Equipping Families to be Strong in the Lord
This morning I woke up at 1:00am, my mom woke up at 2:00am, Sarah woke up at 2:30, and Stephen woke up at 4:30… yeah… our sleeping schedule is a little messed up right now. Looking on the bright side, the middle of the night is a great time to get stuff done! I got my whole room unpacked and organized. My mom organized the garage. 🙂
We arrived back home in Cedar Rapids about 3 hours ago!
As we were sitting in row 66 at the very back of the plane eating “dinner”, the flight stewardess came by and served us coffee. Just as we were beginning to sip our full little cups of coffee, we felt the plane began to swerve and jolt. (Perfect timing I thought) The turbulence increased and became pretty intense—like a roller coaster—causing the coffee to fly up out of our cups and all over us and our clothes. We all began laughing and yes, we had many coffee stains on our clothes.
It feels great to be back home, and we’re very grateful for the Lord’s protection and guidance all along the way. More reports and pictures coming soon.
Here we are singing yesterday at the Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord Conference” in Singapore! The girls who had been attending the Bright Lights Leader’s Training served as the leaders of the small groups. They were an excellent team.
The conference went great, and once again we were encouraged to see the Lord work.
Nickie Biegler, Jolynn and Eunice about ready to go on stage for a skit
Our tradition in the States is to have pizza after Bright Lights conferences, so it was fun to have a change and go out for “Hong Kong Dim Sum” instead. 🙂
This Tuesday-Friday Sarah has been teaching a Bright Lights Leaders Training in this “holiday chalet” by the beach in Singapore. We are grateful to the Lord for this peaceful, quiet location to come away and focus on God and ministry preparation.
I am sitting here in a large warm room with a breeze blowing through the open windows… listening to Sarah teach these girls how to begin their own Bright Lights groups in their areas. We are very excited about more Bright Lights groups beginning on this side of the world! Ongoing groups led by local girls are effective because they provide continual discipleship, follow-up, fellowship and positive peer pressure…and young girls gain so much from having a godly role model in their life.
The other night as we were walking across the Changi boardwalk to some resturants we were able to watch this beautiful sunset.
Yesterday several mothers prepared a special tea party for our group.
We have about 13 girls from Singapore, 4 from Malaysia, 1 from Indonesia, and 2 from Hong Kong. And yes, they all speak English. 🙂 We’ve had a lot of fun learning about each other’s cultures, foods, imitating each other’s accents, singing numerous national anthems, etc. But most of all, it’s exciting to spend time with sisters in Christ on the other side of the world who love the Lord and are similar to us in so many ways.
I haven’t been able to get online very easily where I’m staying right now, but I have many more pictures I’ll post later. Thank you to all of you who are praying for us.
This Saturday we are doing a Bright Lights “Strong in the Lord” conference here in Singapore. I believe we have about 200 mothers/daughters registered. The following Tuesday we fly home.
Wow, there is so much to say… I’m not sure what to write about! Things have been going very well! I’m so grateful to the Lord for all the ways He has been answering prayers, arranging circumstances and details, softening girl’s hearts, etc. Here are a few pictures from today.
In the afternoon all the girls went to a park in the jungle where we did lots of fun outside activities. We had a great time. The girls got excited about the monkeys who were trying to bother us and steal our food. Whenever they saw another monkey climbing around near us they would scream, “monkey! monkey!” They are so cute. (The girls, I mean. Not the monkeys. 🙂 )
Here is a skit we did this morning that we call our “Taking Thoughts Captive Skit”.
Here I am with new friends and old friends from last year. The best part of being on this side of the world is the people. 🙂
Today we had a good afternoon of training with the Malaysian/Singaporian older girls who are helping us lead the confernece. We are all happy to have Stephen with us now. Here’s a picture I snapped as we were eating dinner tonight.
Here is our group– Chrissy, Rebekah, Sarah, Nickie, Elyssa and myself.
The first few days in Singapore we spent settling in, getting over jet lag, spending time with our friends here (who have treated us so well!) shopping, touring, and eating lots of different delicious food.
Yesterday we took a 4+ hour bus ride to Malaysia. We are staying at a large hotel where a homeschool conference will be held for homeschoolers throughout Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and a few other Asian countries. We will be speaking to the parents and leading a Bright Lights conference for the girls while the parents attend sessions.
Here we are eating at local hawker stalls. I am eating Char Kuay Tiow with chili sauce and drinking lime juice. It was great! (but I did eat a little too much chili sauce… 🙂 )
My parents (who weren’t here last year) are doing great and right now they are out touring the town and eating lunch with new friends.
Stephen (who just flew in last night) is supposed to arrive here in Melacca in about a 1/2 hour. We’ve been missing him, and it will be nice to have him here.
In a few hours we begin “Teacher’s Training” where we will train all the older Singaporian and Malaysian girls who will help us with the conference. More pictures coming soon.
We arrived here in Singapore yesterday after about 20 hours in the air. We were thankful to get into several good talks on the plane, also. We have had a very nice time so far visiting with lots of friends from last year and sight seeing. 🙂
In a few hours we will be in the air headed to Singapore! Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures from there. Meanwhile, we’d appreciate prayer!
Wow – I didn’t mean to go for almost a whole month without posting! I’ll try not to let that happen again!
This past month our family has been pretty consumed with conferences… the preparation and packing the week before, the 11 day trip itself, and the week of “catch up” after we got home.
We took our team of “Bright Lights Staff” and did 3 conferences in Ohio and Michigan. It was a very exciting trip for everyone. We also all got very worn out! Most of all we were very grateful to see the Lord’s hand at work. At every conference I am reminded how God is the One who does the work. I love the way Paul states this in 1 Corinthians 4:7. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves…” For all of you who have been praying for us, thank you very much!
Wendy, Kim, Ann Marie, and Chrissy are ready for the first attendees to arrive at our registration table
We did our “Strong in the Lord Conference” Friday night and Saturday, and then our “Radiant Purity Conference” Monday night and Tuesday at the same church in Ohio. It worked out wonderfully, and it was great not to have to tear down and set up again at a different church. Our group of girls stayed in one of the church’s large downstairs rooms for 8 consecutive nights! Yes, the room did get a little messy…
…but we all had a good time and we were very grateful for the church’s hospitality.
Here is a picture of our “Counselor Skit” that we do at the Radiant Purity conference. Although each of the distressed patients appear very different, the counselor explains to them that they all actually have the same problem. But I better not give away any other details. 🙂
After hearing the same jokes over and over again at the conferneces, they don’t seem very funny to us anymore. We’ve decided it’s a lot more enjoyable to watch the audience. 🙂