September Birthdays

The youth in CERC often celebrate birthdays together.  A young person's friends will bake a cake and bring it to church or to another activity for a celebration.  That happened a few times this month.

First was the birthday of Elena, the one holding the baby.

Emily's birthday was September 21, and one of the young women from church 

baked a cake for her the previous Sunday.  Here she is with Charis, Eliana, and Klaire.

The day after Emily's birthday, Roman Lehnert had his first birthday.  His parents gave him a party at an indoor playground not far from our place.

The Lehnert family

Megan, Gabriella, and Jael on the slides

Megan and Roman

Devotions during the party

Group photo

There were at least two other girls, Zi Hui and Nichelle, who also had birthdays this month, but I don't have pictures of their celebrations with their church friends.  May God bless each one of these children and young people in the coming year!

Visitors from Washington

We just enjoyed a short visit from Lisa Heystek from Lynden and Sarah Kleyn from Spokane. The first morning they were here we gave them a tour of our neighborhood.

Looking at a huge offering set out for someone's ancestors--

It is Ghost Month right now, so we see and smell many extra offerings!

A better view of the offering and wet market

At the fruit stand in the wet market

Watching the fruit stand employee cut a pomelo for us to take home

Trying some of the fruits

We also took them to see a few of the sights of Singapore.  We spent half an hour on the coast, where the Singapore and Indonesian Air Forces were doing a couple of flyovers together.  

A picture Lisa took of a lizard at Gardens by the Bay

A stop for some gelato

Lisa and Sarah by the sea waiting for the flyover

The "50" represents 50 years of diplomatic relations between Singapore and Indonesia.

Lisa and Sarah were also able to spend a bit of time with some of the youth from church.

City bus tour with Jessica

Trying some Singaporean desserts with some young women from church

At the night safari

Dykstras and Wedding

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Prof. & Carol Dykstra were able to spend a week in Singapore in August.  The Sunday that they were here, Prof. preached for us both services. After the second service he did a "Table Talk"--a time of questions submitted beforehand that he gives answers to.  Many people stayed at church to hear this Table Talk and have dinner together afterwards.

While the Dykstras were here they were also able to attend the wedding of Marcus & Tze Yan on August 12.

The bride with some of the girls from church

  

Bridesmaids, page boys, flower girls, and bride before the wedding

Megan and Jael walking down the aisle

Jason

Tze Yan with her dad, Seow Thong

The happy couple

The wedding party

We pray for God's richest blessing on Marcus & Tze Yan as they "go down life's pathway together"!

National Day and a Birthday

August 9 is Singapore's National Day and also Jael Lee's birthday.  Our family was invited to join a group who was gathering to celebrate both of these things the evening of the 9th.

First we watched the annual National Day Parade, known as "NDP" to Singaporeans, who love acronyms!  This event is held each year on the floating platform on Marina Bay and included almost three hours of musical presentations and other shows, parachuters, 300 drones lit up to form various shapes in the sky, displays of Singapore's military might, and even a simulated terrorist attack that was quickly stopped by Singapore's military!  The themes of military strength and of harmony among the races and religions of Singapore were very strong throughout the entire parade.

The NDP held on the bay

We watched the parade projected onto the wall.

Boaz and Jason

Some of the kids playing a game

Emily and Noah

After the parade we celebrated Jael's 6th birthday.

The Lee family

National Day Hike

Wednesday, August 9, was National Day here in Singapore.  Because it was a public holiday and people didn't have to work, the members of our church gathered at Windsor Park for a hike.

As always, we began with singing and an exhortation.

Huggy leading the singing

Josiah giving an exhortation based on II Timothy 3

After that we had an hour hike.  This included a spot on the trail where monkeys were sitting on the railings and looking for food to steal from the hikers.  We have somewhat of an American view of this--"How neat to see monkeys in the wild!"--but are also adapting a Singaporean view of them:  "They are such nuisances!"  I say that especially after one snuck up behind me on the beach a couple weeks ago and took off with one of our bags, thinking there was food inside!

This is Jonam...

...and this was Jonam's snack.

The rest of the hike was uneventful!

Jason and Elijah

Daniel Tang, who has always provided so many pictures for this blog!

Bernice and Naomi

After the hike we had lunch.  We were joined for this whole outing by Prof. & Carol Dykstra, who are in Singapore after participating in a conference in Australia.

Good fellowship and fun