Oldham Hall Thanksgiving

left to right, back: Gayle, Hugh, Lynn & Eng Kheng.

left to right, front; Vickie, Tina, Katherine, Lydia, Sylvia, Janet & Yinn

Left to right: Hugh, Yinn, Janet, Vickie, Eng Kheng, Lynn, Tina, Lydia, Katheine & Sylvia

Hugh and I with Gayle have been so blessed as a family to be able to serve as Befrienders to some Singapore scholars residing in Oldham Hall. Together with Lynn and Eng Kheng we have 6 beautiful PRC girls whom we have made friends with and they have made us feel so young once again.

Janet Ji & Sylvia Huang are from Chengdu Sichuan; Katherine Yu, Lydia Ya Hui, Tina Tian & Vickie Chen are from Yantai Shandong. They are all in Anderson Secondary School and are so hard working that they literally have very little time to spare for social gatherings. They arrived in November 2007 to embark on an English Language bridging course before the semester start in the New Year. Struggling with the language initially, I think they all have mustered the language the best they can.

As we got to know them better, we found out that these girls are very talented. All skilled with different specialty from music to arts and to sports, they all excel in their area of love. Yet, each of them is so different in characters but the dynamic mix is perfect.

From the time we got to know them, these were the things we have been and thru;

Ice Cream treat
Botanic Gardens
Birthday Celebration for Tina in January
Chinatown CNY light-up
CNY lunch
Oldham Hall CNY celebrations
Birthday Celebration for Vicky in April. We did it in Oldham hall because she injured her leg.
Birthday Celebration for Sylvia’s in May. A Cook-up at our place, that’s when we found out that these girls are quite “siao jie” (jiao zhe/dumpling soup)
Birthday Celebration for Lynn in August. A barbeque delight!
Singapore fireworks Celebrations in August
Oldham Hall Thanksgiving in August

We are sure there will be more activities to come and look forward to meeting and sharing with them.

During the June holidays, the girls went back to China to spend time with their families and friends. We also went off for a short holiday in Bali. When school started, I was back in routine with Gayle and was struggling to get back with the schedule. I realized that it is not good to over relax during the school holiday and have to struggle when school reopens. It is really difficult to get back to routine after that. I was pushing so hard to get back to the structure so much so that we forgot to check with our girls upon their return to Singapore and school!

However I begin to discover how much I missed our friends by end July when the routine kicks in. So we tried arranging for an outing again with a BBQ on National Day (that’s the same surprise Birthday Celebration for our dearest sister Lynn). Wow, you would not believe how difficult it is to organize an outing with the girls. Thou the above list of activities may seem long, but each co-ordination of their availability actually takes a long time to plan. No, I am not complaining but the fact is that our little friends are really very serous with their school academic and we totally encourage them to be.

Our first breakthrough in sharing the gospel with them, besides the outreach in Dec, was during Lynn’s BD celebration. The opportunity presents itself and the girls were asking lots on how the bible was put together, and who wrote the bible, etc. We were very glad that God has provided the openings for us and we will continue to pray for more opportunities to share God's love with them and pray for God to work in their heart.

May Jesus be glorified always!

Body Language

Sometimes it is so frustrating when someone says something and does another. Sometimes I view it as a choice of action the person chooses and this action speaks louder then the million words said.

So remember when we do anything, let’s to do it with all our heart and soul. Half heartedness is as good as not doing anything or saying it at all.

“I can do all things thru Christ who strengthens me.” (Ph4:13). “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10: 31)

At the end, in my opinion, it’s really a choice we make.

I am inclined to believe that when we make a choice, we will live it to our fullest ability with actions that support that choice. May I be constantly be renewed by the Holy Spirit and not be conformed to this world. (Ro 12:2). May my action speak louder than the all words I can offer!

Our Body Language speaks louder than words!

Posted by Hugh 19 Feb 2008

Several months ago, Peter Loke actually told me to start a journal. At that pt in time, I didn't really see the benefit of it, nor did I think I would have the time. But over the past few weeks, God has been working in me that there is real meaning in writing a journal, and tracing the goodness of our God. So, here's my 1st attempt at it, although not so much in a conventional style of a journal, but I think it'll serve its purpose still. Someday, when I find the time to learn, I'll get a blog going and move with time! ha ha.

Anyway, there's so much to write about how God's been working over the past year, but I think I'll leave that to another time when I can really find lots of time to summarise all that's happened in 2007 and early 2008.

But for today, here's just a couple of things:
We won the tender for the ASEAN Economic Ministers' Meeting 2008! Now why is this such a milestone? After all, in terms of size, it's not really one of our BIG projects, it'll be a mid size project. And working on such projects really mean pain...... strrrrreeeessssss......etc etc. But the significance of it really is God's faithfulness.

This was a tender we worked through in Dec, submitted in early Jan. This was a time of real challenges as we were running into a real shortage of staff, and Yinn, Gayle and I had planned our trip to USA; so we won't around to work on the tender. We really only started working on it in early Jan, and had less than a week to put it all together. And somehow, I think we did come up with a sufficiently good submission, actually just the night before tender submission dateline.
The next challenge came when they called us in for a presentation, and I was away on a business trip. So, Dawn and Eunice went to do the presentation, and they are not the most eloquent people. And they were worried, maybe even scared. And all I could really do was to tell them that I would be praying for them, which of course I did lah.

I remembered messaging them to find out how it went, and the reply was "Not much hope". The vibes from the client was one of "disinterest". Our competitor went with their bosses, and apparently spent quite a long time in the presentation room, and they heard lots of laughter coming from the room. Again, all I could say was "Will pray", and again, of course pray lah.
Somehow there was this peace that this project was ours. When I got back to Singapore, the client had called us in for a meeting. I finally got to meet the client, and somehow I sensed that this project was really going to be ours.

Then came the real test. We will told results would be out in about a wks time. After a week, we were told to wait another 3-5 days. And Chinese New Year went without hearing anything from the client. 2 weeks after Chinese New Year, Dawn received a call from the client and informed her that the results will be posted on Gebiz in about 2-3 hrs time. Now this is really weird. After years of working on government tenders, we never ever get anyone who would actually call to tell you to check the results on Gebiz 2-3hrs later. Again, Dawn said, "Doesn't sound good man". Eunice and Jessica said "I think gone already". The worse part was after checking Gebiz for the results for about 2 weeks, the results were still not posted! And we tried to call the client, but could never reach them. This was a real test of faith. Could it really be that I was reading wrong all this while, that perhaps this really wasn't our project after all?

Today added a further challenge. As we are making decisions on who to employ after going through 3 rounds of interviews, it suddenly hit me that maybe we shouldn't be employing as many as we wanted. The global economy is so unstable now, what if things get worse? I'm sure that's going to affect our business. I actually dropped an email to Yinn on this, and she too had no answer. All we could agree on was to pray about it. And I asked God to give me a sign to let us know what we should do, and some how I had in the back of my mind this ASEAN Economic Ministers' Meeting, that if God wants us to recruit the original nos. of staff, he would grant us this project.

Guess what? We got a call from our client at abt 3pm to tell us WE GOT THE JOB!!! PTL!
So, now you understand why winning this tender is so important. Because it showed me that I was not listening wrongly to God, that God put us through a test, and God showed us that He is real in our lives and doesn't fail us. And now I also know we are to recruit to the maximum number of employees. Thank you God for being so direct this time.

Now, the question is: who do we hire. Haven't got a clear answer on that one yet. But I'm sure God will again prove faithful and show us.

On to another story. Yinn sent me an email that Gayle sent her. It put a BIG smile on my face, even tears in my eyes. See, Yinn had sent Gayle an earlier email using "u" in place of "you". And Gayle's reply was, "Dear Tan Poh Yinn Next time dont write a u for a y.o.u" ha ha. Way to go Gayle. You're so funny. I'm so thankful for my family. They have really been God's blessing to me.

I guess that's all for today. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up this journey of writing. It won't be a daily affair, I'm sure, but as the Lord leads..... Hopefully, will be able to chart how God's working in my life.

Our family’s journal begins here!

As we want to embark on to a record of God’s faithfulness, love and mercy, I have decided to start this blog for these recordings. Because Hugh has done it on a ad-hog basis on email, I thought it would be nice to post previous journal here too. So this will be the beginning of our family journey into a blogging community!