Dinner at Mike and Grace's

"...so that's how I ended up here," I said, concluding the series of stories that led to me being in Philly. My hosts smiled.

"It's my turn. So how did you guys meet?"

My favourite question to couples when trying to stall time for customer support to get back to me while doing sales. Works like a charm. Mike and Grace smiled again.

It was a casual dinner invitation. Mike was the drummer in my band and Grace was his wife. Over the course of serving together in ministry, Mike just extended an offer to me to join them for dinner. Sure, why not? Apparently, my hosts went through extensive lengths to provide me with an all-American dinner. Flattered, I was determined to find out more about my hosts.

"Mike, you wanna start?"

Mike and Grace met in college. It was a typical Korean drama love story. Both were theatre students forced to act as married couple. As an attempt to inject more stage chemistry, their professor arranged a date for both of them by asking them out and not turning up himself. It was a fun first date - they laughed at each other's jokes, climbed a tree at the back of Mike's backyard.... And then the serious of "mishaps" - he liked her, she got attached to someone else; when she finally liked him, he got attached to someone else.

But after six years they finally got together, got engaged within 6 months after and married 1 month later.

"Wow, that's fast." Grace laughed. It's hard to not get addicted to her hearty laughter.

The couple showed me their wedding videos. These two broke every rule in the game. They had 2 weddings, a personal and a public one. The first wedding was conducted in the tree they climbed on their first date. Both of them were dressed in medieval English costumes. Sitting on the tree branch, Mike's father conducted the wedding as they exchange vows and rings. The entire setting was almost fairy-tale like.

The second wedding was held on a beach, conducted at sunrise. Right after the rituals were over, they just shed their wedding clothes and jumped into the water, joined by the rest of the bridesmaid and groomsmen.

It was fun listening to this good-looking couple regaling their stories. It's amazing how they finally found each other again after six years. They spoke of how they intend to go to short-term missions with their future babies, a tough feat.

I guess there is something really special about this couple after seeing the divine magic sprinkled on this relationship. Wishing Mike and Grace a beautiful future ahead.

Mission : Guatemala

This would be an interesting post to follow my previous one. There had been an invitation for me to join Emmanuel Church Philadelphia's missions team. I thought of it and gave it a miss, since I thought it was almost impossible - 5 days off from work and school in a row, burning up all my summer holidays and raising up USD1000.

Seems like I haven't really learnt my lesson of believing God can make the impossible happen. Suddenly my 5 day's leave was approved, there were no lessons for the week and I almost became one of the first to finish my fund-raising.

But this is the best part : the revival team (worship team) apparently already had a full band and was just lacking a bassist and was actively looking for one. So I was kind of like the last piece to the missing puzzle. Found it hard to believe myself.

This is perhaps yet another affirmation that I'm doing something right. Once again, I'm pirvileged enough to play in a different country and this time round, in a different language (Spanish).

Oh yeah, how could I forget the miraculous fund-raising? Being the absolute last to join, it took quite a while before my support letters were ready. It was getting a little worrying since the fund raising time window was short. Guess what? I didn't have to give out the support letters in the end cause the bulk of the amount was already raised before the letters could be sent out.

Michelle, Jia Xian, Jeffrey Jee Hui Tiong, Timothy, Iris, Jeremiah, Estee Yili Teo, Alicia, Kai An, Jessica, Jo-Ann, Kai Hong and Julia - thanks for making this possible.