Easter

Singapore is a very interesting country to live in, there are many different religions and races all living together in harmony. 

Good Friday is a public holiday in Singapore as is Christmas, Scott also gets off work several other days through out the year for various holidays that are important to various religious groups, we are trying to learn more about these holidays that we don't really know anything about while we are here.

It is really important to us to keep as much of our family tradition in our holidays as possible while living an ocean away from our family.

 Usually we would get together with Scott's family on the Saturday before Easter to have a pot luck dinner and spend the day outside playing games, there is always a BIG egg hunt, there have been as many as 18 dozen eggs hidden in the past.

Easter Sunday is spent at church in the morning then we go to Randi's parents house for a nice dinner and quality time together, there are egg hunts, go cart and dirt bike driving etc.. sometimes Randi's grandparents from Indiana have been able to join us in Wisconsin for the celebration.

This year however, it is just the four of us.  We went to church on Good Friday to barely find a seat available, it was a packed service and meaningful to us.

 Friday during the day we colored our eggs, a friend sent us a paas egg dye kit in the mail so we could keep that tradition alive.

As we started with clean eggs I was reflecting on how we try to make ourselves look clean, nice, and presentable before meeting up with people.  Natural eggs have a real calming quality to them.  They are fresh, delicious and nutritious.

We can change the appearance of that egg by what we apply, it is interesting when you are dealing with both brown eggs and white eggs, the dye of course looks different based on the base color. 

We as Christians can look one way on the outside but really we know that we are sinners, Romans 3:23 tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" So really the inside of us looks to me remarkably like this egg that we dyed.

We are clouded with sin, cracked vessels, imperfect, trying hard to blend into our environment.  Romans 6:23 reminds us that "the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"


I loved how this "pink" egg dye turned out on our brown egg it was reflective of the blood of Jesus covering my sin and my shame.

The best part is that in Romans 5:8 it also says "God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us"  Jesus paid our price on that cross on Good Friday we do not need to walk around with shame and guilt from our sin, it has been forgiven.

Romans 10:9-10 assures us that "if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved: for with the heart man believes , resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation"

The golden gates of heaven are open to all who confess Jesus as Lord.  We are all still sinners, trust me our sin does not go away but the power in the blood of Jesus frees us from the shame and bondage of sin.

So really one could say that we are all eggs of a different kind but we are all people and we are all sinners living together on one little island in peace and harmony.

May God touch your heart this Easter as He has touched ours and may you know the power of that blood that was indeed shed for you.

 As we hold to our family traditions this year and as we learn about and love the people around us we really are trying to stay focused on what is important in our lives.

HAPPY EASTER TO YOU ALL, we miss you!

~THE MILES FAMILY Easter, 2011

The Dengue Detectives

A few weeks ago we got a flyer in our mailbox from our condo management office stating that there was a case of dengue fever in our complex.  The mailing stated that they did not think that this case of fever was contracted at our complex but all residents need to be extra careful to do their part in mosquito prevention.

This brings us to today, it was late afternoon and our door bell rang, upon answering the door we discovered a guard from our complex who said "we are here to check mosquito's" with him was an employee of "The Ministry of Environmental Safety."  They came right in and went right to our roof top garden with clip board in hand and a ticket for mosquito offense ready to write.  WHAT?! 

Seriously, they went to all my plants to be sure that there was no standing water, thank goodness there was not, then he checked some containers that are  under a roofed area and never get wet for standing water.  If there was an offense we would have gotten a ticket.

At first I was offended but really dengue fever is nasty and it can be deadly.  I am grateful that we live in a country that takes prevention seriously.  They spray large amounts of pesticide every week, this is hard for me to get used to as I love to keep things organic but there is not prevention for dengue other than to kill off the mosquito population.

The characteristic symptoms of dengue are: a sudden-onset fever, headache (typically behind the eyes), muscle and joint pains, and a rash; the alternative name for dengue, "break-bone fever", comes from the associated muscle and joints pains.

Here is a commercial that they run on TV and if you want to know more about dengue I encourage you to look it up.

Dengue Fever Commercial

We are doing our part and praying that no one gets dengue fever in our family.

?Help?

Have you ever had an opportunity to help someone who has just had a fall, or have injured themselves in  your presence?

Before moving to Singapore we had an 8 hour cultural training class and one of the topics in that training was what to expect if you have an accident while in Singapore.

  We were told that we should not expect people on the street to stop and help us if we are in an accident so make sure we have the emergency numbers in our phones.  That's comforting right?

My boys were out to their language lessons and on the way home it was raining.  As they were approaching the bus stop they saw the bus they needed coming so they decided to run in order to catch the bus, as they rounded the corner they hit a wet spot of grass and BAM down one of them went with a scream out from pain. 

There was an elderly woman in front of them who heard and saw the whole thing, in Singapore an elderly woman who is Chinese is referred to as an "auntie".  When she witnessed the fall her response was......well....rude really.

  This "auntie" proceeded to turn and look at my son lying on the ground bleeding and in pain, did she help?  Did she have any concern for the well being of the person who just fell?  No, her response was to shake her head and finger at him and cluck her tongue at him before she moved on.  ???? 

Several people did indeed stop to see if they could help, offered to call someone on the cell phone etc.. but they were teenagers, not the "older" adult generation of people.

So we let that digest for a bit, this "auntie" was not thinking she was being rude, she in fact was disgusted that a child was "being careless enough to fall".  I have witnessed this a few times, a little boy about the age of 3 or so, running towards an escalator, falls, cuts his lip and gets yelled at by dad for not being careful, he too got a clucking of the tongue. 

Since my fall two weeks ago, my arm has been splinted drawing immediate attention to the fact that there is an injury.  People have been very concerned, very kind to ask what happened but as they find out that I injured my hand due to a fall they shake their head and say "you must be careful so you don't fall".   Then they will offer some kind of well meaning advice, like avoid cold drinks, don't eat vinegar, don't take pain medicine etc....

So what is it about a fall that invokes this kind of reaction in part of the population here?  If you witnessed someone fall, would you cluck at them and move on or would you help them?  Just where does the clucking come from, it is obviously deep inside that person as it is an immediate reaction to the situation.  I find the human race fascinating and although I hope we do not have any more personal experience with falls and the reactions of people to falls I do hope to study a bit more what is behind the lack of compassion and the lack of ? help?.

Visit Highlights

Ahhhh what a blissful two weeks we had with our first Singapore visitors we certainly did a lot and had a ton of fun.

Did we ever take pictures, and pictures, and pictures.  This blog will contain just a few of the highlights as we as a group of four women took well over 1,000 pictures.

They traveled about 30 hours to get to Singapore and once here road on elevators

escalators, more than we can begin to count

buses, many, many buses

and trains, subways and the MRT

we even got to sit in a traffic jam and enjoy the sunset.

We went to Clark Quay

the gardens

Arab Street

Little India

China Town

Sentosa Island

where we enjoyed some sunshine, cold drinks, and ice cream

and Pula Ubin where we road bikes

got close to a wild boar

and once again enjoyed some sunshine

Singapore is famous for food we ate at many different hawker centers crab, octopus, prawns,sting ray, chicken, beef, pork and rice were enjoyed.

Wild life abounds in Singapore, we toured the bird park,

the zoo

and the night safari

There are many beautiful photo spots that we took advantage of, thus the 1,000 pictures.

Of course with being out and about this much we experienced many different bathrooms which can be a learning experience and educational.

there is always the "squatty pot" option we fortunately did not have to use them

but the winner in the public bathroom arena is the night safari bathrooms they are set partially inside with a beautiful outdoor view for hand washing enjoyment these are the sinks.

We visited many markets and did a lot of good shopping.

Caleb even took the ladies to Holland Village one day to shop while I stayed back and rested my hand
I think this is excellent practice for when he is married.

We enjoyed our time of bonding and exploring and due to my injured hand Aunt Lea Ann made sure my nails were in order before leaving,

as the sun sets on this visit we will not soon forget our time together.