Happy Anniversary Jack and Li Yen

My good friend, Li Yen, will be celebrating her ninth wedding anniversary with Jack tomorrow. Congrats, Jack and Li Yen.
I decided to do a layout as a present for them. I love this photo of them taken at Yee Ling and Kwee Peng's wedding last year. They are so happy and look very lovely in this photo. I decided to use journaling tags and placed numbers 1 to 9 on them and left them empty for the couple to journal things/places that are most memorable to them. Hope they'll have a good time reminiscing as they think back about their nine years together and enjoy their trip to Japan this weekend!

Baby in uniform

I love this photo of Jonathan in this uniform top that I bought from Fox Baby. He's only 9-1/2months old but many say he looks way older, like 2 years old. Then I receive the Pink Paislee collection which was most suitable for the photo. I scraplifted this from one of the design team members in Scrapboxx.com.au. I love how people stitch on paper and this is my first attempt. Anyways, it's just straightforward poke holes then sew. I love how the colours all match together with the brown Hambly rub-ons, which I had for the longest time but haven't found the opportunity to use. PS: If anyone can recommend which sewing machine to get for SB, please leave a comment.

Simon's birthday

I managed to surprised Simon by flying in two of his pals, Aaron and Albert over for the weekend. Did he suspect anything....nope, heehee!

When MIL cleaned one of the bedrooms upstairs for the boys, Simon asked me why she's moving the beds around. I told him since Stanley came back and took the bedroom downstairs, his mom had to put 2 beds in the bigger room upstairs so when his sis, Catherine, Bryan and Megan come over on Sundays, they will have somewhere to nap. Correct, coz Cat and Megan indeed napped there.

Now, question was who would fetch Aaron and Albert from the airport. As this was planned two months ago before I started work, I was to take care of Jonathan and MIL would pick them. So MIL told Simon that Stanley's friend was coming to visit. Then Stanley would have an excuse to go away from the office during work hours.

Guess what? Both cars came back home at the same time on Fri afternoon. Simon asked Stanely to drive into the compound first, but Stanley insisted Simon drive in first. Only when the two cars pulled up alongside each other in the driveway did Simon realised his best pals were in Miri.
Simon got a new fishing rod, reel line, torchlight, and some other stuff. The weekend was spent dining and fishing. Simon's a happy man.

We brought the guys for a simple Dinner at Nine 2 Five, where I had my fave Mongolian chicken. There's something about the sauce. I am no cook so I can't really tell what the ingredients are. We had Stir-fried Beef, Vietnamese Hot Plate Lamb, Hawaiian style Sotong, and of course our local vegetable Biling (fern-tip veg).

Dinner on Fri night at Nine 2 Five

Fishing with fishing buddies Aaron and Albert.

Casting

Waiting
Nice blue sky, but where's the fish?

Dinner on Sat night at Meng Chai Seafood - We had steamed prawns, steamed fish, bamboo clams cooked with curry powder, Biling in red wine, and Kampung Chicken. You know all this talk about recycling to save our envionrment right? Well, Mirians here sure do that coz where can you find Krim Soda in a Guinness bottle? Then we adjourned to Ming Cafe for nice refreshing Tiger and Heineken.

It's nice to have friends over in Miri. Just hanging out, having simple fare, and of course, fishing. Pity there were no day trips out. More fishes out there. Here's Simon, Jonathan, who's now 11 months and me.
After eating copious amount of Kolo Mee and Biling, Aaron was a happy man too. And of course, cheaper beer than Singapore.

Mission trip to Rumah Nanggai

Sorry for posting this so late. In May, I went on a weekend mission trip to Rumah Nanggai with a team of nine others from Grace Methodist Church. It is approximately 360km from Miri, just before Selangu on the highway to Sibu. so it's somewhere in between Bintulu and Sibu. Along the way, we passed by long stretches of oil palm plantations, and even logging depots where they send the logs down the river to their intended destinations. I've never been so far away from Miri by land before and was very excited to visit a long house.

This was the first time GMC visited a long house in this area, and we were invited by Rev Norah to join him in reaching out to this particular long house. There were nine families staying in the long house with about 45 people, 30 adults and 15 children (including teenagers).

Outside the Rumah Nanggai long house

Spacious interiors. Above is the common corridor outside the rooms

When we reach RN, it was almost 2pm and we had a simple lunch of local veg, wild clams from the river, and wild boar meat. After lunch, we had a short rest and I took the chance to explore the long house.

Water tank at the back of the room of the host family,
Important to fill it up in case there's no water supply

Cats at the back of the long house
They grow their own pepper

Then it was time to get down to do the Lord's work. We started with the children's ministry since most of the adults were at work. After warming up with a few action songs, we had a colouring contest followed by a nutrition talk and a session on dental hygiene.

Then we set up our "barber shop" along the corridor, where Amy and Jacqueline offered free hair cutting services. That was very popular and quite a number of the children and even one adult had their hair trimmed.

Hanging out with the kids

Some of the group sat down with the adults and chatted with them. Through the dialogue, we found out a couple of issues the Ibans were facing and asked if we could pray for them. They said yes.

Soon it was time to prepare for dinner and Duan and Angeline quickly went to work.

Wild bamboo shoot before it was cooked

As the kitchen had limited space (coz the host family were also in the kitchen), some of us drove a minute away to the stream to have our evening bath. It didn't rained and the stream was very shallow, up to our calves. But we managed to have a nice refreshing and cold bath.

One of our group members found this heart-shaped rock at the stream

We went back and had a sumptuous dinner: the same lunches dishes, fried cabbage with ikan billis and carrots, fried egg with Chinese waxed sausage, and roast chicken and char siew which we had bought at a coffee shop along the way to RN.

Word spread to a neighbouring long house that we were screening a film show (on Jesus Christ in Iban), and they also joined us after dinner. We sang a few songs of praises and the Ibans also sang and even did the actions with us. Teck Choon and I shared our personal testimonies about our relationship with God. And then we screened the film show.

For the trip, I wondered how will I communicate with my smattering of BM. But during the show, a young boy W, who was sitting next to me asked me a few questions about Jesus Christ. With the help of David who was sitting next to me, we answered his questions as simply as we can, and softly so we would not disturbed the others. I wondered whether W understood the love Jesus had for us. When it came to the cruxifixion part, W whispered to us, "If I was there, I will surely defend Jesus Christ." Wow.

After the night programme ended, we had a quick devotion and shared our learnings with each other before retiring for the night. We slept on the clean floors and even though there was the symphony of snores, we had a good night's rest and slept every well. Perhaps we were tired.

On the next morning, we woke up and had a simple breakfast before packing our bags. Some of us distributed goody bags of rice, a tin of biscuit and some necessities to each family. Then we all set off for church. Some of the long house folks followed us too.

The church is a simple building and ladies sat on one side when the guys at the other. David, Duan and Angeline led in a session of BM/Iban songs. While I didn't understand the sermon as it was in Iban, I quietly gave thanks to God for the opportunity to spend time with the Iban folks. God was already at work amongst them and four families had indicated they want to convert to Christianity. I praise God for His grace and love for the Ibans and also prayed that Rev Norah will be able to follow up with the families, and we will be able to support him whenever he needs help.

After the service, we realised one of us left something at the long house and we drove back to get it. Whilst waiting, I got out of the car and walked to a patch of grass that I had noticed when I first arrive at RN. I wanted to check out the bright pink flowers. And when I reached the flowers, this was what I saw - one of the bunches of flowers looks like a heart shape. I smiled knowing that God's love is upon this place.