By Chua Wee Hian
FAMILY CRUISE
Our family cruise to Alaska will forever be etched in the minds and hearts of 17 Chuas! How can we ever forget the time of joyous worship? The releasing of prophetic words? The joyous conversations? For seven days, we ate, chatted and went on excursions. At Juneau, a baby whale gave us a spectacular display by breaching (leaping out of the water) and thrashing its tail thirty times in two minutes. We also saw a pod of adult whales bubble feeding, trapping shoals of herring and krill. The following day we sailed into the Glacier Park bay and gazed at the magnificent glaciers.Some of us caught sight of frolicking otters. On land, we spotted the majestic bald eagles resting on tall cedar or soaring in the air.
HOLIDAYING TOGETHER
We are grateful that we are recipients of generational blessing. The Lord used family holidays to experience it. I well-remembered August 1974. Our family of five had spent a five day holiday in West Sussex in the home of a co-worker.
When I returned to London, my Chairman asked about our family holiday. I thought he would be impressed if I told him that we had five days together.
I never forgot the verbal lashing he gave me! He told me that it was an extremely poor strategy to have brief family holidays. “You take a day or two to pack and another two to settle down. And before the fifth day, you are planning and packing for home.
How on earth could you and your children have a great time together? Wee Hian, as long as I am Chairman of IFES, I will forbid you to have vacations lasting less than ten days.” Wow! What wisdom!
Years later, when I asked our adult children what they remembered and treasured most in terms of family bonding, they unequivocally declared, “Our family holidays”. For me it’s worth spending and planning longer family vacations.
