Church Building

Every now and then someone asks us what CERC's church building looks like.  I meant to post a blog about this long ago but never did, so here, finally, are some pictures of the place where we worship every Sunday.  We meet on the fourth floor of an industrial building.

The building we meet in

The neighborhood and more of Singapore, as seen from the roof of the building

Where we park our cars--wherever you can find a spot on any side of the building

To get to the fourth floor, we either walk up four flights of steps (on the right) or take an elevator, which is through the narrow doorway at the back of the picture.

There are two sets of doors through which you can enter the church meeting area.  These doors go into the lunchroom.  You can see that we are on an open balcony with the city behind it.

(This picture is from the welcome program given by the youth when we moved here.)

A very nice area with a kitchen to the left, bathrooms at the back of the room, and room for the meals between services, as well as many other church functions

Usually when we get to church on Sundays we go in through the other entrance, and this is what we see looking in.  Down the hall are the pastor's study, a church office with copy machine, etc., and three classrooms.

CERC has a Christian Literature Ministry, which reprints many of the PRC pamphlets and other materials.  Some of these are displayed here, and this is where we pick up our weekly bulletin also.

A very nice library

If you turn left after passing the bulletin and pamphlet counter, this is what you see.  The sanctuary is on the right, the lunchroom is on the left, and at the end is a bigger room, used for overflow during church services and for Bible studies and other meetings.

Three small rooms are side-by-side behind the sanctuary.  The far room is where the audio controls are; the middle room is used for translation of the services for those who do not speak English, as well as for the smallest kids' Sunday School; and this closest room is used for Sunday School activities, and right now for those who take care of Jason during the services.

The sanctuary

That is the church building.  Now for a little quiz to see how much you know of Singapore. What would you expect to find right outside the building?

... If you guessed "an idol," you would be correct!  We pass this right before we turn into the church parking lot.  This is a shrine to Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god.  Yesterday when we got to church, someone was bowing and burning joss sticks in worship.

A closer view

Although we worship in an industrial building, the church members put a LOT of work into making our floor a very beautiful and functional place to worship and fellowship.  We are thankful that God has provided this for us, in a land where it is very difficult to get any space for a church. 

The Routines of Life

Another day has come to an end in Singapore.  I can see the neighbor in the flat across the courtyard from us standing in his living room, but I'm hoping the noise is finished for the night.  He often stands in his living room and screams a bunch of indiscernible words really, really fast.  I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling it is some religious ritual.  He does have a big golden idol standing in the corner of the room.  It's also that time of the night when I start going cautiously into my kitchen, wondering where our resident gecko might be at the moment and hoping it's not about to scurry past my feet!

Our days begin with homeschooling.  I've already written a blog about that, and not much has changed there from day to day, so I'll just post one picture and then move on.

After school there is a variety of activities.  Some days are just "stay at home" days.  Every one of those days, and most others, include at least one game of Ticket to Ride.  Jessica, Eric, and I play once or twice a day.  I can't believe I'm not sick of it yet, but it's a fun game! :-)

Some days we take a "trip" to the grocery store or library.  We go to the library quite often, because they don't allow you to get very many books at once here.  Usually a trip to the library also involves a trip to the grocery store, since they are located right by each other. I have just started driving here, only to our mall, which includes the library and grocery store.  It was too hard getting all the groceries home on the bus all the time.  Tonight we had to go out, but being a Friday night, I knew driving and parking around the mall would be very difficult--so getting groceries became a family outing.  And if I ever need to go to a store farther away, that can become a family outing also--we need my husband to drive if we are getting more than just a few bags of groceries!

The kids at the library

If you see Flat Stanley leaning against Jessica's leg, that's because we helped 

with a couple of Flat Stanley projects for Protestant Reformed schools in the U.S.!

On Tuesdays Eric has badminton lessons.  Marcus Wee, a young man from church, offered to teach Eric.  Baseball was always Eric's sport before, but there is no baseball in Singapore (or at least very little--I haven't heard of it).  However, badminton is very popular.  So Eric is learning a new sport and really enjoying it--although he did get Marcus and another young person to throw a baseball around with him today!

On Thursdays a woman from church named Jean comes to our house to teach us Chinese. We only started this two weeks ago, so it is still new and a bit overwhelming!  We are beginning with "hanyu pinyin," which is when the Chinese characters are written into letters.  This helps what would otherwise be completely indecipherable to us become something we can recognize.  For example, a couple of Chinese characters are written as "ba ba" so that we can pronounce it--although of course we still have to learn the meanings! :-)  "Ba ba" is "father."  But there's one more tricky thing:  each syllable can be pronounced four different ways--and if you say it wrong, you are saying a completely different, unrelated word!  So whether your voice goes up, goes down, goes down and then up, or stays the same, makes a big difference on what word you are saying.

Practicing the sounds before our lesson

Jean helping us read a book in Chinese

On Friday afternoon Jessica and Eric have piano lessons.  Two young people from church, Jean's son Yang Zhi and a girl named Joanna, come to our house to teach the kids.  As you can tell, the people from church really go out of their way to help our family here, and we appreciate it so much!

Saturdays are often busy days for my husband.  During the first and third quarter of the year he has two catechism classes, then a couple hours off, then a pre-confession class--and sometimes a speech for the young people during those couple hours off.  Sometimes when he is gone for most of the day, the kids and I will take public transportation and go do something--usually a mall, as there are many, many malls in Singapore, and the MRT stations are often in the basements of malls.  We check out a few of the shops and get Burger King for supper.  We have just entered the second quarter, so my husband shouldn't normally be gone as much on Saturdays, but I'm getting to know the city a bit better and am thinking of places to go with the kids besides malls! :-)

When the day starts to wind down, it's time for me to vacuum and mop the house.  (I still always say "house"--I guess I should say "flat"!)  I had heard before we moved here that people here mop at least once a day, and I couldn't imagine.  But yes, we need to! Someone told me it's a combination of the dust and humidity here.  Although I mop every night, by the next morning our feet are already getting dirty when we walk around in here.  It's just another part of life here!

So, five months into our stay here, we have settled into a routine.  We are thankful to God for His care and provision every step of the way.

Sunday School Outing

The third week of March is a holiday for Singapore schools.  That Thursday we had a Sunday School outing at the Singapore Discovery Center and Army Museum, including a bus tour of SAFTI--Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute.  All young men in Singapore are required to serve two years in the military, and some of the young men from church are doing their national service right now, so it was interesting to learn a bit more about that.

There was a good turnout for the outing.  Some women from church brought their nephews and nieces who come to church with them on Sundays.  Some of those in church who have unbelieving relatives are able to bring the children of those families to church with them. Three boys attend every Sunday morning with their aunt.  A little girl Megan's age (the one who was a flower girl with her in Paul & Anthea's wedding) attends often with her great-aunt.  And there are others as well, but those four were at the Sunday School outing.  It's great for Eric to have a good group of boys to play with, and for Megan to have a little girl her age.

The outing began with a pizza lunch in the discovery center.

After lunch and before the activities, there was a short exhortation by one of the young men from church, Paul Ong.  Considering that we were going to be learning about the army that day, Paul spoke to the kids about the battle that we fight as Christians, and the armor that we must put on.

The exhortation was followed by the tour of the discovery center, the bus tour, and the tour of the Army Museum.

Eric and his friends trying to answer some questions about Singapore history

Megan and Nichelle Wong on a playground outside the Army Museum

More of the group, including one of the dads, outside the museum

The whole group

Elijah and Jael

I'd like to tell you a little bit about Elijah and Jael.  They are about the ages of our Megan and Jason, just a little bit older.  Elijah and Megan get along great, and Jason and Jael get excited in their one-year-old way to see each other too.  Elijah and Jael are also special because they are the first third-generation Christians in CERC.  Their grandpa has been an elder of CERC for over 25 years, so their mom grew up in the church.  Their dad has been an officebearer for many years too.  Many of the adults in church, and some of the young people, are first-generation Christians, having come out of idolatry themselves.  So Elijah and Jael are a special display here in Singapore of God's covenant faithfulness through multiple generations.