Jesus Redeems’ Christmas Cup, Tirunelveli

Tirunelveli is a large inland town, though not very far from the coast. It’s population is estimated to be almost 70% Christian which is pretty amazing for this state and astounding for this country. I think there are villages with higher percentages in the surrounding area but there couldn’t be many anywhere else in the country. The difference was obvious in lots of little things like the incredible number of stars that Christians in this area decorate their houses and businesses with. The Christmas Cup was organised by the large evangelistic organisation Jesus Redeems in association with the local football association. It was therefore a fairly impressive affair if still very much the product of the culture here.

There were 6 teams competing from villages in different regions around the town. Most of the players had traveled 30-60km to be there and spent the duration of the tournament sleeping on mats in a nearby college. There were a lot fairly influential local people in support of the project and at the final awards ceremony there were speeches from all 7 special guests which included the local Bishop, Chief of Police, Principal of the College, Speaker of the state assembly amongst others. Some of the official parts of the program therefore often went for ridiculously long periods of time with little regard for the players but they were probably important for local relations.

The standard of the football wasn’t great with far more enthusiasm than tactical awareness but there were flashes when it was worth watching. However, for myself and the other 6 guys from the Eagles the main point wasn’t the football and who won but rather with the evangelistic program. For the two nights that we were around we ran a program in the evening for the players that included testimonies, a couple of dance items (they love their dance items here), talks and some videos. We also broke the players into smaller groups during the afternoon and spent short periods of time talking with them. I was able to share my testimony and other evangelistic stories with the players on 3 occasions and answered questions during a Q&A. The format always changed within minutes of me having to get up and speak but it was really exciting to be able to spend time sharing and teaching the players and they seemed to respond well to the programs. The only shame for me personally is that my lack of language makes it hard for me to have follow up conversations with people beyond my translated comments. Everyone involved with the program seemed really excited to have us there and I was constantly being invited to sit with whatever dignitaries were in attendance and was asked to compile a list of the best players for an academy they were hoping to start in the region.

The time away also provided an opportunity to get to know a couple of the players better. Our conversations are still pretty halting but we are increasingly being able to share about our lives with each other and that’s been encouraging. One of the players shared with me that when I first arrived they were really nervous that due to my coaching qualifications I would be aloof and hard to talk to but that they’ve been happily surprised that I’m friendly and keen to talk about anything with them. They thanked me for being there and being an encouragement to them. I was sleeping in one of the grubbiest hotels I’ve ever seen (and apparently this was an improvement on the one they’d first booked), trying to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes that were so disease laden even the other Indians were scared of them and really struggling with the food. However, at that point I started to feel like it was all worthwhile and it started to feel a little more like home.

An American Christmas

With much of the family heading south to Angela’s home village it was looking like being a pretty quiet Christmas around here so I got permission to crash Amber and Pete’s Christmas. I thought a little touch of Australia might make the day less lonely than it could have been. As it turned out what I got instead was a large touch of America, which also turned out to be a lot of fun. I can’t thank enough the many people who took me in empty handed and on very short notice and made me feel very welcome.

After attending my church in the morning of Christmas Eve I went with Robin for lunch at his parents house in the countryside just outside the city. His family were lovely and welcoming though I was seriously shocked by the number and size of the mosquitoes out there. They’re breeding a super species at least twice the size of those I’ve seen in the city and they’re no midgets. Then it was back into town to an American restaurant for a Christmas Eve party with buffet food and what seemed like more of the expat community gathered in the one place than I had previously seen all together.

Christmas morning we headed over to the flat of a couple of interns who work with Amber for a great brunch and the first breakfast I have had here that felt like something I might eat at home. With 5 Americans, 3 Australians and 1 local it was a really nice bunch to spend time with.

A brief rest was followed by the main event, Christmas dinner with all the Americans Amber is working with and then some. The house was massive, the spread of food impressive and the air conditioning so efficient that at times it was possible to forget where we were altogether. On top of getting to feast on the old favourites of turkey, roast beef and salads we were also served uniquely American dishes like grits. It was fun to hear each of the Australians ask in turn:
“What’s that?”
“Grits”
“What’s grits?”
“Grits”
The only variation to this was when the Northerners were pressed further on the issue they replied “it’s a very southern thing”. The Southerners when similarly pressed just replied “heaven”. For mine it most reminded me of semolina but didn’t taste as bland. There was also mulled wine to add to the wintery feel of it all. I guess outside it was winter and the local shops did stock woolies. It’s just my first “winter” where the temperature regularly tops 30°.

All in all it was a really delightful time and it was really hard to drag myself away before dessert so that I could catch an auto all the way across town to the bus station. As I sat on the uncomfortable bus preparing for an all night trip to a far more rural area I was tempted to give myself kudos for having not stayed at the far more relaxing party but realized that to do so would probably be to miss the main point of Christmas. I hesitate to even mention going from God’s right hand on high to human form as a baby in a stable in the same sentence as my going from a nice expat community to a all night bus as they’re not even comparable but it put things in much better perspective.

Christmas overseas without Bec and the rest of my family was something I was kind of looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Overall it was an encouraging time but there were still plenty of points when I stopped to wonder what everyone was up to at home and heaps when I wished Bec was here to share it with me.

The Local Scene 2

I've now been in India for 3 weeks and am starting to settle in. I've gotten used to riding on the back of a motorbike in the traffic. The other day I even travelled all the way to the stadium in the centre of town with both my bag and a bag of balls on my shoulders. I'm also not hanging on quite as tight as I used to. I've taken to wearing sunglasses whilst riding in an attempt to keep the dust out of my eyes (even at night), locally head protection means a thin plastic face shield.

The people locally are an interesting mix. They are quite clearly Indian but don't share a language with the rest of the country (other than English). Therefore their national anthem isn't in the language they speak. In schools the situation is even more complicated as education is done in a mixture of English and Tamil depending on the school. Stefka, who is 10, studies in English as her first language. She also studies Tamil but has decided she will drop it next year and study French instead as it is too hard. This despite speaking Tamil all day everyday. She could have chosen Hindi but didn't. It's all got me scratching my head and happily reading one of the three major English language papers in town. This also means that there are quite a few people I can have simple conversations with if I talk really slowly and clearly but most of what is going on around me I don't understand and my coaching sessions have to be translated. Actually translated makes it sound too formal, normally I explain something and then the players discuss it amongst themselves, I explain it again, more discussion, then we start the drill.

Having recently spent time in central Thailand I have been amazed by the real diversity of religions practiced in the area. On the short ride to the stadium I will pass a dozen or more churches, 2 or 3 large mosques, a collection of catholic icons and countless Hindu shrines and temples. This is without even counting the smaller sects and cults which don't have an obvious visible presence. However, despite all this variety the influence of Hinduism is fairly all pervasive. It isn't like the Buddhism in Nakhon Sawan where all life is lived in the shadow of the giant Buddha and temple on the mountain top and there are distinctly dressed monks everywhere, but it's there nonetheless. It's most clearly in the thousands of shrines and temples of various sizes down every back street but you also see it in the intricate patterns drawn in chalk on the road in front of people's houses and in the markings on people's foreheads (even whilst playing football). The religious fanaticism of other parts of Indian may not be so obvious here and a lot less militant but there are still millions of people caught up in idolatry who desperately need the light. Praise the Lord that many of the local Christians have a real vision to reach their city and state and since I have been here I have already witnessed many evangelistic activities. However, in a city of millions and millions there is always a need for more.

Football ministry

The Eagles as a team are about far more than just their onfield results. Whilst most teams I have been involved in have limited their non-football times together to pub nights a core of the Eagles players and other local Christian athletes get together once a week to sing, pray and hear testimony. The last few weeks there have been at least a dozen of us sitting on Robin's floor. More importantly the other players in the team know that it's an open invitation and last night my strike partner joined the group for the first time. Whilst he mostly just sat in the corner and watched what was going on for me it was an encouraging sign that the ministry here is actively working towards bringing people into relationship with God.

Prayer is always a big part of everything that the Eagles do. We pray before and after training. We pray as a squad both in the changerooms and out on the sidelines. The starting line-up prays before each half of the game. All this may not stand out as much in a highly religious country like India as it would in Australia but the Eagles are seeking to make the difference aparent by the way they consistently act and how their words and actions match their prayers. Robin and the other elders try to emphasise that the prayer is not a technique for influencing the result but communication with the God for whose sake we play. That this is making an impact, however small, in the lives of the non Christian players can be seen in the fact that after Robin's talk on getting things right with God at Christmas and the new year another of the non Christian players spoke with a senior Christian player. What he wanted to know was whether the Christian player could recommend a church he could go to for Christmas. We're all praying that not only will he show up but that the service will speak boldly and clearly to him.

Madras Eagles 6 - YMSC 0

My first goal and my first win as a player here. For those of you following the results that now means the Eagles have p 3 w 2 d 1 l 0 for 12 ag 0. Not a bad start to the season. It would have been better if we could of finished last game but with 5 different scorers yesterday it seems like the players are starting to get used to playing with and around me. It was great to get on the score sheet myself with the second goal and the rest of the team were really excited for me. I'm still getting fouled in a range of amazing and unpunished ways but it doesn't hurt so much when you're winning.

I should of had a couple more goals but the one that really frustrated me was when I broke the off side trap at half way, ran towards goal before looking up and seeing the keeper had come out of his box. I hit what I still think was one of the sweetest lobs I have done just to watch the keeper jump up and grab the ball at full stretch. What made the blatant foul more frustrating was the fact that the keeper was almost 3 metres out of his box and yet only received a yellow card. I was so ready to celebrate one of my best goals ever. Though it's hard to get too disappointed as I went on to set up a couple more goals to round out the scoring.

On top of scoring what was most pleasing was the fact that I was able to stay on and keep contributing right to the final whistle despite the heat. Due to the crazy schedule we now have until the 2 January to recover before our next game so hopefully a few of the players who've picked up knocks will be able to recover.

More importantly though we are praying that the players will think seriously about Christianity over the Christmas period. After the game Robin shared about the opportunity the new year brought to get serious and get things right with God and then each of the players was given a Christmas card that also contains a DVD about who Jesus is. Please pray that God can continue to use me and the Christians involved in this team to bless those non-Christians He has brought to us.

Catching up with the Hawkes

On Saturday night I decided it was time for a bit of a break, so after training with the Eagles I headed across town to hang out with the Hawkes (Pete and Amber). I spent Saturday night with them as they babysat 4 American kids and then went to church and lunch with them on Sunday morning. It was a really good time and I really appreciated the chance to see some familiar faces. It hasn't been that long since I arrived here but my immersion into Indian life has been so full on that the rest was appreciated. Up until Saturday night I hadn't seen more than 5 white faces in my time in the city. That has now been rectified.

It was also a chance to catch up on some of the small things I have been missing. We ate pizza and drank beer on Saturday night, had muffins for breakfast and then ate at a crazy American mock-diner on Sunday. I even had a shower (for my excitement about this see an earlier post).

The people at their church and that they both worked with were wonderfully friendly and it was nice to understand what was going on in conversation - though the Americans struggled to understand me. It was also encouraging to share struggles and confusions. Being here with an almost entirely indigenous ministry (only some support and the model comes from outside) has meant that there haven't been many people around with which to process or who can provide a different opinion on what I have been seeing. Catching up with a group of strongly Christian expats provided a brief opportunity to do that.

After watching some of Ashes with Pete (there's an awful lot of Australian cricket available to watch here) it was back into my normal life as he dropped me at the stadium. The top two teams (the locals describe them as professional) were playing and the stadium was the fullest I've seen it. Suddenly I was the only white face again and the conversations were flowing in a language I couldn't understand. It was clearly time for me to get back to work but I remain thankful for the much needed chance to recharge.

Madras Eagles 0 - Food Corporation India 0

I have now played my first competitive match in quite some time. It wasn't too bad though it was very frustrating that we couldn't score because the Eagles were much better than the opposition. In the end almost every player on our team missed a chance to put us infront. I'm pretty confident results will get better as we get more used to playing together.

A few quick observations:

1. 2pm in Chennai can be very very hot (even in winter).

2. It doesn't matter what you do, if it's done to the white guy it's not a foul.

3. The local players who play a wonderful pass and move football in small sided games tend to become advocates of Route One long ball football when confronted with a pitch that has real grass and therefore will allow the ball to travel well across the ground.

It's going to take some getting used to playing here and I think it is going to take the team some time to get used to playing with me. I don't think I'm much like the strikers they are used to - I definitely look very different.

Trials and Transfers

Prayer may be able to move mountains but Football Federation Australia is beyond hope. At least that was the sentence I first planned to write when I sat down to draft this message. After waiting longer than expected (and a whole lot of local prayer) for the transfer to be processed Bec had called the FFA for me to find out what was causing the delay. Apparently rather than sending it to the club I had last played for in 2005 they had found a club of similar name in Cairns and sent the request for clearance there. They were wondering why they hadn't heard back yet! Given that Indian bureaucracy is famous for being slow and frustrating it was pretty annoying to realise the delay was due to Australian incompetence.

However, as a reminder not to doubt God even in jest, as I sat scrawling Robin received a phone call from the President of the Tamil Nadu FA. Apparently he was in Delhi on a conference and had just seen my clearance arrive from Australia. I didn't even have to wait for it to be sent from the national office to the state office as the President approved the transfer on the spot. Last night I sat at a desk in the FA offices and signed the final paperwork to make me an Eagles player for the season... and today is my first game.

At the pleasantly warm hour of 2pm today I make my local debut and am pretty excited and also very nervous about it. I'm still only just getting used to the conditions and am hopeful I can play to the best of my ability and really glorify God on the field. Please keep this part of the ministry in you prayers as it is definitely an area of great potential but also an area where I know the temptations to loose focus or take short cuts is all too real. Given my role here it isn't important that I set the league alight or score lots of goals (though that'd always be nice) but it is important that I do a good job and really serve the Lord with my heart, mind and boots.

On the short term motivational value of novelty

The novelty has worn off. I've now been overseas for basically 2 weeks and in India for just a few days less. Life has started to fall into a pattern and there is a growing sense that much of what I do today will be the same as what I'll do tomorrow and the day after that and so on. More than that I have a growing sense that the problems I have struggled with over the last 2 weeks will remain the same for much of my time away.

What I wouldn't give right now to come home from football training and have a warm shower, or even to have trained on grass rather than hard dirt. What I wouldn't give for fly screens on my windows or air-conditioning, for a break from the sick tired and therefore very moody 3 year old I share a house with (and the rest of her family) or to be able to speak the heart language of my team mates. Actually I've probably expressed that wrong. I probably wouldn't give much at all for many of those things, I definitely wouldn't go home or give up on why I cam here, but they definitely do wear you a little thin and tire you out.

From what I've experienced of temporarily crossing cultures (admittedly not a great deal) it seems like week 3 is one of the toughest, at least if you're fairly settled in your movements. At least it often has been for me - along with week 1, week 7, week 12 and so on. The excitement of the newness has started to fade a little, it's just another cow in the middle of the road, but you know you are a long way away from returning to the comforts of home. I think it's these weeks when you have to make real call about why you are there. If it's just a change of scene that you're after then the time can be very difficult indeed.

However, for me the last 24 hours has been a real time for recommitting to why I am here. With ongoing transfer problems and a whole load of small niggly problems starting to frustrate me, not to mention a wife who I'd really love to be back in Sydney looking after, I've had to refocus. Crossing cultures has been (and I'm sure will continue to be) fun but I'm here to serve the Lord. I'm here to minister to the 23 players that make up the team squad and anyone else the Lord puts in my path. There's been no great moments, no amazing events or strong vindications. Just a sense that if you're doing the Lord's will, sharing His word and caring for His people, HE WILL SUSTAIN... even when the novelty starts to wear off.

more from home

Before I met Andrew I was always very good at being alone. I always had my internal dialogues for company when all else failed. Funnily enough when I got married those conversations in my head went very quiet (maybe just because I had someone other than my barbie dolls who was always ready to listen to my random rambling thoughts).

While we were in Thailand we really learnt to trust God together, to pray and read His word regularly together – that was a great blessing regardless of how hard it was to be there. Now I am learning to do that on my own. I am also teaching myself to sit on the balcony and watch the morning sun cast shadows over my feet and know that I am not alone. There has been a lot to reflect on and pray about lately. There seems to be no limit to our vulnerability, but also no limit to how much God can use these broken vessels.


In less than three weeks I will get to meet the people who have been so generous and gracious to Andrew, to see all the things he has told me about and watch him do what God has gifted him to do. I can’t wait.

The Local Scene

Having now been here for a week I thought I would record a few of my first impressions about life here. The first thing to say is probably the most obvious – it’s very, very different. It’s a city of millions and millions of people but almost no high rises. It just sprawls in every direction with blocks of tiny apartments packed full of people.

Traffic is insane! I thought Thailand was pretty challenging to get around but here seems far worse. Traffic doesn’t seem to gridlock as much as Bangkok but the combination of cars, trucks and millions of motorbikes as well as auto-rickshaws, bicycles and buses has created an almighty mess. There seems to be very little regard paid for road rules. Drivers seem to think that if they sound their horn first they can drive anywhere – and they sound their horn an amazing amount. The other night in a car we had to brake to a holt because two motorbikes side by side had accelerated around a bus taking up our entire side of the road. This is combined with a willingness to puss their vechile into any space if it helps them get where they are going. Intersections here have to be seen to be believed as there doesn’t seem to be any rules about right of way etc other than if you think you can get round the corner go for it. Bikes often change sides of the road and drive down the right to make turns in that direction easier. In the last couple of days I’ve started traveling round the city on the back of various motorbikes and am really starting to get a taste of how nuts this city can be. My scariest experience was coming back from dinner a couple of nights ago on the back of a moped behind Angela with Abi (who’s 3) between us, all 3 of us without helmets. It’s tough trying to hold onto the bike with one hand and a small with the other. The dust and exhaust fumes ensure I finish most journeys pretty worn out.

Robin and Angela have been amazingly welcoming and it is great to stay with them. They have willingly moved their entire family of 4 into one bedroom so that I can have the other (and access to the western style toilet). Home life here is a constant mixture of the similar and the very, very different. There is broadband in the house so I can skype Bec regularly and keep up with emails and cable television so I even got to watch the final hours of the last Ashes test. However, due to a quirk of the local water supply and the position of the house there is no running water so I’m learning to wash with a bucket of cold water (see picture). I’m also getting used to the food which is nearly always rice and some sort of a curry. Today I even had a curry for breakfast. The shops locally sell a number of western products but for now I’m trying to get by on an Indian diet. I’ve even started to eat meals with my fingers – though I’m much slower at this than the locals. Of course you’re not allowed to use the left hand. The other major challenge is trying to avoid being eaten by mosquitoes in a house without any screens and where my hosts quite like having windows and doors open. Given the kind of things you can get from a bite here it definitely keeps you on your toes.

All in all I am really enjoying my time here – even if it is very exhausting. The people have been amazingly friendly and have really taken me into their lives. I’ve been so well looked after that it took me almost a week to see what the local currency looked like up close. I have also found renewed encouragement in reading the word of God, something I always find much easier to do overseas than in the “busyness” of Sydney. Other than waiting eagerly for my wife and wishing they could develop some way to wipe out mosquitoes completely (obviously without the ecological chain reactions that destroying an entire species would have) God has been using this time to challenge and encourage me in my sense of calling to football ministry.

First Football

The Saturday after I flew into town the Eagles organised a practice game so that I could start to get used to local conditions and the team. At 5:30am in the morning we left the AIA camp and drove to another college, MCC, half way back to the city. I hadn’t got much sleep for the reasons discussed previously so was feeling pretty tired when we arrived at a pretty little ground in amongst the college's fairly large grounds (there were even deer in the grounds and one ran across the field after the game). The field itself wasn’t quite as green. In fact there were only a few patches of grass and the rest was very hard brown rock and small stones. The match was against the Netaji club who are in the division above the Eagles (the top flight of state football).

I started off in midfield as part of Robin’s desire to see if I could direct the team from there. What we learned by that experiment was that a slightly unfit Australian who is unused to conditions and doesn’t know the players names around him is pretty ineffective as a holding midfielder and I got tired pretty quickly. Due to interchange being used I came off after 25 minutes in order to get some breath back before the 2nd half. I played most of that half up front which was a much gentler way to get used to the conditions. The humidity at 8:30 in the morning was still pretty shocking. In fact but for my inability to get used to the incredibly irregular bounce and the fact that I couldn’t get enough purchase on the ground to turn and accelerate properly I could have had a couple of goals. In the end we lost 3-0 but a couple of goals probably wouldn’t have counted if their coach wasn’t referee. It was a good taste of the football here and I felt like given a bit of time to acclimatise I could definitely have an impact here. The players are individually reasonably good but don’t work together well as a team and often made fairly basic mistakes.

The first official Eagles match was on Monday (a different start date again from what I had last heard). Unfortunately my papers still haven’t come through from Australia so I was forced to watch the game from the bench. All the games in the league take place in the Nehru Stadium in the middle of the city. It can seat about 20-30,000 so is a pretty impressive place to play games. For most football matches the spectators probably don’t even fill 1% of it. There is far more grass on the surface than any other field I’ve seen in the area but is still pretty rutted under that superficial surface. Normally Division 1 occurs at 2pm prior to the Senior Division at 3:45pm. However, as it was the first day of the season and the Senior Division hadn’t started yet the Eagles match was at 3:45pm. This made it even more frustrating to be sitting on the bench as the weather was perfect for football with a light breeze keeping the humidity as good as it has been since I’ve arrived. The team played well against a much weaker team and came away with a resounding 6-0 win. It’s a great start to the season and almost enough for me to decide that they don’t need me and come home. They assure me that other teams in the division will pose more of a challenge but it was good for the players confidence to get a good win and gave the coaching staff a chance to try a few things and encourage the team to work on things like it’s shape and passing without major pressure. It was also encouraging for me to see how the team prayed before and after the game and took time out of their preparations to hear from a short devotional.

Overall my first few days here have been reasonable from a ‘footballing’ perspective – I’ll be more relaxed once the transfer goes through. The team are a great bunch of guys who are keen to learn and who I think I’ll enjoy playing with. There’s also an opportunity to push myself by training with Robin’s Senior Division team – Customs. More importantly the Eagles contain both non-Christian players who I am sure God has put in the team to hear the gospel and young Christians who God is just starting to awaken to the possibilities of service through football. I just pray I can have a role in serving both these groups.

Athletes in Action Camp - Chennai

After only 2 nights in my home for the next 10 weeks I was off to an AIA camp. Held on a college campus about 40 minutes drive out of Chennai it involved 3 days of sports coaching across 5 disciplines - football, basketball, volleyball, athletics and strength and conditioning. The athletes were all college students from across the south of India and a number of coahces and athletic directors. AIA had brought in American coaches for basketball, volleyball and strength and conditioning. One had flown in especially from the AIA head office for the camp and the others (including the speaker) had come down from the AIA base in Bangalore. I was responsible for running the football program with 2 Indian coaches assisting me.

The program was very full on with the athletes having 3 football sessions each day as well as conditioning work each morning. It was also pretty exhausting for their Australian coach who was struggling with the heat and jet lag as well as trying to keep in touch with news from home. However, the time was really rewarding as I not only got to work on my coaching and try some new things with the players but made good friends with the guys, despite language challenges. On one day took the goalkeepers aside to work on some particular drills which they were incredibly excited about. One of them shared at the closing ceremony that it was the first time he'd had specific training for his position. Alongside the program for players was a program for coaches in which they were instructed in general coaching theory, how to develop their athletes strength and conditioning and spent a session each day observing the foreign coaches at work. It definitely kept me on my toes to have an audience of Indians watching most of my sessions.

More important than the chance to improve the players skills was the opportunities to share my testimony and also the gospel with the athletes. The speaker did a great job of sharing his story with the athletes and seriously encouraging them to commit their lives to Christ. From the feedback I got it seems like quite a few of those there did so.

The weekend wasn't without its challenges as the mosquitoes were at close to plague proportions, the heat took it out of you after a day outside and at night I was sharing a double bed with an older Indian man who was not only very friendly and a great athletics coach but also a great snorer. These things coupled with Bec's inability to remember the time difference meant I finished the camp very tired but really encouraged that God wants me to be here in India at this time and that he has plans to use me here.

Singapore

I' d only just arrived in Singapore when I heard that Bec's tests had revealed a more serious problem than first thought. All I really wanted to do was get straight back on a plane to Australia. Leaving Bec behind had been hard enough when she was feeling unwell, now that it was a serious problem everything felt much worse.

Despite this set back Craig and Lauren made me so welcome whilst I was visting them that overall I would probably describe my time in Singapore as enjoyable. Their welcome was particularly appreciated as Lauren's parents were also in town and both Craig and Lauren's father had come down with a stomach bug. It was also great to have a chance to catch up with Craig and Kath Harris over a meal and find out how they were doing in Singapore.

The city itself was quite interesting - to me it felt like a half way point between a city in the west and the rest of Asia (Of course my reflections are only based on a 24 hour period so shouldn't be taken too seriously) There is hawker food but it is within the confines of specific markets and the sellers aren't too pushy and the traffic roughly follows the road rules. However, for me the half way nature of Singapore was best captured in the signs on the back of utes and trucks which said how many people each could carry. It's Asia so it's assumed people will ride in the back of utes and trucks but it's Singapore so there are limits on how many (though some of the small trucks had numbers that looked pretty squeezy). Oh and the food was very good.

A hard week at home

It has been a week of bad timing. We had a lovely day with family on Saturday having an early Christmas brunch. That evening Andrew's grandfather finally went to be with God after weeks of pain. A couple of days after farewelling a scared but excited boy at the airport, I found I needed to have emergency surgery. I am back at home recovering and being well looked after by family.
Apart from feeling like he just wants to be home to look after everyone, he is coping okay with the madness of Chennai. He is staying with a lovely couple, drinking lots of tea and played his first game on Saturday. He also got to spend a nice couple of days in Singapore with Craig and Lauren and Craig and Kath. Despite all that is going on, we are confident that this is where God wants us at the moment. Praise God for the support of our family and that things are going well for Andrew.