Five Minute Friday

Encouragement

What encourages you?
Keeps you from giving up?
Gives you courage?

A whisper in the dark of sorrow
"I know. I cry with you. "

A bracing challenge in the sunshine of confidence
"Be all you can be!"

A nameless shout in the 11th hour of exhaustion
"You can do it! Keep going!"

Friendly bullying in the face of lethargy
"Come on with me; let's do it together. "

I know each one
Different times
Different people
Each one
Jesus with skin on for me.
God is FOR me!

One Week in January

 Aiden is in the copy cat fun stage.  Everything Daddy does, Aiden will attempt.  Fixing Jasmin's bike, exercise stretches, you name it, he tries it. So cute!

We did a short weekend trip to Bangkok to meet with someone coming from Canada (and renew our Malay visas)...

 The train going was SO cold with aircon: the girls warmed their feet on the sunny windows.  We received a love gift from Imma and Abba - new shirts for the girls promptly worn and delighted in :o)  We needed those shirts that trip - we ended up having to stay an extra day because of the planned protests in Bangkok.  When we arrived and went to buy our return tickets, the train was fully booked (the day before the protests), so we had to book for the day of the protests.  To avoid any problems, we went to the station in the early morning even though our train wasn't until 2:45.  It was a LONG wait, but since the main action of protest was blocking intersections....  Around lunch time, we began seeing growing groups of protestors in the station, so we were relieved when the train left without incident.

A random casual glance in the city sewer walking home today caught this sight: a huge monitor lizard sat blinking in the sun.  Made me think of all the urban legends of alligtaors in the sewers...

Five Minute Friday

Fight
Once I wondered known but not knowing
Tangled thick in sins tight webbing
Fight with your might
Fight with your strength
Fight with passion!
Tangled deeper in sin's tight webbing.

 I came to know as I am known
Bitter truth of despairing helplessness
Struck through with blinding brilliance
Truth will/has set you free!
Fight with hope
Fight with faith
Fight with grace
Shaken free of sin's dark webbing

Though I know as I am known
 I can be tangled still
Fear
Lies
Falls
Despair
Fight with remembering
Fight with trust
Fight with rest!
The fight is not yours to win
It is won!

More Christmas and New Year

Christmas week we went to Queensbay Mall where we had been once before to a fantastic Kid's Play Place.  But when we got there - it was gone... being replaced with a video game arcade :o(  Huge disappointment all around.  Going with friends was supposed to be Jasmin's Christmas present... we hung out in the mall anyway: found a much smaller, not-quite-satisfactory play place which they visited for 1/2 an hour, explored the huge "gingerbread" castle display, browsed a big book store, and ended up buying Jasmin a stuffed horse instead.  Good thing she is pretty easily pleased :o)

There was a "Christmas" party for our condo complex last Saturday too.  Really it was more like a kid's fair... still lots of fun!  There were about 10 stations of different games/challenges for kids to try.  They could win coupons for a prize store, and at the end there was pizza for everyone.  Grace did every challenge more than once, and didn't really care about the coupons or prizes, but Jasmin counted carefully to work to get what she wanted.  Aiden was thoroughly taken with the magnetic darts and would have monopolized it if we let him!  He was not that difficult to distract once Jasmin bought a ball with her coupons :O)







Christmas Eve we discovered that a short run is actually quite helpful for mom's current back issues.  Rather counter intuitive, but we're not knocking it.  Behind our complex is a small strip of a dead end boulevard. So we are going there daily now. Jasmin has learned to ride her bike without training wheels, Grace is working up to 100 skips, and mom and dad are running.  Aiden gets to play with the loads of falling leaves (its dry season now) and gets rides around the loop in the stroller.  A New Year decision to keep it up all year, as it is good fun as a family and good for us too!