Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Its the year end again. Before all the shopping and festivities are done, just wanna take some time to give thanks and reflect for the year of 2008. 4) My friends! Friends are an integral part of my life, without which life can be so mundane and boring. And christian friends are the best! Love you all! First time performing in front of an audience and singing a christian praise song! How cool was that!!! Definitely one of my most memorable experiences. The crowd was crazy. The atmosphere was high~ And we felt like superstars of the night!!! Thank God for this wonderful opportunity! Be charged up for christmas!!!
1Thess 5:18 Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.FIVE THINGS TO THANK GOD IN 20081) Starting of this year, I was given the chance to go for leaders' meeting to be able to not just interact with other leaders from my zone, but also have a closer relationship with my zone supervisor, revelations from pastor derek and have a clearer vision of the church, to see the church moving, to feel the leaders' heartbeat. My own spiritual walk has also grown alot during this period and thank God for giving me the chance to rise up and be involved in such anointed meetings.
2) A great cg with great friends and personalities. Really learn alot from them especially my cg leader, who is not just a teacher by profession but also a teacher of the word. Most of them are adults and so I get to hear from their life experiences, the things they been through and advice on how to overcome challenges when they face difficulties or challenges. 
The night is still young~3) My Baptism! 
Baptism is an outward profession/declaration of an inward change that has already taken place in me. It has been so long waiting for this day to come, due to delays after delays, procrastination and just not taking it seriously. Part of the credit goes to Szemay for msn-ing me one night and set me thinking about it. Thanks Mother May!
Close friends in NTU
Andy Mengchoo who have graduated from NTU and kinleong
Kbox destress friends. 5) The chance to perform in NTU!
Friday, December 5, 2008
I met up with my cgl yesterday for fellowship and visitation of Uncle Peter.
It is great hearing my cgl shared about her experiences during Asia COnference. Her family actually provided accomodation for one foreign pastor and she was actively serving and following the pastors during the entire AC. She shared about how the pastors are so personal in making the effort to know other pastors or people from other countries and not just sat back to be served at. And because vincent has alot of contacts with other foreign delegates especially those from taiwan due to his ministry last time, she got the chance to be introduced to many pastors and leaders from other churches.
There are two main things I got out of my conversation with her. First, discipleship is not forced. It is always the disciples going after the discipler and not the discipler going after the discples. Think Jesus and his discples. Many of His disciples would want to be with Jesus and follow Him wherever He goes. Jesus taught them whenever they ask Him questions on things they couldnt understand. The willingness to be discipled is so important. If a cgl is always chasing after the members to go church, to go cg, to tithe, to give, to pray, then there is no true discipleship there.
The second interesting perspective is regarding the issue of whether God first, ministry second, family third, or God first, family second or ministry third. My cgl told me that last time pastor phil once mentioned, God should be in the centre of everything, not the first nor the last. God should be in the centre of family, ministry and all things should revolve around HIm. So regardless of the priority, if God is in the centre, our lives will be right and ordered by Him.
Tomorrow FYP briefing... Then cellgroup after two loooong weeks...Oh yea~
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Woohoo~ First time meeting my supervisor for FYP today. He passed me a paper and some survey that was already done and roughly briefed me on what to do. The objective is to probably write a paper for publishing because nothing regarding the topic I am doing has yet to be published in Singapore. I can do it free and easy and the prof say he would make the arrangements for me to meet up with clinicians to do all the surveys. Oh yea~ Hope it would be a smooth sailing one...
The building at sgh is rather old. The department of pathology. And there is a weird smell of medicine when I went there to look for my supervisor. Good that I did not have to frequent there everyday...
After the short half an hour briefing, I went to chinatown and window shopped around. I found the stall which I used to buy cheap CDs before I knew how to download songs (=p) and also some famous eating places. It was quite fun exploring all these areas all over again.
Evening had leaders' meeting at Jurong West regarding My Hope Project that the church is endorsing. It is basically a program whereby prebelievers are invited to christians' houses for a good time of fellowship and a dvd would also be played showing testimonies of people who have been touched by the love of God. An altar call would later be given for those who want to invite Christ into their hearts. The season is here again!!
Christmas!!! The season of fun joy laughter and hohoho santa claus merry making. Has anyone planned on how to celebrate this festive occassion already?
Recently my brother did a spring cleaning and cleared out all the books which had been kept over the years. There were actually alot of christian resources given to him last time when he was a christian!! One whole stack of books! Whoever want can come grab from me yeah...
Gear up for Christmas lo~~!!!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Yea it has been long since I updated my blog.
Today went jogging with chingseng and Alarize. It has been long since I last ran and I really need some boost to get back my fitness again. After jogging, went to watched some strangers playing squash. They were such good players despite some of them reaching "uncle" age. It suddenly brought back to me those days of training in JC, after school training and coaching the juniors. Aww...
Emo abit coz suddenly felt alone. LIke being an outcast. Back home in lonely room with my laptop again. Just dont know how I may feel if all my friends leave me...
I think back of those times when my friends left me.
During secondary school days, there was this group of us who were quite close together. Two guys and two girls. I became the monitor and one of the girls became the monitress. Both of us could click well and that time I was quite interested in her. There was once when we were at jurong east interchange and while going home, she turned to me and said, "Can we be 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'? Not those kind, but like friends who can really share...You know?"
I looked at her, quite stunned by what she mentioned and smiling deep within me, yelled "of course... why not!?" She was certainly someone whom caught my attention.
Some time passed, and I was as usual walking around the classroom disturbing the rest. One of the classmates' bags seemed to be open and I peeped in and managed to catch a glimpse of her "bread". Out of just pure cheekiness and playfulness, I then told the rest that this friend brought bread to school and some of us just laughed and joked over it. Little did I know that this angered her so much that she talked harsely to me outside the classroom. She was quite an ah lian and all i remember were the words, "Now I dont have face already and it is all your fault!"
SHe is actually the best friend of the girl whom I am interested in. The few days afterwards were just pure nonchalence and indifference from the very girl who wanted to be "girlfriend' and "boyfriend" with me. It hurt me alot but yet I knew I was in the wrong to tease her bestfriend in such a way. Later on, she even went ahead to plan for the teacher's day gift and celebration without getting me as the monitor involved. We drifted apart like nobody's business. Exams soon passed and we graduated. We didnt really talk after that and we went our separate ways. I went to jc while she went to poly. It still remained as one of my biggest regrets till now.
During JC days, i met this bunch of funloving people. One particular friend whom I had grown particularly close to became my best friend. We did stupid things together, went to play badminton during lessons, went out shopping after school and had lots of fun during the first three months in SAJC. He even invited me to his house and taught me how to play squash, which later on I managed to join squash in jjc and became the chair person. This was because of how I learnt to play from him in the first place. And also the squasherluo you all know today. He is also an artist, and drew a picture, his masterpiece for me as a souvenir. He was my best friend and we always stuck together.
When the O levels results came out, I was devasted. I couldnt stay in SAJC anymore and was posted to JJC. He also would be going away to AJC. As much as we said we could still keep in touch, I was very upset as we slowly have lesser and lesser contact due to school work and CCA in our respective JCs.
I became quite pessimistic in friendship after these two incidents and thought that friendships dont last. I even thought to myself that I am not going to have any best friends in life and that I should just be alone by myself. Such is the pessimism that I had and I became rather withdrawn and shy when it came to making friends and I always dont dare to get closer to others or open myself up for others to come in.
During army, I met another friend. We often write letters to each other talking about girls, army life, family etc. He was the 'old-school' kind of friend so our mode of communication was through letters. Yes, hand-written letters. We became very good friends and we could talk about anything under the sun. It was at that time when I became a believer. I was rather new in my faith and invited him randomly for a church event. It turned out that he was rather affected by it. Subsequent invitations by me seemed to sort of anger him more and more, much to my innocence, and I realised he became less fervent in replying to my letters. It came to a standstill after a few months and there was no more reply from him. I was hurt. Is that the price I have to pay? Just by inviting someone to church and that cost me a dear friend?
Subsequent bad experiences involve lending about $700 to a friend who ran away after I asked for him to return me. I had voluntarily helped him out knowing that he was in need of the money although we were not really very close that time. I didnt know our friendship was worth that much in his eyes.
My relationship with my ex was another story and it ended up in a very mismanaged broke up.
Therefore, after experiencing all these, it is of no doubt that friends and relationships are important to me. Much more after I became a Christian. I would do all that I can to help my friends and I really hope I can be a blessing around. In the mean time, I also know that people can take advantage of me and try and manipulate me like the one who ran away with my money. But between being suspicious of others and just being a pure friend to others, i chose the latter. It didnt matter to me as I began to know about how Christ is as a friend to me. How he sacrificed all for me and how He paid the price for my life. The focus on me began to pale in comparison with all He has done.
At the end of the day, no one can be compared to Christ. If only everyone can be more like Him, the world can be a better place to stay in. And more true friends can be found. =)