This week is going to be interesting. James and I will be teaching in class together for the first time. We’ll be teaching for 2 days on pre-maritial counselling. We’re not conducting a pre-marital course but sharing with the class about pre-marital counselling and how to go about doing it.

First of all, it’s super humbling because we’ve never conducted a pre-marital course in our lives before! Second of all, we’ve only been married 5 years… almost 6 years. Third of all, we’re still working through so many issues in our own marriage. And now we have to train others to do pre-marital counselling! But but but… we believe this is what God’s been calling us to - to teach together and minister together. It’s a great challenge but we’re happy to do it. We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t start trying. So we’re excited and the prep has been going very well, thank God.

So, we will really really appreciate prayer for this Thursday and Friday. We’ll be teaching on why pre-marital counselling/preparation is essential esp in this time and age, who can do it, debunking myths about marriage, how to handle different pastoral situations e.g. cross-cultural marriages. Yep that’s the gist! Our heart is really to inspire the class to be pre-marital counselors/mentors and to help to sow truths about marriage is as God intended. Pray that the Holy Spirit will unearth lies about relationship and marriage within the class. Thank you for praying with us!!!

As you know, we’ve just began the new FMS for 2010.

It’s been a great start and I’m so excited about what God’s doing. Led class worship this morning and felt such an openness in the class towards God. Very cool. (Btw, I didn’t throw up at the class. Turned out to be a bug and I prayed last night in the name of Jesus for the bug to go and I was perfectly fine by dinner time and totally alright this morning! Praise the Lord! My morning sickness is rather mild.)

Here’s a picture of our orientation last weekend. The creche and homeschool staff prepared a parachute game for the kids but noticed what eventually happened?!? The adults had more fun than the kids! The kids were pretty amused. So funny!

This class has only 9 students - 2 singles, 1 single parent and 3 married couples but we have a team of 9 staff so it’s one-on-one! So far so good. James has 1 guy for one-on-one and I have 2 ladies. One of the ladies is a Korean lady who is a missionary in China and she’s planning to pioneer FMS in China. Aiyo I’m so impressed and so excited to be her one-on-one, so many things to talk about. I love people who pioneer stuff, always super exciting for me.

Please do keep us in prayer. James and I are doing well, struggling a little with discipling Sophie at times because she’s really quite strong-willed by nature but with God’s grace, we know that she’ll grow and learn.

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.

My peak period is starting again. The next SOL issue is ready for layout and Irene n I are working on it. And we’ve also got friends from oveseas in town! Pris is back and Mark B is here. Mark B is going to be ministering at a few places - our cell group, St Paul’s church and at our home. Let us know if you wanna come, esp if you are dying for a fresh touch from the Lord.

Again, how do I cope? Lotsa late nights, Sophie watches TV and the helper goes on auto pilot (she’s here now and I have no idea what she’s doing!). I’m done with my picture selection for this issue. I better go check on the girls. I think Sophie is walking on the just mopped floor and my laundry is done, argh!

I’ve been a lot busier these days.

Since the start of the year, I’ve stepped up my involvement in our company. I’ve always been on the side giving comments but I was not fully involved. With the company expanding and more projects coming in, James really needed help. So beyond just helping out administratively and doing the accounts, I am now fully involved in some projects. Which means Monday weekly meetings during Sophie’s naptime to discuss on company directions and the week ahead’s project schedule with James, plus client meetings, design directions etc.

In March, James was on reservist so I had to step in to help out with the Seasons of Life (March) layout (see photo above). I am normally not involved in the design phase and it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything close to this. But all I had to do was direct and supervise our designer. It felt so good to be completely involved from beginning till end. It was really hard to work with Sophie around but we worked around it. Irene would do that work and come back during Sophie’s nap to check with me. It so happened that it was the March hols so my mother in law also chipped in by coming over one full day to watch Sophie while we worked at the office. Of course it’s great that the office is just a few doors away so we could come back at lunch to play with Sophie. It all worked out pretty well. In fact, it’s going to be distributed this weekend at church.

We have FINALLY started on some of our own projects that are not client driven. This is where Daytime is heading. That’s where we always wanted to go. James and I have been talking about this even before we got married! We hope to productize these and sell them online hopefully by end of second quarter. However that also means, no money up front until we sell the products BUT that’s the risk we gotta take by faith. Yeay!!!

How am I balancing all that while looking after Sophie, making sure she’s still running outdoors and not being cooped up at home, making friends and learning?

Seriously? We’re still trying to figure this out.

1. We now have a regular helper that comes in once a week. She does all the major housework that I esp dread like deep cleaning, ironing etc. It used to be more ad hoc whenever I felt like my feet stuck to the ground. Eeks! Was praying about this and God sent someone. The previous helper couldn’t commit to a regular time and I NEED REGULAR TIME!

2. I work while Sophie is asleep - either at naptime or night time. It really helps that she sleeps at 7! Her naptimes are stretching so it helps. Most times we have meeting during her nap.

3. It’s been great that Sophie does a lot more independent playing. Setting out her playyard and her special play area really helps. She has a toy set and a kitchen set that keeps her occupied. She has her own book and toy shelves that she can reach on her own. That gives me some time to be planning and working. We still go for mums grp and meet up with her friends at least 2-3 times a week.

Left: A low book shelf for Sophie

Right: Mums grp picnic

4. Our new designer is also great with Sophie. Sometimes while things are crazy in the house, we’ll be having a meeting and she’ll play with Sophie. Sometimes I’ll cook lunch for all of us and she even helps with the washing! That is SUCH a blessing.

Irene, our designer washing dishes. Sophie loves her!

So far so good, by the grace of God, everything has been falling in place nicely. Nice. Check out the new SOL ya?

Our little business is not so little anymore. It’s growing and we’re hiring! We just finished a couple more websites including Donut Factory before the year ended. This year I hope to be much more involved in the projects like brainstorming and conceptualising and not just in the administration and management, which really just means bookkeeping and making sure we are above the water. Brain is getting a bit rusty and feel so out of touch but I do miss the corporate world.

Here’s us going off to meet new clients at 2AM dessert bar (which btw served really great desserts, food was ok only, the view is a bit odd for fine dining/dessert bar kinda place - one side looked down into the street and the other at our flat). We’re going to design and paint a mural for this couple’s new home prob in the second quarter of the year. Watch out for that!

We have a new website job. It’s a close friend’s food business. We keep getting jobs to do with food - Mother, Uncle Don’s, Donut Factory etc…

Well, the fun part was trying to style and take the pictures for the site. Vic (supposed to be just there for the food only) and I got our hands dirty (or rather, we scrubbed it clean first) to style the food! Dan took the pics and James was the main guy.

It was super fun coz we got to work, eat, drink and basically hang out. Although we took a while with the work and ended up only eating at 11pm! But it was worth the wait coz the food was so good. The lamb chops were AMAZING. They brought it all the way back from their last trip to Perth.

Disclaimer: This photo was taken by moi, not the real photographer. In case you’re wondering why we pay Dan to take such lousy pics. His are much better and we’ll leave that for the site and show off when it’s done.

Hey everyone, we have revamped our blog, as you can see.

A bit of texture and vintage feel to it. Just what we’ve always liked, except that now it’s actually trendy!

We’ve also switched to Wordpress from Nucleus (Blogging/Content Management Software). We’ve chosen to use Wordpress coz it’s a lot more versatile and techie. Ok… James chose it coz he’s very familiar with it. I’m still trying to get used to it but so far so good. A bit of teething issues but more or less ready to launch. ps… i think he’s trying to get me used to it so i can help edit his websites.

So, here’s marking a new phase of our lives… really diving into what we’ve liked to do all this while - designing, art and craft, writing etc. James has started art classes at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and we’re working on a new business (beyond Daytime). We’ve also streamlined Daytime to focus on design rather than web development. We’ll still do web design but we’ll outsource the development process. This is a step of faith for us so please continue to keep us in prayer.

ps: A reminder that this blog was started to keep family and friends updated about our lives and our spiritual journey/reflections, especially those we love that are far away. I didn’t mean it to become an authority for anything e.g. baby nutrition, bible knowledge/spiritual growth, parenting methods, social/political observations etc…mainly just sharing our hearts and beliefs. Occasionally we’ll also raise our prayer requests so we’ll really appreciate if you could keep us in prayer. Thanks for staying with us all these while and dropping comments. It’s been keeping me in touch even as I stay home. May the Lord bless you through our blog.

We found an office space! And it’s literally round the corner…. heh heh. Thank God for that!

God’s been so good… prayer answered. Not that God is not good when our prayers are not answered but it just feels good when it’s answered.

We’re in the midst of looking for free or close to free furniture, prob checking out some garang guni places… prob need some tables n shelves. If you know anyone giving away stuff, pls let us know OR just pray with us that we’ll find some.

Business has been very regular and good! We’ve completed quite a few website and murals that past few months. Mostly websites tho. James’ done a few designs for logos and signages too…

Some of our customers that have become our friends the past 6 mths:
Thy Grace Marketing (Veg distributor, fellow Christian bro)
Singapore Alive! (Travel agency, I wrote the words Alive! and James scanned it in for the logo!)
Royal Harvest (a fruit shop in Chinatown owned by Sun Moon, we did their signages.
Sun Moon (fruit distributor) has become one of our regular clients which is great!
Russel Wong (Celebrity Photographer)
RedSports, Home of Singapore’s School Athletes (Local Sch Sports Blog owned by Leslie Tan. This site is COOL, lotsa regular updates).
Le Papillon (Restaurant owned by well known chef, Anderson Ho, located at Red Dot Museum. We did their distinctive wall mural plus their website.)

From blogging this, I just realised that all our clients are locally owned companies! What a priviledge! They are all Singaporean companies! International clientele would be nice but it’s awesome to be able to be connected to all these enterpreneurs. Some pretty high profile people too!

Thank God for all that He’s brought to us the past few months. We know it’s God coz we’ve yet to do any marketing. As of now, we’ve got no namecards, a makeshift website and no collaterals. Thank you God and thank you friends who’ve played a big part in helping us get off the ground. Praise God for He makes all things possible!

You know i normally buy groceries from HV Cold Storage right? I mean it’s just like two steps away and by pram (!!) it’s so much easier to navigate compared to NTUC which is at Block 15. A lot of people don’t even know that there’s a NTUC at Holland.

But recently, someone gave us some NTUC vouchers and we’ve been going there instead.

It’s really small so you won’t find all that you can find at Cold Storage and the aisles are very narrow (TERRIBLE FOR PRAMS!!), the veggies look like they’ve been there for days and they do not sell fresh meat BUT………. it’s SO MUCH CHEAPER. For example, our daily dose of Meiji milk is only $2.05 per bottle compared to $2.45 at Cold Storage and we got a bunch of bananas for only $1.

Everything is a bit cheaper at NTUC. To add it all up, it really makes a lot more sense going there. Wonder why i still keep going to Cold Storage!?! I think it’s really in the packaging and I’m a sucker for good packaging. I like pretty things. Ok… the truth is also at Cold Storage there are more pretty people and more to see. NTUC only got auntie n uncle.

At Holland V, you can find almost anything.

James wants to start painting for real. Ok he kinda started with murals but he wants to go further.

So we have been art teacher hunting. At Holland V, you can find almost anything.

We checked out an art studio called MICHI along Jalan Puteh Jerneh (which is coincidentally on the same street as L n I’s houses!!!). It is on the same side as Chip Bee Gardens where all the cool and more upperty restaurants and shops are.

Resident artist Ketna Patel runs this studio. You can spot it from a mile away coz leading into the studio are two GIGANTIC flip flops in her distinctive style of collage. I say GIGANTIC.

MICHI represents and supports separate artists with common interests. Artists here refers not just to visual artists but also musicians, movie makers etc. They hold regular classes, events, movie screenings by independent movie makers and other life performances.

But……. our main agenda was really to meet up with Maggie who holds painting classes at the studio. We spent a long time chatting with her. She really understood where James was at and where he wanted to go with his painting. It was nice speaking with her and we had a good feeling about it.

The only thing holding us back was the cost. She charges $490 for 6 sessions. Woo hoo! That’s really expensive. I’m like thinking of all the things i can buy with that kind of money OR even take a short holiday! But of course the classes are small and more focused. We told her we’ll consider and Maggie very kindly invited James back to check out one session.

It was a nice afternoon out exploring yet another corner of good ole Holland V.

At Holland V, you can find almost anything.