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“For behold, from this day all generations will call me blessed;

For the mighty one has done great things to me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.”

From The Magnificat in today’s Gospel of the Solemnity of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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For those of you who have been reading my blog, you might have known that my mum is able to receive divine messages and is doing His work via intercessory prayers. In major life events, we tend to naturally ask her to seek help from God and to show us the way.

Today after lunch, mum again said that the message is indeed “V is healed”. She has gotten this message several times this week in Church and at adoration rooms. Even Mary has appeared to say to “trust in Him”.

My mum’s nature is a worry-wot, and she doesn’t trust easily. Especially when she also knows that V’s scans have showed up the little masses all over the breast as you can see from the previous post. So she probes further to ask “And what about all those things still there?”

The answer is that “in layman terms, its just like scabs, of what’s left”.

Even without these new revelations, V has been pretty resolute in not wanting to go for surgery. Not because she’s afraid of the knife, but because He has said that it won’t be necessary.

So today, on the feast of The Assumption of Mary our heavenly mother, we validate the decision that V will not be going for further treatment. We’ll use the example of Mary’s faithfulness to God’s will to guide us through this. We give complete trust to His word to us that V is healed.

The doctors may think we’re crazy. Because the textbook answer is to cut out the unknown masses – to be safe. But this is beyond science. We have been given a test of faith. And we believe.

Hello 2010!

That’s Je-in with his modified room. We changed it around again today, trying to child-proof as much as possible.

I ended the old year with a fortnight of leave but its the toughest “vacation” i’ve ever had Been basically babysitting all the way while V is back at work. Thank god for my mum who pops by for short periods during the day. It breaks the monotony of his 4-hour eat-play-sleep cycles. I’ve never camped out so much on my living room floor before…

He seems to be growing well each day and now he’s able to spritely crawl/drag himself around the house, always going for places he shouldn’t be at even though we keep expanding the play area by having more play-mats around. He’s also started to stand on his own using the couch or whatever else he can hang on to. I just hope he doesn’t get round to bashing the TV with his toys. He’s already done it with his bare hands.

2009 has been great, we had Je-in come into our lives, and we whirled our lives around him, moving house and all. I finally completed the NET program and am now helping them with their web communications. The day-job seems stable enough even though the mother-ship gets rocked time and again. Mum’s health has been holding up and she’s able to look after the baby while we are both at work. Its been tough because she’s not as strong as before but so far it all seems good.

Even though we dropped off the entertainment radar and have not been to a movie or the pub or whatever, i still managed to visit Wala 3 times during the year So there are many blessings to be thankful for.

Goodbye o-nine!

And since you’re reading this, a Happy New Year to you too and may the blessings of the Lord be upon you this year.

Its been 4 and a half years since mum had the heart attack. She has been complaining of breathlessness for awhile, so the doctor sent her first for a treadmill test where they increase the stress on your heart to see if it functions properly. That didn’t turn out too good, so they then sent her for an angiogram for validation.

The good news is that they found only a 20% blockage on one of the arteries which is pretty common. And no other treatment is required except the usual medication. I guess one of the factors could be her stopping of her daily exercises and diet this year. She has been rather slack on the discipline and its now biting back at her. So from now on, she’s really got to watch what she eats and will probably go back to the daily walks around the parks etc again.

Thanks to the many folks who have been praying for her too…

Miracle update :

I realised the 20% blocked artery sounded strange, so we spoke to her about it today and she said that after the initial attack 4 years back, it was 30% , 40% and 70% on the 3 main arteries. So technically she’s been healed! Although that doesn’t solve all problems cos she obviously still isn’t feeling too good. I guess God does work in mysterious ways.

Photo credit: singaporeflyer.com.sg

It was Mum’s birthday yesterday and we went for a nice cosy Jap dinner at Rakuzen in Millenia Walk. We decided against the normal convention of ordering set meals and instead went for a smorsgaboard of side dishes. Yum!

V also came up with the idea of checking out the Singapore Flyer as it’ll be something for her to remember, so after dinner we took a walk there to check it out. Surprisingly, it wasn’t crowded. I guess the novelty has worn off for the locals. Even though swarms of people were in the vincinity for the National Day Parade rehearsals, the flyer was pretty quiet. A lady in front of us by a few minutes even managed to get a whole cabin to herself!

So the whole check-in and fly with us procedure was pretty novel and it made you feel like you were going somewhere. And everything was smooth and fast. I even liked the instructional graphics on the TV screens. Very interesting.

Finally, the view was of course great! It took 30 min to do a whole round and you can really see far and wide but the interesting sights for us were the NDP rehearsals, the Marina barrage project and the upcoming casino construction which is humongous. I guess it was a great experience overall, and the only thing i could reocommend is to do this once in the night and once in the day because the scenery will be totally different.

We ended the night with coffee at TCC back in Millenia and I’m glad my mum enjoyed the night.

Over the past year or so, we’ve been told by my mum a couple of times that she might be taken back. We prayed and waited for the days to come with baited breath. And nothing happens. Of course the emotions running through her are even more intense than what we go through. I’ve also been told not to mention it which is why i haven’t written more about those days.

For now, it seems those testing days are over. She’s now fully occupied doing her intercessory work and attending mass every day.

God does work in mysterious ways.

Someone once told me my Sunday lunches with my Mum are like those described in this book. About someone older giving advice on life etc. Make mental note to go take a look at it.

Speaking of which Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” is still haunting til this day.

You take care too.

~Feeling melodramatic.

Mum told us a story today. She was in the car going by the lavender road area when she suddenly saw condos sticking out in the middle of the clouds. She thought she was seeing things cos there couldn’t be reflections of building etc as the place was pretty devoid of tall buildings. So she put her head down for abit closed her eyes and looked up again. They were still there.

She asked Him in prayer, “am i seeing things, are they real?” He answered, “Yes, you’ll be coming home soon ” – with reference to Singapore casket just being round the corner.

I guess God really does have a sense of humour.

Tick tock tick tock

We finally got back into Singapore at about midnight. Its been a real adventure so far. The last seven days were really eye-opening in terms of the great scenery and how my family works together as a unit. We travelled close to 1400 kms by car and even took the scenic flight in a small nomad plane around Mount Cook.

The only regret i have is lugging the laptop half way around the world and not being able to use it much

So here’s the breakdown of our trip :

Day 1
Landed in Christchurch, picked up the car in the airport and
drove into the Heritage Christchurch . We stayed for a night in the suite which was a double-storey apartment in a restored Government building – really nice cosy place and if you get a good deal over the net, is really worth the money as there are 3 bedrooms for bigger groups. We didn’t do too much in the city as its mainly restaurants and souvenir shops. Dinner was at a stone grill place called The Tap Room. The food was great and we were pleasantly surprised when the bill was only $113 for 5 of us because we expecting a $200 bill.

Day 2
Drove 5 hours straight from Christchurch to Dunedin. This is a university city and it has many international students staying there so the makeup is quite cosmopolitan though i hear the white kids do taunt you on Friday and Saturday nights when they are all out partying and half drunk.

Met up with Anwar here as he is on a business trip and he brought us shopping for abit before we headed to our castle to check-in. We stayed the night in NZ’s only castle – Larnach Castle. The stay included a 3-course dinner in the castle’s dining room with the other guests staying the night. This was quite a social challenge, as you can tell, my family doesn’t mingle well with strangers and I had to be the one to keep the conversation going with all the small talk There was an interesting Irish guest who was on a 3-month garden leave from his job so he’s doing a world tour going through russia, australia, new zealand and the US etc
Must be the time of his life!

Day 3
Anwar brought us to the beach and the supermarket to stock up on food before we drove 4 hours to The Canyon’s Country Lodge which was near Queenstown. The lodge was beautiful! This place was valued at 3-4 million bucks and it cost us $800 a night but it was well worth it. The rooms had a superior view of a valley and a river below us. The place was fully-equipped – automatic heaters, Sky TV, dishwashers, ovens, microwave, his and hers basins in the master room and double showers!

Day 4
We awoke to find the house out of electricity! Apparently the dishwasher leaked and it tripped the electrical system The owner had to call in an electrician but we went out to explore Queenstown anyway. Had lunch at the Skyline gondola .This had lovely views of the whole area and you can see people doing the tandem sky dives off the top as well as a AJ Hackett bungy near the top. I also did the luge ride which seemed more interesting than the one in Sentosa

After that, we headed to the Gibbston Valley for a wine tour as well as some cheese tasting. The tour was really informative and it was interesting to see the barrels of wines in the caves. The wine was good so we just had to bring back 5 bottles even though it was damn heavy

Dinner was again homecooked in the lodge and we had pasta with lovely mussels and mushrooms.
Pity we couldn’t make use of the outdoor jacuzzi as it was pretty cold outside most of the time.

Day 5
We drove another 3 hours to Lake Tekapo for our next destination. This time it was a 18-month old property named The Residence. Very modern stand-alone apartments in a condo-type setting with their own swimming pool. There wasn’t much to do around here except to visit a small church building by the water’s edge and some dog statue which was commerative of collie dogs which were helpful to the early settlers.

The strange thing about this location was that it was a second choice to Mount Cook itself, but turns out it has an airfield just 2 min away which runs tours of the mountain ranges. We didn’t know this at the time of planning but Val picked up the brochure in Queenstown and started jumping up and down saying she wanted to fly to see the mountains.

Day 6
We called the company in the morning and the weather was just nice for flying. It costs $260 per head which wasn’t too exorbitant considering you get a personalised tour of the mountan ranges up close! Must have been the best experience of the whole trip. The plane was a small 13-seater Nomad and it was fairly smooth flight with a few bumps but it really brought you up close to the mountains. You can see why Mount Cook is called “Cloud Piercer” and glaciers aren’t that big a deal cos they are covered in rock anyway So we spent an hour up the air before we headed back to Christchurch.

We checked into Quest Christchurch service apartments which was another double-storey setup right in the middle of the city. The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping in the city and we ended the day with dinner at Coyote.

Day 7
Checked out of the apartment and spent an hour at the Christchurch Art Gallery. Beside it was some flea market so that was our last stop before we returned the car and flew out.

Overall its been a brilliant trip and i’m thankful my mum’s wishes of seeing NZ have been granted. It also gave me more insight into how He is there with us in our travels.

The weather amazingly held up for us, Anwar was saying he temperature even went down to 5 degrees the week before we were there but when we got over, the temperatures were just around 10 degrees, and more importantly the rain held up from the past week. There was not a drop of rain all the way we were driving. Which really helped cos it would double the driving times if i had to drive slowly through wet roads. It only rained twice, over night, while we were staying at the lodge which was fine cos we were indoors anyway.

Also, though i’ve done driving trips before, this one was amazingly smooth and i didn’t feel fatigue even though i have been driving 3-5 hour stretches. Everybody around me was nodding away but i just kept going. Really amazing.

The other incident which opened my eyes was the one about flying. We originally never planned this, but Val picked up the brochure and coincidentally we were just heading to that town with the airfield the next day. I then found out from my mum that she wanted to see the mountains up close, I guess everything just fell into place.

That’s about it.

Photos of this trip can be found here.