HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DEAR HUSBAND, NOEL!!

Today is my husband's birthday. Noel turns half a century today! Not a century but HALF!!! Yesterday the church celebrated his birthday with a wonderful gift of .....you can see it for yourself! And.....the other T-shirt with '21' signifies the number of years he has been the pastor of our church All Nations Church. There was also a half century egg (you know...the black black one....)  that was presented to him, which he ate.This morning, the boys (that means including Noel!) prayed together, and I am so grateful to the Lord for extending Noel's time with me and our boys. After prayer, he encouraged his sons to be faithful to the Lord and hunger for the Word of God. Despite going through many hard times in his life, God is always good.  As I have written in my book God's Word & You, I believe it is God's grace towards the boys and I, that he is still very much physically alive. It was by God's grace that he was able to have a heart bypass which was extremely risky for him, and come out alive to declare God's grace upon his life. We value each other a lot more because of this...of course we still have our little squabbles!....but the Lord is truly good in our lives!I remember that this is the man that the Lord gave to me. The Lord brought me all the way to Australia to know Noel. All the way to meet this man whom I thought, "This man is a fanatic!". I did not understand that this is the way a disciple of Jesus should be living. To me, we do not say "Praise the Lord!" or "Hallelujah!" in public. And the way he desired after God, and the way he spoke about God's Word made me term him as a fanatic. His 'fanaticism' rubbed off on me and I guess it was my turn to be labelled as a fanatic! I learnt to love God for who He is, and to love Him because I wanted to love Him. I learnt that what was important was having a desire for God, for the things of God. I saw Noel's love for God's people, desiring to see them love God the way he did, and to encourage and challenge them to seek God, obey God's Word  and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. To me, the most important thing that I have learnt from Noel is faithfulness to God and the love for God's Word. I first learnt how to study God's Word from him. To my dear husband, Noel Joseph Ha Thien Sen. You may be unassuming and have a tendency to 'take the back seat', but you are a great person because I know you have touched many and influenced many, to love God and love His Word. Thank you for being a faithful and loving husband and father, ever increasing with time! May we, as a family, grow and continue to serve our Lord faithfully and love Him with all that we have!                                                ............................................I intentionally booked a trip to Melaka last week, without letting Noel know. If I ask him when he would be free, it will be never! He always seem to say that it is difficult to go away. So I just told him last week that we will be going to Melaka....and here we are!! Here are some of the photos of places we have been today....mainly makan places lah.......

We had nice chendol and nyonya laksa here - Celenthe Art Cafe

Watching a Malay uncle making onde-onde

At the reception area at our Hotel - The Baba House. 
That is my dear mummy. Nice place!

At the STRAITS CHINESE JEWELLERY MUSEUM. 
We actually went to the wrong place...wanted to 
go to the BABA NYONYA MUSEUM...will visit tomorrow
Still a good experience. The picture on the right shows what 
young nyonya ladies learn to do manik (for putting onto shoes)
....one of the requirements to be eligible to get married.

All the good nyonya places were closed (most are not open 
On Mondays) but have read about this great Tandoori place, 
Pak Putra, but did not know it was only walking distance from 
The Baba House. That is their famous tandoori Chicken....
Noel had some!! For those who do not know, 
HE DOES NOT EAT CHICKEN


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Last, but not least, thank you all of you guys from ANC for a wonderful and blessed celebration yesterday!!