A few weeks back I made my first ever trip to Southeast Asia to hang with some great new friends from Church of Our Saviour in Singapore. It wasn’t exactly a quick journey…between flights and layovers it took about 30 hours (30 hours!) to get from Logan Airport in Boston to Changi Airport in Singapore. By far the longest journey I’ve done, but it was worth it. Thankfully jetlag wasn’t bad at all when I got there. I spent about a week there, primarily to lead worship and speak at the AS ONE retreat for the entire creative arts ministry of the church. They even had lavender shirts (lavender, according to my wife, is THE color for the fashion world this season. They must have been in step with the Spirit.) Since COOSG is a pretty good-size (around 4,000 people) they understandably had a proportionately good-sized creative arts ministry including worship, dance, artists, flaggers. We crossed over the Singapore border into Malaysia and spent a few days at the Palm Resort. Totally “suffering” for the gospel, as you will see in the pictures below =).

Without getting into potentially sensitive details, the leaders and I were blown away at how God had completely orchestrated our time together. All the topics we discussed were words in season:  talents/gifts, honoring leaders, cross-generational ministry, etc., and I also taught a few original songs. Even the way I got connected with the people at COOSG seemed divinely orchestrated for such a time as this. Several years ago, I spoke at a church in NJ where a member of COOSG happened to be visiting…he found the church in the hotel Yellow Pages the morning I happened to be there because he was in the area for military training! After the service, we talked and found out his church leaders and I were slated to attend the same conference in California later that year. We went out for a meal at that conference and fast forward a few years when we were all together again. I had a wonderful time, not just experiencing a new part of the world but be among people of kindred spirit. It was also cool that I saw so many Asian people, haha. My only regrets:  not being able to introduce my wife (classes started) to all our new friends, getting sick so I couldn’t lead worship the second night, and not taking more pictures with the awesome people there! Still bad at documenting memories, I guess =/. Miss all of you at COOSG already!