Home Thoughts From Abroad

The school break is finally here. In order to earn this break once exams and grad were over I had to endure another three days of enrollment promotion for Taylor’s. That is basically nine hours of non-stop talking for three days about the program to get parents to enroll their kids. There was no time for lunch. Education is a business in Asia, and there is stiff competition. Since our jobs depend upon enrollment, most of us take it pretty seriously. By the time we got on the bus Monday morning I was pretty close to exhaustion, I think I slept for about four of the five hours it took to get here.

Here is Singapore, the city state at the end of the peninsula. Singapore is everything Malaysia hopes it will be someday. At one point in their history they were part of the same country and shared the same government and the same currency. But in 1965 they went their separate ways. Both have enjoyed success, but Singapore’s dollar is now worth nearly three times what Malaysia’s ringgit is worth, and their standard of living is correspondingly higher. High enough that we could not afford to stay in a hotel here for any length of time. Fortunately, we don’t have to, since we have missionary friends in the city.

McDaniel and Blossom Phillips have been with Trans World Radio since 1984. At the time we were in the process of going to Bangladesh, they were leaving for Bonaire, and as TWR lay representatives we helped then Canadian director Carl Seyffert organize the fundraising dinner in London, Ontario on their behalf. They served for many years on Bonaire and in Cary then transferred to TWR’s Singapore office and it has been our joy to visit with them on our occasional trips south to this beautiful city. They rent a nice little apartment on the west side of town in a park-like setting that is peaceful and quiet. We like it here.

We especially like Blossom’s hospitality. She is a lovely hostess, and her place is always so nicely decorated at Christmas, with wreaths and angels everywhere. Her tree is just gorgeous! Pam and I work so darn hard that there just doesn’t seem to be much time to just relax and enjoy our surroundings. The only way we get any rest is to get away. This is a great place to get away to as Singapore is so lovely. The streets are wide and clean, parks and trees abound, buses are prompt and numerous. We can literally walk out of this apartment and within a minute or two be on a bus that will take us all the way downtown. And we won’t have to stand all the way! In KL they have instituted special pink buses and train cars for women so they don’t have to endure being groped while standing packed like sardines on the infrequent and crowded vehicles. Not sure how that is going to work.

We are not planning anything special; just do some reading and walking in the parks. Time to talk and refine our vision, time to reflect and be grateful for a life of purpose, even if that life is sometimes overwhelming in its demands. We hope that you also are taking some time for yourselves at the end of the year. We all need to step out of our busy lives once in a while. Happy reading.

Back home has been suffering in the snow. Lucan, where Pam grew up, had 154 centimeters (five feet) in three days. My sister and her family in England have had their fair share of challenges with record levels of snow fall as well.

Thames Valley where I used to teach has had three snow days in a row before Christmas. This in a board where for twenty years I went without a snow day (we don’t quit easy in our part of the country).

Of course our grandkids enjoyed playing in all this white stuff. It’s their parents and Canadian grandparents who had to shovel it and drive through it and get stuck in airports trying to get home in the middle of it.

We hope that everyone gets home safely for Christmas, and enjoys a good hug with their kids and maybe even a chance to build a snowman or two before this stuff all melts away. And don’t forget the hot chocolate when you get inside.

Lindie-Ann Taylor is the Caribbean’s first missionary to Asia. Pam met her as part of her outreach and training in Cambodia. She was in Kuala Lumpur recently on her way to Singapore for a conference with her mission board, Operation Mobilization (www.om.org), and we had the pleasure of her company for a couple of days.

Lindie-Ann has an amazing testimony. She is very bright young lady with a degree in Agriculture and a fine Christian family behind her. She also had a very bright and comfortable future in front of her, as her pastor and had already singled her for a unique role at home. He was not pleased when she announced she was going to the mission field instead. This is just not something that everyone does.

But Lindie-Ann is not everyone. She was living happily in Trinidad when she began having very vivid dreams of living in a tribal village. She did not know where it was at first, just that she was meant to live there, and that they needed her. After six months of this, all the while praying that God would make sense of what she was dreaming, she began to hear the name ‘Cambodia’ spoken as if someone were talking in the next room. Often she would go around the corner expecting to meet someone in conversation, but never did. But she did start doing some research into what she came to understand as her target mission country.

This led to a conversation with the leadership in her denomination. After some prayer they decided to invite her to speak at an upcoming conference. Having never spoken in a public setting before, Lindie-Ann was concerned; all the more when she found out the she was the only scheduled speaker! She left the conference with her entire support pledged, dazed and amazed at what God had done for her and through her in such a short period of time.

Her dream became reality as she entered a tribal village in Cambodia and began to live among the people, as the people there do; in a thatched hut mostly open to the elements, wading through ankle-deep sewage water in the street when it rained, eating what was available in the meager markets. Through all of this Lindie-Ann presevered, believing that God had called her there for His purpose. After a year of this she earned a visit from her mission board who undertook a necessary upgrade in her accommodations that included space for teaching the local children.

Lindie-Ann’s smile could power a small village all by itself as she talks about the children she teaches and the friends she has made. After just 14 months in Cambodia she is already fluent enough enough to preach in Khmer once a week. She admits it is pretty simple Khmer, but then these are pretty simple people. But it doesn’t take fluency to see Lindie-Ann’s passion for Christ, and it doesn’t take an advanced education to see her committment to the poor of Cambodia and her willingness to share in their struggles and their hardships. This is the sacrifice it takes to win the lost for Christ.

This week I became aware of a poem written by Martha Snell Nicholson.  Diagnosed with four incurable illnesses, for more than thirty-five years she was an invalid, confined to her bed.  However her spirit was so triumphant through those many painful years, that she wrote some amazing Christian poetry that continues to challenge and comfort hearts today.

                                              The Thorn

I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne

And begged Him for one priceless gift which I could call my own.

I took the gift from out of His hand but as I would depart

I cried “But Lord this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.

This is a strange a hurtful gift which Thou has given me”

He said “My child I give good gifts and gave My best to thee”

I took it home and though at first the cruel thorns hurt sore

As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more

I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace

He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

However America sees itself today, the global view is much different, and may I suggest a good deal more accurate. I’m sure the view in some quarters on that side of the world is three cheers for democracy, or something like it. On this side of the world it is more like, there goes the (economic) neighbourhood. At least over here we have the Chinese, whose economy shows no sign of cooling, to keep things afloat. You guys in North America aren’t going to be so lucky. Gridlock in Washington is a prelude to economic disaster.

America began its slide with Reagan and his deregulation of the economy from trucking and airlines to Wall Street and the banks. There has not been one good thing to come out of ‘Reaganomics’ unless you are Warren Buffet and have made a gazillion bucks from it. The rest of the country has just gotten poorer. I saw a report on what has happened to the airline industry in America, and I am glad I fly Asian carriers. But what Reagan did to destroy the airline industry is just the tip of the iceburg. The middle class – and by extension that means the Canadian middle class – have been deliberately squeezed into the upper lower class, and the lower class have been squeezed even lower. Every economic indicator of real income among the middle and lower classes shows this trend.

I say that this is deliberate in the sense that democracy springs from the middle class. Eliminate the middle class and the rich don’t have to worry about legislation depriving them of an even more obscene share of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile the squeeze goes on and the poor are going deeper into debt from which the only escape in suicide (read the rates from India, it is shocking). How do the rich get away with this wholesale slaughter of the innocents? By duping good hearted people into thinking this has something to do with preserving religious and civil liberties. Rally round the flag boys, and vote America. The rich laugh at such simple-mindedness.

Some of the rich have enough of a conscience to be embarrassed by this. Warren Buffet is ashamed that the cleaners in his office pay more in taxes than he does and would like to see the tax break for the very very rich eliminated. The very very rich have just bought America’s compliance with their very very slick propaganda and now it will be made permanent. The death of the middle class in America will shortly follow, joined in rapid succession by any pretence of democracy. Perhaps, eventually the Christian church in America will wake up to this fraud, at which point the full weight of the law – now unstoppable, since the middle class has been destroyed – will be brought to bear on their cherished religious freedoms. And Christians, who by and large have bought into the whole greedy fraud, will have been complicit in its demise.

Millions of North Americans are actively voting away their rights with every election, duped by pretty pundits who know which side of the bread their butter is on. I see a new Babylonian captivity for America on the horizon, but my faith is in the Lord, and He has a purpose in allowing America to drive itself eagerly into the hands of its capitalist captors. I will wait and see the hand of the Lord. He is working it out even now in China as that country embraces Christ, even as America abandons its founding principles. That that doesn’t mean I won’t grieve for the loss of a country that once stood for something, and now falls for anything. And Mr. Obama, as good a man as he is, won’t be able to stop America’s self-deluded destruction.

Today we happened upon an amazing display of 22 exquisite Japanese kimonos, each one a work of art. Worn by the Kabuki actors during the early days, these unique kimonos have been preserved by the costumer for the Kabuki stage from 1907 to 1952.
Kabuki, literally means Music (ka), Dance (bu) and Play (ki) and it has many fascinating aspects but what fascinates the audience most has been the actor’s flashy kimono and make-up. This traditional form of Japanese theatre dates back to the sixteenth century when a dancing girl known as “Okuni of Izumo” began performing in the river beds of Kyoto. Kabuki plays are about historical events, moral conflicts and of course, love relationships.

It is really lovely to live in a country were you come across displays such as this in a department store in a mall.

Every road that’s begun has an ending.
Every season has its share of pain.
We only get love through our giving.
In each loss there is something to gain.

We only die once in a lifetime,
But each life has a hundred small deaths,
When we die to the beauty within us,
And lie with each compromised breath.

The rich die in peace in their mansions,
The poor die in filth in their holes,
But both go to meet their Creator
With only the wealth of their souls.

I swear by the One who has made me
I will not go to death in my sins,
But recognize who came to save me
And offer my life back to Him.

I’ll shoulder my cross and my burden
And walk down the straight narrow road.
I’ll give unto God all the glory,
And treasure the life He’s bestowed.

Steve Wise, Oct 2010

Sitting in Sihanoukville it is easy to imagine this place crowded with tourists. It is a beautiful beach; three beautiful beaches in fact, the nicest easily being Sokha Beach. Riding the bus back to Phnom Penh it is easy to see why the place is almost completely deserted, except for the hardy and the foolhardy (not quite sure which of those two categories we fall into).

The bus ride is brutal: five hours made worse by interminable traffic down sometimes impassable stretches of road. You have to earn a nice vacation in this part of the world. The places that are easy to get to are overrun by the truly obnoxious. On the long ride back we amused ourselves by thinking about the worse vacations we have had here. They are few and far between. Even Phuket, whose Patong Beach has to be one of the most vile spots in Asia, was made bearable by awesome Thai food and a fun dance spot. We even got to visit with our Bangladeshi mission buddies on that trip, so that can’t be all bad.

The Sunset Terrace restaurant at Sihanoukville is going down in the memory banks as one of the nicest, though. Great food (very inexpensively priced) fabulous service (Did you twitch, dear? The waiter wants to know if you need something), and a balcony seat to the gentle lapping of the South China Sea at our feet while the little fishing boats made their way back to port through the sunset.

We did our duty back in Phnom Penh, though, hiking out to Central Market to pick a sample of “favours” for the guests at our daughter’s wedding. I will reveal no secrets except to say that we have some nice choices for her to choose from. Then it was back to a newly renovated and very clean looking Sisowath Quay and the Foreign Correspondent’s Club for a light bite to eat before heading back to the Billabong for the night. I was up at 5.30 to catch the morning flight to KL. Pam will remain in PP for another couple of days to do ministry business.

We had breakfast in the dining room this morning. There was the endless buffet, there was the staff (of 17!) waiting for our every whim to be expressed, and there we were, entirely on our own. There was no way we could eat all of that food by ourselves! We felt so bad!

After breakfast we went for a walk. It was about an hour down Independence Beach. We weren’t in a hurry and it was hot. At the end of the beach there was a trail leading across the peninsula. We forged ahead with some trepidation and found ourselves in a fishing village clinging to the side of the sea. We were hot and tired and stopped to have a coke. There, in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny Cambodian fishing village we chatted to the owner in English about the weather, and the daily catch. Ours is a powerful language.

The strip ahead was Sokha Beach, like Independence Beach, totally deserted and absolutely gorgeous. We hiked the mile or so to the Sokha Beach Resort, a multi-million dollar affair in the process of building a huge addition to their already extensive property. It looks like the new building will be a casino; further evidence that with the completion of the airport, this place is expecting a boom. We stopped for some ice tea at the bar by the pool. Like our hotel, the staff at Sokha were delighted to see us, and sad to see us go. We had to promise to come back.

We hiked down the rest of the beach and over the top of the next peninsular. The path looked like it came to a dead end, but we found a path down through the Cloud Nine Resort to the beach at Ocheateal. Now this was different! Ocheateal Beach was crowded with little bars, restaurants and hiker hostels. This was clearly where all the people come in Sihanoukville. We strolled along the crowded beach, then grabbed a tuk to the centre of town to buy a few groceries.

On the way into town Pam spotted the local office of RHAC, one of the NGOs she is working with, and part of the reason why we are in this remote corner of the country. While I chilled at a local spot called the Holy Cow, Pam met with Dr. Rath and introduced herself and the work she was doing with RHAC in Phnom Penh. It was a productive meeting and the kind of connection that the Lord seems to have provided for her at every stage of this strange adventure we are on.

We bought our return bus ticket to Phnom Penh, grabbed some snacks at the Orange Grocery, and caught a tuk back to our hotel. The water had been calling to us all day, so we finally headed down to our own little beach to cool off and catch a few rays at the end of the day. It was a long day and we were grateful to head back to our little room early.