Christmas Eve

Tonight we enjoyed a Christmas Eve dinner with Kong Wee & Dorcas's family and Curtis & Esther's family.

The whole group with our delicious meal, mostly cooked by Curtis

Gabriella enjoying her food

Jael and Megan by Dorcas's cake

My husband with Roman

The guys talking after dinner

We don't have a white Christmas...just huge thunderstorms, and then time to swim when the storm moves on. :-)

Eric

Our family also wishes you all a blessed Christmas and new year!  Thank you all for your support and prayers throughout the past years!

Vacation Bible School

The annual Vacation Bible School was held from December 6-8.  This year, the entire event, except for the outing, was held at church.  (Thanks to Nichelle and Ivan & Elisa for many of these photos.)

The theme of this year's VBS was "Elisha's God is Our God."

Jean teaching some of the kids

Ah Moi teaching another class's lesson

The youngest kids putting words of a Bible verse in order

Elijah with some of the things his class learned

Always popular are the games.  Yes, you will notice that even wet games were held inside this year!

Also popular this year was the oldest kid at VBS, our son Eric--and his soft blond hair, which everyone had to feel. :-)

The outing on the last day of VBS was to the Science Center, where Elisa had prepared special activities for the kids, related to God's creation.

Putting together a puzzle

Filling in a worksheet with what they had learned about the creation

The kids lined up before lunch

The Science Center also has a butterfly exhibit right now, which we went through after lunch.

Some tried to hold butterflies directly on their hands, 

others on big paper butterflies--and some not at all! :-)

Shang Yi

My husband with Jonam

Jael and Jason

There were crafts connected with the butterfly exhibit too.

It was a good week of friendship and learning about God's Word together.

All the VBS kids

Charis and Emily

Given and Eric

Elijah and Megan

Pile of boys :-)

Miscellaneous

Our daughter Jessica turned 14 at the end of October.  She and her friends like to bake cakes for each other's birthdays and try to surprise each other, and four of her friends showed up at our house on her birthday with a cake for her.

Our kids with Given, Zi Hui, Nichelle, and Tze Yan

Our family

Jessica and her good friends Zi Hui and Nichelle

We have had a couple more homeschool outings recently.  At one of them, we saw some strange goings-on with groups of people in the park.  We weren't sure at first if they were doing some form of exercise or some form of Buddhist ritual, but it turned out that some of it at least was Buddhist ritual. 

 The November homeschool outing was at West Coast Park.

One or two young men from church are doing their National Service right now.  This is a time when all Singaporean males are required by the government to spend almost two years doing army training, usually beginning at age 18.  One of our young men, Yang Zhi, just spent three weeks training in Brunei, including ten days living in the jungle.  Our daughter Emily got to go to the airport to see him off.  You will see by her dress that it was a Sunday. The National Service training week often seems to begin on Sunday nights, but we are thankful that most of the time during their two years of training, the young men can still go to church activities on Saturdays and church services on Sundays.

Yang Zhi on the right, with his girlfriend Nicole and our Emily

Yang Zhi with Nicole, his mom and sister, and Emily

Emily, Tze Yan, and Marcus

Our three oldest kids take an art class with Nichelle Wong from church.  For the past couple of months Megan has joined them, and Nichelle's older sister Noelene has taught them. They did a few projects together, and one day some extra kids from church joined them.

A big batik project (fabric dyeing technique)

Johann, Given, and Eric with chalk pastel drawings

Jochebed, Megan, Emily, and Jotham

Nichelle and Jessica

The youth recently went to a trampoline park for an outing, and my daughter forwarded me a picture of the girls.

Orchard Street is a very busy road in Singapore.  We are always amazed at how many people can fill the sidewalks there, so that when you stop for a traffic light, probably a couple hundred people cross the street in front of you!

And finally, one group photo that I missed on my last blog about the Bruinsmas and Singhs: