October Update

becky    General    

I don’t think we’ve done any real updating since we got home from Singapore almost a month ago. I can’t believe that it’s been that long.  Samuel had a really tough time readjusting, which led to about two weeks of very little sleep for all of us and just as we were all starting to get some sleep again, I got sick.  We did celebrate Samuel’s first birthday in the midst of all the sleeplessness.  All of his grandparents joined us for the celebration and we had fun reflecting on our little guy’s first year of life.  It went by so quickly. 

We are currently working on getting out a newsletter specifically about our trip to Singapore. If you have not received our newsletters in the past and would like to, just send a message through the “contact us” page with your address and we’ll add you to our list.  It was a little therapeutic for both Toffer and I to actually write out some of our experiences.  The trip ended up being nothing like we expected, certainly harder than we expected, but it was definitely worth it and we’re glad we went. 

At this point in the process we are focused on raising support for HCJB Global for our ministry with them.  We have about $65,000 in one-time outgoing expenses to raise and then we need pledges for $8834/month for long-term support.  I don’t think we’ve previously put a breakdown of those numbers, so here it is: 

Outgoing Expenses of $65,000:
19%–Training–any training we have already done or will do before we leave
9%–Communication/Support Raising
10%–Vision Journey–the trip we took to Singapore, which actually ended up being quite a bit less-Praise God for relatively inexpensive plane tickets and free housing
13%–Shipping–for the few things we’ll take with us when we move (most of what we own will be sold or given away)
8%–Departure Travel–an estimate of what it will cost for us to travel when we move
1%–Administrative–passports, visas, etc.
23%–First Month Salary & Household Set-up–we start getting paid when we begin the training we do just before we move and then we have an amount we get to buy furniture, dishes, basic household items when we get to Singapore
17%–Administrative Fee/Confidence Factor–the administrative fee goes to HCJB Global and the confidence factor is because several of our categories are just estimates

Month Support Needs of $8834:
26%–Personal–for our personal needs living in Singapore (food, clothing, transportation, etc)
26%–Housing and Utilities–both of which are quite expensive in Singapore
9%–Social Security
3%–Retirement
2%–HRA–health reimbursement account
10%–Medical Insurance
11%–Ministry Expenses/Emergencies
3%–Travel Reserve–essentially a reserve that builds up to pay for our tickets when we come back to the US every few years for Home Missionary Assignment (furlough)
8%–Administrative Fee

If you have questions about any of this or about anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Trip Pictures

toffer    Uncategorized    

Here is the start of some pictures from my (Toffer’s) trip…

Some of the kids we met during the trip through Nepal.

Getting around in style in Thailand.

The guardian of one of our taxis in Nepal.  Sad to see such trust in such the wrong things.

Festival preparations in getting into swing.  These displays were all over the country.

Paving a street the old-fashioned way.  This is not a quick job.  The steamroller and the tractor pulling the asphalt were the only mechanized parts.

The countryside as we traveled between cities. 

Making milk tea for us during a pit stop on a van ride in Nepal.

Singapore, Thailand, and Nepal: Toffers Perspective

toffer    Uncategorized    

Okay… a quick few paragraphs from me, I’m hoping to get working on the next mailed out letter and then I’ll get more in depth.  I’ll add a few pictures as I get a chance.

First off, the most frequent question I’ve been asked was, “how was your trip?”  My best answer is that it was an exhausting and wearing trip.  It was a good trip, but hard.  I think in our candy-coated lives we are looking for confirmation about a big life change to be everything working out great, you are excited, and everything is roses.  This trip was not that.  It was taxing, tiring, and on quite a few occasions I was wondering what I got myself into.  But God never said that following His will would be easy.  He promises to always be there, but He never promises life will be a liesurely round of golf and then relaxing with a book.  Sometimes you will be sweaty, tired, and wondering what is in your dinner.  That all to say that we are definitely moving forward with HCJB Global, but with a more realistic expectation that we will give up a few comforts we have now.

I’ve learned a few random things that I’ll share now.  1) If you are given something and you think you may need it later (airplane peanuts, extra bottle of water, toilet paper) hold on to it.  2) The chances of dying in a Nepali highway accident are not as high as you would think.  3) As an English speaker, I can get around a lot more of the world than I thought.  A few words in the local language helps, but there are ways to get by.

I think understanding the importance of the work has much less to do with pictures I can show you of towers and transmitters and equipment.  A lot of it comes down to the stories from the people with the partner ministries. Many of us don’t understand the sacrifice that comes with following Christ, but it becomes more real when you hear about a pastor as a young child being expected to take over as a Hindu leader, but giving up his relationships to become a Christian.  They have such a wide vision of what could be done using radio.  They want to take prayer requests and pray for those that are hurting.  They want to teach Christians.  They want to be a beacon for Christ in their communities.

These are the sort of things we want you to think about as you consider helping us get to the field through monthly support of HCJB Global.

Singapore

becky    Uncategorized    

Here are a few pictures from our trip.  These are from the camera I had in Singapore with me. 
I mentioned most of these things in my updates about our trip. Enjoy!

Ikea was probably Samuel’s favorite place during
the trip.  This was from our first visit there.

Yummy dumplings from the Happy Pot hot pot that Samuel
and I shared for dinner the first Saturday. Samuel ate almost
half of them.

Downtown at night.

Samuel at the Chinese and Japanese Gardens,
where people kept asking to take pictures of
us. I wonder how many pictures people took
without asking…

A shot down a street in Little India.
The decorations are for a festival that
was going on called Deepavali.

Toffer and Samuel at breakfast the morning after
he returned from his adventures.

A shot of part of the pedestrian street in Chinatown.
It was so hot!

Our family at breakfast our last Saturday in Singapore.
On the plates in front of us is roti prata either plain or
filled with egg.  Samuel actually had a mouthful of prata
in the picture.

Becky and Samuel with the Merlion.
The Merlion is in the picture above of downtown,
but you probably can’t see it.

Samuel enjoyed playing in the equipment cases
and suitcases we were trying to pack in to come home.

I’ll Give This Updating Thing a Whirl and Hope it Make Sense

becky    General    

According to the calendar, we have indeed been home for a week now. According to my brain, I’m living in some alternate universe where time does not seem to really exist.  We’re still trying to recover from two very busy weeks in Asia and the LONG trip back from Singapore (it takes over 24 hours to get home).  Instead of Samuel having his days and nights mixed up, he decided to just sleep very little in general last week, which means I slept very little last week. I’m just hoping that some of what I’m writing is sort of coherent.  Here’s a bit about the rest of our adventures in Singapore…

Thursday-We decided to have a low-key day and spent most of it just hanging around the condo.  I’d dragged Samuel all over Singapore for a week and decided he might like some down time before Toffer got home and we dragged him around Singapore some more.  The only times we ventured out were for food and that was just to hawker stands close to the condo. Toffer spent the day traveling back to Singapore from Nepal and got back very late Thursday night (it may have actually been early Friday morning). 

Friday-Toffer thought he should probably actually see some of Singapore as that is where we’ll be living, so off we went to Chinatown. It was HOT and we stopped to get drinks numerous times to try to keep cool and hydrated, including Toffer getting some bubble tea.  We got lost a couple times trying to negotiate the pedestrian area and later realized that one street we thought we got lost on actually connected to the street we wanted to get to instead of having to back track and go around the way we had come from. Such is life!  We shopped some (included getting a little something to send in our next newsletter-if you haven’t received one of our previous newsletters, send us your address and we’ll add you to the list), ate some, and explored some.  After a hot morning and afternoon, Toffer thought a trip to Ikea was in order.  If you haven’t been to an Ikea, it’s fun to go poke around even if you’re not buying anything.  We decided we could probably furnish an entire apartment almost solely from Ikea, so it will definitely be our first stop after getting a place in Singapore.  We had pizza for dinner at a place across from Ikea.  It wasn’t like pizza here, but it was food and we were hungry. 

Saturday-We spent the morning and early afternoon at the condo with our wonderful host and hostess.  The late afternoon and evening was spent with a family from the mission who are from New Zealand. They live in a condo with a pool, so we took Samuel and their four-year old swimming.  Being in a pool has never felt so good!  If we can have access to a pool when we live in Singapore, it will make the heat and humidity much more bearable.  They prepared a meal called steamboat for us. It’s kind of like the broth type of fondue that we cooked meat, veggies, and noodles in.  I never realized noodles could be made from so many different things until we went to Singapore.

Sunday-We went to Redemption Hill Church where several of the families from HCJB Global attend.  We liked it and will visit again after moving to see if it’s the church God has for us in Singapore.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant for lunch with our regional director and his wife (who we stayed with the first half of our trip).  Like pretty much all of the food we tried that we have here at home, the Mexican wasn’t quite the same, but it was nice to have something familiar.  Sunday afternoon was spent packing. Samuel enjoyed crawling in and out of the cases we were packing in.  And even though we said we weren’t going to go on anymore adventures before we left, we couldn’t resist one last jaunt into the city.  We went downtown where Toffer got to see the Merlion (it’s a mermaid with a lion’s head because Singapore is the lion city and it’s on the water) and had hoped to go back to the place where Samuel and I had eaten tasty dumplings while Toffer was gone. Unfortunately for us, the Formula 1 race was going on (it was REALLY loud!), so a lot of downtown and the esplanade area where the Happy Pot hot pot place that we got dumplings were closed to those without race tickets.  We went to an area called Orchard where a lot of ex-pats are hoping to find some western food that was decent.  We had pasta. Again, it wasn’t great, but it worked for the moment. Then back to the condo to finish packing for our LONG trip home. 

Monday-Sept. 28 existed for about 36 hours for us because of the difference in time (Singapore is 13 hours ahead of CST in the US).  The teenage girl in me was excited to be behind two of the Backstreet Boys in the line at Burger King in Changi Airpot in Singapore.  No, I didn’t take pictures, but they did smile at Samuel. I was also tired because we got up at 3:15 to leave for the airport by 4:30.  There’s only so excited I can be at 6 am in sweats at the airport knowing the next 24 hours of my life were going to be primarily in a large metal tube hurtling through the atmosophere.  We did get to watch a couple movies on the plane and Samuel did as well as could be expected. We arrived home tired, smelling more like a locker room and less like a bed of roses, and very ready to sleep.  We’re still waiting on the sleep…

God was good to us on our trip, as He always is. He gave us a very real perspective on what Toffer’s work will be like and what Singapore life will be like.  Moving to and living in Singapore will be a major adjustment for us.  Any time I think that maybe I can’t do this, I remember why God is calling us to Asia-to take the gospel to people who have little or no access to it.  I can endure a drastic lifestyle change and all of the challenges of living in Singapore if it means that people get to know Jesus who may not have the opportunity if it weren’t for us following God’s call.  

What’s next-We move when we raise all of our support. Right now we have about 15% of our outgoing budget in and a little over 8% of our monthly expenses pledged.  We’re hoping we will be living in Singapore next year at this time, but it’s not up to us in the end. If you’re interested in supporting us, please contact us.  We’d love to talk more with you about our plans.