The team has been slowly easing in – new food, new culture, new climate, new people, new everything! We’ve had a few battles e.g. sickness, grumpy kids and sometimes adults but overall I think the team has done very well despite of it all.

We had our first ministry time on Thursday night where the team shared their testimonies at the base community meeting. Gin did so well even after a whole day of stress with the kids. She rose up well to the occasion and it was such a powerful testimony.

We have also been visiting the preschool under the banyan tree. Rachel who runs it just gave birth two months ago and she is still teaching everyday. She has 7 kids of her own plus she operates a free preschool for 20 neighbourhood kids who cannot afford to go to the local preschool. We’ll be helping her out from this week onwards.

This time, we have base duties. We do breakfast cleanup every morning and the base has rostered us for dinner duties twice a week. So far James cooked on Wed and Stuart cooked on Sat.

Jim, the oldest member of our team has been having divine appointments every day! God has just been bringing people to talk to him. Somehow having white hair helps! ? We are really thankful to have him on the team.

We also made some friends at church this morning and invited them to the outreach that we’re having.

We have a full six weeks ahead. We are helping to spearhead YWAM’s community outreach with a women’s group, youth group to teach life skills, youth mini-DTS, men’s group, and the men are going to visit the prisons and do some building work on the base.

Please continue to keep us in prayer.

P/S: Update on team health – Stu and Sue are well now. Evan and Eli were down with fever but they have recovered. Simon is still recovering from flu symptoms. Rest are well, praise the Lord.

It’s so good to be back again in Vanuatu. We love it here. Sophie is behaving like she never left! She commands the stray dogs to go away, kick them and tells her friends to do the same.

It’s so nice to see everyone again and it really helps that we are familiar with the base and the surroundings. When we walk around the villages, it’s nice that people remember us!

Thank you all for praying. Sophie is full well now. The fever was just for a day. However, one other kid is down with fever today and two of our team members have got stomach problems. Pls con’t to keep us in prayer!

After the outreach, we went with the Grobs to see Mt Yasur, one of the world’s most accessible active volcano, in Tanna. Vanuatu is made up of a few islands and Tanna is one of the islands in the south. It takes about 40 mins to fly to Tanna.

I mean, how often does one get to be so close to an active volcano right? We had to go and the experience turned out pretty amazing.

It was a 1 and a half hour drive from the hotel to the volcano on bumpy road. Tanna is hardly developed, mostly jungle and no tar roads at all. It was crazy! The guide was driving real fast because we needed to get there before the sunset! Sophie fell asleep halfway and when she woke up, she THREW UP VOLCANO STYLE on mama me!!!!!! Great. That was a good introduction to volcanoes. Thank God I brought along a sweater so I had to change out of my vomit soaked tank top into the sweater in the middle of nowhere. I had to make do with the pants tho. Eeks.

When we got to the foot of the volcano, it was getting dark, just the right time. It also stopped drizzling, which was good. We climbed up to the mouth of the volcano and spent about 45 mins watching the volcano. It was constantly erupting. We managed to get some good shots and videos too. Very cool! A bit scary at times, esp for Sophie. Check out the videos (Part 1 2 3 4) James put up.

Sadly, it started to rain again and we had to come down and head back to the hotel.

The hotel was a nice change – outdoor warm shower, nice bed, lovely food and overlooking the beach. I’m glad we took the short break to Tanna. Minus the puking, I really enjoyed everything else.

P/s Btw, the puking happened again on our flight back, small plane, but this time our lil one was super smart she had the puke bag ready and threw up in it. Phew.

We left Vanuatu on Sunday and we’re back in Auckland, NZ. We’ll be here for a few days and then we’re coming home to Singapore!

We are so enjoying the warm shower, lovely hotel room, Jap food, shopping and Borders. We even watched Star Trek at the cinema with Sophie today! She fell asleep after a while… hiak! Oooo I love God, being on missions and Vanuatu but………… i’m really a city girl at heart. I bought a pair of Riders skinny jeans. Hee, nice.

More starfish!!! This is a big one with spikes! Sophie took a bit of coaxing to pose with this one, not because it looks scary………. but coz it was so heavy! Hiaks!

Erakor island is real pretty. We even rented a canoe for an hour and brought Sophie with us. She listened well and tried not to fidget for a whole hour! Hee… it was hard coz she wanted to touch the water, catch the fish and seaweed but I got a bit scared each time she moved that we’ll fall out!

You wouldn’t believe it! (Ok, my mum wouldn’t, right mum?!?)

We cooked Hainanese chicken rice for the base. Yahhhhh…. Well, they asked us to cook something from Singapore because they were going to pray for Singapore during intercession. Our first intention was to cook Pig Trotters Bee Hoon, a fav of James and I. But we couldn’t find any canned Pig Trotters nor any Bee Hoon!

So, we decided to do chicken rice. I mean what is more Singapore than chicken rice?!? If I don’t think, I’ll eat chicken rice.

Anyways, the truth is neither James and I have really done this before so we got a recipe off the net (duh!). Oooooo it was SOOOOO goood…. it was almost surreal to eat chicken rice right here in the island of Vanuatu! We seriously did the chicken the same way, the cucumbers the same way, the rice the same way. BUT we used chicken wings and sweet chilli sauce instead. Still, the taste was familiar, so good for us. I think everyone generally liked it too!

A piece of Singapore.

We’ve been to Blacksands village four times over the past few weeks. It’s a village near the airport. It is much poorer compared to where we are at Pango village (Pango is near the town and it is more developed). The locals actually call Blacksands a slum. So you can pretty much imagine the condition. There are hardly any schools in the area, hardly any electricity (serious, I brought my laptop and had no where to plug it into!), no proper sanitation, water comes from the river and some kids go around wearing nothing.

We were there to conduct a couple of marriage seminars and ended with a parenting seminar last Sat. It was pretty discouraging at first because only the women would come and only a few of them. We struggled with whether our teaching would even made sense in their condition and culture! Who cares about spending marriage time when they need to make ends meet? How do we encourage them to show love in action when the men are constantly away, drinking and hardly home?

We learnt a lot each time we were there – about their lives, culture and struggles. Each time we went back, we made adjustments in our teaching and our examples.

Finally when we were there the last time, I felt that we had a breakthrough. In that village, although we had a full 3 hour seminar for just 5 mothers, they were so open and willing to learn. We felt that presence of God and even had the opportunity to pray for healing for some of the children.

Sophie had so much fun at the last village that she was a bit sad when we had to go. The kids really took to our straight black hair. It was funny how they kept touching our hair. Like little kids would jump around me, just trying to stroke my hair!

That ended our ministry in the villages. This week we’re teaching on The Father Heart of God in the current DTS and we would be done by this Wednesday! Time really flies!

It’s really quite different being on a mission team with families. In the past I’ve always been leading youth teams and once James and I went on a mission trip with both our parents to China. That was all before Sophie was born.

I used to be really apprehensive what families can do on short term mission trips especially families with small children. Now, I’m convinced that it’s doable and it’s probably one of the most effective ways of reaching out. Somehow kids just open the doors. Once people see kids, they let down their guards and are able to trust us more. It’s amazing.

Between the 3 families we have 6 kids – one 1 year old, 2 that are 2-3 years old, a 5 year old, a 9 year old and a 12 year old. It helps that the 9 and 12 year olds are SUPER matured. They make great babysitters.

I’ve seen what worked with our group the past few weeks and I’ll just like to share how it can be done.

1. Our schedule is super light.
We normally do only one seminar/teaching per day – e.g if we have a seminar in the night, we will not have one in the day. Some days we have nothing to do, only preparation. Teaching requires a lot of preparation. Only once or twice we had ministry in the morning and night.

Other than ministry, we join the base for worship, intercession and also open meeting nights. We also have our team meetings, devotions and intercession every morning for about 1 hr together with the kids. We also meet our leaders as a couple for feedback and personal time once or twice during the prep and outreach.

2. Time for family & spouses
We always have a weekly day off and Sunday after church is free for us too. We are mindful of the need for family time and marriage time. It’ll be ironic if we as representatives of the Family Ministries School failed to have time for our own families and spouses! It is SO important to make sure we spend time with our kids and keep their love tanks full. Sometimes when we’re on the run, they feel it too and tend to act up more. We need to slow down and be with them.

3. Keep to kids’ schedules
As much as we could, we try to keep to the kids’ schedules e.g during naptimes and bedtime, we’re back at the base. If meals are late, we will prepare food for the kids first. This is very important because it gives the kids security and there is a lot less fussing. But I have to say, our kids have been very flexible – Julia sleeps in her pram and so far Micha and Sophie have slept whenever needed and even once on the beach!

4. Keeping the team small really helps.
We are only 3 families. Decision making is tough even with 3 families of different cultures and systems. If there are more families, it’ll be harder to make decisions.

5. Having a baby monitor helps.
We forgot to bring ours but the Swiss family did. So when they are out for ministry at night, we will help to listen if Micha, their son, wakes up in the night.

6. It helps that all of our children sleep by 8pm or so.
I’m forever thankful that Sophie has been habitually sleeping by 8pm. That has really helped in the adjustment to NZ and on missions.

7. It helps to have certain team rules.
For example, we eat everything we are provided with. We can buy our own food but we cannot bring it to the dinner table because it will cause jealousy for the locals who might not be able to afford. That is great because our kids all have to eat whatever is before them. Such a great habit! It’s good to set a few team rules that all the families adhere to.

8. The children are included in almost everything.
The children are present for outreach preparation, meetings, devotions, intercession, ministry etc. We learn to work around them and they learn to play around us. It’s really not that easy. For example once during our turn to teach, Sophie needed to pee. This was in the really rural village – no sitting toilets! In the end she had to do it under a tree and only after much crying. Super stress. Poor girl! But eventually every time she’s at the rural village, she’s fine with doing her business anywhere. Thank God for the breakthrough!

9. Foster the bonding between the children and other parents as early as possible
This will enable other parents to look after your kids and they are able to play well with the other children. For example, one night Micha woke up crying while his parents were teaching at a seminar and James had to put him back to bed. It was not that bad because Micha knows James well and could trust him. Micha is only 2 btw.

10. Arrange intensive prayer time separately
The men meet at 5.30am every morning to pray and at certain times, we meet to pray when the kids are napping. This give us the space to listen in and really intercede. There needs to be a balance because we cannot involve the children in everything.

Finally it’s all a matter of being patient and adjusting our expectations. Communication between families is also key. Most of all, just need to trust God because there is just so much that are beyond us. It’s been a great experience and I’m so very glad we did it.

The base makes fresh bread EVERYDAY! It’s so good…

Sophie is absolutely loving the beach…………. so are we.

Our team spent our first weekly off day at Hideaway Island.

We took a little boat to a small, really small little island with a resort. It was a great place to go snorkelling and diving……. BUT BUT BUT it poured big time that day!!!! What a pity! But that’s the weather here – it is hot and it rains…. reminds me of somewhere I know very well…..yes yes it’s very similar to Singapore except that the temperature goes a lot lower here in the nights especially. Back to the trip, we still swam anyways and it was so cool to see fish and corals.

Sophie really enjoyed the boat ride and swimming. We spent the whole day at the island and the kiddos all fell asleep at some point for their afternoon nap.

A village preschool that meets under a huge banyan tree. It is free to send kids to this school so many of the parents will send their kids early in the morning for a half a day. It acts very much like a daycare.

We were there to do a little program with songs, stories, craft and games. Sophie took a while to warm up and join in the activities. Her favourite part was snack time!