Update 11th March 2009

Finally, Reaching Home….

8th March 2009

On The Way Home….

Leaving Detroit, Stopover In Tokyo

Update 1st March 2009

The Goodbyes Begin....
Thank You, Concordia…Our Family

Update 16th February 2009

Looking Back…

We had a full dosage of traditional Christmas in December. We stayed over at the Freudenburgs with their children, in-laws, and grand children. It was a wonderful time of experiencing the family traditions of the Freudenburgs; Christmas day dinner, Christmas story-telling, gifts opening, fun activities, etc.

We had a quiet evening at the Freudenburgs on New Year Eve.

We used the Christmas/New Year break to catch up with the studies.

The new semester started on 12 January. It has been a stretch of trying to finish as much of the 4 remaining courses as possible. We ceased all outstation travelling to concentrate on the studies.Yes, we did celebrate Chinese New Year with the two professors from the Family Life Department, some fellow students, and friends. We decorated the common area of our dormitory with 2 paper lanterns and any pao packets which Douglas sent to us earlier. A surprise dish was the chicken feet. One of the guests thought that they were paws of cats we slaughtered for the meal. We had a great evening.

The weather is kind of crazy sometimes. The coldest day so far was minus 21 degree Celsius. It was very cold. We were told that this winter has been especially cold and the snow fall has been unusually high. Winter weather is expected to last until the end of April.

Looking Forward…

We are really looking forward to going home, to meet up with our family members, church members, and friends.

3 more weeks to go…

However, we will surely miss the people here. We will talk more on this in our blog next week before we leave.

A Week In Passing

What A Time To Be!

Christmas is a time of celebrations, a time for family and friends rejoicing together and celebrating the coming of the Light of the World – Jesus Christ.

Christmas has become a significant time for Rose and I since 26th December 1986. On that day, my life took a major turn. I invited Lord Jesus Christ into my heart and gave Him the control as my personal Lord and Master.

Being cynical of all this ‘stuff’ about God for 31 years before that, I made the decision with the attitude of ‘let me try and see whether this God-thing works’.

The life of the last 22 years has been really remarkable. Though there were trials and struggles, I can say that I have very few regrets. In fact, there have been countless blessings which I would definitely not have had experienced if not for being a follower of Christ. As we reflected on the precarious life we lived before the 1986 event, we cringed, thinking of how our lives would have turned out if we had not had Jesus Christ in our lives all these years.

Jesus Christ has blessed our marriage tremendously. Our children have grown up loving and serving God. We also know the specific purposes why we are here on earth and are pursuing them right now. We have the peace and joy of living a life of great hope, not only on earth, but into the eternity. For all these, we can only give our Jehovah God the glory and honor. He made all these possible.

This will be our second Christmas away from the church after 21 years. The last time was during my business days. We will surely miss the great bunch of people whom we have grown to love and as part of the great family besides our own natural families.

We will be celebrating Christmas with Professor Freudenburg and his family.

Christmas Greetings
Rose and I would like to take this time to wish you a very blessed Christmas season and New Year 2009.

Most important of all, if you still do not know Christ personally, make it the reason for the season by asking Jesus Christ into your life. If you are not 100% sure like I was before, may be just take the first step of inviting Jesus into your life as your Lord and Saviour and see what He will do for you in 2009. Like me, miracles of God await you.

The Boar’s Head Festival
‘What festival is that?’ That was just exactly the question I asked myself when someone mentioned this at a staff seminar when we first arrived here in July. It took us a while to comprehend what that really was and appreciate the powerful impacts the festival brings.

This festival, a pageant rooted in ancient times, is a vibrant and living tradition of our university and one of its hallmarks. It’s very much a part of our campus culture.

In 1977, three professors - Dr. Paul Foelber, John Sturmfels and Quentin Marino brought the Boar's Head Festival to the Concordia University Ann Arbor. This year’s festival is the university’s 31st.

Yes, we both participated in this year’s festival. We will talk more about this later.

First, the background on the festival.

Wild boar, sovereign of the forest and menace to humans, was hunted as a public enemy. At Roman feasts, boar was the first dish served.

As Christian beliefs overtook pagan customs in Europe, the presentation of a boar's head at Christmas came to symbolize God’s dominion over sin. The boar, being the most ferocious beast in the forest, was considered the ultimate symbol of evil. Its death came to symbolize Christ's victory over sin.

The Boar's Head Festival is probably the oldest continuing festival of the Christmas season with over 660 years of history. The Festival we know today originated at Queen's College, Oxford, England in 1340.

What began as a pagan festival was endowed by early Christians with symbolic religious meaning.

Mixed with Medieval pageantry, the costumes, the Yule log, and King Wenceslas, comes the Christ child, the angels, the shepherds, and the three kings.

The Boar's Head Carol is a

macaronic 15th century English Christmas carol that describes the ancient tradition of sacrificing a boar and presenting its head at a Yuletide feast.

The festival is an emotional experience – especially the final scene, as the proud King Wenceslas lays down his scepter at the feet of the Christ child.

Our Parts
Many persons in this year’s cast have been part of the festival for a number of years. One person stood out among us was Professor Dr. Neil Skov, who has acted as King Wenceslas 31 years in a row. His performance was just par excellent. No less outstanding were Professors Kevin and Kathy Brendon, the Duke and Duchess.

Though we had to juggle the schedule for rehearsals and 3 performances, we are so thankful and count it a privilege to be a part of the festival. We played the parts of lord and lady. Rose and I had a lot of fun learning to dance and wearing the costumes. Of course, teasing was plenty. I was teased over the tights I wore.

Update 7th December 2008

What’s happening…

A lot has happened since 2 November. On 7th and 8th November, Matthew went with Professor Freudenburg to Cincinnati, Ohio, for another FFPN seminar. It was again a great learning experience from the professor who conducted the family life workshop with a heart of fire for about 40 family life practitioners.

On 11th November, our university celebrated the Veterans Day when the whole nation honoured those who had served and were still serving in the military. At the flag raising ceremony, we had choir singing and orchestra playing and two fighter jets flew over the place where we assembled at 12 noon. It was quite an experience to see such strong patriotism expressed among the people.

Next, Professor Freudenburg and Matthew travelled to Phoenix, Arizona, on 12th and 13th November, where the professor was the plenary speaker of a 2-day family-life summit, where some of the key family-life practitioners of an organisation gathered.

For 3 days on 21st to 23rd November, Professor Freudenburg and Professor Doyle conducted the Senior Project for 8 about-to-graduate students. It was such a powerful weekend as the professors mentored the students for the career ahead of them. We travelled to different locations in the Michigan peninsula for that. That was also the time when we experienced real snow for the first time here.

After one day of break, we left for Cape Girardeau, Missouri on 25th November for the Thanksgiving celebration with the mother of Jennifer Freudenburg. Matthew & Cori (Professor Freudenburg’s older daughter and their children also joined us for that. Thanksgiving celebration is equivalent to Chinese New Year in Malaysia. We stayed overnight at around mid-point to Cape Girardeau on 25th November (after 5 hours of driving) before proceeding to St. Louis and then to Cape Girardeau on 26th November.

On 26th November (Wednesday), all four of us visited the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (after 2 hours of drive) where the world-famous Gateway Arch is located. I remember looking at the photo of the arch when I was studying Geography during the lower secondary school years. Professor Feudenburg and Jennifer treated us with a ride to the top middle section of the arch, at 630 feet above ground. The view over the St. Louis city was just breathtaking. The visit to the Museum of Westward Expansion underneath the arch was also very exhilarating. After that, it took us 2 hours of driving to get to Grandma Millie’s house in Cape Girardeau, the south-eastern part of Missouri, at the mighty Mississippi River.

The Thanksgiving meal and the time with Grandma Millie and her children and grandchildren was just wonderful. It was a good break for us after many months of hectic schedules.

When we returned on Sunday (30th November), we headed into a snow fall. We came back to a campus covered totally with snow for the first time.

This week, we experienced several snow falls. People say that the worst is yet to come. The highest temperature today is around minus 5 degree Celsius and the low is minus 10 degree. More snow is expected this coming week.

It is getting very cold. We have never ever experienced this cold before. If you wish to keep track of what we are going through here on the weather front, log in on http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/hourbyhour/48109?locid=48109 or key in ‘Ann Arbor weather’ on Google Search.

What’s ahead!

We are coming to the end of the fall semester. Next two weeks will be crazy with final examinations and assignments due.

A Week In Passing

Update 2nd November

What’s happening…

You must be wondering why we did not mention much about how we got on with our studies so far and about the campus. Well, we sort of waited to see how this went before we let you in a bit more on it.

So far, we do really enjoy all the subjects we take. You know what, we have not failed any test yet. Our classmates are all nice and also very bright. Yes, all of them, except one, are younger than Nicholas and Douglas. Just imagine these two old Asian folks sitting in their midst. Kind of like Asian parents with a family of American kids. We have great fun in class. We have this professor (Professor Genthner) who even hand-wrestled with a girl student to make the point of gender differences in our Human Sexuality course. Last Friday, some students dressed up for the class. One even came in a World War 1 uniform. It was the day our adult student, Jackie, brought her son (Aaron) to the class. That was real cool.

The professors are great too. Each has their uniqueness. They are not just great teachers but have such a caring heart for their students.

The fun side of university life does help greatly with the ‘pain’ of the course assignments and tests.

We did a fair bit travelling also in the last few weeks. On 16 and 17 October, Matthew travelled with Professor Freudenburg to Altanta where the professor spoke to a group of university professors on family life.

Then, we were off to the FFPN function in Nebraska. We had a tremendous time there. Professor Fruedenburg, his wife Jennifer, Matthew and Rose landed at Ohama airport and took a 2.5-hour drive to Norfolk, a farming community. First, we met this most lovely and energetic 90 year-old lady, Adelaide Schewe (we all call her ‘Addie’), the first cousin of Professor Freudenburg, who hosted us at her beautiful house.

After seeing many cornfields at where we stayed in Michigan, we were wondering what kind of machine (they call it ‘Combine’ here) they were going to use to harvest such big fields of corn. It was explained to us that such a machine convert the whole corn plant into corn kernels in a split second. Addie arranged for us to not just to see a combine but to ride on one. I rode on a combine driven by a cool guy called Chad, a third generation farmer. Rose went onto a truck that carried the corn.

That afternoon of 17 October, we also traced the root of Professor Freudenburg to the house where he lived in the first four years of his life. We also visited the graves of his parents. It was a very meaningful journey for all of us to do that.

For Friday night and whole day Saturday, Professor Freudenburg conducted the FFPN seminar. His wife, Jennifer, and Matthew also conducted one session each. On Saturday evening, we were treated to a delicious dinner at another Freudenburg family member’s (Elaine) place.

On Sunday (18th October), Matthew & Rose spoke on Malaysia at a special function.

On the following Saturday, Professor Frendenburg and Matthew went to Richville, 3 hours drive time north of Ann Arbor to conduct another FFPN seminar. There, after the seminar, we visited the largest Christmas store in the world at Frankenmuth.

On the weather front, we are going below zero degree Celsius at night now. It is getting very cold now. Everyone is telling us that the worst is yet to come. We have yet to see snow. On the bright side, the trees here are turning into beautiful colours. This is a nice blessing from the changing season.

What’s ahead!
Professor Freudenburg and Matthew will be going to Cincinnati, Ohio next weekend for a FFPN seminar.

A Week In Passing