hung out with our friends. Sorry no photos coz very lazy to take photos now that we’re home. I’ll try to do that more soon. Btw, this is a picture of us canoeing in Vanuatu, very shiok.

We’ve finished 3 months of school, 1 research paper, 7 hours of homework per week, 1 oral presentation and 1 exam! Woo hoo! We had our graduation last nite.

It’s been a great run. We really enjoyed the school and God has done tremendous things in our lives.

We have one more week of outreach preparation on the base and then we’re off to the lovely pacific island of Vanuatu on the 19th of April. We’ll be there for a whole month. We’ll be living on the YWAM base and working with the local churches to conduct marriage seminars and parenting courses. It’ll be quite an interesting outreach because our team has 3 couples and we have 6 children ranging from 1 – 12 years old between us! That really means 6 adults and 6 kids! Woo hoo! Sounds more like a family holiday than outreach. This is my very first time on a family outreach and I’m not very sure what to expect. But I’m sure it’ll be good.

Please do keep us in prayer.

Prayer requests

1. Effective teaching and outreach

2. Wisdom and Holy Spirit guidance

3. Sensitivity to the culture and ability to transend language (Languages: Bislama, English, French and over 100 local languages)

4. Love for the people

5. Health for all of us

I’m really looking forward to this. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a mission trip! The last one I did was a local outreach in Feb 06! It’s so cool to be able to do this with Sophie. I’m really really excited. I’m also looking forward to a bit of beach, sand and sea, without the cool chilly wind. Hiak hiak…

Over the weekend, our family was on weekend duty. What that meant was, we were part of a team to prepare dinner for the base as well as do all the clean up in the kitchen and main hall. There is a rotation for all the families and we only have to do it for two weekends throughout the lecture phase. It’s really not that frequent at all.

Last weekend, James and I decided that we would take the initiative to cook Chinese food! Most times it’s the school staff that will initiate the menu and we just help out in the preparation but this time, our school leader let us choose the menu. OF COURSE WE CHOSE RICE coz we only have rice once a week! Hahaha…

So together with 3 other girls, we cooked garlic oyster sauce chicken in the oven and stir-fried veggies served with rice. YUMS!

It was CRAZY! So stress! Never done it before. But my super husband is amazing. He never fails to surprise me with what he can do.

We followed a recipe book for the chicken. For the veggies, he just mixed a whole jar of black stuff that included oyster sauce and peanut butter (!). I had no idea what went into it because I was busy frying the veggies while he did the sauce. Oh… but so shiok to smell the fried garlic and onions, plus the smell of sesame oil that we took for granted back home. I loved doing the frying. I so miss that!

Well, it turned out to be a winner! We had great reviews, thank God! For us, we were just glad that it turned out edible! Hahaha…

P/s OH! Forgot to mention where Sophie was coz she is not allowed in the kitchen. We arranged with another family to babysit her and we would babysit their kids when it was their turn to cook. Worked out really well.

There’s a big problem that we have here – both of us don’t drive so we didn’t get a car. That makes us pretty much stuck on the base most of the time. There’s a weekly van run into town so we take turns to go. And on Sundays, the van also takes us to church.

What we’ve been doing sometimes is, we follow the van to town on Sun and instead of going to church, we spend some family time in town. It’s been really good for us. Last Sunday, we spent the morning at the cafe. Sophie had a little blueberry tart and her usual babycino with chocolate powder and a marshmallow by the side. That’s how they serve hot drinks here, with a little marshmallow by the side. Sweet.

She loved it and she’s been "upgraded" to sit on an adult chair, no need to sit on the high chair anymore.

We finally finished packing up the house last week and handed over the keys to our tenant today. I had mixed feelings the entire day – sad to say bye to people and our home that we’ve lived in for the past 4 years YET excited about our next step.

I was wondering how Sophie was feeling about the whole thing. She didn’t even ask about her missing cot as she went about in her room at Holland. She’s settled in very well in my in laws’ place btw. Then I realised she knew exactly what was going on! My MIL asked her if she knew where her things were and she said "It’s in your house!" a matter of factly! Nothing really fazzles this little one. She takes it in her stride. I really pray that she’ll be just a matter of factly about moving to NZ.

We really enjoy staying at our in laws the past few days. Everything is provided for – childcare, food, washing etc. So nice….. We could run our errands and not worry about Sophie. My MIL is back at school but Jean, their helper has been a GREAT help in caring for Sophie while we’re out.

So what did we do on our final weekend? James had a night out with the boys on Fri, I met Beks on Sat morning, my extended family came over to my parents’ for a gathering at lunch, my sis and I went shopping at Haji lane for her birthday outfit, I hung out with Serena, Chris n Nikki at night, came home to pack, went to church today, dropped by Joshua’s bday party to say bye to the cell, had lunch with my family, met tenant and handed over the house, dinner with my in laws and came home to complete our packing. Feel like this entire process has been very thereputic – helped me to flush out what is redundant and keep what is precious.

We have reduced what we need down to 2 large, I mean REALLY LARGE suitcases (1 for Sophie and I and the other for James and misc stuff), 1 cabin bag (mostly Sophie’s books), 2 backpacks (1 for James, 1 for me) and 1 play suitcase for Sophie. Ooooo and 1 box in case we are overweight, we have to junk that box. We’re praying that the SIA people will be kind.