Home Thoughts From Abroad

The older we get and the more often we make the trip across the Pacific, the more difficult the transition from East to West seems to get. Since this visit we needed to go directly into two weeks of classes for our Master’s, it seemed prudent to build in a bit of a buffer to try to acclimatize to the time difference and change in weather. That is what age and wisdom is supposed to teach us. You might have cause to wonder why it took us all this time to build in such a buffer, but we never claimed to fast learners, did we! This year the long flights were in and out of Los Angeles, and never having seen the place, we decided to cocoon for a few days there.

Pam scoured the internet and found a lovely little guesthouse in Venice Beach. We had some initial moments of panic when arriving well after dark we needed to make our way down a “walk street” that even the local cabby had trouble finding. Our fears were instantly allayed when our very gracious hosts showed us to the renovated garage of their lovely home that had been converted to a cozy and fully equipped studio apartment. A welcome bottle of wine and cheese platter and a comfy couch in front of the gas fireplace was all it took to make us feel completely at home.

We slept remarkably well for our first night (nearly 5 am!) and headed out in the morning to make the fifteen minute walk down to the beach. The weather was beautiful and we spent the entire morning watching the waves, the surfers and the seabirds. With two days to explore, we were able to wander through the Venice Canals, explore much of the town and try out some lovely little restaurants. We confess to needing a wee nap in the afternoon to get us through the day, but again slept really well at night in our cosy and private little space.

Saturday we walked several miles down the beach to see the sights of Santa Monica and watch the sunset over dinner on the Santa Monica Pier at the end of Route 66. Why Steve feels compelled to sing lines from every tune that relates to wherever we are visiting escapes me, but that is just one of his quirks, and I suppose there are worse things he could do to get his “kicks.” He insisted on his picture beside the sign as well. Whatever makes the old guy happy! This little hiatus turned out to be a great plan and we felt completely ready to take on the next stage of the journey with a flight to Colorado Springs via Denver.

Pam and I have been Asia for nearly eight years. Believe it or not, that is the longest we have lived at any one place in our marriage. We didn’t start out with this in mind, but it seems that the Lord had His own plans for our lives. It is true that we spent 20 years in St. Thomas. It is also true that we lived in four different houses while we were there and spent two years overseas. For us, eight years is the max, and frankly we are getting a little restless. I probably would have been happy to leave two years ago, but this new position in community service opened up, and I saw huge potential for personal growth. We had also just embarked on a Master’s and Malaysia has pretty good internet. We opted to stay for a couple more years. But always, running in the background, there is the question, and perhaps the tyranny, of “Or”

There have been a lot of “Or”s in our marriage. Do we settle in London or St. Thomas, which is safer for children and has cheaper housing? Do we send our children to a public or a Christian school, where they can develop Christian friends and have the benefit of smaller classes and phonics-based reading? On my deferred salary leave year do I pursue my Master’s, or do we go to Bangladesh and serve the Lord where the needs are great and the workers are few? Do we keep this older house that we can afford, or do we buy something that will escalate our debt and give our children some privacy to develop as they go through their teenage years?

Coming a little closer to the present, do we maintain our high-paying jobs at the peak of our careers or do we give them up in order to do what we have purposed in our hearts to do for God? With mixed success, and apologies to our children for our many failings, we have always chosen what seemed best for others, rather than ourselves; made decisions that fed the spirit, rather than the flesh, regardless of the cost to us personally. Now it is time for another “Or” decision.

Do we remain in Malaysia, which has become like a second home to us, comfortable in positions that are in no danger of running out of ministry opportunities, or…..? And it is the uncertainty of that “Or” that marks this decision as unique. There is no viable alternative at present, just a lot of unknowns. This we do know: our kids are getting older, and more importantly, our grandkids are getting older. Once a year at home just isn’t enough to maintain those relationships to the depth and consistency that is in keeping with our commitment to family.

But the cost and the time it takes to get home from Malaysia is just prohibitive. So, despite how comfortable we now are here, despite the honour and recognition that we now receive in our present positions of leadership, despite the uncertainty of the next step, we are asking the Lord to find us a place of ministry a little closer to home. Our target destination is the Caribbean, but we would take Central or South America, or even Western Europe depending on the safety of the locale and the opportunities for ministry.

Consequently, I started putting together my résumé and references and registering with agencies back in September. As of this writing, I have sent off fifty applications to various schools in the region. To date there has been no response, but it is early yet and hiring typically doesn’t start until the New Year. I recognize that I am old, although I don’t often feel it, and know that there are several fields now closed to me on account of my age. I know too that if we are able to leverage this move to the West, it will likely be our last kick at the can.

For this reason so we want to ensure that we find a good posting that will allow us both to work productively and leave us room to grow into those positions. Given our work experience and our growing educational lineage, I am optimistic that the Lord has something left for us to do. Nevertheless, if you are so inclined, we would greatly appreciate your prayers for us on this adventure. It would be wonderful to be within five hours of ‘home’ if we were needed. Or if we just needed to get a hug from a grandchild or two. This is our Christmas and New Year’s wish. If you would share yours, we would consider it a privilege to pray for you as well. Blessings on those decisions, and thank you for following us, as we seek to follow God.

I am not a huge video game fan, but there are some games I definitely enjoy. Probably some version of golf is my favourite. There is a lot of strategy involved, as opposed to hand-eye coordination, so the playing field is pretty level for an old guy like me. The absence of gratuitous violence, pneumatic sex slaves and buckets of blood, gore and mayhem helps maintain my attention span as well and the graphics get better every iteration. When I was younger I enjoyed problem-solving games like the Legend of Zelda and Myst, though anymore I just don’t have the time to invest in such a lengthy puzzle. I did used to enjoy Frogger, back in the day, and I think I still hold the family record in Asteroids, whatever that is worth.

Red Alert is an older game that eschews blood for strategy, and there is plenty of that to keep one occupied. Or two, for that matter, since like Risk, it is much better to form alliances and take on a common enemy that fight alone against all comers. Last year as our grandson turned seven, his Dad and our other son in Calgary played an online version with limited success. Limited by my ignorance, largely. I had trouble just getting things built, let alone deployed. It was pretty much a rout as Dave had to bail my sorry ass out on too many occasions to be able to fend off his brother as well.

This year Ben is about to turn eight, and his strategy skills have improved. However, this year I acquitted myself a little more honourably as well and between Dave and I were able to win best two out of three against the Yanks in Seattle. First taste of victory for the old man, and although I had the least number of “kills” I’d like to think that my defenses were strong enough to have least slowed down the attack enough for David to rally and win.

My life doesn’t allow for much leisure, so this was an added treat to my holiday down time. Dave and I had a back channel open through Skype to talk strategy, which was only fair, given that our grandson and his Dad can play sitting beside each other and it was very nice to visit with him as the game progressed. In fact, the whole thing was very enjoyable and I am looking forward to this becoming a Christmas tradition. Now if we could just get an online golf game going I might have an outside chance of winning!

Malaysia does not have the worst drivers in the world. In my experience drivers are worse in both Italy and Vietnam, and I have yet to drive in South America. Bangladesh has the worst drivers I have ever seen from the passenger side of the vehicle, although I never got to experience driving there. On the other side of the coin, Germany has far and away the best drivers I have seen anywhere, and during the entire year we were there we only saw one accident. That despite the fact that there is no speed limit on the autobahns. There is a speed limit on the highways here, but it is routinely ignored. So are most safety protocols that you can think of. They tailgate, switch lanes with no warning, park on curves and simply abandon their vehicles if there is no parking spot readily available. I’ve seen children sitting and even standing in Daddy’s lap as the car is hurtling down the road. It is shocking and alarming and you’ve got to think that if you stay here long enough – eight years is plenty long enough – you are going to get hit.

Fortunately, I was schooled by one of the best drivers anywhere: my father, who had been taught when he was still a teenager by Raymond Mays, the reigning world driving champion before the war. My father was incredibly detailed in his training. The rear view mirrors had to be just so. If you could see your own car they weren’t right. You had to be able to see the car in the mirror until you could see it with your peripherals. He trained me to look under the wheels of parked cars for legs in case some child would dash out. You had one shot a parallel parking and you had to be less than six inches from the curb. I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio, or I wouldn’t be able to hear the revs of the engine to know when to change gears. Oh yes, it had to be a manual transmission. By the time I took the driving test, I knew more than than the instructor. Naturally he failed me.

In adolescent anger at this totally arbitrary failure, I foolishly took my brother’s car and unfortunately lost control on a gravel road, totally smashing it in a farmer’s field north of the Toronto airport. I was very lucky to have survived the crash. But the accident embedded in my stubborn head (along with the shards of glass from the windshield) what my father had tried his best to impart: the cost of inattention. I have never forgotten that lesson, and drive with a fierce attention to detail. I rarely listen to music, never eat, barely talk. When I drive, I can tell you what is happening ten cars behind and twenty cars ahead: who’s going slow, who’s cutting in and out, who’s signaling, who’s heading for the same gap in the traffic as I am. All the time. That attitude and attention to the task has kept me from having another accident for nearly 50 years in driving on four continents. Nearly, but not quite.

There is a roundabout between the university, where I work in the morning and early afternoon, and the college, where I work in the late afternoon. Normally I avoid it as it is one of the most congested in town, and with the lack of lane discipline in Malaysia, one of the most dangerous. Nobody signals, nobody stay in lane going around corners, nobody has much patience with other drivers when they want to exit. Usually I take the long way around down the Federal Highway and in by the back streets behind the college.

This day I was running terribly late. The website was chewing up every spare minute and I just could not get out of a meeting to get over to the college on time. The work I had loaded myself with in three courses for my Master’s was keeping me up far too late at night and I was sliding ever deeper into sleep deficit. On top of that, I had become terribly sick and really shouldn’t have been at work at all. The illness made me fuzzy headed and inattentive. I made a bad decision to go through the roundabout to save time. I was driving in a fog of pain and stress and quite frankly, I didn’t even see the guy coming. I was in the left, outermost lane in the roundabout; he was to my right in the next lane and wanted to exit. I was in the way. He ploughed into me, just behind the passenger door. He didn’t beep the horn; he didn’t even try to brake. He just drove into me at speed.

I pulled over and got out on the passenger side just in time to see him remove the license plate from the front of his car and put it into his vehicle. He took no responsibility for what he had done and dared me to go to the police. He said I would be at fault. I was incredulous, but it turned out he was right. The sergeant took one look at me and immediately started to shake me down for 300 ringgit or he would charge me with the accident. I refused to pay him the bribe. He wrote me the ticket and sneered at my naiveté. I called my insurance agent who told me that he would not file a claim for me since the sergeant had determined that I was at fault. It would be too much trouble and the company would refuse my claim. He instructed me to call they guy who hit me and offer to pay for his damage so he didn’t claim against my insurer. I refused. Three days later, still woozy and now with colossal headaches, I checked myself into emerg at the local hospital for a workup on my neck and spinal column.

To be sure I have had plenty of lower points in my life, but this one was weighing on me. However, I was determined not to act in any way that would bring offense to God. I played it entirely by the book. I insisted on filing a claim, and it was not only honoured, but my insurance rate actually went down for the following year. The car was not only fixed properly, but I got a nice rental car for the interim at a fantastic rate that we were able to use while our friends Al and Shelley were here from Canada. God honoured my integrity. Even more importantly, I learned a little humility about what I can and cannot do at my age, and am determined to slow down, both on the road and in my personal life. No, I didn’t make 50 years accident free, but I might have gained something more important than a numerical record. I might have gained a little wisdom.

When I finally broke down and bought a smart phone, one of my colleagues said that I was likely the last person in Malaysia to get one. That might be overstatement, but not by much. Malaysia in general, and Kuala Lumpur in particular, prides itself of being up to date. Smart phones hit the market barely days after they were unveiled in the States and now have a 70% market share countrywide. That translates to an estimated 95% in the big city. The price, as you will see below, was ridiculous. And Christmas was coming.

I bowed to the inevitable when my boss insisted that he get in touch with me through What’s App. He gets a hundred emails a day and claims reads none of them (I think that too is overstatement for I know for a fact he responds to the important ones). I can’t function in this position without his signing on for the initiatives I am pushing, so I got the phone. Turns out I love it, and the What’s App is great. I immediately got on and immediately got connected to what the boss wanted. Turns out the principal of the school in Bario, Sarawak where the largest CSR project is being built, also uses What’s App and she started sending me pictures of the hostel being built. I send them on to the CEO. He thinks I’m the man.

My next download was the Kindle App. Pam and I are big Kindle users, and having the App on my phone means I am never without my books. Sitting on the bus while my car was being fixed (next post) I could keep up with my reading on all the courses I was taking this term. The phone came in particularly handy when I got sick and had to do my course work flat on my flat staring up at the ceiling. Someone on the OISE course I was taking (next post) raved of her success with a smartphone app for BlackBoard. OISE uses Blackboard. I downloaded the app in seconds, found the OISE site in minutes, and was happily trolling through and responding to my cohort’s posts within the hour. All flat on my back. There is no doubt that this smart phone saved that course for me.

I know you are thinking this kind of service doesn’t come cheap, right? It has been the cost that kept me from buying all these years. So, I just refused the service; I’ll just take the phone. Who needs service when we have Wi-Fi at work and a hub at home; Starbucks is wired, as is MacDonald’s and most shopping malls. We pay nothing for internet service, and aside from a driving GPS, never miss it either. Pam was so impressed she went out and got her own. To my delight, there she was chatting to our daughter through Skype on her smart phone the other day. Don’t you be giving us none of that old dog nonsense. We’ve got tricks.

Oh yeah, the cost. Well each phone was 300 and we got matching black and white Azus Zen 4s, so that came to 600. Ringgit. That translates to 200 Canadian for two smart phones, all in. This is about 170 American, including tax. For two smart phones. Merry Asian Christmas everyone!

It has become fashionable in the West to become churlish at Christmas. ‘Bah Humbug’s fill the air like noxious smog. Instead of greeting Christians cheerily, the airwaves and printed pages are filled with venom and invective towards us. Ebenezer Scrooge – at least before he’d had a change in heart – would be delighted. I know that has been going on for some years now. We had one particularly vindictive shrew at the school where I worked who would instruct her class – I couldn’t help but think of the Nazi Youth League at the time – to roam the halls inspecting ‘seasonal’ decorations on our doors to ensure that nothing Christian was in evidence, and report us if there was. Then we would be ‘eliminated’ from competition by the ‘decorating committee.’ There’s a woman who clearly missed her calling by a couple of decades.

This could well be our last Christmas in this part of the world, and there are certain things that are true about Malaysia. Yes, it is unbearably hot at times. Yes, it does rain – torrentially – for weeks on end. Yes, the sidewalks are broken or non-existent, the traffic congested, the roads like tortured spaghetti, the government corrupt and incompetent, the illegal immigrants and refugees persecuted and abused, the muezzin intolerably loud, especially at 5:30 in the morning or 7:30 in the evening when you would like nothing better than a little quiet conversation with your date for the evening. All of this and much more is true, and none of this comes as any surprise to those of us who live here.

But this is also true: the people here are kind and friendly and generous to a fault. They are as happy to wish you, as a Christian, a Merry Christmas, as they are delighted that you wish them a Happy Deepavali or Eid al-Fitr, Theravada, or Gong Xi Fa Cai. There is no craven Happy Holidays, or the even more smarmy Happy Festivus. Malaysians are of the opinion that there are times in everyone’s life worth celebrating, and are large enough in spirit not to begrudge you your celebration.

Imagine someone refusing to wish you a Happy Birthday because it wasn’t their birthday, and therefore not worth a greeting. Would such a person escape being labeled boorish and inconsiderate? Such are those who withhold the greeting appropriate to one of faith, whether that faith be Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Shinto, or Christian. Fie on them. Merry Christmas! It is a time of great celebration. The God of all creation came to earth to show us how to treat each other on earth and to show us the way to heaven. If that isn’t worth celebrating, then nothing is.

In celebration Pam and I went dancing last night. Badly, I’m afraid. We are out of practice and both heavy on our feet. But it was a pleasant evening, nonetheless. Tonight we will celebrate Christmas Eve with my longest serving buddy in Malaysia, Easton Hanna and his new wife at their apartment. Tomorrow morning we get to Skype with our grandchildren in Seattle as they open their presents, and enjoy another Skype visit with our family in Calgary. We have a boys only online video game scheduled for Boxing Day. There is much joy in our hearts as we anticipate all of this happiness. Is that not cause enough to be merry? Casting aside our usual frugality in honour of the special occasion, we even bought each other presents.

All of this to say Merry Christmas to you, gentle reader. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers this past year. It has been a tough year for us personally, as it has for the world at large. But yet there is much to be thankful for, and I trust that you also will remember what has cheered your heart and encouraged your spirit. May peace be your portion, and glad tidings of great joy, as you think upon God’s great Gift to us.

While our family and friends in Canada celebrate the last long weekend of the summer, we also had a three day weekend to mark the 57th anniversary of our adopted country. We opted to use the time to revive our very old scanner which is capable of scanning our family’s slides. It stretched the limits of our technical knowledge to convert thirty year old slides to digital format using a ten year old scanner and new computer platforms. But with the help of Steve’s now out of date Windows XP on his work computer we were able to upload the necessary software and the CanoScan 4200F was soon up and running again.

With the technical details behind us, we were soon absorbed in the wonder of seeing long forgotten images. Once we got over the shock of how much we had aged and shrunk, we were caught up in the wonder of the memories that cascaded over us. The sheer volume of those collected experiences began to sink in, and we were overwhelmed by the depth of God’s blessings on our family in our adventures with these three wonderful children through their growing up years.

With our water babies – all of them – we spent many happy hours on the beach in Port Stanley or at the cottage in Barrow Bay on the Bruce Peninsula. They loved their routines and yet were all very flexible, adventurous and could roll with the punches effortlessly. You could pretty much toss them their blanket and they would curl up and sleep wherever they happened to be. Throw in some sand on a sunny beach and they would entertain themselves for the entire day.

Their fearless and accepting attitude to whatever came their way gave us the courage to pack them up for an amazing adventure that found us living for a year in a quite remote hospital station in the southern panhandle of Bangladesh. There we served alongside some faithful servants of God and made life long friends while our kids learned much about independence as they explored the compound with their buddies. As we made our way home, we had the joy of visiting Kathmandu and driving out into the Himalayas to watch the sun rise over Mt Everest. From there we flew to Amsterdam where we picked up a camper van and had an amazing three weeks exploring some of Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland enroute to visit with our TWR missionary friends Steve and Barb in Monte Carlo.

Seven years on, we again packed up and headed off for a year at Black Forest Academy in southern Germany and were again touring the countryside in a camper van. It wasn’t a very fancy set of wheels but it took us on several trips to England, enabling us to spend time with Steve’s Dad just a week before he passed away. We made many trips that year through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. There were great experiences skiing in the Alps, swimming in the beautiful lakes of Italy and the beaches of the Adriatic, amazing European campgrounds, and city tours of Rome, Venice, Florence, Zurich, Bern, Paris and Frankfurt. We grew to love the beauty of Interlaken, Alsace Lorraine and the Black Forest.

But babies grow up, teenagers move out and young adults establish their own lives. Grandchildren are born and their own parents take photos of their little ones. Before you know it babies are taking “selfies” on their tablet and grandkids are making their own videos. We don’t know what technology will be available when our own children look back on their family experiences, but we pray that they will have made the type of wonderful memories we were delighted to revisit.

Thirteen years ago on the last weekend in August. the 25th to be exact, we were overjoyed to see our son Jon marry Nicole, the love of his life just a few weeks after their 21st birthdays. Exactly ten years later on the last weekend of August, the 27th Liz and Greg followed suit. It has been so delightful to watch their marriages blossom, each of the four of them mature as individuals and to have our family so enriched by the birth of each of our grandchildren.

Happy 13th Anniversary Jon and Nic and Happy 3rd Anniversary Greg and Liz!

Each year of your marriage is unique, bringing incredible joys, the need for perseverance through myriads of daily challenges and at times unthinkable pain and loss. Anniversaries are the opportunity to celebrate the love that brought you together and makes your marriages strong. Few are so blessed to find a friend, a lover and a partner for life and you need to celebrate the precious gift that is to each of you.

We pray that the bonds of your marriages will grow everyday; become stronger with each victory and each trial and that your friendships will remain a source of fun, encouragement and stay unblemished throughout your lives. May you fall in love with each other over and over again.  It is said that a successful marriage is an edifice that needs to be rebuilt everyday and we have certainly found that to be true.

We are so proud of you all and stand in awe as we watch you pour out your lives into your kids and grow into your responsibilities as parents. We want you to know that we love you all and we will always be there for you and would do anything we can to help you.

One year ago our family was greatly blessed by the birth of Liz and Greg’s first little boy who has been such a joy, even in the midst of unthinkable sadness. We love his happy little smile and boundless energy and excitement with life. He has grown up so much in just one year.

His first birthday party was a pirate theme and we bought him a great pirate ship water table which he got a sneak preview of when we were home last month.