It was a short visit about half an hour, but the weather was perfect. And somehow when I look at these pictures, they give me some sense of peace. We should visit Maroubra beach once more before we go back to Kingsford in few weeks time.

It was a humbling and a moving experience for us, we are now making our commitment to bring up our children as God’s children publicly. It was also a good reminder for me on what baptism really (in this case children baptism) means.

I’ve taken an excerpt from Baptism Service which I think does the explaining of children baptism really well (note: I’ve reformatted them slightly – emphasis are mine, I’ve also listed Jet and Matt not the other children):

Baptism: An explanation

Jesus said:

"Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.(Mark 10:14-16)

Children are baptised on the understanding that:

1. They will be brought up as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and that
2. When they are old enough they will take upon themselves the promises that are made on their behalf.

Therefore, let us pray that God will grant to Jeremiah and Matthew that which by nature they do not have, that by the work of God’s Holy Spirit they may grow up to know the forgiveness of their sins, and to put their trust in the Saviour who laid down his life for them.

The meaning of the children baptism is simply summarized by the 2 points above, for us the parents to bring up as followers of Christ (our promises), with the hope that they themselves one day confess that Jesus is their Lord and Saviour.

Oh, how we long for that day to come.

The godparents were also making a promise, their promise is to pray and seek to encourage both Jet and Matt in the name of Jesus Christ. Kuku San is Jet’s godfather and I i Chen is Matt’s godmother.

And then the congregation prayed together.

We receive Jeremiah and Matthew into the congregation of Christ’s flock and pray that they will not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but will bravely fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue as Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants until the end of their lives.

Amen.

Amen indeed.

Matt got wet first.

Jet went next, Kuku San was supposed to hold him but he was so scared – so I had to hold him instead.

  See Jet, it wasn’t scary at all – it’s just water (from the rest room ).

We went around the city (as usual), bought a Hazelnut Ice Tea at ChaiTime then we went to Chinatown, did a little window shopping. We ended up the night with a nice dinner at Kazumi Ikazaya (we’ve been going to Japanese restaurant a lot! – what can I say, Japanese food is nice and healthy).

I notice those hands were skinnier and wrinkled – I guess they’ve been working hard for 6 years.

This is how we look like at year 6 of our marriage – still good looking!

Thank you Lord.

Celebration #1 on the 14th – mom and grandma bought cakes for him.

Celebration #2 – at Sunday School – we brought cakes and goodies bags for his Sunday School friends. Below are his faithful Sunday School teachers.

Celebration #3 – Sunday evening with family and friends. We had lapis Surabaya cake, very yummy.

Thank God – he had a good time with his celebrations. We are entering the terrible two phase – we are praying that it would be the terrific two instead.

Jet has made farewell cards for his teachers. He managed to give out the cards personally to his teachers, except for one teacher, Todd – and he was quite disappointed that Todd wasn’t in on his last day (and few other teachers too like Nat). Anyway, yeah I am thankful for this one year – Jet has certainly learned quite a handful of things from this centre and most importantly he has developed relationships with the people there. I am sure he will remember the time in this centre as a happy one.

Another person in the household has also achieved a milestone last week, Lina got her P driver’s licence last Saturday. I am so proud of her, she managed to pass the driving test in one sitting. For someone who has know driving experience at all to where she is at now, in just a couple of months, is really something. And yeah, I hope and pray that she’ll be a good and safe driver. Driving is still making her very nervous, hopefully with more driving hours under her belt, the nervousness will cease.

My recent buying a property, reminds me of a conversation that I had with him during my last year of high school. At that time, we have been discussing about me going overseas to study. That night I guess he wanted to get a final confirmation from me, he asked me to consider between going overseas to study or having the money put into a house for me. Being an ambitious (and naive) person that I was, I took the option of studying overseas. I thought to myself, if I get a good degree, surely I can afford to buy a house for myself. I also wanted to make him proud by having a graduate degree from an overseas university, by getting a good job and by living a comfortable life. I kind of wanted to prove myself to him.

He also asked me on which field that I want to study. I was contemplating at that time between Computing and Civil Engineering (following his steps). To his credit, my dad didn’t push me to follow him in terms of career, he’s happy for me to choose something that I like.

Back to property, my dad did ask me quite often about buying a property in Australia. As an Asian parent, of course he wanted me to own my own house. On completely different direction, I remember my dad quizzed me about multiplications table, I was quite bad at it and he was very strict, he kept on testing me until I got it perfect.

I talk about him once in awhile with Jeremiah, there’s a picture of him and Jet at our old place’s wall. Of course, Jet doesn’t remember him. Hm, I really wish he is still part of our family life. On that note, I need to take care of my mom.

We’ve been looking to buy from few years back. We started looking to buy around Parrammatta area, we drove to Para on the Saturdays for few months (this is when Jet was little – he’s such a good baby, 2 hours drive back and forth doesn’t seem to bother him much). We were very close on buying a unit on North Parra, I really like the unit, it feels really homey. However later we found out that there were problems with the building and the owners were trying to get the builder to fix the problems – sounds like trouble to us, so we decided not to go ahead with the purchase.

The second period of searching was concentrated around Hurstville area, we didn’t find anything that we like that’s within our price range.

And then came along Matthew, so we had to put the property hunting for awhile. Then few months back we started to look again, obviously now it will be harder to travel far for inspection. So we started to look somewhere closer.

Just so happen, on Saturday on August, went to Pacific Square and saw unit for inspection. Went to inspect that, and found out there were other units open for inspection too, so we went on inspecting them. We then paid a visit to the PS Realty office (it handles the rental on the property), met LK one of the sales agents. LK told us that she’ll have a unit available on next Wednesday. We looked at the price and potential rental, it looks quite attractive.

LK told us to come and inspect on Wednesday with deposit ready as she has a lot of people wanting to buy. She wanted us to come and have a look first. And so we did that on Thursday (turned out she couldn’t get the keys on Wednesday).

I wish I could say the exchange and the settlement processes were smooth – but they weren’t, there were problems that I just don’t feel like recounting.

And now we moved in to the property, we will be living here for six months or so – just so that we can claim the first home owner benefits. Living here so far (5 days) is a love hate relationship. Love the close proximity of everything, the beach, bus stop, shops, eating places, library. Hate the noise, the internal walls are not double brick, so sounds come through the walls quite easily, at the moment I couldn’t sleep because someone is putting dance music on his stereo. I prayed that he’d want to sleep soon. Argh! Looks like I am going to call in sick tomorrow – been not feeling well since the moving.

The holiday was very nice – Surfer Paradise on July was perfect. Jet most certainly enjoyed his time there.

Prayed that you will be Jesus’ follower one day (if not already) and tell people about him too..

Whenever something worth blogging comes up – I put it off. Trying something new now, got the urge to blog anyway, rather than waiting for the next blog worthy thing – I’ll just blog whatever I have in my mind at the moment.

Ok, let’s start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah has started pre-school this year. The first few weeks were difficult. He didn’t enjoy his time at school – we also suspect the teachers were quite strict with him as well. But we prayed about it, and you know what God answered our prayers, the last couple of weeks has been good. Partly because there is a new teacher, his name is Todd. Jet really likes him somehow. Jet often wears a hat and put on a shoulder bag and introduce himself as Todd Jeremiah went to pre-school 2 days a week – Tuesday and Wednesday, daddy was forced to take a gym day off on Tuesdays, as Tuesday morning could be hectic  - but hey it’s for the kid – so it’s worth missing a gym day.

As usual Jet’s most noticeable growth is always in the linguistic area – he’s getting wittier with his comments. I-i Chen also taught him some foreign languages like Japanese and Korean – he seems to grasp them quite easily. I would really like to see growth in terms of bodily height – but alas he’s not growing much in that area – but maybe that’s a good thing – he can always be my cute little boy

Now Matthew, oh man, we called him Tiu-Tiu the Terrible – yes, it’s a terrible nickname for such a cute toddler – but boy oh boy this boy is a destroyer. His other nickname is Godzilla. He just loves to “acak-acak” – say if Jet builds something with Lego blocks – he will come and destroy it, he likes to rip pages off from books and magazines, he likes to pull and rip tissues from the tissue box. He also likes anything that’s yucky – which is the exact opposite of Jet – Jet is a clean freak. Jet also quite obsessed with order, that is, he’ll get upset if things are not in the supposed order – well, Matt just loves chaos! So now we have a problem as the two cannot play well together..

But Matt, is such a beautiful toddler. He’s very cheeky – he likes to play hide and seek, he loves to play dead sometimes and he’s starting to be able to pronounce words clearly too – his latest word was Cocu (supposed to be Coco). And he has this sweet tone when calling Papa or Mama, so adorable. We need to discipline him – but when he looks at us with his big and clear eyes – we usually just melt.

My favourite thing of going home from work is the welcoming party waiting for me on the balcony. It’s new habit this year – Koko, mama and Tiu2 wait for me on the balcony.

Anyway I thank God again for my two sons and my wife.

We had a nice dinner at Lowenbrau on Saturday night, had a nice conversation too.