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.