Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Update on life here

Sorry for the lack of blogging. Life has gone on here at an incredible pace and in the midst of that, we have dealt with some serious crises that have sapped my strength and creativity. Our boarding program lost three students last weekend due to poor choices and inappropriate behaviour. One of our girls was among the three and we are helping our students grieve and process in healthy ways, all of which takes time and patience and wisdom. We are receiving that from the goodness of God and through your prayers for us. It reminds me of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians...
We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us and he'll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing. You and your prayers are part of the rescue operation—I don't want you in the dark about that either. I can see your faces even now, lifted in praise for God's deliverance of us, a rescue in which your prayers played such a crucial part.

Thanks for holding us up and being part of our rescue operation! We appreciate each one of you.
Alan turned 16 over the Christmas break so we celebrated with a belated birthday party.
He got lots of food and some new t-shirts that are really cool.

David is a fine young Korean boy whose family lives in Indonesia...thus the reason he can speak Bahasa and English (and obviously Korean) fluently.

Chinese New Year weekend, Uncle Tim took some boys and Sabrina, of course, out to a waterfall to hike and play.

Laurian has grown so much in the two years he has been with us! He's beginning to discover his strength too so the older boys don't wrestle with him much anymore.
This is the slippery path on the rocks down into the pool of water. Apparently the hike out to the waterfall was fairly dangerous, Tim told me later, but no one seemed to mind the fact that the rocks were sharp and dangerous.
Sabrina also had a birthday. She turned 11 and we held her party after school so she could invite her day student friends.
She ordered the famous Oreo ice cream cake which can't have candles in it - only tealights on top!

On the Chinese New Year weekend, we had a full day off with Kaleb and Annie - so rare! We spent most of it with our friend Lisa and her two kids. We headed to the Youth Park, with several thousand other folks! We didn't swim - the pool didn't look so clean.
But we hung out at the skateboard park - no skateboard though just a lot of fun running up the ramps...very quickly because the cement was really hot!
Julia had her roller blades so she beetled around quite well.
Daniel made an attempt at running up the biggest ramp but didn't have enough steam to follow Kaleb.Later we enjoyed waffles and sausages at Lisa's house - the girls helped.

One night our family took a walk on the beach. These are the shanty houses put up for workers building the condos behind.
Father and son engrossed in a conversation.

The view from the school beach to the west towards Batu Ferringhi just around sunset at 7:30 pm.

4 comments:

Kate said...

Good to hear from you...love you and miss you

Pam and Gene said...

Two things....
Why no candles on Sabrina's cake?

I remember the shanties at the construction site. However when we were there last year (already!), I think there was only 1 or 2 floors up and steel being set. Such progress.

Gene

Carla said...

Great pictures and insite into life at Dalat. I will pray for you as you navigate these rough waters. Your talking about trusting God and your verse from Paul reminded me about what God is showing me lately. In fact I just wrote up a teen Sunday School lesson on "Dependence on God"...and we are reviewing people in the Bible who had to sometimes be broken or tested in order to completely trust and depend on God and be used by him. You are being used by Him, hang in there during this time of trouble....He will be glorified in it.

Colleen McCubbin said...

Thanks for the update, Shauna. I will pray. Bless you ...