Singapore is for sure the cleanest, and I think safest city/country there is. This is the result of a government implementing rules and regulations, fines and education on not littering and keeping crime at the lowest possible rate. Even chewing gum is against the law. The wonderful site of NO moving, chewing jaws ! (I know of a few Namibians that will suffer not being able to do the futile chewing passtime!) I realized once again that we must put more effort in educating our people in not littering, it is not something that comes naturally for many people.
This is also a city, like London and Paris, where one gets along easily with public transport (buses, trains and taxis). The only difference here is that it is clean. We are pro's by now by knowing the best routes to almost any place in this city, which is also the country. A big benefit of this transport is that we have to walk a lot. The departure point is never from your front door step! We really follow the rule of healthy living by "adding steps to your day". We also excercize daily by walking in the park next to our apartment building(block of flats) . During such an outing one loses at least 1 litre of sweat, not because the excercize was so vigorous, but because of the heat.
After the walk , we take a refreshing swim, even me(who almost never swims back home).
The city planners took a lot of effort to create open spaces, parks and playfields, which is wonderful as there are thousands of apartment buildings everywhere. There are also more malls in Singapore than churches in Rehoboth- and you know how many there are!! People shop as a way of living, shopaholics originated here. Everything is also very expensive, except for eating out at the local foodcourts. These are big halls where there are different foodstalls (all with local food) and tables and chairs to sit and eat. Singaporeans eat out as a way of life, because these places are so cheap. We are brave and comfortable in eating (some) of the local food, which is RICE /noodles with something on top of it. I must admit that we have not tried the pig intestines yet!
The good news is that I still make most of our meals, although it is challenging. This time we do not have an oven. We have a rice steamer, a gas stove and microwave. The supermarkets also do not have many "western" food. We eat rice with chicken,noodles with chicken and if we want variety: potato with chicken!
(a note for any one back home who want to treat Charlie: give him MEAT, not chicken!)
This is also the first place on our tour where we go to church and God is there!(we went to many churches -where God went in with us, where people go just to see what the inside look like, but here people enter to have a meeting with God.) Oh what a blessing it's been to attend a service, praise and worship with fellow believers and get a very good Wordbased message. Also a blessing to see it is people who look different, who has a different culture and habits, but we are one body, brothers and sisters because we worship One Living God. Our housechurch was always very special, but this is God really spoiling us. We attend the City Harvest Church together with 9000 other people in 1 service. They have 4 such services on a week end.
My blog is getting too long now, but I do not have the computor often,so while I have, I'm using it! Feel free to continue reading later.
Last Sunday was a very special day. It was Charlie's 15 birthday and My mom arrived the
previous evening for a short visit and We were invited to a barbeque with the Prins's and other friends of theirs and We ate lamb for the first time since 30 December. It was a special day!The braai was in a public park next to the seaside. The sun was shining and a breeze helped to break the heat. The people we met are wonderful people living in Singapore, all Christians. It always amazes me that although we are strangers,we start on the same page because we have the same Father! A blessing for the children was ... a rugbyball! They had great fun playing rugby with teams of all shapes and sizes. Charlie,
being the birthday boy, had a Singaporean party! They sang to him in English and Mandarin. We all really enjoyed the day and say "Thank you" to our special friends. It was great!!Back home we had our own celebration with Charlie. Dawie J baked a chocolate cake and we had chips and cookies. We prayed for Charlie and praised God for his life. 13,5 years ago he drowned and was dead, but God gave him back to us. We will continue to praise God for that and are grateful that Charlie's life glorifies God!
On Wednesday Charlie flew back to Windhoek for 2 months. This was what God showed Charlie during October 2008. It was hard to say goodbey to him, but we know God has a plan. We also know that no pain is wasted pain for the Lord. We all must just be faithful during these 2 months of seperation and God's Goodness and bigger plan will unfold.My mom's visit of 1 week was also a true blessing. You can imagine how she spoiled us all. There were sweets and cake to eat, there were cooldrink to drink and we even visited Pizza Hut for pizzas! We went all over to do site seeing, that way not only us, but Ouma and Charlie could experience Singapore with us. We,
Ouma included,walked many kilometres . We did a lot of talking and sharing, enjoying being together. She left yesterday. Praise God that she had a mission leaving us: to take care of Charlie for the next 2 months.We've sent 35kg of clothing and books back to Windhoek with the 2 of them. It is all our winterclothes and even summer clothes as well. We realized that we do not need that many clothes. We actually need so much less than what we have...
And then there were 4... That is where we are now. But the 4 of us are 100% sure that it is not time to go back yet, not time to end this journey. We will miss them, but go full out,listening and following where God is taking us. Learning what He wants to teach us. Enjoying, knowing how blessed we are.
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