Our Friends' Wedding

Our friends Mei Sin and John got married on March 8th.  It was a wonderful wedding!  Lots of planning went into it and our community group was right in the middle of the planning and executing it all.  It was interesting to talk with Mei Sin about her planning and such since my own wedding wasn't all that long ago.  There is no registry here - only money is given to the bride and groom.  Generally you give about what your portion of the cost of the wedding dinner would be.  (you'll see why later!).  Mei Sin had three dresses, one for the wedding and two for the dinner.  She and John had to go and register their marriage in a civil government office before the church wedding.  This took place about a week before the actual wedding and she wore one of the dresses to that!  

The theme colors were red and white.  Because the guests would have to wait a bit between the afternoon wedding and the dinner (which would probably start late), they decided they wanted to give the guests something to nibble on while waiting.  So they asked our friend Hannah and I to bake cupcakes to set out on the tables.  We decided to do red velvet cupcakes with white butter cream frosting and little red hearts.  It was an all day affair.  First Hannah brought over her oven:  

Yup, that's Roy carrying the oven into the house.  We had to bake 300 cupcakes so we knew we'd need extra baking help.  We had quite an assembly line going with two stand mixers, two ovens, and six of us mixing dry and wet ingredients, frosting and decorating.  It was a lot of fun and the cupcakes turned out really pretty...



Chinese weddings are all about the dinner.  The service was lovely and the groom played the violin as his bride walked down the isle, but the main event was in the dining room later!  The dinner is a 9 course affair.  I forgot to take a photo of the first course which was four hot and cold appetizers.  But here are the rest...

Shark's Fin Soup

Crispy Roasted Chicken with Black Pepper Sauce

Steamed Red Snapper with Ginger and Garlic

Baked Tiger Prawns with Salted Egg and Butter

Braised Clams with Assorted Mushrooms and Vegetables

Fried Rice in Lotus Leaves

Sweet Fancy Duets (the nearer ones are little buns and the far ones are a jelly like thing rolled in coconut)

and finally....Sweetened Sea Coconut with Oat and Milk

It was all delicious.  I really enjoyed the shark's fin soup and the coconut soup thing at the end.  At each table there are about 10 to 12 people and so you each get a small portion of each dish.  It makes it really nice.  Kind of like a tapas thing.   Between each course there were things going on up front - like friends singing a song, Mei Sin and John singing, a photo collage from friends in Europe, cutting the cake (which was fake!), toasting and also their first dance (Roy and I got invited up to dance with them).  

We were really honored to be a part of the wedding.  We served with others as ushers and I read scripture during the service.  

I love this photo of them!

Here's our community group toasting the bride and groom!

And here is a photo of our whole community group with the bride and groom!  

 

More from January and February

January and February absolutely flew by.  Both were packed with visitors from the US and lots of other things.  A new couple joined us in early January and will be here for 2 years.  Shortly after their arrival, three other couples came to visit and make decisions about being involved in what we are doing.  We all got together for a retreat in a nearby resort town.  It was nice to get away to cool breezes on the coast.  

Roy and I started a Marriage Course (which finished in March).  That was a great thing for both of us.  It not only helped with our communication but also gave us a great opportunity to get to know several other couples in the church.  We love working with the students, but it is nice to get to know other couples as well.

I helped start a women's Bible study at our church.  I'd been looking around for something in the area and couldn't find anything close by and during the day.  I had asked another lady and she got really excited because she had been wanting to do something similar.  We began with a study on 1 John from Redeemer Church in NYC and are now working on one from the same church on Prayer.  It has been a great place for me personally to grow and learn from these other ladies.  

More visitors came in mid and late February plus we hosted a Valentines outreach for college students at our home.  We popped popcorn, made chocolate cake and served up lots of sweets while watching a movie with the theme of love.  It was quite fun and the students enjoyed it.  We have ordered some more movies to show over the course of the next year - all on the theme of redemption.  

Chinese New Year - Year of the Ox

Okay, so Chinese New Year was in January and this post is really late...but hey, at least I'm getting around to it finally!  Roy and I hosted a Chinese New Year (CNY) party for students in our home the week before the actual event because everyone (and I mean everyone) goes home for CNY.  The streets literally empty out.  We had friends who had just moved here and we told them it was the best time to drive because no one was around that week.  Businesses closed anywhere from 2 or 3 days to 2 weeks!  (those that were Chinese owned - not your regular grocery stores).  

So we asked our Chinese colleagues if they would provide all the food.  It was a wonderful afternoon.  We learned so much.  When we were in the US, the CNY parties were all about the dumplings - but there wasn't a dumpling in sight!  The food is very different.  There were pineapple tart/cookie things, chips made from arrow root, and some BBQ meat that was dried a bit like jerky.  All the food is centered around prosperity and money.  If the name of the food in Chinese, or the shape of the characters or food itself look like money, then it is "lucky" to eat it during CNY.  Anything gold (like pineapples) is a good thing.  Red is the color for decorating.  There were red lanterns decorating many of the houses in the neighborhood - they should be done in twos just in case you want to decorate next year!  

The photos above are of something called Yang See.  It is a regional dish that you won't necessarily find in other Chinese communities around the world.  The name again has to do with prosperity.  Everyone gathers around the table and uses chopsticks to toss the different items into the air and mix it all up.  The idea is that the higher you go, the more prosperity you will have in the new year.  You also wish aloud for things that you want.  Apparently this is a good thing to do with your business partners over lunch during CNY.  

Oranges are another thing that are given out during CNY.  (also in pairs).  If you are married, you give all of your single relatives ang pow - which is a monetary gift.  Our cell group made sure that Roy and I knew all about this tradition!  While we didn't give any ang pow to them, we did give it to the children of friends when we went to their house for a CNY lunch.  

We really enjoyed our first CNY and look forward to celebrating it again next year now that we know lots more about what goes on and what to expect.  It is exciting to get to know new traditions and also to see how the Christian community takes the traditions and sorts out what is tied to past religions and what is just cultural.  

Cool photo

When we were in Singapore last month we went to eat down by the river.  They had lights underneath the stairs all lit up.  They would change color and sometimes have multiple colors.  I thought it was really cool and tried to capture it with my camera.  Not sure this does it justice, but I thought it was pretty.

Fireflies and Seafood

Being near the sea, there is an abundance of seafood available here.  Our Chinese friends love seafood.  During the Christmas and New Year holidays we had opportunities to go out to eat with lots of friends.  On New Year's Eve, we went to a local seafood place that was amazing.  There were 17 of us and we sat at 2 tables.  One of the guys ordered food for us and we ended up with about 10 different dishes.  There was black pepper crab, and salted egg crab, two kinds of prawns (shrimp), la la (clams), sotong (squid), plus a beancurd soup, some lamb and some chicken.  It was a crazy amount of food!  

After dinner we went back to a friend's house played games and brought in the New Year.  After the countdown we each shared how God blessed us in 2008 and what we were looking forward to in 2009.  What a great way to start the year! 

A couple of days later, Roy and I took our ministry leaders on an overnight retreat.  We wanted to have time to plan and think about what God can do through us in the next year.  We went to a place that is known for its fireflies.  I remember sitting in my back yard in the summer time and seeing a few fire flies flit around here and there.  Sometimes there might be a lot - like 10, but NOTHING like what we saw!  We took a boat ride after dark on the river and you would see bushes filled with fire flies!  Hundreds of them on one bush - all twinkling like Christmas lights.  I wish I could have captured it on film, but we weren't allowed to use flash photography.  It was so very cool.

Our package deal included a "self serve" BBQ dinner.  So after our boat ride we went to see what this dinner would be and discovered that they provided a charcoal fire and lots of raw seafood and other meats along with a tray of watermelon and some chinese tea!  We had to cook the food ourselves.  By this time it was about 9:00 p.m.!  We had a great time grilling and eating and just sharing out stories with each other.  

Here is a photo of Roy and Kelvin manning the grill!

Here is a photo of our leaders - minus the one taking the photo.  

Here is a photo of the chalets we stayed in.  We had one chalet with two sides - each with two bedrooms.  It was quite nice.  
The next day we met and worked through our goals for the year, came up with a theme and then worked on some other details.  For lunch we drove to a nearby town and went to a seafood restaurant!  Crazy!  When we got home later and Roy asked what was for dinner I said, "not seafood!" 

December and the New Year

Merry Christmas!  Okay, so it is a bit late.  Sorry about that.  I put off blogging through the holidays because it got to be a bit crazy.  Roy was traveling a bit and I was busy baking, baking, baking.  

We decided to host an open house for our neighbors and friends the weekend before Christmas.  So, I made 3 kinds of quick breads, dipped pretzels in chocolate, made cookies, peppermint bark and other sweet treats and set up a dessert table along with hot apple cider (not as odd as it sounds in such a hot climate!).  We were blessed by many people coming to hang out and enjoy themselves.  




Christmas Eve was spent at church and I made 5 fudge wreaths for the dessert at the church (400 people came for dinner, worship service and a dramatic production).  It was quite a crowd!

Then on Christmas Day, I made a big dinner with all the fixings - turkey, stuffing, veggies, rolls, cranberry chutney, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.  We invited some international students who didn't have family in town and some other friends as well.  We had dinner and then sang some Christmas carols and shared stories about our past Christmases.  It was a sweet time.  Our Botswanan student LOVED the potatoes!  And, he really liked the pumpkin pie and bread.  

It was a really sweet time of celebrating Christ's birth.  We were amazed at how many stores decorated for Christmas.  But we were also blessed that unlike in the US, Christmas was seen as a Christian holiday.  There wasn't any pressure to change the name or to not say "Merry Christmas" even to a Muslim friend.  It is our holiday and just like we would wish them well on their holiday, they would honor us and wish us well on ours.  It was just nice to not have to be "PC."  

After Christmas Roy and I took a bit of a holiday and went ballroom dancing in Singapore!  That was so much fun.  We have really missed being able to do that frequently like we did in the US.  We used to go to a dance at least once or twice a month, plus we took lessons.  We found that we were a bit out of shape and needed to work on our communication as he led around the dance floor.  

rainy cool weather

It rained all day yesterday - a nice gentle rain that was almost like a mist at times. We've been getting crazy storms that have booming thunder and lots of lightening. Really scary stuff! The humidity is really high with those and so it doesn't seem very cool even though the sun isn't shining.  But yesterday it was cool ... really cool.  We didn't have the air con on all day - a first since we've moved here!  It reminded me of Portia's speech from the Merchant of Venice .. "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It was a great day to be reflective and consider all that God has done in our lives these last six months and all that he is continuing to do!