Home Thoughts From Abroad

On Monday morning, Pam will be heading by bus to Singapore to spend a few days in the Trans World Radio office. She is very excited about the prospect of meeting the team members  and seeing first hand the work that goes on there to support Women of Hope in Asia. Steve will be going down at the end of the week to enjoy some R&R in Singapore and we will travel back on the overnight train together.

We would ask that you pray for Pam as she makes this important connection with her ministry partners. This is such a valuable work in many needy countries in the Far East.

When you live in a climate like this, it is virtually impossible to get enough to drink.  However, you can find some amazing fresh fruit and vegatable drinks; and in unique containers.   When you open a coconut at home there is about a cup of milk inside but when they hacked the top of this one,  we shared about a litre of sweet juice.

When we ordered carrot juice they picked up a bunch of carrots, ran them through the juicer and emptied it into the inevitable “plastic bag” for take out.

What a great idea!  The Grandmas will love it.

This has been a long week for Steve!  The kids are wonderfully sweet and eager to learn – a real joy to teach – but the periherals are endless. He has put in a minimum of twelve hours everyday just trying to stay on top of the reporting procedures in the Byzantine world of bureaucracy that characterizes Asian schools. The end result of sitting for hours at a desk and neglecting walking and swimming, is an almost permanent back spasm. 

The Staff Room is one open space that houses upwards of fifty teachers, each assigned a cubicle which is in fact a study carol such as you would find in a library back home.  The place is filthy, with papers, books and student assignments piled everywhere.  Teachers are treated like a commodity, like copy paper or water supplies, and as a result the teaching staff is pretty transitory. There is no way of knowing if that pile is recent marking or fifteen years old. And we won’t even talk about the bathrooms!

The bright spot in the week was that Steve met for the first time with two other men who are working together to set up a Saturday night discussion group for college students.  They have been offered a space to meet off campus with snacks provided by our church.  With five colleges in one block of the city, there are students everywhere and they love a good debate. Steve is praying that this will be the start of a much needed outreach into his students’ spiritual lives.

On Saturday the school provided a van and driver for us and Moaz, a Canadian teacher who has been here for a couple of years, took us on a city tour.  We visited Putra Jaya, the new administrative center for the city which is still being developed.  The area is a man made island in the center of a man made lake that is connected by seven bridges, each designed to represent a continent.  The architecture is spectacular! 

After a vist to the Batu Caves, Little India and the Eye on Malaysia ferris wheel we headed downtown for supper and to watch the sunset over the Petronas Towers from the Sky Bar at the top of the Traders Hotel.