The future looks a little uncertain when roughly half my kids will graduate in a month's time. I know I will miss them so much. The fun times and the tough times together had made us so close. The fun times is of course the jokes and laughters. The tough times are those when it gets challenging to believe in themselves and give Math another chance and another go.

When kids give you farewell gift and tell you how much you have helped them, you just can't help me miss them so much the moment you read their notes.

I tell all of them that they are my favorite and it's true that I love all of them so much. I want the best for them and constantly think about how I can prepare them for their future and not just for math. I read up and improve myself on how to speak to them, how I should think towards them and be so deliberate when I'm imparting knowledge to them. Don't give them the answer straight away. Lead and guide them. Encourage them to take little steps to answer my questions and eventually they think they do it on their own. That's when confidence is built up. I shower all of them with love as much as I know how because I know not all kids come from loving families with parents believing in them.

Education in Singapore can be a very lucrative business. It can be tempting to get into it for the money without realizing that the returns of educating the young far more exceeds the monetary gains. For me, when parents enrol their children to BM, I don't see it as them paying for a service at an hourly rate. I literally adopt them into my family, treating them like my younger siblings, perhaps a little too young for me. That's why it is not an issue for me to help them beyond tuition hours, providing food for them during lessons when they are hungry and giving free lessons to help students who need the additional help. Kids naturally flourish in an environment of faith, hope and love. Just like how plants will naturally grow in an environment of sunlight and water.

With almost half of my kids graduating this year, naturally I feel the financial stress that comes with it. Yet somehow God gently tells me not to worry so much. He will take care of the situation.
There's a quiet assurance that many students will come. However it is not so much to make me rich or an answered prayer to pay rent and salary. Instead, God wants to bring children to this oasis called BM to experience heaven. I pray that my focus will always be aligned to what God wants me to do and I'm totally excited about the people He will bring to me. :) I always feel it's a privilege to be able to love people. This is because we can only love to the extent that we have been loved. I can only love as much as God's love has been poured into my life and my heart.

As this academic year will come to a close in about a month's time, my heart is filled with gratitude for all the children that God has brought to me. I am certainly very honored to be given that chance to make a difference. To the cynic, making a difference sounds too cliche and you think how much difference can a tutor who sees her kids for 2h a week can make. But to me who receives those very sincere and heart-felt notes from my kids, I am totally convinced that teachers do make a difference.

For this year, I shall do things a little differently. I seldom take pics with my students but I shall do it this year with all my graduating kids and make a collage out of them. :p

Ps 90:12

Hearing all about the news of Hurricane Irma brought me back to that fatal day of earthquake in NZ last year.

At 2am, we were woken up from our sleep and had to evacuate to the mountain lodge. We had to pack our belongings hurriedly in case the Tsunami hit. Before I left the motel, I turned back and looked at it again thinking that I may not see this place again, the way it was.

There was a jam up to the lodge. We received calls from MFA. We got text messages from friends to ask how we we're We stayed in the shelter up on the mountain for about 5 hours. The kind of anxiety, fear and helplessness that I felt, it's not sth I often get to experience and will never want to.

As I hear about the evacuations of so many people in Florida, my heart goes out to them. I pray that there will be a miracle. I pray that the storm will change its course.

Just too many bad news in the world. The nuclear situation in N. Korea, the Rohingya situation in Myanmar, the chloera epidemic in Congo and many more. Really, there are so many things happening outside this sheltered singapore. I can't help but to remember what Jesus says about the end of time. I know I can't change path of the hurricane, I can't stop the missiles from flying from N Korea, I don't have the medical means to stop epidemic, but I know one thing I can do- to ask God for His special grace to teach me how to number my days. To live each day with heaven's reality. To live with gratitude for even the slightest things like my breath.

There are just too much things that we take for granted and will only learn to appreciate when we lose them. But why do we have to wait for that day to come?

Classroom situations

Student: Cher, why do I always get homework after every lesson? Other people don't get as much.
Me: Coz I love you. When you practise, you will get better. When you get homework, it is more work for me to mark too. But I really hope you can improve because you are not a failure grade student.

Enough reason to convince the kid. :)

This same kid asked me why don't I open more tuition centers?
S: Cher, why don't you open more tuition centers?
Me: For what?
S: To earn more money.
Me: For what?
S: So you can buy a bigger house.
Me: For what?
S: So you can buy more things to put in the house.
Me: For what?
S: So you can be happy.
Me: But I am already very happy when I see you do well for your math. I don't need those things to make me happy. :) So if you want me to be happy, please get back to your work and improve in your studies! :p

All in one day!

Mac Breakfast from a student.
Overseas tidbits from a teacher.
Text message from a friend.
Kind words from my students' parents.
Wonderful message of God's love in Church.
A special gift that came so timely.

How can my life be not full with so much love? :)

This has got to be my favorite picture.

As a teacher, I'm always the one who encourages the kids and somehow I'm used to doing that. And since I always look so positive, so confident and so blessed, I don't often get encouragements from people. I'm fine with that actually. But just that when people encourages me, it catches my attention a lot more than I thought.

During church anniversary, we played a game and there I was, being volunteered. When it was my turn to "perform", I heard a voice shouting "Go, Phoebe, you can do it!" I looked towards the direction of the shout and there I saw cute little Asher. Though I didn't score the highest for my "performance", I was beaming with joy because of what Asher said.

It dawn upon me that God uses the people I always encourage to encourage me back. When the Bible speaks about he who waters others get watered himself, I didn't know it can be so literal! I'm so grateful for the kiddos. :) Because of Reuben and Asher, I want to be a more loving and encouraging person. They have shown me how much love can be poured into a person and how much difference a small gesture can make. I want to build an environment around me where people feel loved and valued just the way God will love and value them. The power of God always move in an atmosphere of love. I pray that love will be the greatest motivator of my life... To be loved by God and to love Him and His people.

Too blessed! :)

Thank you for the dim sum delivery to the door step! I survived my lunch and dinner on this.

The enemy of good is not evil, but apathy.

Just watched a video on sex slavery online. It brings back some much memories of the what I read and experienced in Cambodia. On one of my humanitarian trip there, we signed up for a program that allow us to shadow garbage collector kids and interview prostitutes.

It was like 6am and the first part was following behind a really young child, maybe aged 7-10 years old who collects glass bottles and precious sellable stuff that he finds on the street. Dragging a big sack behind him, he bends low at every dump of rubbish found along side of the road. That boy will do that in the morning so that he can earn some money for his family. After which, he will go to school that is sponsored by a NGO. We interviewed him and he shared that he had to take care of his family as his dad ran away. He would use the money to support his sister's school fees and also feed the family. After talking to him for awhile, we realize that he does have things he likes and aspirations that he wants to achieve. He loves to play soccer and wants to grow up being a scorer player. He is no different from the kids in my neighborhood except that he is born in a "wrong place".