We live in NZ. My dad works in Brazil. My sis goes to Uni in Brissy. My bro just moved his family back to Singapore from Brissy last year. So, to get everyone in the same country at the same time is almost a miracle in itself!

We almost made it this time. Only person missing is Rachel, my sis.

To make full use of the occasion, my mom booked all of us in for 3 days in Bintan Lagoon Resort. Bintan, Indonesia is only an hour's ferry ride from Singapore. Very doable for short holidays for those with young children.

We had fun, even though it rained everyday! Sophie had fun at the pool and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and little Janice. Sophie hasn't seen Grandpa for a year and a half so she was really thrilled to hang out with him.

We even bumped into our distant relatives. They too were having a big family gathering – 2 grandparents, 2 kids and their other halves plus 6 grandchildren! They invited us to their villa for BBQ. I haven't seen them in ages although we are about the same age and grew up together. It was really good to catch up.

I love family holidays!

From Left: Mothers and their Babes (Mum, Me, Sophie, James, James’ mum, Sis in Law JY, Niece Janice and Bro Kelvin)

We came back in time to celebrate Mothers’ Day with all our mums! It’s so so good to be with family again. Dad’s coming back from Brazil in a couple of weeks and James’ dad was taking the picture.

We had seafood dinner at Owen Seafood Restaurant at Turf City, one of our fav seafood haunts.We had bamboo clams, chilli crabs, drunken prawns, steamed ta pin (my goodness it was SO good! I haven’t had steamed fish for so long!), baby abalone, and stir fry veggies. Let me say it again, it’s so so good to be home.

James created a outdoor house for Sophie over the weekend.

He sealed up part of the balcony using bits he found around the base and made windows for the light to come in using transparencies (remember those things before computers?). He even found some whiteboard for writing on and a frame for a pretend door.

Very very cool.

I’ve always imagined for us to have a place for Sophie to play outdoors, yet within the confines of home. We’ve been doing lotsa craft, painting and drawing outdoors. We even started a small garden starting with planting herbs.

I had a craving for chicken heart with salted veggies and who made my dream come true?

It was SOOOOOOOO goood…….

We had quite a crazy day today.

In the morning, James caught an eel using a self-made eel trap and he made unagi! Check out the process on our flickr site. I’ve uploaded the pictures of the trap and stuff!

Later at night, he found a calf stranded by the river (later we found out that the calf was two days old and it had slipped down the slope towards the river when the mother cow gave birth to it. poor thing!). After dinner (we had a massive Chinese food feast at our home and invited some friends over), he went back with our friend Stuart to rescue the calf and brought it back! We got the farm next door to come over to collect the poor calf. The kids were kinda sad that they couldn’t keep it as a pet. Hiak!

What a day, what a day!

One of the things that God’s been working on us throughout this year has been our unity as a couple.

James and I have been raised pretty individualistic – he being the only child and me the dictator oldest child. What that really means is – almost always, we get our way! The past 5 years of marriage has been such a pruning process. Somehow I never realised how selfish and headstrong I was until I got married and the realization just got more apparent when I had Sophie!

But but… thanks to the grace of God, we’ve had pretty major breakthroughs this year.

One of the breakthroughs is that we produced our first newsletter together. We’ll be leading a team to Vanuatu on outreach in Oct and we really need our friends to pray for us.

If you’ll like a copy of the newsletter to know how you can keep us in prayer, pls let us know ya?

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.

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.