Perhaps this is what being a pastor feels like - having lovely Mondays :)

Woke up at 4.15am today even without an alarm clock because I slept at 9 yesterday! That gave me a huge amount of time to sit in bed singing, talking to God & reading John (finally finished it), and even after that it was still only slightly past 5. Wrote letters to the RG girls, and around 6.30am I convinced my maid/Tita to come running with me.

The weather was unsingaporean and the sunrise was amazing. Our running conversation consisted of a lot of this:
Made beehoon for breakfast and finished up last night's honeydew(?). I'll leave for school in an hour!

& tomorrow I can do this all over again because H1N1 means that my first block (PE) is cancelled & 2nd block is free block so I only have to be in school for 3rd block! Plus since there's no assembly to take attendance, Mondays & Tuesdays begin at 9.45.

Oh yes - if you want to ask me out, I end school at 11.35am on Mondays & Wednesdays, subject to H1N1 remaining a big enough threat for assemblies to be cancelled :) hehe ok I feel bad for delighting in H1N1 but it's giving me so much free time I love it.

__________________________
EDIT @ 6pm: Other glorious things that happened today:

1. The busker at Shaw Centre (at the mouth of the Orchard MRT underpass) plays LOVELY MUSIC. She plays the guitar, has a really soothing voice, and always smiles super warmly at me when I put money into her tin :) I could stay there all day listening to her music.

Friends if you ever pass by please drop money into her box, and help break the stereotype that only disabled people make money busking in Singapore!

2. Went back to RGS to drop off letters to RGS-COOS girls, and met some of my favourite juniors at the bus stop!!! All happy and very recognisable in their blue blue GB uniforms (:

3. I just spent the past hour cooking dinner, under the careful (ok haha more like "sigh why are you so hopeless") guidance of my Tita :)

(Whole post taken from blog.worship.com.

It first caught my eye only because the passage was what Ps Derek spoke about today, but as I read it, it shifted my paradigms.)

²⁰ Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. ²¹ Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. ²² David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and greeted his brothers. ²³ As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. - I Sam 17

David didn't wake up planning to fight a giant. When he was killing bears he didn't visualize killing a warrior. When he went to the battle, he didn't go as a solider; he went as a deliverer of cheese. A cheese delivery boy. His day didn't turn out as planned.

He was on his way to something else and grabbed an opportunity. That opportunity changed everything. What if he had dropped the supplies and gone back home? What if he followed his pre-determined agenda? "Sorry guys, I am just here to drop off some cheese, not fight a giant and change the world. I have a schedule to keep."

The best things in my life happen on the way to something else.

You may be on the way to something else, but keep an open mind. Today God may have much bigger plans than being a delivery boy. He may have an opportunity for you to change the world. Keep your ears open.

Scot Longyear, Resonate

Today, I talked to a 10-year-old who walked on water. He's Angie's (ngui) little cousin, Russell, who I met today when I went over to Angie's house.

The conversation went something like this:

(For the past 5 minutes we'd been talking for a while about our lives - things about his family, life in Indonesia where his family lives, and Angie's family's barbeque last night - so this comes midway through our conversation)



I've heard many stories of people walking on water from the Bethel team. I've told people about it & believed it was possible. But today, judging from my mindblown "wowwwww"-ing at Russell's sharing, I realised I probably never fully grasped that this is something we can actually do.

It was a big lesson in childlikeness for me. To me, walking on water is such a big thing that I was even skeptical at first, then after I got over that, blown away. And when I related this story to someone today, her first reaction was - "So did they have a camera?". But to a kid like Russell, it was just "you told me it was something I could do, so I tried and it worked... What's the big deal?"

What a mindset! To me, THAT is childlike faith.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=4300383

It's long, but do go read!

Please help if you can spare 5 minutes! Here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dE5GV0lQc1lTYThpbXdxQWdVZ1pVcHc6MA

It might take a bit of help from whoever in your household does housework/watering the plants, but every effort to complete the info is very very much appreciated.

Thank you so much :) If you're a fellow J1, leave your survey link here & I'll help do it too!

(P.S. This is the girliest yet prettiest online survey I have ever done, haha.)

NOTE: you are especially appreciated if you're 21 & above!! We really need more non-teen responses so if that's you, please help to do it because you are in short supply in our social networks!

This music video makes me cry very hard every time I watch it. (You have to watch the song story below first to understand the context - Mark Schultz was adopted.)


What breaks my heart in particular is how many adopted children might feel rejected & bitter towards their birth mothers (who gave them away), but they might not realise how hard it must have been for her to decide to keep the child, and then entrust her own child to somebody else to raise not knowing what's going to happen but just hoping & trusting it's for the best. I know I'd never be able to do that.

I don't personally know anyone who's an adopted child, but if I did, I'd want him/her to see this.

"End of CTs" doesn't seem as "wow" as it should to me because I'd been slacking so much before it ended anyway that it doesn't feel very different :)

The long 'yay' is because I've never ever felt so happy mugging for something as I did last night! It was just a really big joy looking up all the metalanguage (language used to describe language) I didn't understand and reading about all the studies researchers have done that brought out really cool social trends just by looking at people's English. In the end my essay was pretty out-of-point & I didn't have enough time but it was the happiest paper I'd done so far so CTs ended on a joyful note!

It excites me that I'll get to (hopefully) study this for the next 4-5 years of my life :)

Movies I Want To Watch Sometime
1. Love Actually
2. The Pianist
3. Music and Lyrics
4. My Best Friend's Wedding
5. A Walk To Remember
6. About A Boy
7. Four Weddings and a Funeral (?)

Any more to recommend? :)

I saw this on somebody's blog - amazing idea and execution!


They go all around their city doing spontaneous musical things like this & they're good too :) I love how they take acoustic music a capella (and really nice harmony) and bring it to people.

Another group which always makes me laugh is Flight of the Conchords, a duo which does comedy through their songs on guitars - totally my kind of thing, haha. One of my favourites is The Humans Are Dead, but today I found a performance that might just trump that in creativity/funniness. (ok I'm not sure it's everyone's cup of tea but I like how they're so deadpan :D It's a story, so watch it if you have 7 full minutes to spare!)



EDIT: I realise both groups are from New Zealand!!! :)
suddenly I miss Hillary Challenge and all our fascination with Maori words (remember "Whackapapa"?) & steak pie & huddling together in a Z-sac then freezing in a tent at -4°C. (ok the last one not so much.)

I've been promising photos of our NZ competition since ages ago but haven't posted because I don't have most of them myself ): Ben has unglam but true-to-competition photos here on facebook and I have only the pre-competition days in NZ, but just from those, here are some of the best memories:

( 14-28 May 2008, highlights )

During the challenge itself, there were points I really really wanted it to end, like when we were hiking endlessly on the expedition with aching shoulders & feet with bleeding blisters, or when we were fighting the cold at night. But looking back, I miss the team a lot & the time we spent in NZ where it was, more than anything else, fun :)

I think this will always be remembered as some of the best days of my life with one of the best groups of people I've ever been part of.

(I'm going to get scolded by many people for posting so much on the eve of CT week, but it's not out of procrastination... it's just that there are many things weighing on my mind/heart & I can't focus if I don't let them out. It's mostly my own processing so please don't read if you have CTs tomorrow.)

Yesterday I had the revelation that optimism has a link to faith - How optimistic you are speaks volumes about the faith you have, because it doesn't take much faith to believe that bad things will happen!

Then Sam pointed this out to me: I'm very optimistic about other people but pessimistic about myself. Drawing back to my revelation, I realise I don't have much faith in myself. Naturally, I wondered: "Is not having faith in yourself a problem?" I didn't know so I asked google, and one result was this pretty relevant blog post.

The author posted a poem, "Faith In Myself", where the poet's asking God to give her faith in herself. And the first comment by a reader was:

"I wouldn’t have faith in myself anymore than I have faith in my shadow’s ability to drive my 4X4 truck over the river and through the woods to my daughter’s home for Thanksgiving dinner.
Jesus Is Who Our Faith Is In! Anyone or anything else, including self, is nothing more than a flimsy, empty shadow of Truth. This is all documented in the Bible."

(emphasis mine)

So those are the 2 camps: Christians who believe it's Biblical to have faith in yourself (in addition to in God, of course), and Christians who believe it should be "only in God". I realise I've lived with the 2nd mindset - I didn't think we should have faith in ourselves, but just in Jesus. (But yet I had no problem with having faith in other people...) It never ever occurred to me that that mindset could actually be problematic.

I still don't know for sure which mindset is right. I see potential problems if you take either mindset to the extreme! But since people usually talk about the problems of having "faith in self", I want to share my personal problems that arose out of not having faith in myself.


( My struggles )


ok I think I can try studying now :)

I still have a lot to work on though, realisation's just the 1st step. Haha I wish this barrage of self-discovery had come at a better time.

When we come to God with something, God multiplies it.
Even when we come to God with nothing, God still gives.

That's a beautiful but mindblowingly hard truth for me. I find it so hard to translate knowing it intellectually into "heart knowledge" so that it changes the very way I approach God. I always feel that I must have something to offer before I can come to God.
_______________________________

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

-- Luke 10:38-42

I want to be like Mary who chose to sit at Jesus' feet. To me, Martha was blameless - she was doing good things for good reasons. Mary just chose the better thing and came before Jesus without striving; without worrying that she was coming with nothing to offer.

I want to be at that position of sitting at Jesus' feet, but... I'm not quite sure how to tell if I'm there! (ok it's a rather silly but very real problem haha) Currently I still feel so 'strive-y' that I don't think I am. So - just how far away am I from there? How do I get there? A very practical question is, do I have to (ironically) 'work' towards it by 'intentionally' blocking out time every day to spend with God?

How is sitting at Jesus' feet supposed to feel?

I never thought my favourite kinds of music (Acoustic and Disney) could ever come together nicely, because to me Disney songs are nice precisely because they use the orchestra & choir so beautifully. (Some of my favourite ones musically: Mulan's I'll Make A Man Out of You, Honor To Us All, Beauty and the Beast's Something There and The Lion King's Just Can't Wait To Be King)

But this guy does an awesome job of fusing the two! Here's his acoustic cover of Beauty and the Beast's opening song Belle (the original, if you don't remember):


Also really good is The Little Mermaid's Part of Your World - lovely strumming (esp the section starting 1:49) + chord changes, and I love how he's so human!!! Like the ending haha.

(thanks eden for the recommendation!)
There are still so many undone Disney songs though... Maybe one day I'll play the guitar well enough (or find someone who does) to try hehe :)

What are your favourite
- Disney songs?
- Acoustic covers/songs?

Link them and I'll go watch... after CTs haha. At this rate I'm going, I spend more time on breaks than mugging ):

After days of criticising the US for its stupidity in the Cuban Missile Crisis, I've conceded that I wouldn't actually mind living there... even if just for things like free shipping when you buy stuff off US sites :)

My sister & I love these!


(esp the tiger-stripey one! :D)






Anyone know if these are anywhere in Singapore? Haha I love strange socks.

EDIT: my sister insists asks that i link the pair she likes as well:



ok la it's a bad photo but they do look pretty, tabi :D

back to mugging about the US!

Hey friends!

Please take a moment to visit the link below - you don't have to read it if you don't have time, but just go click on it because we need 250(?) hits haha. It's a blog on peer pressure done for a GB ValuesVenture project, something I was a part of when I was still involved in GB post-sec. Shihui & Waiian's in the team too so please support us, GB friends! We're not trying to win (right?) but just trying to fulfill the requirements I think.



To be honest I didn't put much work into the project & it was mostly Shihui (and the rest?) doing everything, so it's their effort you're supporting :)

Personally I think these 2 groups from other schools put in a lot of effort & their videos are pretty cool. Stop Motion is really a lot of work but they did it!

Colour Me Friends by a group from 48th Coy (Zhonghua Sec), and a video on Drunk (Drink?) Driving by a group from 28th Coy, primary (Kuo Chuan Presbyterian Primary!!! School). I'm pretty impressed primary school kids have the patience to do Stopmotion, wow.

Even though I don't have the time to commit to post-sec anymore, I really feel GB's something I think I'd like to be involved in next time when/if i teach because through personal experience as well as what I hear from others (through church friends & blogs of GB girls/companies esp), I see how much it's impacting lives in many vastly different environments. GB in neighbourhood schools & 'elite'/mission schools probably have very different cultures, but even in the schools where GB girls tend to be from largely Christian backgrounds already, I believe it still makes a difference.

It did for me :)

I love this:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

-- Marianne Williamson (though often miscredited to Nelson Mandela, who quoted this in one of his speeches)

Kegan & I with Thomas, one of the Bethel School interns who came with the team. He was the one that reminded me of this quote.

Thomas released a word about daring to be great over me & Kegan when we went to ask him a question at SSM. At first I found it a very foreign/strange idea that I could actually fear being great, since for a long time (and actually, even now), my struggle was with feeling inadequate.

Is it possible to fear inadequacy and greatness at the same time? Hmm.

The fear of being great is pretty real because we subconsciously equate desiring greatness with pride. At least I did! But since daring to be great allows others to be great too, perhaps the way to not be proud is to not be jealous of any status I achieve, but instead gladly allow my ceiling to be someone else's floor, and desire that the ones I lead surpass me. Like Kris Vallotton put it, his goal is that "other people can have the same things (lessons, benefits) I have, without having to go through the trials I did to get them." That's receiving through inheritance, which is probably the most efficient way of progress.

___________________________________
On a more brainless note, here are ( photo highlights of SSM, sleepovers, cute cousins & godbrothers. )

SSM posts will have to wait until after CTs, I think... sorry! I overestimated how much time I have left to study :\

(1st part typed yesterday)

My dad's hurting left knee just got healed after prayer! Hehe this is so exciting.
___________________________________

Here are the long awaited Day 4 SSM Notes! It's just Part 1 though cos there's really a lot. (Part 2, about false prophets, will come asap.) My greatest takeaway on this topic was that prophets can and do make mistakes, but just because their prophecies aren't 100% accurate doesn't mean they're false prophets! There are examples of real, godly prophets in the New Testament getting prophecies wrong.

What this means is that we can't judge someone to be a false prophet just because his prophecies are inaccurate, and also, that all prophetic words have to be judged by the receiver.

( Elaborated under here :) )

That's about all I can manage for tonight. I'll post Part 2 & Day 5 notes by tomorrow, then begin on Week 2 (Day 6-10) notes after that. This week is so exciting!
Let me know if you read, and if this can be made more helpful for you in any way so I don't end up typing redundant stuff instead of things you need :)

Last night at service I saw so many miracles happen, and even played a part in two! The second one happened outside of church :)

After service, I was sitting outside at the plaza with Sam Kegan & Rachel when Amanda Joy asked me if I could pray for her to grow taller. So we asked Abigail (Chua) to mark our arms, and prayed.

The first 2 times nothing happened, and I actually was going to stop praying... I told Amanda to go home and measure her height before & after she sleeps because perhaps when she wakes up the next morning, she'd have grown. (I've seen quite a lot of immediate growths but often the healing/growth takes place some time after prayer or is evident only the next morning.)

But this girl wouldn't give up! :) So I went with her to the hawker centre where we got more people to come and pray. Mel, Ian, Gerald and I surrounded her and prayed for growth + the slight pain in her back to go away. After just a short 2 minutes of prayer Gerald suggested we check to see if she'd grown, and the results were CRAZY! Amanda screamed! One of the stall uncles also came to see what happened & we got to excitedly relate the story + show him the height markings :)

Photos from Chrystella's phone:


Amanda's on the left, and the TOP marking on her arm was the one which matched the line on my arm before prayer. (The lower line was a mistake, Abigail drew wrongly but permanent marker = cannot rub away) I joked that maybe God wanted to grow her so that the bottom line would rise to meet the line on my arm, but God surpassed that!


Full-body shot, we were standing on flat ground. She's still shorter than me but I think she grew about 3-4cm!
It was so exciting because I've heard about many people growing but have never actually prayed for someone to... and it wasn't even healing we were asking for but supernatural growth! Amanda's faith really inspired me, and the two 'failures' at first also taught me perseverance in prayer. Amanda - you inspired other people too :) I heard that after we left, some of them still at hawker prayed for Mel, Sherry & Shermaine to grow and they all grew!

Even if she didn't grow, I think God would have been very happy with our daring requests because he doesn't reward performance, he rewards faith (also spelt r-i-s-k). Heb 11:6 doesn't say "without performance/success it is impossible to please God", but "without faith it is impossible"!

So many other things happened at service - flat feet, curved spines, necks, fingers, goodness-knows-what-else healed, and so many people laughing with more joy than I'd seen in a long time :)

( Some snapshots from Kenny )

Service only 'ended' around 10 (instead of 8), and only because we got chased out of the auditorium.

For those who missed it - don't feel disappointed or like you missed out! This isn't a one-off thing but the beginning of a lifestyle transformation. Our goal is that this will happen every day, and definitely not just in church :)

I'm so excited for more.

I'm exhausted physically (and probably emotionally) from the long days & lack of sleep, but I've been feeling so soaked in love & safety that I really dread next week coming to an end.

For these 2 weeks I'm living in a very happy bubble doing things I love with people I love (Rach-Kegan-Chris-Sam & Tina-Angie-Gideon-Kai En in particular, two separate groups of friends but each v dear to me and who have made my 1st week so happy)! But after it all it's back to work, where the application of all that I'm learning really kicks in, haha. I know I'm not supposed to be in the bubble forever la but I really get very tired when I think about how much work I have to do. Miss Chia I want your slacker life!!


Also,
I learnt so, so much from Samuel & Timothy today. Sam this sounds strange coming from me but I just feel incredibly proud of you. Press on you guys!

Sorry for posting Day 3 notes so late - I missed the morning session and only managed to copy the notes from Rachel Chia (thank you friend!) today. This post combines a bit of Day 4 stuff in because it's on the same subject of hearing God.

"Wow" insight of the day:
Jesus told parables not to reveal truth but to hide truth, saying things in a way people wouldn't understand.
Kris didn't draw this conclusion based on his own opinion; Jesus himself said it!

"The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"

He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables:
"Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
" 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving."

(Matthew 13:10-14)

God hides his messages to conceal His treasures from the arrogant and proud. (Luke 10:21b - "You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.") Knowledge is power and he doesn't want the arrogant to be powerful! Therefore, He hides truth - not FROM us, but FOR us. Those who are hungry will search out these treasures God has hidden and find them.

"To him who has, more shall be given" (v12)
Has what? Has eyes to see and ears to hear.

"But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." (Matt 13:16-17)

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings. " (Proverbs 25:2)

Often, I look at the prophets of the Old Testament and am both envious and puzzled about how they could hear God's voice so clearly. However, we as new covenant people have the Holy Spirit residing within us and through the constant communication we have with it, we are able to see & hear things they couldn't. So Jesus makes it clear that those who are born again have a tremendous advantage over anyone who lived in the old covenant!

This insight about parables was very cool to me, but it's part of a larger point that God is always speaking. Whether we hear it or not is another thing. Only the hungry and the humble have access to His voice.

( The rest of the notes, on all the things you'd hear if you just tuned in. )