Sunday, 30th May 2010
"We're all going on a summer holiday
no more working for a week or two.
Fun and laughter on our summer holiday,
no more worries for me or you,
for a week or two"
Those lyrics, from Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday", sums up the mood I am in right now :-)
The kiddos have finished their mid-year exams and did relatively well, praise God! Their holidays actually started three days back.
At work, things have started to lull off a bit as well. I was pretty busy in the months of April and May and spent the weekends unwinding, so I did not have the motivation or inspiration to blog regularly.
But I think it is time for me to share yet another testimony of God's goodness and unmerited favour.
At the end of 2008, I shared how God, through a series of seemingly random events and circumstances provided me with a BMW X5 for the price of an X3. The COEs back that were less than S$5k whereas they are now going for nearly ten times that. I may be an accountant by profession but I was never taught in school or even at work how to time the market such as to catch the COE, stocks, etc at their lowest price.
For those of you who are new to my blog, you can read that testimony here.
A Blessed Most Wonderful Experience (Part 1)
A Blessed Most Wonderful Experience (Part 2)
Behold My Wagon!
I am reminded of how Ps Prince preached on Ecc 3:11 whereby Solomon concluded "
I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither is bread to the wise nor riches to men of intelligence and understanding nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all."
What this verse is saying is that the race is not always won by the fastest runner. The battle is not always won by the strongest warrier. It is not always the one with the brains and tops the cohort that ends up earning millions. What is important is being placed by God at the right place at the right time. And because I know I am God's beloved and that He loves me personally, I have a good opinion of Him and knows that He will alwaya put me at the right place at the right time, so all I need to do is labour to rest in His finished work and enjoy the ride, so to speak :-)
And that is exactly what happened to me when God blessed me with the BMW X5. Most Christians in my position would probably just be grateful and contented with the savings of S$50k and not dare to ask or expect any further blessings from Him.
Well, not me :-)
I know my God is an extravagant God. He is like the father in the parable of the prodigal son. It was not sufficient for him to just welcome the son back. He asked for (1) the best robe to be put on the boy (2) a ring to be placed on the boy's finger (3) sandals to be worn on his feet (4) the fatted calf to be killed and (5) a party to be thrown so as to eat and be merry.
Ok, back to the testimony. Sometime in July 2005, we were watching on TV how London was awarded the rights to host the Olympic Games 2012. Suddenly from out of the blue, my kids mentioned something about going to England for a holiday! Back then, my son was still on peritoneal dialysis and needed to be hooked up to a machine every night, so I did not give it much thought but did say that we would consider after their PSLE exams (which my daughter took in 2008 and my son took in 2009).
Well, since then, my son has been blessed with a transplanted kidney and is enjoying a much higher quality of life. Travelling on long holidays is no longer an issue.
My daughter has taken a liking for this English actor by the name of Ed Westwick (who plays the character Chuck Bass in a series called Gossip Girl). My son supports Chelsea, a London-based soccer team that just won the English Premier League and FA Cup.
At the start of this year, the incident of them asking to go to England suddenly came back to mind. And so, sometime in March 2010, my wife and I went to the NATAS Travel Fair to check out itineraries on visiting the UK.
To cut a long story short, again through a series of events and circumstances, we see God's hand involved in granting us this summer holiday, which I will summarise in 5 salient points (5 being the number of grace).
(1) We bought SIA tickets through Chan Brothers at $1,280 each at the travel fair. Since then, the price of a ticket has shot up to more than $2,000. God's timing is so wonderful.
(2) Initially we had applied for leave from 7 to 18 Jun, right smack in the middle of the school holiday. However, the 9-day tour of UK organised by Insight Vacations from 9 Jun to 17 Jun was fully-booked so we had to put our names down for the one that was scheduled a week later (ie. from 16 Jun to 24 Jun). What this meant was that our leave had to also be delayed by a week. Thankfully, our bosses were okay with the rescheduled leave, ie. from 14 Jun to 25 Jun.
(3) When I emailed my cousin (who lives just outside London) about our trip based on the original schedule, he said he would have preferred us to visit a week later because he would be Hong Kong until 17 Jun. Some would say that this is a coincidence (we had to delay our trip because the earlier tour was fully-booked), but we again know that everything is God's perfect timing. And so, we will be staying with my aunt (who also stays just outside London) for 2 days, embark on that 9-day tour, and then stay with my cousin for another 2 days, before heading back home.
(4) The 9-day tour from 16 Jun to 24 Jun was not a definite departure at the time that we booked it . We were told that they needed at least 25 participants in order for it to be so. They did not tell us how many others had booked (which makes me suspect we were the only ones at that point of time), but we decided to step out in faith and go ahead with our travel plans. After all, the above events seem to be God's way of confirming to us that He wanted to bless us with this family vacation at this point of time in our life. And so, each day in the car on the way to work, my wife and I would pray in agreement, claiming Rom 4:17, calling things that were not as though they were. And sure enough, God answered our prayers! On the morning of 19 March 2010, we received the following email from Insight Vacations:
Pleased to advise the following tour and date is now a definite departure.
9 Days Best of Britain, starts : 16 June 2010.
Kind Regards,
Sheryl Lim
Insight Vacations (S) Pte Ltd
Hallelujah! Isn't God an awesome God! It was actually only an 18-day wait but it seemed much longer than that :-)
(5) The Sterling pound has dropped to its lowest ever against the Singapore dollar. When my wife and I went to Europe for our honeymoon back in 1993, the exchange rate was at 2.35. When I went to Villa Park back in 2007, it was about 2.97. Just last week, I managed to buy the pound at 2.04. Again, God's timing is perfect.
And so, for the first time since Mark got his transplanted kidney, we will be going on a 2-week family vacation. Thank you Lord for blessing us with this summer holiday. You are worthy to be praised, mighty God!
Oh ya, and just in case you are wondering why there is a slide with a picture of my car in it (slide 69), this is because I intend to preach a "mini-sermon" on the significance of the numbers 7 and 5. Heheh :-)
And then in the mid-1990s, when I was working in SICC, I invited Class 95 to "Come Visit My Office", and that was what Tracey Kwong and a couple of other crew members did, bringing us lunch from the nearby KFC. That's a photo of us on the right. Trace still remembers me after all these years and we got re-connected on Facebook. In fact, I got to know Joe Augustin (or should I say he got to know me, heheh) because he and the Flying Dutchman had asked for the lyrics of Hansen's MmmBop and yours truly was the one who typed it out and faxed it across to them :-)
Of the 4 types of media, I suppose print would be the easiest to appear on. Magazines and newspapers, you have been warned! :-)
Rev Reuben was warned about me even before he began his ministry on 1 August 2007. But to his credit, he gave me the benefit of the doubt, and did not just listen to what the other pastors had said about me. Although cautious at first, our friendship blossomed over the weeks and months. But in order not to "get in trouble" with the senior pastor and thus jeopardise his ministry, we had to be very discreet about our relationship, just like how Romeo and Juliet (for lack of a better analogy) had to keep theirs under wraps. 
Oh ya, if anyone of you read the article about megachurches in yesterday's Straits Times, the author described Ps Prince's as being of appeal to "denominational church escapees tired of being asked to work for their salvation". 
The places we went to on that tour included Stratford-upon-Avon (where Shakespeare was born), York, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lake District, Cardiff, Plymouth, and Stonehenge. Here is a photo that was taken of us in front of those massive stones. I bought commemorative magnets at each of these places and will be decorating my fridge with them shortly.
All in all, it's been a fun two weeks in the UK, and I really want to thank the Lord for blessing us with this great holiday. My son got to visit his beloved Chelsea's home, my daughter got her purple Blackberry Curve (only available in the UK) and my wife got a pair of Clarke's shoes.
Today is Palm Sunday, and in the tradition of the Methodist Church, the sermon was on the triumphal entry that Jesus made into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey.
And so, I will make it a point to go back there every 2 years to support my alma mater. This time around, I went with my wifey and kiddos again. My girl is now in PLMGS and my boy is in ACS(BR). No prizes for guessing which JC my desire for them to go to is :-)
But the crescendo of Rev Reuben's sermon was his experience when he brought his wife and kids to the Singapore Science Centre. When the ladies were freshening themselves up in the ladies, he chanced upon a carrrom board in the shape of an ellipse. An ellipse is an oval-shaped object with two focal points, F1 and F2. When he placed the striker at F1 and flicked it, it would always end up hitting the carrom seed placed at F2, no matter in which direction he flicked it. 
