Home Thoughts From Abroad

We are both beginning to get very anxious about our fast approaching time apart and are trying to make the most of every minute we have left. On the spur of the moment – not something we normally do – we decided to get away for the weekend. I didn’t even bother coming into KL from my conference, but just met up with Steve at the airport after school. Thank goodness for Coffee Bean; the softest chairs and the nicest Chai Latte around.

Pulau Langkawi, is a beautiful and unspoiled island off the north west coast of Malaysia and definitely our favourite fast and cheap get away. Steve put the whole package together in about one hour on Thursday evening, and then booked a cab to pick him up after work on Friday so he could make the flight.

The Best Star Hotel had been recommended by friends and it turned out to be a great find with a breakfast area right on the beach. The rooms were clean and cool, and the bathroom was unusually dry and free of mold. The beach is really lovely and never crowded so that is where we spent Saturday. We walked down to a great restaurant on the cliff for pad thai and a beautiful sunset and then found a spot with live music and started a dance for old couples. I think I actually wore Steve out!

The north end of the island is a GeoPark, one of the highlights of which is a cable car to the top of the rock formations that are thrust 750 metres above sea level. At the top, a suspension bridge creates a canopy walk and a breath taking view of the Andaman Sea on three sides.

A rental car made the daytrip stress and hassle free. It cost thirty Canadian for unlimited gas and mileage and we drove ourselves to the airport to drop it off, saving us cabfare. As a bonus Steve got to watch the end of the Malaysian Grand Prix at the airport, which was the icing on the cake for him. It was a late night, past midnight, when we got in and basically crashed on the bed. But it was a fantastic weekend, and well worth the exhaustion!

Our son David left town yesterday, off to Bali to spend a week in a timeshare condo there with a friend from Canada. His time with us was short, but very much a blessing. It is so good to see family from home. Only those who live and work overseas away from family can really understand what a joy it is to spend even a couple of days in the company of your children when you haven’t seen them for ten months.

Not that Dave is much of a child these days. Watching him and Pam walk side by side down the sidewalk was a giggle. To think that this strapping young man was born at less than six pounds and was birthed by a woman he now dwarfs is hard to process without some degree of wonder. Truly life is full of surprise and delight.

Dave is such easy company. He was basically happy to do whatever we wanted. Want to see the Aquarium? Sure. Want to check out the mall? Why not. Want to play of game of cribbage? Yeah, that would be great. Whatever. It made entertaining him very relaxing and enjoyable. Just for the record, and so we get it recorded for posterity, Dave not only beat us both at crib, he skunked us by a pretty comfortable margin.

Shelley, a colleague, was kind enough to cover two of my classes so I could spend most of the day with my son. We did check out the aquarium and our timing was good enough to catch them feeding the turtles and sharks. We got to Times Square, the enormous ten-story mall in the heart of the city, and Low Yat, the six-story digital gadget mall. We ate lunch at an Irish pub in KL’s Soho district and watched the lights come up on the Petronas Towers from the SkyBar in the Trader’s Hotel. We had a good day.

Pam and I like our life in Malaysia. We are doing some good and making a difference in the lives of the people the Lord has called us here to serve. We would, frankly, go anywhere He asked us to. We were even willing to go to the far corner of Pakistan, at the edge of the Himalayas. But He sent us here instead, and we are happy that He did. But gosh it is so wonderful to see our children, even if only for a few days, and just to bask in the joy of their company and touch once again their lives that are so intertwined with ours. It makes living here possible.

Our son David arrived from Calgary this afternoon, a little tired from the long flight, but none the worse for wear. We of course are delighted have our middle son with us, albeit briefly. We took the detour through Putra Jaya, and the obligatory tour of the place where I work before we headed home to our little condo to clean up before dinner.

It was great to get caught up on his news, and just to soak in his company. After a brief clean up we went out for dinner to Italiannes with some of the staff from the school. We brought some fruit for breakfast and a dumb film at Rip-Off Videos for $3. Battle for L.A. was so bad we had to flip it off after three minutes.

That was fine, because we were all done for the night anyway. We have a full day ahead planned in downtown KL and are looking forward to showing Dave around.

If you look to the right on our homepage you will see a link to our son’s blog. He has been blogging for a lot longer than we have, and we owe our interest in blogging to his initiative. This latest post from our son’s blog is just too wonderful to not capture in our own record.

The other day, Ben and I were driving around on some errands, and he started into his ‘God’ line of questioning. The kids frequently ask questions about Jesus and God, and daddy’s grandpa — who died and is with Jesus. These are complex concepts to wrap around a 2 and 4-year old brain. “How are God and Jesus the same person? If God is bigger than our house, how does He live in our heart? Why did Jesus have to die? Why did daddy’s grandpa die too? Is Jesus taller than daddy? How old is Jesus? How fast can he run?”

And now my oldest son, my firstborn, isn’t just a part of our earthly family, he’s apart of our heavenly family too. There will be lots of hurdles and hard times. If he’s anything like his father, there’ll be rebellion and anger and stubborn independance too. But at the end of it all, he’s been bought with a price and saved by grace, and I couldn’t be more proud of my little man.

We are humbled by the Lord’s grace to our children and grandchildren, and rejoice with Jon and Nic at this news. May the Lord who has been so good to this family, find a home in your heart as well.

New Year celebrations are not what they used to be when we were younger. These days they tend to be more reflective than celebratory, a function not only of the physical limitations of age, but a recognition that there is still a whole pile of things left to do, and an increasingly limited amount of time to do them in.

This coming year is no exception. I won’t bore you with our To Do list for the year, but when we talked it through on New Year’s Eve, as is our custom, it looked pretty daunting. It also looked pretty fun, at least most of it did. There is a wedding coming up and the birth of a new grandkid; some ministry endeavors in Cambodia and some interesting travel opportunities. It all looks pretty good; we are just going to need to stay strong and healthy to get through it all.

Both of us continue to be amazed that the Lord finds so much for us to do at our age. Pam met with two members of her TWR team in Singapore, and came away with further increased responsibilities and opportunities as a result. My own responsibilities at school continue to grow as I have now become the veteran on staff after just three years and a leader in the recruitment of students for our program, a position that may involve some travel in the near future. We have long ago given up the idea that this part if our life would lead us to a gentle semi-retirement. Instead we seem to be busier than ever.

However, none of this would be possible without our kids, and that is the purpose of this post. We are here and able to stay here because are kids are doing such a fantastic job of looking after themselves back in Canada. Now you might say that because they have all reached or are approaching 30 that this goes without saying. Okay, perhaps. But how many 30-somethings do you know that are not still relying on their parents for some level of emotional or financial support. Not many in our experience. How many are conducting their lives in a way that does not provoke some level of parental anxiety or concern. Even fewer.

Our kids are not perfect. That ended when they became teenagers! But they are all doing extremely well, and we thank God for that. They are meeting their challenges, they are making responsible decisions and they are mastering the consequences for those decisions. Of course we miss them, particularly at this time of year. But we are able to get on with our lives because they are getting on with theirs. They enable our ministry just by the way they conduct themselves. This gives us great comfort and even motivation in what we are doing on this side of the world. Our kids are a blessing and an inspiration to us; we wish them a very happy and successful new year.

St. Andrew’s Church is Singapore’s oldest Anglican church, a lovely building located on Beach Road, so presumably at one time it fronted the water. The way that Singapore has added to its territory through landfill means that it no longer does, but it is still surrounded by park and has a serene and peaceful atmosphere. We decided to attend the Christmas Day service there.

I was baptised and confirmed in the Anglican church, as was my brother and sister. If you were British in the time we were born, that was standard practice. So I am well familiar with the liturgy and the book of Common Prayer that Anglicans follow. Pam and I have attended mass at Lincoln Cathedral, and know all about the incense and the processionals. There certainly is a place for such ritual and tradition within the large body of diversity that is the church of Christ on earth.

But we did not expect the emphasis on salvation and a personal connectedness to Christ that we found at St. Andrews. The message was one that any evangelical would have been comfortable with. And wonder of wonders the service was going to be followed by the baptism of adults by immersion! The Christian church in Asia is full of surprises.

We had two delightful Skype calls with our children and grandkids that morning, and encouraged by a suggestion by Greg, decided to have a look at ‘the world’s largest fountain’ which happened to be close by and which turned out to be completely underwhelming. A short hop on the MRT got us back to the condo where we are staying in time for a wee kip before dinner at Su Min’s.

Su Min and his wife Sing Yu (Chinese women rarely take their husband’s name) are doctors who have retired from their practice in Singapore. Su Min is part of the leadership team in Pam’s Cambodian ministry. They were gracious enough to invite us to their family Christmas meal. There was plenty of food and lively conversation, in my case it revolved mostly about the political situation in China and Singapore since that is my particular interest, and then a time of singing Christmas carols.

It was a blessing to have celebrated the birth of Christ with Asian believers yesterday, and we are grateful for God’s good hand in our lives. Technology has allowed to remain close with our family back home. We do miss them of course, but their greetings and especially the blessing of seeing their happiness is a great and meaningful joy. Have a great Christmas Day, wherever you are.

Orchard Road in Singapore is like Toronto’s Bloor Street or New York’s Fifth Avenue or London, England’s Oxford Street. It is a wall to wall shopping extravanganza, and at this time of year is all dressed up to the nines and absolutely packed with people. Pam and I went down there last night to see the lights, stoll along the avenue with the crowds and get a bite to eat.

We had spent a couple of hours at the new TWR office visiting with staff and participating in their open house and dedication service of the new space. They had a lovely potluck lunch with lasagna and scalloped potatoes, roast beef and gravy, a nice time of fellowship and a gift exchange. It was good to vist with them, share in their celebration and discuss a few plans for projects in the new year.

Orchard Road is delightful and pretty, but there is no place to have a nice meal. You’ve got to explore the little alleys and cul-de-sacs that lead away from the street to find a decent place to eat. After a couple of false starts, we found a lovely spot that offered some great Indian food – our favourite cuisine – and had a very pleasant evening under the stars with a warm breeze coming in off the Straits.

Just shy of midnight we packed it in and caught the MRT and bus back home to Blossom and McDaniel’s place and were up early this morning, Christmas Day, to get in a couple of Skype calls with our kids and grandkids. Now we are off to church at St. Andrews, Singapore’s oldest Anglican church, for their Christmas Day service. We wish all of you, family and friends, a very warm and mellow Christmas. May you all be encouraged in your heart by the love of those around you this day, and may Christ dwell in your thoughts to bless and light your way in the year ahead. Thank you for your continued friendship and your interest in our lives as we seek to serve the Lord in Asia.

Somewhere back in the colonial days a Scot by the name of William Cameron wandered off into the boonies of central Malaysia and discovered the highlands and valleys that still bear his name. Others followed, and finding the soil and climate suitable, introduced tea plantations using cuttings and expertise from Sri Lanka and India. A commercial enterprise and a desirable resort location ensued. We took the opportunity yesterday to make another trip.

We took along a couple of friends to split the cost of the car rental and to get them out of the city to a place they hadn’t seen yet. I have mentioned in these posts before how much I enjoy driving, so you know I was looking forward to getting out myself. My Dad learned to drive from Raymond Mays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Mays ), the leading British driver of his day, and remained an extraordinarily competent driver to the end. I don’t claim to be anywhere near as good as Dad was, but I’m no slouch either, and the Highlands are as good a workout as you can get locally.

Getting out of KL is always a bit of a trick, but through dogged determination to avoid the congestion, we have found the Guthrie Corridor, a little known and underused expressway that takes you 40 kilometres north of the city before joining the E1 that goes to Ipoh and Penang. The E1 itself is wide and pleasant with plenty of rest stops along the way, but Highway 59 that winds its way to Cameron Highlands is 60 kilometres of switchbacks along narrow tarmac with no shoulder and a sheer drop on the downhill side.

The worst problem though is the trucks that lumber up the road and the scaredy cats that dog their heels all the way up. The trucks are not that big a problem; leapfrogging six cars to then get by the truck is more so. The trick is to get an early start so there is not much traffic coming downhill. You also need to take advantage of the dogleg-left-then-right switchbacks that allow you to see the maximum distance up the road. There are no straight stretches, so this is the best place to pass. The worse possible place to remain is behind another vehicle, because then you are placing your safety in the hands of that driver’s competence, and that vehicle’s brakes! The whole exercise requires maximum focus, and I guess that is why I like it. I don’t enjoy video games; they are much too boring and repetitive. Give me a challenging drive any day.

Although my Dad was my instructor, I learned most of my competence driving cab for two years in Toronto. It was that experience that taught me that the safest and least frustrating thing to do was not to drive with the traffic, but to drive just slightly faster. This enabled you to weave in and out of the traffic much like paddling a canoe though the rapids. If your boat is going the same speed as the water around you, you cannot steer; you have to be going a little faster than water to direct the boat. The same is true for traffic. You don’t want to race through traffic; that is dangerous and stupid. But you do want to be able to steer safely through it. I could tell you all about mirror placement too, but then I would be getting tedious, wouldn’t I!

We had a very pleasant day, including tea, shopping and a fabulous lunch and then drove home in a torrential downpour with about ten feet of visibility. I had already chosen a safer route out of the Highlands knowing that I did not want to be on the downhill side of Highway 59 going home. Highway 181 is a new road to the north of the Highlands with paved shoulders, but even still it was a 1500 meter drop in the space of 40 kilometres, so there was a lot of driving to do. Once we got to the E1 things weren’t much easier. Within a short space of time we encountered an impasse: a bus had skidded in the downpour and done a 180 into one of the huge ditches that line the roads over here. The passengers were huddled in the pouring rain and although it didn’t look there were any injuries, there was a bit of tricky driving to get around the emergency vehicles and negotiate the Malaysian drivers who seem to be at a bit of a loss when the unexpected happens around them.

We found the link back to the Guthrie without any trouble and the exit off the Federal Highway to our own neighbourhood, despite the total lack of signage. I was fortunate to catch a vehicle coming out of the very rare parking spots around Taj Curry House where we intended to get a bite of supper, and pulled into the narrow spot with one swing, no mean feat with all the cars doubled parked, and edged within an inch of the curb. My passengers thanked me for a safe trip through tricky terrain and were effusive in their praise of my driving. Pam’s comment after thirteen hours of driving? “Not parked too square in that spot, are you!” Ah well, no man is a hero to his wife.

Marx wrote over 150 years ago that the capitalist system would collapse on its own in the near future, torn apart by cycles of boom and bust that would grow in intensity until the whole facade fell in. He might have been a guilty of some overstatement, or I might be guilty of misunderstanding the nuances of his central thesis. I am no economist, and certainly not a Marxist, but the latest global downturn shows no signs of abating in the near future. Recently Ireland, formerly thought to be an economic tiger, has had to come mewling to the EU for a bailout, and Portugal and Spain look set to follow suit. The American economy still struggles with plus 10% unemployment – enough to provoke a backlash at the ballot box in November – and other Western economies are not faring much better.

Yet the very rich don’t seem to be suffering much, as a recent Canadian study shows. In fact the top 1% of the rich take a whopping 30% of our country’s wealth, squeezing the middle class lower on the economic ladder. This is not the anomaly that it seems to be, but rather a return to the historic economic picture that has characterized mankind since Babylon. Those of us who have grown up in a post war world would be advised to study human economic history. The middle class, from which democracy and civil liberty arose, is a relatively new institution, and might already be passing away as suddenly as it appeared. As many of Christian liberties are tied up with civil liberty and democracy, Christians in particular ought to pay attention. To be obsessing about gay marriage and abortion policy while quite literally the farm is being sold right under our feet, is particularly near-sighted and naive. We are being played by clever politicians – the window dressing of the rich – while the store is being robbed.

I could go on, but there is plenty of information out there about this and you don’t want this sound like a screed anymore than I do. Besides, I am more interested in what the proper Christian attitude ought to be. The first thing is to realize how this will affect your children, and seek to ameliorate the damage. Know that they are being played just as you are. The distractions of sport and entertainment, the drive to buy trinkets and squander what precious little resources they have; your children are just as much under pressure to do this as you are, and they both more susceptible and less able to help themselves.

That is where our responsibility comes in. Those of you who are middle class contemporaries with us have lived through the most egalitarian economic times in all of recorded history. We have been financial comfortable in a way that this coming generation will never know. We owe it to them to help them get established. They basically have no chance otherwise. When we were starting out a house cost about a year’s gross family income. Now it is three to five times a family’s gross income. We paid the 5% necessary in downpayment to get a first mortgage without having to borrow a cent. Now the downpayment is 20%, and the house prices are astronomical. Your children will not even so much as get a foot in the door if you are not prepared to help.

Secondly there is the propaganda angle to deal with. The rich will tell you that they have made it on their own and that if our children were strong and independent they could too. But that is a huge lie. In order to get started in business the rich lean heavily on their parents who understand that they only way to be rich is to start rich. The fiercely independent young buck fighting through odds to make it in the world is just another marketing idea of the rich to keep the poor in their place. Only the poor and middle class get no help. That is why they remain poor. We have to help our children and especially help them to see through the propaganda. The Bible teaches that parents are to lay up for their children, not the children for their parents (2 Cor. 12:14). Be a Biblical parent: help your children get started in life.

Thirdly you have to teach your children the value of money. The rich buy assets with their money, the poor buy liabilities. You have to show through your example that buying assets is the way to go. Don’t indulge in trinkets yourself; be self disciplined and instruct your children to be the same. They may not listen at first and you may have to bail them out of their nonsense before they ‘get it.’ So bail them out. Presumably they have learned their lesson and are ready to choose a more rational route through life. You don’t have to leave them in poverty as punishment. Surely ‘not provoking our children to wrath’ (Eph 6:4) means helping them financially when they need it, and most importantly, not rubbing your help in their faces either.

Finally, be patient and loving. Know when to offer to help and when to be supportive. Keep strong in yourself and keep fighting to be healthy and industrious. Yes, it turns out that life is a lot longer and harder than we imagined when we were younger. ‘Do not be weary of well doing,’ since it is not only for your children that you labour, but for the Lord (Gal 6:9). Be informed about the world and the forces that are seeking your hurt and the hurt of those that you love, and be proactive in your response. Seek to educate yourself and others around you, for these are important issues and there is something for you to do. Commit yourself to be an agent of change to as many people as you can help, and may the Lord help you.

I am not what anyone would call a fashion plate. Fashion costs money, so basically I’m agin’ it. Education, travel, mortgage reduction, yep, they are legitimate expenses. Fashion not so much. But with a wedding on the horizon, only a fool would stand between his wife and her need for a gown for the occasion, and my mother didn’t raise no fools.

So here we are off on just about every other weekend looking for wedding gowns. And let me tell you, it has not been easy! First off, there is no such thing as a ‘mother-of-the-bride’ dress. I don’t know what they wear, but they don’t make any dresses for them. The sweet little girls in the wedding shops all look at you with their eyes wide as if they are going to cry because they have no idea what you are talking about, and they hate to disappoint a customer over here. So we have stopped asking. Instead we ask, ‘do you have any evening gowns?’ Well of course they do, dozens of them in all sorts of colours and fabrics, from Chinese and Indian traditional outfits, to classic Western gowns; a truly dizzying array of choice in style.

However there is no choice when it comes to size. Everything we have looked at is a size 2. Now there was a time when Pam was a size 2, but that was many years and several kids ago. Pam is not overweight by any stretch, but neither is she Asian. Everyone over here is a size 2; young, old and in-between, all the women are size 2. That is how the dress shops can get away with carrying just one size. If you are no longer a size 2, then you have a seamstress to make your clothes. It is all very simple, very cut-and-dried, and impossible to get around. So we have given up looking.

Instead we have gone looking on the internet. I don’t know why we didn’t just start there, it would have been a whole lot easier on my feet. Pam, with help from her sister-in-law Syl, found some excellent options.  So now the plan is to print off the pictures (yeah I guess you could say that is a kind of plagiarism, you got me there), buy the fabric locally and find a first-rate seamstress to make the dress to fit. Any of our local readers know of a good seamstress?  The beauty of that is that she can then chose the colour and adjust the designs as needed.

Local or not you are all invited to weigh in on your choice. No prizes for the winner, and Pam is not bound by your choice – she IS the mother-of-the-bride, after all – but it would be kind of fun to see what you think. Personally I would like to see Pam wear something Asian. It is where we now live, and there are some gorgeous saris out there, but I know I am going to lose that argument, and that is fine. What am I going to wear? I think my daughter would like me to wear something really shiny, I’m not sure why, so I am looking for that. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.