A Swedish Dream

I just woke up from a strange dream.


I dreamt that I was in a convience shop & cafe and I was looking at the menu, wanting to order a small snack - a waffle or pancake with berries.  Being on a tight budget, I forgo eating.  I then took hold of a newspaper and whilst reading, the mending personnel, a swedish lady, age around 50+ suddently jolted my reading and placed on the counter a bundle of gold pendant and a nice big pendant with necklace.  She said she is selling them for RM25.  I was shocked at the price and asked her why she wanted to sell them.  She said she need that to buy some food for herself.


I then turned to Annie and consulted with her that we will buy over and we can give the small gold pendant as Christmas gifts.  Annie agreed.  I told the swedish lady, that we will buy over but asked her why she is selling the big pendant with necklace and asked her whether it was her family heirloom.  She confirmed it was,  but she had to sell it because she need the money for food for herself.


I felt compassion for her and suggested to Annie that we will give her RM50 instead.  I also told Sally, who was browsing nearby about the whole situation and then said that we will give her RM50 and not take the bundle of pendants.  Sally agreed.  When I told swedish lady, she said she will not accept if we do not take the pendants.  She said that she is grateful and when she return to switzerland, we are invited to visit her.  I told Sally and Sally said that it would be good for us to visit her so that we can source some kind of business in switzerland.  However, Sally said the visit to switzerland will be in 13 years time.  I asked why?  Sally replied that swedish lady contract will be over in 13 years time.  I checked with swedish lady and she confirmed that.  The final decision we told the lady was that we will still give her RM50 but we will hold on to her jewelry until the day she can afford to redeem them.  She happily and gratefully agreed.  

Then I woke up from the dream.  I felt good about the dream because it showed the depth of my heart, in the sense that I was not selfish but was ever helpful to the lady.  It also speak to me that I am sometimes like the lady.....for example.  The Word of God said Philippians 4:6 - "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God"  The truth is that Jesus died on the cross for all my worries, therefore I should not worry.

Well to visit Switzerland in 13 years.........................a dream to be realised.

 

In the center of  pendant has a motive consisting of a upright lion and shield

Ariel

We are now in the valley of decisions with regards to Ariel.  Due to our current situation, we have to let Ariel go to a new owner because we have 4 adult poodles and Arie's sister Odette with us.

There is a friend who fell in love with Ariel after seeing the photos above and want her.  Our hearts are heavy and reluctant to let Ariel go......................

Annie and I lay 'fleas' before God and said that if we receive good news from another of our prayer (not related to Ariel), then we will keep her.  

So, Ariel, your fate is in God's hands.  Put your paws together with us and pray or woof, woof God!

My Garden - Herb Patch Chapter 2

I have increased my herb patch with 3 more herbs.

Herb 1 :                                   
Misai Kuching - a herb for diabetic.
The leaves and the flower must be boiled, add honey

Herb 2:
Ficus Deltoidea or Mas Cotek
The leaves and fruit must be dried and boiled together with Misai Kuching for better result

Herb 3:

Stevia - substitute for sugar. Natural and safe.
A bottle of stevia powder (50gm) costs around SGP25!!!!
I bumped into this plant while I was at the plant/flowers exhibition at Putra Jaya. It cost me RM10 per plant.... :-)


More updates soon................................................

Double Rainbow - Double Promises of God

Have you ever seen a double rainbow? Strangely, we did, on sunday when we were on the way back home from church. All of us (my sisters and niece) felt that God was saying to us the same thing - His promises to us are a double Amen. A econfirmation to the song we sang in church 'God will make a way' prior to the sight of the beautiful rainbow.

God is good - He shows up in the midst of our downs and lifts us up when we are drowning. Just as Jesus lifts Peter up when he was sinking in the midst of the wind and storm. God's lifting is sure and assuring.

We will hold on to your promises............till they will all come to reality!

My Garden - Herb Patch Chapter 1

I revamped my herb garden from a circled one to a square one, with much more space for planting more herbs. In the herb patch, I have rosemary, dill, basil, purple basil. Hope to be able to find and plant more varieties of herbs - a great accomplishment though. Maybe in the near future, I could upload photos of my accomplishment - yah - a great challenge!!

Bubble Safe

I saw this photo of this little boy in a bubble. How in the world did he get inside of it? I am reminded of the vision Cherish saw in one of our family prayer meetings about 6 months ago. We came together to pray because we were in state of fear, anxiety, unsurety of the future, hard-pressed on all sides, really shaken over. The only fortress to run to was to run into God's presence - our family prayer time! As usual after the prayer, there will be debriefing time and we will each give feedback of what we feel, sensed, see visions, pictures, revelations.





Cherish shared that she saw that all of us were travelling inside a dark tunnel and each holding as it were, a thin thread, yet it was strong enough for us to hold on to. The thread was not limp but there was something or someone holding the other end. However, she could not see what or who was at the other end.

THIS picture of the tunnel has some light but THE tunnel that God showed to Cherish was dark and she just knew that we were all going into the tunnel. While travelling inside the dark tunnel, she heard lots of fearful noises, gnawing, growling, knocking, scratching surrounding us. In the vision, she felt such intense, cold-sweat fear but then at that moment, she heard God said "trust me". Somehow, she had the deep assurance that God was there amidst the fearful noises. The vision continued with the next scene of all of us coming out of the tunnel. Whilst outside the tunnel, where there was light, she saw that God was holding the other end of the thread and He was the one pulling us out of the tunnel. She then saw that we were all enclosed in a bubble and outside the bubble she saw the enemies outside trying to gnaw and attacked us but they bounced back because of the protective bubble over us.

God revealed to her that though we are going through a dark tunnel of fears, uncertainty, instability, crisis, as long as we hang on to the thin thread, trusting Him, He will pull us through. Even though our enemies try to attack us, flinging darts and arrows of fears at us, their weapons will bounce back and return back where they came from. God put a protective bubble with safety features enclosing us within all the time.

Having heard the vision, we all broke into tears of relieve, gratefulness, thankfulness to God who cares and love us so much in our hour of crisis. That moment caused us to love God even the more for such a revelation of His protective love.

I was just musing over the God's word "trust me". Not easy to trust in our hour of crisis. Everything outside the bubble seems so real - the noises of gnawing, growling, scratching. They seem about a inch from us, as though the enemies were going to touch us. Being in the dark tunnel and without our knowing, we were all inside God's protective bubble. The thin fine thread, seemingly weak but they were strong, was the only thing we all had to hold on to and at the same time trusting God to lead us all out of the tunnel.

It's like the comparison of a child having heard the word from daddy "jump" from the top of the diving board. The child would just jump, trusting daddy will catch at the bottom of the pool. Sure enough, daddy caught the child and gave a lasting hug before releasing the child to another jump.

Till today, we all remembered that vision and sometimes in our prayer time, we thank God for the bubble of protection over us. Some days, when we receive negative news or when we are being pursued, we do feel such a weight over our spirits and hearts, the spirit of God will just jolt our memory that we are still inside God's bubble and a calm beyond description will just clothe us at that hour. Thank you Dad for your bullet-proof, devil-proof, crisis-proof God-Given-Bubble!!

God's Angels

My bible journalling for today is Exodus 23:20-23:-

V.20 "See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.


As I read this passage, I am so assured that God has send His angel ahead of me. What for? To guard me along the way, to bring me to a place which He have prepared for me. Wah, so comforting and victorious to know that my enemy and opposer will be God's enemy and opposer too. God will not let them go. The catch for me is that I must not rebel, listen carefully and do all that 'God send angel' ask me to do.

So, I hereby hold on to God's word that His assigned angel will surely bring me to the Promise Land/Place which God have prepared for me. Amen!

The Promise of God

We (my sisters and Cherish) went back to Malacca during the weekend to meet up with my other siblings for my parents memorial. Eventhough we do not observe "all souls day", we took the opportunity to fellowship with my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, grandnephews and grandnieces.
Though the trip was short, 2 days, I was feeling very tired because I was the driver to and fro Malacca. Jolted out of bed, still at sleepy state, we left Malacca, heading toward KL on Sunday at 6am. The rest of the passengers had the luxury of sleeping in the car while I, the driver, was struggling to keep awake most of the time.

While we were travelling along the KLIA highway, going towards kesas highway, out of the sky appeared a half view of a rainbow. The other half of the rainbow just merged into the clouds. A beautiful sight of nature, to behold on a Sunday morning. We all found it strange that the rainbow appeared in the clear blue sky because there was no sign of rain before that. Concidently, it was Easter Sunday, Jesus resurrection. God made a convenant with the sign of the rainbow to Noah after the flood that He will not destroy the earth. We all knew that God was speaking to us through that sign. Sally broke forth in prayer and thanked the Lord for His promises to us all. Same thought I had at the same moment.

We were waiting anxiously for the fulfilment of His Promises to us all that "All is Well". We undertook a 'project' in November 2007. As at todate, we have gone through this for almost 2 1/2 years now. It was a project that turned our lives inside out and outside in. An experience that caused us to go through the burning furnace with the intensity of the heat that every stone in our lives were not left unturned by God. What remain must be pure gold, a burning of relationships, friendship, life's values - ours and others. The burning caused our eyes to see more clearly, man's heart and ours too. It caused us to hang on to God for dear life as we know that God is our only Rock that we can lean on to.

In one of our constant, frequent family prayer time, God showed one of us a picture/vision of a tornado. The tornado was ferocious, twirling, sucking every single thing in its path. Some people were seen running away from it and they too were sucked into it.

In the vision, God said that He put us all into the eye of the storm/tornado, which is the safest place to be. We cannot run into the eye of the tornado ourselves because we will be sucked in and be destroyed. It is only God who can placed us there! What a revelation!

After we heard the explanation the picture/vision of the tornado, we all felt within us a sense of safety and we burst into tearful, grateful prayer to our Heavenly Father that He is full of wisdom, love and caring at our hour of pain, fears and uncertainty.

A great promise to hold on to when the going is tough and the 'tahan lasak' gets going!

A Birthday Treat for a 20 year old

Today is my niece 20th birthday. I specially made time for this important ocassion for her because she has become important and precious in my life. As a family, my niece, her mum (my sister) and my youngest sister, supposedly named by one of our friends as the Lo-Ongs (my niece surname 'Lo', we 3 sisters - surnamed 'Ong' = Lo-ongs), spend the whole of Sunday with her after church service.


We had lunch at Ko Hyang restaurant at mid valley.

Ko Hyang restaurant has a myanmar waiter which recommended us their menus, all so 'chun', We told the waiter, "please hurry up with the food because we are going to die". He left us while we sheepished smiled to one another. In no less than 15 mins, out came the dishes. Have a look..............slurrp.....

Wow, we had a smashing, delicous, mouth-watering, fun-filled lunch.Yum...yum, we hungrily tucked in everything, every drop of korean soup, sauces, gavy were wiped clean. We thoroughly enjoyed the food in this restaurant, our second visit!! You will not do justice to yourself if you don't visit this restaurant, Ko Hyang!!







Then we decided to watch a movie at GSC. We asked the birthday girl to choose a movie to watch but knowing her mum wanted to watch Confucius, she opted for that, though 'Alice in Wonderland' was beckoning her.

 A movie well played by Chow Yun Fatt. I have studied Confucius in my history books during my school days, so I have some knowledge of this scholar. However, my 20 years old niece, don't have a clue. By watching it, I think she have a better knowledge now stored up somewhere in her brain and I know that in the future when the topic arises, she will just whipped it out from her 'brain-drive',

 I recalled, I didn't have such a birthday when I turned 20. I was away from home, earning a living. However, I kind of 'tumpang' on her celebration today. I enjoyed myself though my legs and back are aching now!!

Here's your birthday gift................super junior posters (print it yourself and get it autograph on the 20th March)

Hmm......m, I wondered, 20 years ago, whether the nurse mistakenly picked you up from a korean baby cot at the hospital or what?? Naa...ay, 100% from the LO's cot (you've got papa's nose - a trademark).

Blessed birthday 'anak saudara perempuan', 'jok a' (korean). Lots of love..............ah boh.

You are Holy Lord - By Michael Battersby

I am reminded of a song I heard in Gosford, Sydney in year 2003. The song keeps ringing in my ears and I got hold of the lyrics stashed in one of the files. It is such an assuring, comforting, healing, overcoming and promising song. It drives, pulls me closer to God, wanting only Him at the moment. A child wanting only the Father, wiping all fears, tears and be rocked in His comforting arms. I hope I can get hold of the CD, which is stored away in one of my boxes.


C Ami/G
You are Holy Lord
Gmi7 G/F
You are Holy Lord
C/E G7/D Emi7 F/G
In Your awesome presence I stand……..
Ami7 Emi7
You have taken away my shame
Ami7 Emi7
Such is the pow’r of your Holy name
F Emi7 Ami7
You’ll always be my God
Dmi7 c
And I will be your child


C Ami/G
You are faithful Lord
Gmi7 G/F
You are faithful Lord
C/E G7/D Emi7 F/G
In Your awesome presence I stand
Ami7 Emi7
Every promise is steadfast and sure
Ami7 Emi7
And you will love me till time is no more
F Emi7 Ami7
You’ll always be my God
Dmi7 c
And I will be your child

C Ami/G
You are mighty Lord
Gmi7 G/F
You are mighty Lord
C/E G7/D Emi7 F/G
In Your awesome presence I stand
Ami7 Emi7
Like the crashing of waves on the sand
Ami7 Emi7
Let Your spirit flood over this land
F Emi7 Ami7
You’ll always be my God
Dmi7 c
And I will be your child

(Words and music by Michael Battersby, Victoria Park, Sydney, Australia)

Just had a crying session again.....had a talk with my niece a while ago. I would say it was a good cry because I could share freely with her, though a 19 year old!!! Sounds funny...... me confiding to such a young adult. Well, I find she have a way of bringing or explanation of things that cleared my fuzzy mind, turning my head to another angle to see what I could be blind too. I find her choice of words are like removing the veil from my eyes and my mind would open up.............things fall into places. I find that she is playing a role of a peace maker.

Jesus taught the disciple the Beautitudes in Matthew 5:-

Matt 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God"

We will be called blessed if we are peace makers. Not only that we shall be called sons of God.

I realised that not many can play that role but I find that my niece has this gift from God.

Peacemakers must not take sides and ability to reconcile parties concerned.

I find that I dont often play that role..........than shall I not be considered a 'son' of God?

Nah....ah, it is being 'called', like an associate, son of a char kueh teow man, son of a fishmonger. So, I am not called by that role.

Now, I see that my niece is blessed with friends around and even a small 7 year old boy at home, just admired her!!! May God bless you, my Cherished one!! Thanks for your prayers and hugs.

Good Mechanic, Good Malaysians

Our family car came out of the workshop after a car ramped into it. It was a job, badly done by the insurer's mechanic because there were noises from the back of the car which was originally not there before the accident.
Then my family resolved to get my nephew's (Gary) mechanic friend, David, to resolved the mechanical problem. Gary and his friends plus David, decided
to drive along the Kesas Highway to test drive the car. There were some distinct noises at the back. Along the way, David suggested to Gary to put him into the boot, so that he could determined where the noise came from.
So, they stopped at the side of the road and David jumped inside the boot. However, they did not realised that there were 4 malay bikers who saw the whole scene. As Gary was driving along, the 4 bikers rode in front of the car and caution them to a halt. They agressive demanded that they open the boot as they accused Gary and friends for attempted kidnapping. Gary opened the boot and David was astonished to see 4 malays faces staring at him and then asked whether he was alright. David said "apa ini? I ok" (what is it, I am okay).

David told them that he is the mechanic and they were trying to test run the car. After much explanation, the 4 malay guys left, leaving Gary and friends in a state of shock and bewilderment. After that they all had a good laugh!!

When Gary related the whole incident, all I said was "Good mechanic, good malaysians". Very rare species nowadays..............some mechanics would not go at such length to ensure a job well done, while some malaysians would prefer to mind their own business. I am so proud of the 4 bikers. If I was at the scene, I would appraise them for being good citizens of Malaysia!

My Rescuer

Click on youtube below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbeNpmqdfmg

RESCUE
You are the source of life
I can’t be left behind
No one else will do
I will take hold of you

Cause I need you Jesus
To come to my rescue
Where else can I go?
There’s no other name
By which I am save
Oh capture me with grace
I will follow you, I will follow you

My heart is yours, for life
I need your hand, in mine
No one else will do
I put my trust in you

Cause I need you Jesus
To come to my rescue
Oh where else can I go?
There’s no other name
By which I am save
Oh capture me with grace

I need you Jesus
To come to my rescue
Tell me where else can I go?
There’s no other name
By which I am save
Oh..oh, capture me with grace
I will follow you, I will follow you (only you)
I will follow you, I will follow you

This world has nothing for me, I will follow you
This world has nothing for me, I will follow you
This world has nothing for me, follow you
This world has nothing for me

** Cause I need you Jesus
To come to my rescue
Tell me where else can I go?
There’s no other name
By which I am save
Oh..oh, capture me with grace **
Repeat 2x ** (I need…..)

Capture me with grace; Capture me with grace (2x)
I will follow you; I will follow you (4x)
I will trust in you, I will trust in you
I will follow you

This song minister much to me whenever I am distressed and going through troubling waters. May you also know my life RESCUER - JESUS!