Home Thoughts From Abroad

My first full day back in Canada Pam and I were up early and off to Cambridge to attend church at Forward Baptist. I know that sounds very devout of us, but actually we had a very selfish motive: our grandchildren were going to be in the nursery because that is where Jon and Nic go to church. I had completely forgotten/was never aware that this was going to be Father’s Day. Whe I went into Ben’s nursery classroom he recognized me instantly, dropped his toy and came running over and gave me the sweetest hug. Then he took my face in his hands and stared me right in the eyes and said “I love you Grandpa.” I just dissolved! That was the nicest Father’s Day gift I could imagine.

Abi was a little more unsure. She had to see Pam first and then looked at me again and allowed herself a shy little smile. Our friend Kay was in Ben’s nursery and was kind enough to give me a welcome home hug as well. I insisted that we sit in the balcony so I could be close to the nursery, and then excused myself during prayer so I could go and just watch the kids interact with others in the nursery without disrupting them again. It was such a sweet joy to see them again after so long.

After church Brian and Bernadine took us back to their place for a barbeque. It is their daughter Tatum who has been travelling with Jon and Nic in Asia. They are a lovely Christian family and not only fed us a terrific meal, but treated us like old and dear friends. We were reluctant to leave, but while we were there Joe called from the hospital and Pam felt impelled to get back to London as soon as we could.

When we arrived at UH we met Ray on the way out, pretty close to tears. He like many in the family is finding it hard to come to grips with Dad’s situation. There is a lot of denial and a lot of anger, but slowly it is being replaced with acceptance. It is not an easy process, but God is faithful in these things. Upstairs Randy and Sylvia and their three kids were struggling with the same things. It was good to see Pam take charge of the situation, ministering to her Dad’s physical needs and treating him with such loving compassion. It seemed to cheer everyone’s mood, and by the time Lorri and her two boys arrived we were sharing stories that featured our interactions with Dad and the family, and things were noticeably brighter in mood by the time Lawrence arrived.

Dad is in a coma, resting as comfortably as the staff can manage. He is in a ward, but in a somewhat private corner of one so we were able to visit around his bedside. We would go to the cafeteria for coffee and back  up to the room again on a rotating basis and easily put in six hours this way. I insisted that Pam come home and allow others to take the night shift. She objected and was angry with me, but I am willing to engage her displeasure if it ensures her rest. She has been at this for over a month and needs to guard her own health to some extent. I see that as part of my role in this. I have always sought not only to be a good father, but to be a good husband as well.

I think I always knew that Pam’s Dad was not going to make it. Something in my heart told me that this was going to be his final chapter.  After two surgeries and several weeks in hospital he is on comfort measures onlyand not expected to last much beyond the weekend. After extensive measures to attempt to bring  his blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature under control, it was evident that he was not likely to respond.  He has slipped onto a deep coma and is very much at peace for the first time in a long while.

I have changed my flights courtesy of a very understanding agent at Air Canada, and will be landing in Toronto in about 24 hours from now. Pam would of course appreciate your prayers at this time for the family as they get ready for the inevitable. I am so grateful for our faith that enables us to face what will be ahead for us over the next week. Dad is going to a much better place.

Once again Jon, Nic and Tatum have touched down in Subang Jaya, and once again they are off again, this time in different directions; Tatum to Vietnam to visit a missionary family there, and Jon and Nic up the coast for a little beach time. I’ll get my own holiday soon, so I am not complaining. Then again I do get to live in Malaysia, so I should never complain (but if I didn’t, who would recognize me??).

If you are thinking as I am “Um, didn’t they just get back there from Phnom Penh,” you would be right. In fact it was at 7.30 last night that I picked them up from the airport. By the time Jon and Nic had skyped their kids, and Tatum had skyped her parents, and I had skyped my Mom – who was definitely getting lost in the shuffle here – and Nic had got a load of wash in and then hung up to dry, it was getting close to midnight. I had opportunity to reflect on this as the alarm went off at 3 am so I could begin my day by getting Tatum off to the airport to catch her flight to Hanoi.

To their credit, Jon and Nic were up as well seeing that Tatum got safely away. By now I should have the route to the airport entered into autopilot. We got Tatum’s bags checked in and headed to the Coffee Bean for our lattes. Then once Tatum had gone through the gate the three of us headed back into KL, this time going through Petra Jaya. It was nice and a little bit magical watching the sun come up over new administrative centre of Malaysia with its distinctive building and bridges. We snapped some pictures and were on our way snaking through the new expressway that heads north.

Unfortunately, despite having plotted and even driven this route just days ago, I missed the turn to Subang Jaya, and we ended up practically circumnavigating the city to get back on track. That is the price you pay for the smallest navigational error in this city of serpentine asphalt. We did get to Sunway Pyramid, and by then we had worked up a bit of an appetite, so the breakfast brunch at the Sunway Resort hotel fit the bill quite nicely. I have promised myself I will go on a fruit and fluid diet for the next  three days in penance!

Having dropped Jon and Nic at the condo for a wee kip, I headed up to the school to catch the last staff meeting of the year. Despite having my principal’s permission to be absent (thank you Jim, you are a most considerate man!) I just couldn’t leave this one critical task undone. It is at this meeting that final adjustments to marks are made. Although the adjustments are minimal and never exceed the bounds of professional judgment, the one or two marks afforded here can mean the difference of thousands of dollars to these students, or even the loss of their scholarship. We all take this task very seriously.

Mercifully the meeting was brief and I got back in time to get in a swim with Jon and Nic at the lovely pool in our condo, and after a quick change we headed back to the school to show off the facility and meet the few folks that were still around. Then it was on to Asia Cafe for claypot of rice and curried chicken for them and some Vietnamese noodles for me (Honest; nothing but fruit for three days!).  That gave us just enough time to get back to the condo, repack, and get Jon and Nic back to the airport for their flight up the coast to Langkawi. This time there were no wrong turns, and I got the rental car back under the 24 hour deadline. Please don’t call me dear, I’m going to sleep until noon. I remember now what it was like raising this kid. No wonder I was always exhausted!

Jon, Nic and Tatum got in at 1.30. That would be am, folks. Add an hour’s drive home from the airport put us in bed around 3 am. I was more than a trifle surprised to seem them up at 9, but not unhappy, as is has been a long three years out here without family company. Although we have had the occasional friend visit us in KL, it has been quite a dry spell since that happened as well.

I had bought a good variety of fruit (although I unaccountably ‘lost’ a plate of it for a while, unitil I discovered it had turned turtle and disappeared into the door tray), and with some scrambled eggs and green tea had a decent breakfast. Then it was off to the Batu Caves, as the the Hindu shrine on the north edge of town is called. The drive out was uneventful, although we had to restrain Nicole from stopping off at the Ikea store. The three of them went up the 292 steps while I conserved my strength and plotted out a route back into the city.We do not own a car and rent one only on special occasions. Driving is problematic at best in this convoluted metropolis, and my scant knowledge of city roads and traffic patterns has got us into trouble on more than one occasion. Fortunately, Nic was up to the navigational challenge, and we made it to the Twin Towers parking lot unerringly.

Once there the girls went off to explore while Jon and I sat in the Dome coffee shop that overlooks the park, one of my favourite spots in KL. It was nice to get a little bit caught up on Jon’s life. He has been on quite an adventure over the last few years, to say the least. Then we hoofed it over to the Pavilion and took in the upscale stores and the tacky mall display that you see pictured here.

Having done the local downscale mall BB Plaza, and the high tech mall, Low Yat, we ended up at Berjaya Times Square, with its 1,000 stores and 3.5 million square feet of retail space. Jon and Tatum took a ride on the corkscrew roller coaster inside the mall, while Nic and I opted to take pictures. A cab took us up to Thean Hou (Heavenly Mother) Temple overlooking the city, one of the largest Taoist temples in Southeast Asia. The cabbie waited while we snapped some pictures, and then drove us down into Brickfields, the Indian quarter where we got dosai, butter naan and tandoori chicken for ten bucks for the four of us. I am going to miss Asian cooking when we have to leave Malaysia!

A quick ride on the LRT got us back to the park at KLCC where we had a strawberry smoothie and a couple of Shirley Temples at the Trader’s Skybar overlooking the Twin Towers as the lights came on. Those of you who have been to this spot know how magical that is. We found Jalan Tun Razak without any trouble, and caught the Smart Tunnel out of the core (an underground route that serves as an expressway and doubles as a storm drainage system in the monsoon season). We were home in time for Jon and Nic to do some planning for Cambodia and get themselves packed, including a suitcase full of vitamin supplements for a health clinic in Phnom Penh.

We were all up at 3 the next morning to drive to the airport to catch the 7 am plane to Siem Reap. They got themselves checked through in time for one last chai tea latte, this time at the Coffee Bean at the airport. I don’t know how the three of them are managing, but it is only 6 pm as I blog this, and I am ready for bed already; and they’ve got jetlag and strange new food and water to contend with. But for all the driving and walking we did, it was a wonderful day, one that I will treasure for a long time to come. Thank you Lord for a family visit to cheer my lonesome heart.

Not sure how the whole idea of engagement rings got started. But they are an obvious and unavoidable announcement of intentions, very much ‘in your face’ and out there. It comes at the price of much good-natured ribbing all around, and we are sure that Greg and Liz have been the happy recipients of much of that recently.

So now that they have released the news to their friends, it is safe for us to comment. We’d just like to say great choice Greg, both in the ring and in your future wife. We are so happy for both of you and Pam can hardly wait to see you in just a few weeks and to start doing some wedding planning.

We were delighted to meet Greg and his family on our last trip home and found them all to be very lovely and hospitable people who all seemed to have developed a real affection for our daughter. That Greg and Liz have made this commitment to each other makes us very happy indeed. What delightfully good news!

As has been said several times on our website, we are so grateful to God for the the gift he has given to our family in blessing my brother Randy with his lovely wife, Sylvia. Amongst other things, she is a gifted musician and writer and this weekend she so beautifully put in the words the thoughts that most of us can barely think.

I wrote the following as a result of the journey we’re on with my father-in-law:
Can I put my trust in God’s sovereign hand,
When it looks so dark and I don’t understand?
Why my loved one in hospital must suffer this way,
As he’s tied to a bed and the most he can say
is to plead for his family to please set him free
While his mind is not coming back to reality.

Is God really a part of this very dark puzzle?
Do His filtering hands allow such deep struggles?
What will my hope be for this new day of pain
as the news of the day is that nothing has changed?
The emotions are raw and the grief is so deep,
the tears slip out easily from fountains that weep.

Just what does life mean if I go out today
and sit by the pool while he’s wasting away?
Or off to the store so that life can go on,
Are there two worlds or one? Am I here, is he gone?
The journey of having no power to help
is eating away at my own sense of self.

And so I go numb and I go through the motions
of continuing life while my world is an ocean
of storms and of winds just too strong to endure,
of panic and fear that there will be no cure.
So back to the question of God and His ways,
Is He mindful of us? Does He hear when we pray?

Today will not answer the questions I face,
So I turn and look back on God’s love and His grace.
And I hold to the hope that through dozens of years,
He’s always been there to wipe tears and calm fears.
So today as I choose to re-anchor my soul,
I rest in the God that I love and I know.

By Sylvia Carter (used with permission)

Richard Foster in his widely regarded book Celebration of Discipline marks out the territory that Christians need to inhabit in their daily walk with God. One of his most insightful chapters is on the fundamentally important role of prayer in shaping the future of our lives. He writes:

“In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray? We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that. The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference. The apostle Paul announced that we are ‘co-labourers with God;” that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events (1 Cor. 3:9). It is Stoicism that demands a closed universe, not the Bible.

“Many people who teach acquiescence and resignation to the way things are as the fixed ‘will of God’ are closer to Epictetus [an early Roman Stoic philosopher] than Christ. Abraham prayed boldly because he believed his prayers could change things; even once God had made up his mind (Gen. 18:16-33). Moses implored God to ‘repent’ of his planned destruction of the people, and the Bible records that the Lord “changed His mind” (Ex. 32:14).

“This may come as a shock and a genuine liberation to many of us in our prayer lives, but it also sets a tremendous responsibility before us. As Christians we are working with God to determine the outcome of future events. Certain things will happen if we pray aright. Other things will happen if we do not pray. What more motivation do we need?” (Foster 35).

Pam’s Dad is in the final phase of his preparation for surgery on Thursday. Doctors will remove part of his skull and seek to sever a cranial nerve. There are a dozen things that can go badly wrong in such a critical operation. However, if it is successful, he will be free of pain – and the debilitating pain-killers that he is on – for the first time in years. I would ask you to join me in prayer for Pam’s Dad and for those attending him this week for a positive outcome that would leave him healthy, whole, and free of pain.

Happy Birthday, Steve.
In eternity we will celebrate all our birthdays together but in the meantime I rejoice in the life that we live together even when it means being apart. It is such an incredible privilege to be able to serve together at this point in our lives.

I know that you are committed to your students and always give them your very best and I know what an impact the you have on these fine young people. 

Looking forward to seeing you soon in Vancouver.  I love you.

On the weekend before Pam left for Canada we stole a couple of days away, rented a car and drove across the Malaysian peninsular to Cherating, a coastal resort on the south China Sea. It is the kind of resort that we have come to call deshi; that is to say, local and a little bit down at the heels (from Bangladeshi).

We don’t mind deshi resorts, and aren’t expecting Western comforts when we stay at such places. At at good one – and this one was reasonably good – you get a clean room with Malaysian only TV, all the noodles and rice you can eat for breakfast, and a decent beach with no chairs.

That doesn’t bother me as I just drag chairs from the poolside down to the beach. The locals freak, but there is nothing that they can do because a) Malaysians just accept whatever you do as the status quo the moment it happens, and even more importantly, b) I’m white. (You can complain all you like about the white man’s burden and the white man’s tax on the cost of goods and services, but I can walk into any hotel lobby just to use the washroom, and no one will ever confront me. At my age, that is a real bonus!)

The beach at Cherating was just flat out gorgeous. It was not Langkawi convenient; that is to say we were not offered all the amenities the moment we parked ourselves in the sand, but the water was clear and the beach was clean and the air was as fresh as a spring morning. We read and swam and chatted the day away, and in the morning did the same again. This is our kind of holiday!

I don’t know if we are mellowing as we age, but we got good and lost several times on the way home and never once argued about the route or how we had both messed up; we just kind of rolled with it, accepting that a lack of signage in this country was a small price to pay for a few more hours together on the metaphorical road we are travelling together. To our credit we didn’t make a single mistake coming into KL, a veritable Gordian’s knot of ramps.

Pam is back in Canada now, reading this web log, and hoping I get it right, so let me say that I am glad we just took a chance on this trip and got some time together. It turned out to be a nice little break, and a decent memory to add to the huge store we have accumulated during our time here. Sorry we didn’t get to see the bioluminescence, but that just means we will have to go again.