Home Sweet Home

1 Sep

Happy Teachers' Day to all my teacher friends and family out there …. May the Lord renew your passion, love and commitment to serve the kids of the next generation! They are God's treasure and delight! They will be our pride and joy as we invest our lives in them …. ☺☺

We spent the rest of our time in Dili at the beach enjoying the live sea urchins near our hotel. We left for the airport and we had to switch airplanes three times (Dili to Bali, Bali to Jakarta and Jakarta to Singapore), which was rather tiring … but I was looking forward to my beloved bed, pillow, clean loo and my PC. We have been so disciplined to be 'logged out' from the world of internet for a whole entire week but back we come – to reality!!

God has been so faithful and kind. He gave us a safe journey when we drove from the West to the East (~4000 km), good health, hosts, food, water, electricity, weather like cool Camerons and most of all – superb company! The team was so gelled that it was like we had known each other for ages … we even planned for our afterglow in 2 weeks time. We are going to have a treat from our House-husband (only man on our team) – Uncle Jerry who will be whipping up popiah, itek tim, buah keluak, bakwan kepiting with soon, pepper crab, chap chai, ngoh hiang … etc. Is your mouth watering already? Mine is!

A Heart For Viqueque

31 Aug

That morning, Ps Yew Lin had the honor of sharing the word and we prayed specifically for the District of Viqueque (its pronounced VKK). This district is extra special because FCBC has been selected to adopt this district. Unfortunately, we do not have any missions team or base there. Recently, 400 over houses were being burnt up in the district due to the unrest. Also, the infrastructure for this district is not sufficiently set up and they do not even have a proper guest house for us to stay, should we visit. There is apparently only a Catholic orphanage which is run by some nuns and they are willing to provide housing for us.

Ps BC felt that for this trip, as a blessing to the other districts, we will not be making a trip down South to Viqueque so where we were, in Lospalos, we prayed for Viqueque from afar. We asked the Lord specifically for teams, local partners and even a couple to be stationed there. We also prayed that by the end of this year, we would see someone or groups of people taking full ownership of that land…. The Lord gave us some visions as we prayed… that Viqueque is like a choked-up place. I saw a vision of a big bottle filled with lots of treasure inside but it was corked up. Another vision the Lord gave to me was a dry well and I saw many people pouring water into in. Later, Ps BC shared with me that indeed the visions I saw was correct. The wells in Viqueque are really dry. May the Lord uncork the bottles of treasure and fill the dry wells to overflowing so that the Work and Word of God can be penetrated into this specific district. It’s OURS as we learn to claim the inheritance that God has given to us, just like Abraham when he saw the vast land in Gen 13:14. Lift up your eyes from where you are and look North, South, East and West. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. What an awesome promise for us to claim!!

That night, I had a vivid dream of Ps VT driving in a 4-wheel drive (like the type we were driving) and going round the mountains in Timor. He was so fearful of the sides that he kept shouting out. Somehow, this came as another surprise to me – I was told later that he had been to Timor twice and each time he drove, he would be fearful of the road. Ha! What was God trying to tell him? I must tell him my dream when there is an opportunity … is there a higher calling for him?? Hoho!

A New Calling?

30 Aug

Pastor Beow Chin was asked to share the word that morning after breakfast and I was ‘arrowed’ to lead the time of worship. God was among us that morning. She shared from 1 Cor 16:8,9 and Acts 19 about how Paul made his decision to leave or to stay in his Missionary journey …. We could consider what God was doing and what man was saying in the process. When we see the Holy Spirit’s outpouring, doing miracles, casting demons, healing and the Prophetic, we need to fix our eyes on God rather than on the opposition (verse 19) where there was disunity, false prophets and there was much fear in the hearts of the people especially during the riot with Demetrius. It was a great lesson for us as we considered the activity of God rather than that of men.

We drove off to the district of Lautem in the town of Lospalos where we met Ps Lily from Singapore’s Victory Family Church and her team. As it was such a long journey, we were happy to have found a little ‘restaurant’ called Angel where we ate yum fish with sauce, organic vegetables and hot peanut soup. After which, we were brought into the village to visit her team members. Ann and Boyle were so hospitable to host us as they shared about their work in the village. They left 4 children behind in Singapore (age ranging from 17 – 36) for a term of one year to serve the Lord in Lautem. Interestingly, Boyle was a horse trainer with Singapore Turf Club and gave up his job after he received the Lord some 3 years ago, to serve together with his wife, Ann in the mission field. How loving!! We had a time of prayer together at their cosy home and God released many words to us. I was weeping like a baby when the Lord spoke to me very vividly about a call and also released words for the team. Ps Lily also had a word for us ….”This is a new calling for you. God is sending you with a new vision when you come here. You will come and pray in a new dimension and will have a better perspective to capture the cry of the Timorese. The good life that you have will be paid back in the spiritual dimension.. whether you are the Go-er ..or the Send-er.” I believe that God opened our eyes to see how we could either send our people to serve on short or long term mission trips as well as ‘catch the fire’ and bring it back with us to ignite in the lives of our people back in Singapore.

At dinner time, in Roberto Carlos Hotel, we had an opportunity to share together at the table why we came for this trip and where we will go from here. Guess the Lord brought me there to have a glimpse of the work in Timor Leste and filled my heart with compassion and love for them. I am praying that there will be many more opportunities for me to go into the land to serve … God-willing!

From West To East

29 Aug

We had a sunrise service together at 6.30 a.m. (Timor time – Singapore time 5.30 a.m.) where we had a time of worship and prayer for the village of Mialiana, Ps Edson and the Government. It has been a long time since I played the guitar but I guess God uses weak vessels like us when we avail ourselves …It was awesome because the day before, we went up to the Indonesian border to pray for revival and we stuck our ice-cream sticks with verses that we wrote on it into the ground. We are trusting that the Word of God be planted in this district of Bobonaro and in the town of Maliana. As a result of our prayer today, we want to see miracles happening, just like we saw when we prayed for a local who visited us at the guest house (Mandano) who was suffering from Tuberculosis. He experienced the power of God come upon him and something was happening with his lungs when we prayed. Also, we want to pray a hedge of fire and protection over every pastor in that city, church worker and over Maliana. We are expecting a revival in the Timorese congregation that God would send a revival because of our prayer. Say bye bye to West Timor …..

After breakfast, we set off back to Dili and headed straight to Manatuto – East Timor, to visit another Singaporean couple from St John St Margaret’s Church – Francis and Grace. It was such a delight to be with them as they shared briefly about their work with us with 30 kids whom they were teaching English to and how their next door neighbour, who happens to also be their landlord, was selected the District Administrator because of their help to type his resume when they set up their dial-up internet service … yes … dial-up for us who are so used to broad-band speed … repent!! Oops….

We set off to another district Baucau to visit a Victory Family Church Base headed by Ps Vakaran and his wife Ruth who was managing a guest house to train local Timorese to teach Bible study to the Orang Laut people. He’s from Calvary JB and he shared how God called him and ‘blocked’ all the blessings when he chose to ran away from the call God gave. We were very thankful that we had beds (yes! again …), yummy bee hoon and clean loos to use. God sure knows how much we could bear, in terms of our tolerance for cleanliness and rest…. That’s our super duper Heavenly Father who loves us so much! This group of people in this guest house are real prayer warriors – they are up at 3 a.m. daily for personal devotion and at 6 a.m., they come together for corporate worship and devotion and at 7 a.m. they have breakfast together and then they are sent out into the villages to minister to the people. When our team heard about their daily schedule, we were ashamed that we prayed so little .. compared to them. But God still loves us …. Hee hee!!

Bobonaro, Here We Come ...

28 Aug

We set off early from Dili and arrived in the town of Bobonaro in a little village Maliana where we met 2 sets of families from Singapore. This couple – Sebastian, Andrea and little Timothy had a nice place where we spent time praying and worshipping in their house. We released the Word of God to them and ministered to them. We also partook of the Lord’s Supper together with them. They were from His Sanctuary Church, back here in Singapore.

There was another family, also in Maliana, a pastor from COOS, Ps Derrick and his wife Trisker, their son Elijah and Pearl. They are expecting their 3^rd child. It was nice to see how they lived when we visited them in their homes. More than that, we had an opportunity to pray for them, minister to them and shared about our prayer journey and how God led Ps Beow Chin, 2 years ago to plan for this trip to be on-site to bless the land. We are certain that as we make this journey to bless the Missionaries who are there, we are going to see a revival in that land as we, by faith, believe that God will plough up every hard ground and bring transformation to the lives of the Timor Leste people.

Thank God for the Guest House we stayed in that night. It was better than I expected when Ps Edson, the person in charge of the Guest House hosted us. There was a bed for each of us (even with a mosquito net), a proper loo and even yum goring ayam for us to feast on. The Lord gave a word that we needed to do an ‘Opening Ceremony’ of our trip with a sunrise service the next morning ….. so we had to go to bed really early.

YWAM Base in Timor

27 Aug

We visited the Nazarene Youth Centre in Dili where there was a lady Pastor AChae who just gave birth to a little baby girl. It was such a joy to be able to bring a little Moses basket and a sarong/ carrier for her and her new born baby as a gift from the ladies in my network. She needed it to bring it along when she went out for ministry. Thought that was such a sweet gesture on the part of my gals when I asked for it before we left. They were all generous to share and that is really the heart of Jesus for the poor and the needy.

We also visited the YWAM Base in Dili and met Annabel and the team. Many of them are Brazilians with some Australians and even Koreans serving there. They prepared delicious cheese bread and brownies for us! (I decided that I shall attempt to make the cheese bread when I return to Singapore. The recipe’ rather simple… I hope!)

The YWAM team shared with us about the state of the church in Timor Leste and also about the condition of the hearts of the people. The people of Timor Leste needs a revival – in their school system, their health conditions, the infrastructure of the Government but most of all, God must begin a transformation in their lives. There was an interesting testimony that the team shared with us that they had an opportunity to speak to the President and requested to have a prayer room next to his office. They wanted us to pray that God would grant that favor because it would be awesome if prayer teams had access to ‘speak’ into the lives of the high ranking authorities and declared God’s Word and Will to the nation. Indeed then, when the Government opens its doors to the Church, the nation would turn God-ward.

The team (East) was really doing a good work in Timor Leste. They were building houses for the people, especially those youths who had no education, were in financial bondages, lacked parental care or who were orphans. They were like family to them and cared and loved them, just like Jesus would. There was another testimony that was shared of this 8 year old boy who was beaten blue-black by his parents when all he did was sold a rooster in the market for $3 instead of $4. Parents used harsh methods of discipline on the kids and the team wanted us to pray that these parents would have the heart of God the Father…. What they lacked was the Father’s love.

The team (West) was doing something different. They were setting up mobile clinics and Music groups, Women and Kids Ministries and teaching the Timor Leste people how to make handicraft. They were requesting for prayer to increase the number of Missionaries there are now.

The team (South) had a partnership with the Village President to be involved in a project to build zinc houses and to help the people find produce from the land. They are to built 16 houses altogether and it would be a fund raising project for the Government to endorse so that they could establish the relationship with them through these means.

We prayed for the team before we left – for safety for them, their health, opportunities to meet the right people and connections, resources, a God-given model and strategy for other parts of Timor Leste to be transformed.

Arrival at Bali

26 Aug

You may want to view our photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/congal-csn/sets/72157601815579166/. We arrived at Bali airport after dear family members and friends sent us off at Changi Airport at 9.15 p.m. We checked into Aston Inn and went for a sumptuous dinner bought by Uncle Jerry – this uncle who made the entire Timor trip quite memorable. It didn’t seem quite like a mission trip especially the soft cushiony quilted bed in this Hotel in Dili. Well, guess God knew how much we could bear. Then again, God is sovereign! We chatted at the Restaurant till past 12 midnight where Uncle shared many wonderful testimonies of his life and how he met the Lord and was delivered from many bondages, strongholds and curses in his life. It’s all about the mercies of God constantly reaching out to us.