Singapore History 101

Fort Canning Park

There were three stops in Fort Canning Park during the Car Rally. The first picture shows a sign about the Battle Box, underground corridors and rooms that the British built in Fort Canning in 1936. This was an important site because the decision to surrender to the Japanese during World War II was made here in 1942.

The most impressive site was Fort Gate. Fort Canning was used as a military base by the British (who built it), the Japanese (during World War II), and Singapore’s armed forces (once it became a country). The government of Singapore demolished the fort in the 1970’s to make room for a reservoir. This gate and the adjoining wall are all that remain.

In the 14^th century, Singapore was part of Malaysia and ruled by Malay kings. The third picture you see is information about the last of these kings, Iskandar Shah. When Sir Stamford Raffles came to Singapore from England in 1819, the Malays indicated that the hill that Fort Canning was later built on was called the “Forbidden Hill”. When the hill was cleared of jungle, ruins were found. It seems this was the place where the old kings had their palaces. A “keramat”, or tomb of a holy person, was also found. The tradition is that this tomb is for Iskandar Shah, who died around 1420.

Birds and Grass

On Friday afternoon Daddy took Aaron to explore the playground equipment at our condo. He wasn't very sure about the grass, or the riding birds.

True Wisdom

It says in Proverbs that the fear of God is wisdom. I'm not sure we really understand what this fear is. It also says in Proverbs that to fear God is to hate evil, pride and arrogance. Even this is harder to live out than to read and put into our heads. I've (Betsy) been reading the major prophets on my journey through the Bible. Ezekiel tells the Israelites that their captivity and extreme losses are all due to their abominations and idol worship. He tells them that God brought these evil things so that they will know that He is God. He says this phrase over 60 times in his book. And you know what? All those horrible things cured Israel. Ever after, they worshiped God alone. They still acknowledge that there is only one God, Jehovah!

What will it take to cure me of my pride? My prayer is that God will only need slight nudges, not extreme measures to kill that side of me. He is an amazing and merciful God, after all. I can never thank Him enough for His death that brought me life.

On that note, it has been an exciting year teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at the International Baptist Church (IBC). God gave me an opportunity to tell my students about His plan to reconcile the world to Himself. One of my students was very moved and this week accepted God's death as payment for her wrongdoings. She has become a child of the King of Kings! What a great God we serve!!

Danny is in the final stretch of this school year. The last day of school is May 30. The staff and students are pushing to finish everything. Please be praying for wisdom and diligence as they prepare and study the materials. Next school year will bring many, many changes. About half of the current Junior class will be moving away over the summer holidays. This changes the entire dynamic of next year's Seniors. Though students will be moving on, the school is growing very quickly. The administration has already hired about 12 new teachers. Please pray for them and their families as they prepare to move overseas. Pray also for the students and current staff. It is always hard to say goodbye!

Betsy is looking forward to the coming weekend. She will be playing her oboe in a concert held at IBC. It is called "God With Us" and will have singing and narration. She invited many people, Christians and non-Christians to come. Pray that God will be glorified and exalted at every performance.

Be watching our blog in the coming weeks. We will be posting pictures of famous sites all over Singapore. Our church put on "The Amazing Singapore Car Rally" (like "The Amazing Race" TV show). Danny, Betsy, Aaron, Sam, Noelle (teachers at ICS), and Jerry (fellow Church member), teamed up to tour 20 places all over the country. We were given a list of places to visit and questions that could only be answered at the locations. Envelopes with Bible verses could be opened after visiting and photographing our group at the site. We will take you on an historic tour of Singapore in the coming posts! Are you ready??? It begins soon!

More Aaron Antics

Daddy, do I really have to go milk the cows now????????
My favorite pastime---digging for basketballs!
Help, this beach ball is stuck and it won't come off!!!!

Cute! Need I say more?

Traffic Safety Day

This was the scene outside our giant mall, Vivo City, a couple of weeks ago. The traffic police designed a road course for pedal carts . Anyone who wanted to try the course could sign up and drive at designated times. It was great to see all the kids mistiming the stop lights and piling up behind each other. They also had a tendency to follow each other everywhere. There were many different routes, yet it seemed that there was only one line of traffic most of the time. The police volunteers were mostly youths involved in a Singaporean version of Boy and Girl Scouts. They had a difficult time stressing the traffic signals. Some of the drivers blew right through red lights just because the driver ahead did.

Back online

Well, our computer is finally in a working order again. We ended up taking it into the computer shop and finding that the hard drive was faulty, we purchased a new hard drive and now Danny is slowly getting all the programs and settings reinstalled. We are still having some issues with getting our email addresses set into our address book again, but most other things are running well. It is incredible how much quicker the computer is running with this new hard drive and with so many fewer programs installed!

So here is a quick synopsis of what we did this past month and a half:

Betsy's mom returned to the US in mid-March.

March 26th-30th was spring break. We didn't go anywhere, but enjoyed a nice time of relaxing at home. (Until the computer stopped functioning midway through the week!)

On April 6th we had a Good Friday service with our church, then had friends over for games in the evening.

April 10th-13th we had achievement testing at the school, this is a nice week as a teacher because there are less classes to plan for. Our principal also came around to talk about plans for next year. My tentative schedule has me teaching Algebra 2 (2 sections), Calculus, and a couple of computers courses. This may change though as we are still trying to hire a full-time computer teacher to cover elementary, middle, and high school classes. We are looking forward to continued growth at the school and really working to make the changes necessary for a bigger school. Pray for wisdom for the administration in bringing in the proper staff, there are still a few positions left to be filled.

Of course there was also much growth in Aaron, you will see from the pictures that he is now walking just about everywhere and enjoying life. He loves his 'ba' (ball, this is his first word.)

Enjoy the pics, and hopefully we'll see you again in just a little bit!

A few of my favorite things

We thought you would enjoy a little glimpse at the joys our son is enjoying over the past month.

March 18:
BalloonsFood (Look, no hands!)
April 6: Pillows on the couch
April 9: Reading with Mommy
April 11: My crown

April 13: Walking and ballsApril 13: My crown and balls
April 15: My ball
My other ball
April 16: Drinking by myself and food.

Pool Renovation

We got a notice a few weeks ago that the pool would be closed from mid-April through the end of May for renovations. While we don't like being without the pool, we are looking forward to watching the progress and seeing the great changes. . . We decided to take pictures to chronicle the event for you:
Day 0: A quiet poolDay 1: The water being pumped away.
Day 2: A big tent to cover the pool, so much for watching the progress!
Day 5 or 6: Tiles broken up. Will probably do some more pictures later, as major changes occur.

Computer Troubles

I wanted to put up a quick post here from school. Our computer is having issues, so we have been unable to post this week.

Aaron is doing great, he is now walking all around the house.

We are enjoying spring break immensely. Danny has been able to get a lot of rest.

Please pray that Danny will be able to take care of our computer issues quickly and cheaply!

A visitor to ICS

This is a post from Betsy's Mom about her visit to the school last Friday:

Hello there!
I spent last Friday, March 2nd, at the school all day. I went to the elementary
chapel right after school started. I waited until all the kids and staff had
left the music room where they hold chapel. I gathered my things and was just
kind of moving slow, when the door opened and 3 high school boys bolted into the
room and shut the door quickly. They went over to a window and were looking
out. I thought to myself "they are watching for a cute girl or waiting for the
music teacher or ??" Didn’t pay too much attention to them and headed out the
door. Denise, one of the teachers, and her 2nd grade class who were on the
other side of the campus started pointing past me and yelling “look out, look
out”.

“Look out for what?” I asked.

“THE MONKEY”, they answered!

I did not see a monkey, so started down the stairs (I was on the 2nd floor) and
as I walked onto the parking lot, they started pointing again and there he was…
the monkey. He was just two classroom doors down from where I was at the music
room. And fortunately he was heading away from me and down the open hallway
when I was up there!!!!

They can be quite mean and can bite! So I was glad he was going the other way
from me as I was so unaware of the pending “danger”.

The monkey catcher (yes, the monkey catcher) was called. He set a trap with
bananas for bait. I guess this little guy has harassed the school before. So
he will be caught and sent to the wild… the wild???? In Singapore? So they
tell me!

ONLY IN SINGAPORE!

Aaron the Explorer

Aaron is crawling and exploring all over the place now, here are a few pictures of the places he has gotten himself into:New shoes

Chinese New Year

This year our condo (Mount Faber Lodge) put on a New Year's party for the residents. It was a lot of fun mingling with fellow residents and partaking in a bit of the traditional New Year's activities.

Walking, Teething, and Reading

'K' is for kiss, Aaron's favorite letter!Aaron playing with his treehouse
Showing off the teeth:

Yes, that first picture shows a molar at the back of Aaron's mouth. He now has three top center teeth, two teeth on the bottom center, and three molars in back (two top, one bottom). He seems to be real close to a couple other teeth coming in as well, he's constantly chewing on things.

Reading with Mommy.

Swimming at the Beach

Hiding under the table.So cute!
A day at the beach

Helping Aaron with his dinner.