March 24 - April 4

March 24 to 28 saw us in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia at a Member Care conference.  Opportunity to meet with many wonderful people who are concerned about the welfare of cross-cultural missionaries.  As the conference brought out, missionaries are perhaps the most misunderstood and under-rated people in the church.  Because they are away from their home church they are often forgotten and left to try to survive on their own in a foreign environment.  Praise God for those who seek to minister to the "sent ones"!  

March 28 to 31: I left the conference early to take a bus back to Singapore on the night of the 27th.  Arriving home at 5:30 AM, I got ready to leave for Batam and Pontianak.  At 7:00 I met with 3 other men from the church and by 8 we were on the ferry to Batam.  Dave Enns met us there.  The flight to Ptk was delayed till 2, so we spent the time getting to know each other better. The whole weekend was great as we helped our brothers from Singapore get to know our brothers from Kalimantan.  Lots of cultural differences to compare. 

March 31st: Back to Batam and to Singapore.  Stopped to visit our good friends Wendy, Linda and Merry (former domestic helpers in Singapore... members of our Indonesian Fellowship) who are now living together in Batam.  Janet came over on the 30th to visit them.  

Now have just a few days to get everything in order... we leave for Canada on April 9th.  Will spend 2 weeks or so in BC, but will not be able to visit even a fraction of our friends there.  Priority will be to spend some time with our children.  Andrea's art show (her graduation from Capilano College) is on the 14th.  Joel's presentation is later in the week.