hullo! 'sup? =P

Adam, Eve, and Evolution

2011-11-17T20:08:00.002+08:00

the other day one of my church youths asked me a question that stumped me - "if evolution is true, were adam and eve neanderthals, or modern humans like us?"

to be honest, i had no idea how to answer him! =P

then a few days later, i was in my uncle's office. he is clearing it out because he will be retiring soon, and he has all sorts of interesting stuff in there. one of his books caught my eye - "Creation or Evolution: Do we Have to Choose?" by Dr. Denis Alexander. i thought it looked interesting, and wondered how the author would handle that youth's question.

so i flipped through the book to find out what he had to say about it. this is a summary of what i found. he presented 5 possible models of understanding and connecting Genesis and Evolution:

Model A

there is no connection at all between Genesis and Evolution.
Genesis is a theological account, a story or a parable which teaches us about the role and importance of humanity in God's purposes; whereas Evolution is a scientific account, and the two are disconnected.
in this model, adam and eve did not really exist - they are just characters in the myth of creation.

Model B

Genesis is not fully historical, but refers to events that took place in particular times and locations.
Suggests that as anatomically modern humans evolved, or during some period of linguistic and cultural evolution since then, there was a gradual growing awareness of God's presence and calling to which they responded in obedience and worship.
Therefore Genesis is a story/parable (like in Model A), but one that refers to real events that took place over a prolonged period of time during the early history of humanity.
in this model, adam and eve also did not really exist. they are symbolically representative of all humans - everyman and everywoman.

Model C

Very much like Model B, Genesis is not fully historical, but refers to events that took place in particular times and locations.
Unlike Model B, however, this model locates these events within the culture and geography that the Genesis text provides.
In this model, Adam and Eve were two Neolithic farmers in the Ancient Near East to whom God revealed Himself in a special way.
Religions may have existed before that, but Adam and Eve ('homo divinus') marked the time that God chose to reveal Himself and His purposes to man for the first time.

Model D

This model is known as 'old-earth creationism' or 'episodic creationism'.
According to this model, the earth is very old as per scientific data, but God has intervened at various points in evolutionary history, particularly:

creation of the genetic code
formation of the first living cells
evolution of the main 'kinds' of animal
creation of man

in this model, Adam and Eve were the first anatomically modern man and woman, and they were created directly by God, not evolved.

Model E

This model is known as 'young-earth creationism'.
In this model, scientific data on the age of the earth is disputed or discounted; the earth was created by God around 6-10 thousand years ago.
All living things were created within 6 literal 24-hour days.
In this model, Adam and Eve were the first anatomically modern man and woman, created by God on the 6th day.

None of the models are perfect. Models A-C run into serious theological problems. for example, what does the Fall mean if we hold to those models? the author favours Model C, but in that model adam and eve were just two humans chosen out of a large existing population. how then can it be that "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— " (Romans 5:12) ?

Model E is problematic because it disputes or discounts scientific data. the only reply i can think of that can deal with the discrepancy between the scientific data and the young-earth creationist understanding of genesis, is that God could have created the world with an appearance of great age. but the problem with this view is that it makes God appear to be a deceiver - he tricks scientists into thinking the world is old, which then becomes an obstruction that keeps them from coming to faith.

personally i think i favour Model D. however, it meets a problem very similar to that of Model E; namely, man has every appearance of having evolved, so why did God create him that way? isn't that deceptive as well? off the top of my head, i suppose we could say that God was keeping a kind of thematic harmony; as every other living being was evolved, it might have been aesthetically pleasing to Him that Man also appeared that way. atheists would probably find this suggestion silly, though.

in any case those are the 5 models that Dr. Denis Alexander presented in his book. let us continue to think and ponder over questions that matter. the question of whether adam and eve were neanderthals doesn't really matter, as it has no practical effect on us today. but the question of how we understand genesis and what relationship it has with present-day scientific discoveries is an important one, and one worth thinking over.

feel free to respond or to think out loud in the comments section. =)

When i was a young warthog...

2011-10-19T10:44:00.002+08:00

this morning while looking at my bookshelves, i found a diary that i kept when i was 14 years old. i was quite amused to be reminded of what my 14-year-old self had been like; and i thought it might be fun to share some excerpts here. =)

31 December 1995, Sunday
1. Church - 8.30 am (done!)
2. Lace shoes (done!)
3. Wash plates (done!)
4. Piano Theory class - 2.00 pm (done!)

Friend 1 came to IMYF yesterday and church today. i pray that he'll start coming every week. i've witnessed to Friend 2. praying that he will accept Christ. signed up for Baptism/Membership classes today. went to Church watchnight service tonight. gave my life to Jesus to do what He wanted with it. Very significant decision. IMYF Club Hiking next sunday. this year was great. next year i'm going to grow spiritually in my walk with God. it's going to be even better as God helps me through 1996. =)

Note: Signed up for 2:7 as well. =)

Notes from 15 years in the Future:
- For those of you who aren't methodists, IMYF stands for Intermediate Methodist Youth Fellowship. it's for 13-15 year olds; once you're 16 you graduate to MYF.
- i'm tickled and touched by the immense optimism of my 14-year-old self. i still have an optimistic tendency today, but 15 years of Real Life has tempered it with a little realism and sometimes even cynicism. not necessarily a bad thing; but it's refreshing to see the world through the naive and hopeful eyes of my past self again, if only for a short while. =)

8 January 1996, Monday
1. Practice Piano (done!)
2. Wash plates (done!)
3. Theory Homework (done!)
4. Study Geography (oops, not done.)
5. BM Tuition - 7.30 pm (done!)

Today during Geography period, the teacher asked to see her homework. i honestly didn't know anything about it! when she asked me why i didn't do my work, i told her that i hadn't heard anything and she accused me of lying. how can she do that?!?

Anyway, i've had a great day apart from that. looking forward to a brighter tomorrow!

Notes from 15 years in the Future:
- Just in case any foreigners read this, BM stands for Bahasa Malaysia. it is our national language, and is a compulsory subject in schools up to the secondary level.
- still tickled by the optimism, lol! and i remember that geography teacher... she was strict and scary.

11 January 1996, Thursday
1. Practice Piano (done!)
2. Wash plates (done!)
3. Piano lesson - 9.30 am (done!)
4. BM Tuition - 7.30 pm (done!)
5. Maths homework (done!)
6. Science homework (done!)

After IMYF today i didn't go for 2:7 because Mum said Aunty Kim Guat said i shouldn't. i was the only person in the IMYF who signed up for 2:7. Aunty Kim Guat wanted me to be with my own age group (if i joined 2:7 i would be joining a MYF group). in IMYF today Aunty Kim Guat started a Bible Study, so i signed up. i hope i won't be the only one again!

Notes from 15 years in the Future:
- Oh, for those who don't know, 2:7 is a discipleship and bible study course by the Navigators.
- Eventually, in the following year, a 2:7 group was started with kids my own age. it was great! i learnt a lot, and i think it played a big role in helping me to grow and mature as a Christian.
- 4 years later when i was in Form 6, i led a group of younger kids in 2:7... sadly, they quit after finishing book 2 (the whole course is 6 books), saying it was too tough. =(
- Now, as a Youth Worker in Taman Ujong Methodist Church, i am leading another group of youths in 2:7. i pray often for them, that they may grow in the knowledge and love of God. =)

What Happened on Resurrection Sunday?

2011-10-13T11:51:00.003+08:00

those of you who are familiar with the Gospels may have noticed that they differ quite a bit, on quite a number of details, in their accounts of what happened on Resurrection Sunday. this has long been a nagging question in my head, but i've just not taken the time to sit down and look at them to see how they fit together, until this morning.

i guess there are probably many ways different people may try to harmonize the four accounts, and perhaps we may never be able to know with 100% certainty exactly what happened that sunday. this, however, is my best guess at how events played out; and i'm reasonably satisfied with it.

if you've ever wondered why the accounts differ, perhaps my reconstruction of events might be helpful to you:

1. There was a violent earthquake. (Matt 28:2)

2. An angel descended, rolled back the stone, and sat on it. (Matt 28:2)

3. The angel's appearance was like lightning, his clothes white as snow. (Matt 28:3)

4. The guards were stupefied by fear of the angel. (Matt 28:4)

5. The guards later recover and run away. (Conjecture)

6. Very early on Sunday morning, while it's still dark, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb alone. (John 20:1)
- maybe she couldn't sleep, or was woken up by the earthquake. (Conjecture)

7. She sees that the stone has been rolled away. (John 20:1)

8. She tells Peter and John, and they race to the tomb. (John 20:2-9)
- Luke 24:12 says that Peter went to the tomb, without mentioning John.*

9. Peter and John leave, but Mary stays and cries. she looks into the tomb and sees 2 angels in white, seated at the head and foot of where the body had been. (John 20:10-12)

10. The angels ask her why she is crying, and she replies that Jesus body has been taken and she doesn't know where they have laid him. (John 20:13)

11. She turns and sees Jesus
- She recognizes Him only when he calls her name.
- He tells her not to hold Him, to go and tell the disciples. (John 20:14-17)

12. She goes to tell the disciples. (John 20:18)
- and she eventually does! but some things happen before that... (conjecture)

13. On the way back, she meets the other women who are going to the tomb and returns to the tomb with them. she doesn't say anything yet, maybe because she's still processing it all and can hardly believe it herself. (conjecture)

14. The women all go to the tomb together, with spices to anoint Jesus' body. (Matt 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 24:1 and 10)
- Luke has the most complete list: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and others.
- Mark omits Joanna but includes Salome.*
- Matt mentions only Mary Magdalene and 'the other Mary'.*
- The two Marys are included in all three accounts, probably because they are the most important or well-known women in the list.

15. As they walked, they asked each other, "Who will roll away the stone?" (Mark 16:3)
- note that, as per point 13 above, Mary Magdalene is silent although she knows that the stone has been rolled away.

16. When they get to the tomb, they find that the stone is already rolled away. (Mark 16:4 and Luke 24:2)
- at this point, Matt goes into a flashback to explain why and how the stone has been rolled away (see points 1-5 above).

17. Some of the braver women enter the tomb first. (conjecture)

18. They find the body missing and are perplexed. (Luke 24:3-4)

19. Suddenly, 2 men (angels) in clothes that gleamed like lightning appear, standing beside them. (Luke 24:4)

20. The angels:
- ask why they look for the living amongst the dead
- proclaim that Jesus is risen
- remind the women that Jesus had said that He must be crucified and resurrected. (Luke 24:5-8)

21. As they speak, one of the angels walks to the right side of the tomb and sits down. (conjecture)

22. At the commotion of the angels appearing and speaking to the women in the tomb, the other women who did not enter the tomb at first come in. (conjecture)

23. The angel seated on the right tells all the women,
- Don't be afraid or alarmed
- Jesus has risen
- Come, see the play where He lay
- Go, tell the disciples (Mark adds, "and Peter")
- He is going before you to Galilee. (Matt 28:5-7, Mark 16:5-7)

Notes on point 23:
- I think that Mark doesn't mention the other angel because only the seated angel speaks at this point.*
- Previously, in his flashback, Matt has the angel sitting on the rolled-away stone. but he does not specify the angel's position at this speech, so we can go with Mark in this matter.

24. The women leave the tomb trembling and bewildered, and saying nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:8)

25. However, Jesus Himself meets them on the way, and they worship Him. (Matt 28:9)

26. Jesus reinforces the angel's words:
- Don't be afraid
- Tell the disciples to meet me in Galilee. (Matthew 28:9-10)

27. While the women continued on their way, the guards who had earlier run away (see point 5 above) go to report to the Chief Priests. They are told to tell people that the disciples stole the body. (Matthew 28:11-15)

28. The women (including Mary Magdalene - see point 12 above) go back and tell the disciples everything, but are not fully believed (Luke 24:9-11) until later, after Jesus makes a few more appearances.

* these points with asterisks are examples of the principle, "an omission is not a contradiction". different accounts may omit certain details for reasons known only to the author; but when we read them together we get a clearer picture of the whole thing.

for example, let's say that while shopping in Jusco i bump into Mr. A and Mr. B. You are close friends with Mr. A, but you don't know Mr. B. Later when i meet you, i say, "guess who i bumped into in Jusco earlier! your good friend Mr. A!"

note that i am not lying to you by omitting Mr. B, although i bumped into him as well. i simply don't mention him because i don't think he's relevant to you. and later, if i meet someone else who does know Mr. B, i can well tell him that i bumped into Mr. B without contradicting my earlier statement to you that i had bumped into Mr. A.

with that principle in mind, i hope that we can see how the 4 gospel accounts of what happened on Resurrection Sunday can fit together to give us a more complete picture of that wonderful event. Moreover, i hope that seeing this will give us confidence to believe that He is indeed risen; and knowing the risen Christ will fill our lives with joy and hope, for He has conquered sin and death. =D

Psalm 105:37-45 - What God Has Done! =)

2011-09-21T14:59:00.006+08:00

i preached this sermon last sunday, 18 September 2011. since i've typed out the outline and all as part of the assignment for my LPL (Lay Preacher's Licence) Homiletics module, i just thought i'd post it here.

hopefully it might make my blog a little less dead. =P

What God Has Done!
Psalm 105:37-45

Introduction
• As Christians, each of us should have a story or many stories to tell about what God has done in our lives.
• Today’s passage proclaims what God has done in the life of the nation of Israel.

1. He Brought Israel Out of Egypt

• Explanation:
o Seen in Psalm 105:37-38, 43.
o Historical record found in Exodus 12:31-36.
o The exodus as a type or foreshadow of our salvation.

• Application:
o Get to know the God who saves.
o Be thankful to God for saving us.
o Tell others about this God who saves.

2. He Protected and Guided Them

• Explanation:
o Seen in Psalm 105:39.
o Historical record found in Exodus 14:19-20; 40:34-38.

• Application:
o God protects and guides us even when we stray from Him.
o However, we must follow and obey God to fully enjoy His protection and guidance.

3. He Provided for Them

• Explanation:
o Seen in Psalm 105:40-41, 44.
o Historical record found in Exodus 16:1-3, 11-16; 17:3-7; Joshua 24:11-13.
o Was God unfair to take the Promised Land from its’ inhabitants and give it to the Israelites?

• Application:
o Acknowledge God’s provision and thank Him for it.
o Trust in God’s provision.

Conclusion
• This psalm celebrates what God has done for Israel, and reminds us of what God has done for us.
• In thankfulness and love, may we live our lives as acts of worship to this great God.

For After Sunday:

Think:

I must be mindful what God has done in my life, and be thankful.

Talk:

1. How did you first come to know the God who saves? How can you help others come to know Him too?

2. Share an incident where you personally experienced God’s protection and guidance.

3. Why do we tend to trust in ourselves rather than in God’s provision? What are the effects of such misplaced trust?

Do:

Tell one non-Christian friend about something that God has done in your life.

Remember:

“He brought out His people with rejoicing, His chosen ones with shouts of joy.”
Psalm 105:43, NIV

i didn't actually give out this outline on sunday. i only prepared it after the fact, as homework for the homiletics course. looking at it now it would have been nice if i could have put it in the hands of the congregation for them to look at while i was preaching... something to think about for future sermons.

if you're interested, you can also take a look at the visual aids i used here.

as always, feedback is welcome. =)

Intro to Contemplative Retreat - Day 2: Meditation 1

2011-02-26T10:16:00.002+08:00

opening prayer

Lord, give me grace to stay in Your presence and be attentive to You.
teach me to hear You, listen to You, talk with You, learn from You, interact with You, worship You, know You - not just from the head, but from the heart.
my head came in here, thinking of Romans 12:2 - "be transformed by the renewing of your mind". the word 'mind' here is 'nous' in greek, and it actually means heart and mind.
just the mind is not enough - must have the heart as well!
i've focussed much on training my mind - now it's time for my heart to catch up.
reminder to self: don't study with my mind - meditate with my heart!

lectio (reading):

aiyo! so easily distracted! just read 4 verses from Exodus 3:1-12 and my mind began to wander.
moses' encounter with the burning bush led me to think of divine initiative and human response, which led me to think of the atheists i've interacted with online and wonder how that dynamic has gone wrong (many of them claim that they've responded to God, even begged Him to help them keep their faith, but God just remained silent... as if He didn't exist. which was how they ended up atheists.) this then led me to think of various people i know who may be struggling with or not doing so well in their faith... and i had to clear that and commit them all to God before i could continue. cham lor!
then wanted to write it all here in my journal some more. alamak! distractions are everywhere, even though i'm alone! OK, back to the Word. Lord, help me guard my heart and mind, focus on You and Your Word, not be distracted!
lectio divina (a method of reading and meditating on God's Word that we were to practice in this retreat, with 4 steps: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio) is hard. i kept getting distracted when reading the passage. (see above). i'd fall into 'study mode, and/or start thinking about how to teach or preach the Bible's truth to people.
to use the buffet analogy, instead of actually tasting the food, i'd begin thinking about what ingredients they were made of, and how the dishes were cooked, and how they'd taste to someone of a different culture.

meditatio (meditating, chewing over God's Word and hearing His voice):

anyway, after all the distractions and false starts, i meditated and chewed over verse 7, which speaks of God as

the God who sees
the God who hears
the God who is concerned.

oratio (responding to God and what He has spoken, in prayer, worship, commitment, or action)

Lord, let me know - really know, not just in my head, but deep in my heart - that You are the God who sees, and hears, and is concerned. that no matter my circumstances, fears, doubts, pains, sorrows, struggles; times of loneliness or failure or despair or hopelessness; i will have You as my bedrock and security.
because You are my God... You see me, and You hear my cries and groans and prayers, and You are concerned, You care, You love me, You are on my side... even when i'm not on my own side, when i'm inadvertently working against myself and against You.
thank You, Lord, for who You are. may this knowledge of You be branded on my heart and stay with me always. AMEN.

contemplatio (just resting in God's presence, no need for further striving or reflecting.)

Intro to Contemplative Retreat - Day 2: Morning Walk

2011-02-22T11:00:00.002+08:00

On the second day of the retreat, we started the day with a morning walk, in which we were to enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of nature, and therein enjoy the presence of God.

words can't describe how beautiful that morning was (although i'm gonna try). before even opening my eyes, the first thing that caught up my senses was the sound of birdsong. it was as if the birds were so happy the day had begun, they were bursting with music. the coolness of the highland air was refreshing and invigorating. the trees stood; tall, green, mighty, and ancient. they covered and adorned the hills, which were mightier and more ancient still!

i revelled in the fresh smell of pine sap, which i think is one of the heavenliest smells on earth. the very greenness of the moss and the grass - which is normal really, for if not green then what colour should they be? but nevertheless - the very greenness of the moss and the grass was wonderful to me. the sky was a light, airy blue, with almost intangible wisps of cloud. i thought to myself, 'if i were a better scout i'd remember what kind of cloud that is."

the beauty of creation all around me inspired me to re-read Genesis chapter One. and indeed, i declared together with God, "it is good!" and, "it is very good!" =)

at about this time sms-es and calls started coming in, wishing me a happy and blessed birthday. so as i was contemplating God's creation of the world, i was also reminded that this was the day God created me! and my heart was full to overflowing with thankfulness; to the One who had freely given me the good gift of existence, and created all good and beautiful things for us to enjoy, and gave us the senses and faculties to enjoy them! =)

however, in the midst of all this joy and thankfulness, there was also a little bit of struggle going on. you see, in this retreat, one of the spiritual disciplines we were to practice was silence. now, there are different degrees of silence. outer silence is easy - just don't open your mouth and make noise. anyone can maintain outer silence, though perhaps for differing lengths of time. inner silence, now, there's the rub. to maintain inner silence is to "not think our own thoughts", and to "empty our hearts of our own preoccupations and distractions, and fill our hearts with God's presence".

now, that certainly sounds very nice. but how does it work out, practically?!? "i shouldn't be thinking my own thoughts." - oops, that's a thought! "eh, i shouldn't be thinking about not thinking my own thoughts." - shoot, that's another thought! "maybe i should write down this struggle/difficulty in my journal" - that's a thought too!

but not to panic, i told myself, i'm just a beginner and this is my first ever silent retreat. i'll take things slow and learn to be silent before God - to let my words be few. He will teach me. and over the course of the retreat, although it was still sometimes a struggle, He did. =)

Intro to Contemplative Retreat - Day 1

2011-02-21T09:56:00.002+08:00

how did i spend my 29th birthday? The Wife and i were up in Camerons, trying out a Contemplative Retreat - a.k.a. Silent Retreat - for the first time! it was a great experience, and i highly recommend it for anyone who's been a Christian, serving God and trying to follow Him for ages, and wondering "is this all there is to the Christian life? is this all there is to knowing God???"

the morning of the first day saw me rushing to complete my Biblical Theology Assignment. got it done just in the nick of time - this one really by God's grace. (reminder to self: now i need to start on the Understanding Islam Assignment! lol)

after lunch we picked up a friend and were off to camerons! =)

we arrived late for dinner, so munched it as fast as we could, as the other retreatants were waiting for us to begin.

the first session was an introduction to what contemplative retreat is, what the goals of the retreat are, and etc. Basically, in this retreat, we were to practice 4 Spiritual Disciplines: solitude (being alone with God), silence (being still before God), meditation (chewing on the Word of God), and worship. after that first session, the silence began! all handphones off, and no talking to one another!

here are some thoughts that stayed with me from this first day of the retreat:

i realised a deep need for more meaningful and intimate daily connection with God. had to ask for His forgiveness for neglecting Him, being too busy and too easily distracted. but also gave Him thanks for waking me up!
in this retreat, we strive to seek God in the everyday, ordinary, and natural.
the ultimate goal of the retreat is for us to be able to be still and abide in Him even in the daily hustle and bustle of life.
enjoy God... DON'T enjoy enjoying God!
meditate with my heart... DON'T study with my mind! (meditating is like chewing slowly, enjoying the flavours; whereas studying is like trying to analyze the ingredients and thinking of the best way to cook and present the food)

in following blog posts, i hope to share what i gained from some of the meditations is did (or tried to do) in this retreat. may you be blessed! =)

trying to capture the uncapturable

2011-02-08T11:04:00.002+08:00

The Wife and i have been spending some time, once in a while, viewing pictures and videos from our trip to NZ last year. it's great fun, remembering the good times and re-living the exhilaration of those moments.

but really, when it comes to reproducing the sheer beauty, majesty, and splendour of the things we saw there - our pics and vids fall so far short. words are even worse - unwieldy things with vague meanings and connotations! it's almost impossible for verbal descriptions to evoke the sense of awe and wonder that we had when we experienced it firsthand.

and yet, those natural wonders are but a glimpse of the Beauty, Majesty, and Splendour of God. Indeed, He is Truly Awesome. and i'd run out of superlatives if i tried to describe Him some more here, so i'll stop. but i hope that we'll all think about it, and be reminded of Him every time we experience some of the goodness, pleasure, and beauty that He has infused our world with. =)

p.s. oops, i've neglected the blog for two whole months! so much for the resurrection... *blushes*

p.p.s. i just got back from a delightful CNY Break with The Wife and The In-Laws in Penang. to the few who are still reading my blog, and who happen to be chinese, hope you had a blessed Chinese New Year too! =)

p.p.p.s. oh no, my Biblical Theology Assignment is due this month! *tears hair out* pray with me, that i'll be able to do it well and finish it in time! =P

3 Songs by Caedmon's Call

2010-11-16T11:53:00.002+08:00

i've been listening to some songs by caedmon's call on youtube, and thought i'd share 3 of them here. hope that you'll be blessed by them, as i've been:

Walk with me

Shifting Sand

There is a Reason

how does one cow collate lameness? =D

2010-11-12T10:28:00.004+08:00

i know, i know... i'm not supposed to write another post so soon. the thing is, this just came to me last night when The Wife and i were shopping... and i thought it would be fun to share it with the world.=)

i hope that (if or when The Wife and i eventually have kids) we'll have identical twin boys! then i can name them Karl and Carl.

"but why would you do that???" you ask. "it would be so confusing!"

well then, i'd give them the chinese names: Lay Shern, and Lay Ting.
then their full names would be...

.
.
.
*drumroll*
.
.
.
wait for it...
.
.
.
*cymbals crash!*

Karl Kiew Lay Shern and Carl Kiew Lay Ting!!! =D

geddit, geddit? lol!

[in reference to the post title: MOOOOOOOOO! =P]

Accidental Beauty?

2010-11-10T10:05:00.002+08:00

hullo world =)

i guess no one is reading this anymore as i've left it abandoned it for almost a year (that is, 10 months or so).

the truth is, i was waiting for something momentous or extremely important or significantly life-transforming to happen before i'd re-start the blog with a bang.

unfortunately, no such event has occurred... lol =P

anyway, you might be wondering, what does all this rambling have to do with the phrase, 'Accidental Beauty'?

well, The Wife and I, together with The In-Laws, recently went to New Zealand for a family holiday. it is indeed a place of spectacular natural beauty, which inspired me to write the following:

Accidental Beauty?

Looking on
the sea:
it seems to stretch, to infinity
Gazing on
the ocean:
its' waves, constantly in motion

In my heart,
i do feel
a sense of awe,
a sense of wonder -
That we're a part
of this real
vast and raw
majestic splendour.

The hills!
undulating
one upon another, rolling
The mount!
austere and proud
head capped with snow above the cloud

Some do say
that this beauty
is just here
by accident.
What? no way!
That's just batty.
To me it's clear
that it was meant.

the first half of it was written on the interislander ferry, between the north and south islands of NZ. the second half of it was written as we were travelling from picton to christchurch.

well, things are getting busy as we approach the end of the year. some things i have on my plate are:

preparing for carolling
teaching membership class - they should be finished by early Dec
ongoing outreach to community youth via free guitar classes
taking steps to start another youth outreach via basketball
preparing for NSCFL workshop - 25 Nov, topic: salt and light
preparing for YouthQuake workshop - 28 Dec, topic: home wars
preaching at TUMC - 21 Nov
Biblical Theology Assignment, due Feb 2011
Islam Assignment, due March 2011

thanks for reading, and supporting me in prayer... i'm not sure how often i will be able to write here. so, 'see' you again when i next post here (hopefully it won't be another 10 months!)

ZMAX CAMP!!! =)

2010-01-12T17:12:00.002+08:00

greetings! =)

i brush the dust off this blog... and take some time to type something for the diehards who still visit here, in spite of the updatelessness [if you are such a diehard, please leave a comment so that i can thank God for you]...=)

my last camp as an SU staff [assuming i do not join SU again one day, lol] will be ZMax Camp.

where? Cameron Highlands!
when? 17-20 March 2010!
who? 13-15 year-olds!
how much? only RM120 per person! (in a group of 3 or more)
what if no group? only RM 150 per person!
what are we gonna do there? some highlights of the programme are jungle trekking, an outing to the BOH Tea Plantation, games, theme talks, and workshops. =)

this camp is about Life to the Maximum, and it is gonna be a blast! [we hope and pray la...lol]

so, i need your help... yes, i'm talking to YOU, the person reading now. if you are 13-15 years old, COME FOR THIS CAMP!!! more than that, invite all your friends who are also 13-15 years old to come too! [email me at doogsy.dog@gmail.com for the camp form.]

and if you're NOT 13-15 years old, please go and tell people who are: your children, your cousins, your nieces, your nephews, your neighbours, your neighbours' children, your church youth, etc etc etc [no muslims though... heheh]. persuade them to come for this camp!

finally, please pray. this camp is meant to share God's truth and love with two groups of people - those who don't know Him, and those who have grown up in a Christian family but may not yet have made a personal commitment to Him. so pray that God will move the hearts of young people to come, move the hearts of parents to allow their children to come, and pray that He will reveal Himself to young people at this camp and open their eyes that they might know Him and be saved. =)

my own Mother came to know God through a Scripture Union Camp similar to this one when she was 14 years old, many many years ago. may there be many more like her, at ZMax Camp 2010. =)

p.s. i thought it was pretty pointless to put this up, as hardly anyone comes here anymore, plus it's going against what certain people have told me to do... but The Wife convinced me to put it up regardless. so, credits to The Wife! she is my bestest support, friend, and helpmate. =)

back from singapore =)

2009-09-01T17:50:00.000+08:00

i took the night bus from singapore back to seremban last night. 10.30 pm bus, arrived at 4.00 am in seremban. =)

had a good time in singapore with The Wife and The In-Laws. also got to catch up with Wei-Xun, which was really great. Wei-Xun, you rock! =)

i think i'll be taking a hiatus from blogging for awhile. if you want to get in touch with me, just email me or message me at facebook [doogsy_dog@hotmail.com].

until we meet again, God bless! =)

Something has happened. =(

2009-09-01T11:17:00.002+08:00

Somebody informed certain Authorities concerning a Certain Matter which i have written about in my blog.

The aforesaid Authorities have commanded that Certain Matters (including the aforesaid Matter) must not be mentioned on this blog, and that posts which mention those Matters must be taken offline.

As the main point of this blog is to inform readers and request prayer support concerning the aforesaid Matters, those Matters are mentioned in almost every post. It is thus almost impossible to filter through every post in the archives to purge them of the aforesaid Matters.

Therefore, for now, all blog posts written prior to this one are no longer accessible to the Public.

My humblest apologies to any and all who may have been offended or injured by my previous blog posts.

If you've been using this blog to keep in touch with me, feel free to email me or message me on facebook [doogsy_dog@hotmail.com] instead, as this blog will probably be rather inactive after this.

God bless you all, until we meet again - in person, online, or in the Lord. Remember (more of a reminder to myself in the midst of all this, heheh) - God is good, all the time! =)

trouble is one year old

2009-08-27T10:17:00.002+08:00

do any of you remember last year's subang rally? probably not (unless you're a subang secondary school student or recent ex-student). to refresh your memory, i'll copy and paste this from here (bolded emphasis added in this post):

1. subang rally - it was very 'charismatic'. for my thoughts concerning this, refer to my post on kepong baru scf camp. i believe that God was present and that people were ministered to, and i am thankful for that. however, i felt that i had to remind them of the inter-denominational nature of schools' work. so, when we had our slot to promote SPM Bible Knowledge and our Camps, i took the opportunity to say something about it. later, i managed to talk personally to some of the committee members. they understood where i was coming from and said that i wasn't too harsh, so i hope that they will take heed and be more sensitive to this aspect of running scf activities.

one girl did say that i should have spoken only to the leaders and not the whole congregation. to tell the truth this had never occurred to me. when i was talking with God and wrestling over the question of whether or not to say something about the 'charismatic-ness' of the rally, somehow i saw it as a dichotomy - speak or stay silent. my brain did not come up with alternatives like 'speak only to the leaders'. if i had done that, it would have had less potential to embarrass the leaders, and also have avoided confusing normal participants who didn't see anything wrong with the way the rally was run.

however, in talking it over with The Wife, she brought up another point: if there was anyone in the crowd at all who felt uncomfortable with the 'denominationally biased' situation, my words may have brought relief and comfort to them. it let them know that they were not alone in feeling that way, and that they were not wrong. even if there were only one or two such people in the crowd, i think that it was worth it to say what i said.

well, now, about a year later, this incident has come back to bite me.

an ex-student-leader of a CF wrote an email to my boss about this. here are some excerpts from his email:

...siehjin... went on to "lecture" the organizers and participants (which included non-believers) publicly from the stage...
...when i noticed something was very wrong, siehjin was already giving a piece of his mind to the floor...
my concern is that... no one goes in to just "bombard" one's opinion or conviction on a group of teens...
...i felt that no respect was given to the organizers...
...the CFs felt confused...
...as such, the decision was to exclude SU from most CF activities in subang...
...(SU's) manner of teaching is "boring" and somtimes, not as relevant...
...the few times the SU staff get to speak in the CF is when they approach the CF if they can speak...which sometimes, they feel obliged to say yes...

whoa. can u imagine how i felt when my boss showed me the email? totally crap, man. i don't remember having been that evil! =(

you can click the link to my post on kepong baru scf camp (it's up there in the first red paragraph) to read a more-or-less complete write-up of my opinion and stand on the inter-denominational nature of SCF work. of course at the rally, i didn't have time to pontificate so comprehensively; as i remember, i did not lay down the law or anything like that. i just said a few sentences to ask the people to think about the inter-d aspect of SCF work and to consider that the SCF consists of many different churches with many different styles.

i don't think i even mentioned specific issues or specific denominations, merely stating that i noticed that the way the rally was run was similar to a certain denomination. i may have mentioned in passing that i am not against the move of the Spirit, and that i myself do speak in tongues - just so they'd know that this wasn't some misguided anti-charismatic fundamentalist speaking.

all i wanted to do was to be a voice of reason, calling for balance, speaking out for those who may have no voice (see the third red paragraph above). how did it turn out so horribly? =(

please pray for me, readers. i need discernment and guidance from the Holy Spirit to know:

was what i said wrong?
was the way i said it wrong?
how should i handle such situations in the future?
how should i/SU respond to this email?
how can i/SU redeem the lost relationships with CFs as described by this email?

positive and negative comments are welcome.

let's move on.

in terms of work updates, this is how my schedule looks for this month:

5-7 Sept: ministry trip to ipoh.

6 Sept - speaking at St. Peter's YF on "being a transforming agent in community" (!)

11 Sept - speaking at Sri Garden's SCF
12 Sept - Christina's "engagement party"! w00t! =)
18 Sept - speaking at Rawang SCF on "science and the Bible"
18-19 Sept: TUMC Leadership Retreat (they invited me 'cause i'll be working with the church next year)
21 Sept - SUSOM 2009 Reunion!!! yay! =)
25-27 Sept: ministry trip to Melaka/Batu Pahat/Kluang

26 Sept - speaking at Agape Presbyterian YF, Kluang, on "7 reasons why the Bible is God's Word"
27 Sept - speaking at FGA Batu Pahat YF on "BGR II" (continuation from last years' "BGR Talk")

undated - preparations are underway for NSCFL 2009, ZMax 2010, and SUSOM 2010 (this includes coordinating ministry trips to the East Coast and Seremban).

please pray for me as i prepare for these sessions and camps, and as i liase with churches to coordinate those ministry trips. thanks readers. 'till the next post, God bless! =)

Learning to be Holy

2009-08-07T10:43:00.002+08:00

This is an excerpt from The Fight, emphasis mostly mine (i played around with the punctuation, too). i found John White's thoughts on holiness interesting and helpful, and hope that you will too. =)

Although i knew in my head that i was justified by faith, i rarely profited from the knowledge. i dragged my feet through life beneath a burden of guilt. often i had little heart for Christian duties (although for the most part i was faithful in maintaining them) because of a leaden sense of the impossibility of straightening out my life. how could i confess the same sin for the 100th time? where was my sincerity? having gone through 'sanctifying experiences' several times, having dedicated my all to Christ, having rested in Him, yielded to the Holy Spirit and trusted God to work in me what i could never work in myself, my situation seemed hopeless.

Light began to break over me when i realized in the depths of my spirit that i was forgiven, cleansed, accepted, justified; because of what Christ had done for me, and not because of the depth of my yieldedness. i had preached this gospel to non-Christians for 25 years but never tasted its full sweetness. it was as though dawn broke. suddenly the relief of knowing that i was forgiven and loved lifted the load off my spirit. i found that i was set free, free to be holy. To my astonishment i discovered that i wanted to live a holy life far more than i wanted to sin. Forgiveness freed me to do what i wanted most.

i cannot say that my life has been sinless since then, only that now each time i am guilt-ridden, i return to the Cross of our Lord Jesus. i go shamelessly. i don't struggle to experience feelings or to achieve the requisite degree of piety. i recognize that peace and forgiveness don't depend on my feelings... but on Christ and what He has done!

i haven't arrived at perfect sanctification. what has happened is that i have begun an ongoing learning process. the nearest thing i can compare it to is learning to sail... our little Laser, a boat that skims over the water like a bird (and capsizes at the drop of a hat!).

no, this dude isn't John White. but check out how
he's hanging out of the boat to balance it! whoah, man... =)

we sail it on a lake where the wind is gusty and veers frequently. i have capsized as many as 10 times in a single sail. but i am learning. it is something like learning to ride a bicycle in the middle of an earthquake, yet somehow i am beginning to harmonize with wind and water and sail. and if i am flung overboard as i capsize, i right the boat, get in again, and sail on. i am covered from head to foot in bruises, but who cares? i'm becoming a sailor!

in the same way, i am learning about holiness. at one time, it was only in shame and humiliation that i went back to the Cross for forgiveness. the humiliation included alot of self-conceit. now, i go back gladly. it is the basic manouevre of holy living. now, bruised and breathless, i scramble aboard my righted boat and sail on, praising my Redeemer. i am learning to sail. i am learning to be holy.

btw, The Wife came back on sunday, and life is so much brighter and chirpier when she's around. sometimes there are fireworks too, but that just makes things more exciting. =)

if you would, please pray especially for the upcoming School of Evangelism. registration is slow. pray that students will sign up, especially those from melaka. this camp was organized in cooperation with CF teacher-advisors in melaka, and students from melaka are the main target group.

pray for me also as i prepare sessions/talks for TUMC MYF (9 Aug), SUFES Prayer Meeting (12 Aug), Bukit Mewah SCF (14 Aug), Bethel Baptist Church (especially this one! 16 Aug), St. John's SCF (21 Aug, switched with my colleagues for Sri Garden) and the aforementioned School of Evangelism (24-26 Aug).

now, let us go... and inspired by the words of John White, let us continue to persevere in learning to be holy! =)

missing The Wife

2009-07-30T14:57:00.002+08:00

she's having semester break now. she went back to penang... it's been 6 days already. another 3 long days before she comes back... =(

the last time this happened, i wrote a song about it. it's in a minor key, very sad one. this is how it goes:

It's only a week
A week's not too long
To be lost and alone,
Heart tattered and torn
It's only a week
A week's not too long
To love you and miss you
And sing you this song:

A week, just a week
How my heart longs to seek
For the whole* that makes
Our oneness complete
A week, just a week
With desire i am weak
For the time when we
Again shall meet.

It's only a week
A week's not too long
I've been counting the days
With heart so forlorn
It's only a week
A week's not too long
Until i can hold you
And sing you this song:

A week, such a week
Now my hand, touch your cheek
And we're whole, for He makes
Our oneness complete
A week, such a week
But it's done, we can speak
Face-to-face once again
Praise the Lord as we meet.

*This is a reference to the idea that marriage consists of two whole
people whom God joins together to become one flesh. =)

Apart from pining away for The Wife, here are some upcoming events that you can pray for together with me:
- BK Oral Quiz, 1 Aug (this saturday!)
- ZMax Camp 2010 planning meeting, 3 Aug (monday)
- SUSOM 2010 planning meeting, 4 Aug (tuesday)
- Preaching at Bethel Baptist Church, 16 Aug (sunday)
- d'Na 2009 planning meeting, 17 Aug (monday)
- Speaking at Sri Garden SCF, 21 Aug (friday)
- School of Evangelism, Melaka, 24-26 Aug (monday-wednesday)

Thanks for reading, commenting, and praying. God bless! =)

Wake Up!

2009-07-27T15:11:00.003+08:00

i've been reading about the Teoh Beng Hock case.

this is not a political blog, and i am not particularly well-informed, politically. i don't have the time or the energy to really get involved in the political scene. in fact, i am rather neutral when it comes to politics.

and so, i don't even know how to write about this thing in a way which does justice to it. i'm not sure if i can express my feelings of anger and sadness coherently.

well, a friend of mine wrote this in a facebook note, and i'm copying it here because i think it's something that as many malaysians as possible need to read.

====================

Are we drifting towards a culture of murder in Malaysia?

http://www.thenutgraph.com/selangor-exco-aide-found-dead
http://www.thenutgraph.com/what-happened-to-teoh-beng-hock

Of course, I have complete faith in our institutions to ensure that nothing will happen, nothing will be discovered and justice will not be done.

Not so long ago there was this:

http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101472912-un-cadavre-tres-derangeant (French)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa (English)

And this...

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/26623-kugans-death-questions-unanswered
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/19539-final-autopsy-suggests-kugan-sustained-severe-beating

How many more people have to die before the nation wakes up?

====================

when so much is going wrong in our world, and there seems to be no recourse for justice in the official system, what can one do but cry out to God?

Lord, let justice be done. let those who are corrupt and who abuse their power be brought down. let righteousness and truth prevail. give us courage and strength to do and uphold what is right, even in the face of futility. You are our Hope.

in Jesus' name, Amen.

memos to the disorganized

2009-07-22T16:08:00.002+08:00

Adapted from "Ordering Your Private World", by Gordon MacDonald. =)

Be convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity.

Make a daily choice to monitor your private world's state of orderliness.

Recognise your proneness to operate according to schemes and patterns, not made of God, but fashioned by a disordered past.

Face up to what drives you, then listen quietly for the call of Christ.

See yourself as Christ's steward, and not master of your own purpose, role, and identity.

Make a daily determination to see time as God's gift, worthy of careful investment.

Seal the "time leaks" and allocate your productive hours according to your capabilities, limits, and priorities.

Determine that every day will be for you, a day of growth in knowledge and wisdom.

Seek to use all you learn in service to others, as Christ did.

Regularly choose to enlarge the spiritual centre of your life.

Be unafraid to be alone and quiet before Christ.

Absorb the words of Christ into your attitudes and actions.

Begin to pursue the discipline of seeing events and people through the eyes of Christ, so that your prayers reflect your desire to be in alignment with His purposes and promises for them.

Choose to press Sabbath peace into the rush and routine of daily life, in order to find the rest God prescribed for Himself and all of humanity.

Make a deliberate decision to begin the "ordering" process... Now!

This book is full of good, timeless principles. now, may God help me put them into practice in my life in increasing measure... =)

Health and Wealth?!?

2009-07-14T10:43:00.002+08:00

[note: all names of people, except me, have been changed to arbitrary letters of the alphabet.]

one of my friends took this test on facebook: "which church in iwon'ttellyouwhichcountry are you best suited in?" and her result was "This Church". i made a comment on that test result, and the following conversation ensued:

=========================
Sieh Jin Kiew at 6:27pm July 7
hmm... some people say that "This Church" preaches health and wealth gospel, a feel-good version of the Truth...

i'm not saying they are wrong or anything, just saying be careful and always exercise discernment, ok. =)

=====
Mr. A at 7:39pm July 7
Jesus heals the sicks... that is health. Jesus multiplies 2 fishes and 5 loaves... that is wealth! He is the same yesterday, today and forever... hmm good discernment!!!! Amen!

=====
Ms. B at 7:42pm July 7
AMEN PASTOR! :D

=====
Sieh Jin Kiew at 11:24am July 8
Yes, Jesus heals the sick. when He was on earth, He healed every sick person who came to Him - there is no record of Him ever refusing to heal someone.

yet, after He ascended to Heaven, although His disciples continued to heal (and yes, i do believe that the gift of healing is still active in the church today), the incidence of healing was no longer 100%. see how Paul told timothy to take a little wine for his stomach and his frequent illnesses in Timothy 5:23. or see how Epaphroditus was sick and almost died, in Philippians 2:25. why not just heal them, if we were able to heal at all times and in all cases?

so the fact is that, in spite of the purest faith and the most fervent prayers, God does not always heal instantly. we may not understand why one is healed and another is not, but it is something we have to deal with. yet this is a fact that one almost never hears from the lips of those who preach the health and wealth gospel.

=====
Sieh Jin Kiew at 11:34am July 8
and yes, God can prosper us if He chooses. Promotion comes from the Lord (Psalm 75:6-7). yet reading Jesus' words, "you cannot serve both God and money" (Matthew 6:24), and His reply to the rich young ruler, "go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" (Matthew 19:21) and paul's words in 1 Timothy 6:10, "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil"...

all these verses show us that there is something wrong with the kind of gospel that can blithely proclaim that all God wants to do is to bless and prosper you.

God does not want to make us happy - He wants to make us holy. and that means struggle, sacrifice, disappointments, dying to self, and etc... not the hollow promises of health and wealth that some churches peddle.

once again, a disclaimer - i do not say that "This Church" is one of these. just that this kind of teaching is becoming prevalent among some churches, and we would do well to be careful and practice discernment. =)

=====
Mr. A at 12:20pm July 8
2 Corinthians 1:20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.

Father, whatever promises that he doesn't want, please give to me and I say, " Amen!" to Your glory...

=====
Ms. B at 12:36pm July 8
I want also.. Amen!

=====
Sieh Jin Kiew at 12:43pm July 8
lol... i do not deny, and neither do i reject, the promises of God. so, Mr. A and Ms. B, if you're hoping God will give you my "rejected blessings", too bad, they're all mine! =D

but... here's a promise (or is it a warning?) that ties in with what i was trying to say earlier... "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."
- 2 Timothy 4:3-4

one thing that makes the health and wealth gospel so dangerous, is that it's exactly what we want to hear. we must not 'censor out' the difficult, hard, challenging parts of the gospel. ok? =)

=====================

there's more, but i think that's sufficient to convey the concern or caution that i was trying to communicate to them.

i'd be glad to interact further with you on this matter if you have questions or objections; just drop a comment here. i do not deny that some pastors can be very charismatic and persuasive, and there may be no discernible error in their sermons - but i am afraid that they may be preaching only half the truth without error: the nice, encouraging, happy, blessings-and-prosperity half.

what do you think?

[p.s. the East Coast Regional Trip went well, in spite of some screw-ups on my end. thanks for supporting us in prayer. =)]

Kuala Terengganu, here i come! =)

2009-07-08T13:35:00.004+08:00

the SU Youth Team and i will be in Kuala Terengganu tomorrow! please pray for us, for safe journey and meaningful and effective ministry there and in Kuantan. this is our itinerary...

Thursday, 9 July 2009
- Travel to Kuala Terengganu, 9.00 am
- Meet up with BK Students and Teachers in Kuala Terengganu, 9.00 pm
- Rest!

Friday, 10 July 2009
- Preach at St. Andrew's Anglican Church (Preacher: Runa), 9.00 am
- Preach at Air Jernih Presbyterian Church (Preacher: Jason Fong), also 9.00 am
- Speak at AJPC's Youth Fellowship (Speaker: Jason Fong), 3.30 pm

Saturday, 11 July 2009
- Youth Seminar, with people coming from Kemaman and Kota Bahru!
- Session I - The Bible: God's Word?!? (Speaker: Me)
- Session II - The Bible: Reading it Everyday?!? (Speaker: Runa)
- Session III - The Bible: You Know It?!? (Speaker: Me)
- Session IV - Scripture Union and You!!! (Speaker: Runa)
- 7.00 pm, leave for Kuantan.

Sunday, 12 July 2009
- Preach at Kuantan Baptist Church (Preacher: Me)
- SU Promo at Kuantan Wesley Church (Promo: Jason Fong)

oh, and a new guy will be joining us on this trip: Daniel Koo, a potential SU staff in the Camping Department. which is good news considering that so many staff will be leaving SU at the end of next year and early next year [including me]. i'll be bringing him home with me to seremban tonight, before we go off to Kuala Terengganu tomorrow.

thanks for supporting us in prayer... God bless! =)

A looooong conversation on free will, which mutated into something else

2009-06-30T13:20:00.003+08:00

[Note: this Mr. X is not the immigration guy. a different person altogether, just using the name Mr. X to conceal his identity.]

Me:
hi Mr. X =)

i was thinking about what you said the other day, about the question of free will being moot... do i correctly understand this as meaning that you believe that free will does not exist?

doesn't this kinda cause some problems for Christianity, e.g. how can God create creatures that have no free will and yet hold them responsible for their actions? how do you get around problems like that?

i guess i could ask the same question to a strict Calvinist, but i wondered what your take on it was. =)

Mr. X:
Yes you understand me correctly, to the effect that free will does not exist in the magical sense that many people believe it to exist in.

No, it seems you have not yet understood that no magic is required for systems to employ/deploy the concepts of guilt, punishment, and responsibility. For example, it's easier to note that 1990s Walkmans have no free will, are guilty of obsolescence, and are systematically punished with extinction and the ridicule of antiquity.

To bridge this with Christianity you only need to understand how Walkmans, cockroaches and people are all governed by fairly deterministic processes.

Here's a reference to the classical solution (see 3.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomy

If you and your friends would like to discuss this further, let me know. The classic text referred to above is The Critique of Pure Reason, and it is critically boring, FTW.

Me:
hmm, the walkman analogy is a good one. alternatively, slightly closer to the Christian idea of heaven and hell, free-will-less shirts which are guilty of being defective are punished by being sent to reject shops to be sold, whereas those with the merit of meeting standards of quality control are rewarded by being sent to glamorous official distributors.

however, before this i've always thought of this transaction involving a choice, an exercise of free will - whether or not to believe in God, Jesus, and etc. i've also always thought of the Bible as exhorting us to choose to do acts of righteousness and justice. if there's no free will, then what's the point of all that? just empty rhetoric?

i can understand many of the arguments for determinism. however i do not think that they are conclusive. for example, it is possible to imagine 2 men for whom deterministic elements - genes, environment, etc - are considered equal, and yet their lives may have very different ends. would i be wrong in saying that it was their exercise of choice and free will which made the difference?

one more thing - the genesis creation account tells us that man was created in God's image. i'm not sure if this falls into the category of magical thinking, but this is a distinction which cockroaches and walkmans do not share. therefore if i believe that God has free will, it is quite possible that one of the things implied by our being created in His image is that we have free will too.

Mr. X:
Here's the short cut - the choices you make are the result of the information that is made available to you.

Me:
hmm, but two people who obtain the same information may make different choices based on it...!

i guess that choice of what to do with the information is influenced by deterministic factors like genetics, environment and etc. but like the example i gave earlier, if there are two men in whom those factors are equal... doesn't their course of action then boil down to their choice?

Mr. X:
You forgot that before they got the same information at T=0, they had different information at T=-1, -2, -3, etc.

:)

Me:
this would work if people were rational all the time. but they're not, therefore their choices are not influenced solely by information, right?

Mr. X:
We started with the premise that people are rational (determined within a system which can be described rationally). In order to falsify the premise, you need to be producing evidence/examples that falsify the premise... not simply assuming the opposite :)

Me:
ok sorry... can i play the i'm-not-a-philosopher-so-my-thinking-processes-are-rather-fuzzy card? lol

anyway, excuses for sloppy thinking aside, a few more questions...

in your understanding, people go to hell (i'm assuming that you believe in hell... do you?) because they lack information?

also, people lie and steal and generally sin because they lack information?

i need to chew on this abit more... it seems hard to swallow.

Mr. X:
Hell? I don't pretend to know anything about hell,or heaven for that matter. Chew away.

[after an interval of a few weeks for chewing]

Me:
hi Mr. X =)

as i was chewing over this, i realised that my main reasons for believing in free will are rooted in the bible... God often seems to exhort people to make choices, which seems farcical if people don't have free will (e.g. "choose this day whom you shall serve..."). but of course, it also has verses that imply determinism (e.g. "predestined before the foundation of the world..."), which leads to the classic predestination vs. free will debate in christian circles.

i don't understand it fully, but as i read my bible i find that it speaks of both free will and predestination... therefore a fully biblical perspective cannot major on one or the other, but must hold both in tension.

what is your take on this? how does the bible affect (if it does) your POV on our apparent lack for free will?

Mr. X:

Do you even understand the process of reading? What happens to dots on paper that are captured by the iris of your eye? That's a good place to begin the dissection of text.

Me:
err, the eye creates signals which are sent to the brain, which recognises the symbols that the dots are arranged in.

the symbols (letters, words, phrases... whole pages, for speed-readers) have meanings associated with them, and (if it's not a nonsensical piece of writing) these are combined into a meaningful message.

have i gotten it right so far?

Mr. X:
What are meanings?

Me:
well, letters are associated with sounds... strung together in the right sequence, they become sounds associated with certain ideas... like 'b', 'a' and 'g' combined makes the sound 'bag' which brings to mind a pouch-like thingy that you can keep stuff in, with straps that you can sling around your body parts for ease of carriage.

Mr. X:
Righto - but at some point they have to refer to sensations right?

Me:
erm yeah, sounds are sensations. and we know what a bag is primarily by sight, which is also a sensation.

how does this connect with my original question again? lol

Mr. X:
Ok. Now we need to begin to map out in terms of sensations, what you mean by every word in your original question.

Me:
original question: "how does the bible affect (if it does) your POV on our apparent lack for free will?"

i'm not sure how to do this. what sensation, for example, corresponds with "how"?

does it really have to be this complicated?

Mr. X:
Yes. Let me know when you have thought about it, and have something to say :)

[after another interval of a few weeks, for thinking]

Me:
hi Mr. X. i encountered two problems when thinking about this.

firstly, i don't know how to translate concepts and ideas into sensations.

example 1: "how" at the beginning of a sentence tells me that it's an enquiry as to method, process, etc... but i have no idea what sensation that is.

example 2: "bible" brings to mind a thick, leather-bound book embossed with the words "Holy Bible" on the cover, with thin pages and words interspersed with big numbers denoting chapters and small numbers denoting verses. those are the sensations that are associated with the word, primarily through touch and sight (i don't often smell or taste my bible). however, the word "bible" is also associated with the concept of God's Word, which Christians believe is eternal, authoritative, and true. how do you translate that concept into sensations?

secondly, what does it mean to map out the sentence in terms of sensations? no matter how i explain the sentence, i'll still be using words. those words then would have to be further explained or mapped out, ad infinitum. therefore, i need to know what are the irreducible sensations to use - words which do not need further explaining and mapping out. i also need to know what to do if there are words or phrases that can't be mapped out in those irreducible sensations.

some help?

Mr. X:
Good questions, I'll get back to you when I have more time to read. I must warn you however, that it is more time effective to sit down and work through this stuff in conversation. Anyway. Whatever works.

[after a few days...]

Mr. X:
re: firstly - well then all there is left for you to do, is to learn how. Keep thinking about it. If you want a tutorial, we should meet up for 30 minutes to an hour. More value-for-time if you have other interested parties so that we can do a group training, btw.

re: secondly - see above.

[so... what do you think of this conversation? feel free to comment on free will, predestination, or the strange turn the conversation took into linguistics and sensations. anyone interested to meet up with Mr. X to learn how to map sentences in terms of irreducible sensations? i doubt there'll be much response, but no harm asking. the meeting would have to be in kl/pj, though. =)]

Taman Connaught SCF

2009-06-23T10:30:00.003+08:00

i had some problems going to Taman Connaught SCF the other day.

i got out of my office at 11.30am, nice and early. i waited outside my office for a taxi. one came along. i stopped it. after a short conversation, it went off.

without me.

repeat the above five or six times. what was the problem? every time i said "connaught?" they said, "cannot!".

by this time it was already 12.00pm,and i was in danger of being late for the SCF meeting. so i went back in to the office and asked around for help. thank God, one of my colleagues, Siew Meng, was kind and generous enough to lend me his car! =)

well, it was actually his sister-in-law's car, as his car was in the workshop... but that just makes his willingness to lend it to me all the more amazing, no? anyway, so i started driving to Taman Connaught.

not being familiar with the car caused abit of frustration and trouble. for example, every time i wanted to indicate a right of left turn i ended up activating the windshield wipers instead.

i'm also quite bad at roads and directions, so all the way i was praying that God would help me find the way to the school and help me get there on time.

i was driving, so obviously i couldn't scrunch myself up like this.
i think my heart was in this posture though. =P

and God was gracious to me; i got there safe and sound and without a second to spare. =)

i did a session with them about worldviews. just an introduction to the concept and to some broad overviews of different ones, which i hope will start them thinking and forming a true Christian worldview.

thank God for His hand with me throughout all this! =)

p.s. if you're wondering how come i can blog from staff consultation, it's because staff consultation has been postponed. why was it postponed? that's a good question. the answer is shrouded in mystery. none of us know. we just got a brief email to that effect on friday evening, without much by way of explanation. *plays creepy music*

the good thing about that is, i can go home to The Wife for these few days instead of being stuck, err i mean being actively involved, in interminable meetings. =P

singapore and TUMC Camp

2009-06-17T09:51:00.003+08:00

i had a great time in singapore. =)

i got to reconnect and ber-bonding with The In-Laws. =)

i got to meet up and catch up with old, dear friends in Singapore... people i value and treasure from our secondary school days in sitiawan. =)

i got to visit Singapore Zoo with The Wife and The In-Laws... the "open zoo" concept is simply amazing, and gives great opportunities to observe the animals up-close and personal. i left awed by the beauty, majesty and variety of God's creation. =)

i had a great time in TUMC Camp, too. =)

i learnt the names of some church members [which i hope i can still remember when i see them in coming sundays]. =)

i played saboteur, basketball, volleyball, and swam in the swimming pool. =)

i listened to sessions and thought about what it meant for the church to be a transforming community, while trying to help some of the youth stay awake. =)

i'll be doing the following things in the coming weeks:
- planning meeting for National School Christian Fellowship Leaders' Camp ~ 18 June
- speaking at an SCF in Taman Connaught ~ 19 June
- staff consultation, where we lay plans for 2010 ~ 22-25 June
- speaking at St. Mary's SCF ~ 26 June
- attending Li Yit and Lydia's wedding ~ 27 June

keep me in prayer ya. and drop a comment or a note on the chatbox to keep in touch. 'till the next post, God bless! =)

interesting arguments

2009-06-07T07:51:00.002+08:00

greetings from singapore! =)

here's an update of what happened on facebook after my comments on Mr. X's status update concerning emigration:

Friend #1:
talk cock. move out means disobey calling of the Lord, means selfish, and it is a fault for CHRISTIANS to move out?

bunch of talk cock people.dun worth my time reading it.but good for people like u.

Friend #2:
Who are we to judge what others should or shouldn't do with their lives? Have you ever thought maybe God has a different purpose for him or those who migrated? Maybe God wanted to mold him/them elsewhere so they will be ready to serve Him when they come back? Just because your way of loyalty is shown by staying at your birth country doesn't mean those around you should do the same. At the end of the day, it is you yourself who have to answer to God for the decisions you made in your life, not your loved ones/family/supporters/critics.

My Reply #1:
if you read what i wrote, you'll notice that i never said that tristan was definitely in the wrong. i merely raised questions.

i am sure that some of those who emigrated are sincerely and truly following God's calling. but i'm not sure if all of them are. especially when most of them are emigrating to "better" countries, e.g. u.s.a, australia, etc. Strange that God calls them only to those countries, and not to poorer countries like cambodia or vietnam or bangladesh eh? but of course, God works in mysterious ways.

all i want to do is to spur tristan, and any other Christians, who are thinking of emigrating, to seriously look at their own motives. if, as ricky says, tristan can honestly tell me that he wants to leave malaysia because God is calling him to, and not because he just wants to chase a better life, then that's great.

Friend #1, sorry if i offended you. it's not talking cock, at least not if you care about God and what He wants.

p.s. Friend #2, if they plan to come back to malaysia, that's a different story. that's very commendable, because it will definitely be hard to come back and start all over again. but what i was refering to was a permanent move, which if i read tristan's words correctly, is what tristan was referring to.

Friend #2's response:
Nor did I said anything about who is right or wrong. Again I would like to repeat, who are we to question their motives, genuine or otherwise? That's strictly between God and themselves personally.

Using a quote, "The right to disagree, The duty to support". We can all disagree on everything all day long but we should support our fellow brothers and sisters as long as we exist, no matter the choices they made, be it good or bad(subjective matter). Life is hard enough as it is, why should we make it harder for them and ourselves? We can only give guidance and advice but ultimately the choice is still made by them themselves, and they will have to live with the choices they made the rest of their lives, again be it good or bad choices.

My Reply #2:
Being able to question one another's motives is part of being an authentic community and keeping each other accountable. i would appreciate it if my brother-in-Christ questioned my motives and helped me see if i were really doing my best to follow Christ in all that i do. (of course it would be best if he could do it in a non-threatening way in which i did not feel attacked... and if i've failed in that, please forgive me.)

good and bad is not a purely subjective matter. there is an absolute standard of Good. as Jesus said, God alone is Good. and His standards are revealed to us in His word. as we claim to be His followers, we have a responsibility to help each other in growing to be like Him. a true friend would not support his friend's wrong decisions - and would question, guide and advise his friend on those decisions - although he would always be there to support his friend.

thanks for your sms yesterday Mr. X - appreciate it. =)

Re: the SMS, i was on the way home from work, slightly shaken by the comment that i was "talking cock", when i received an sms from Mr. X. In that sms, he basically said that he'd read my comment, and after thinking about it, he agrees with me. he told me that he'd typed that status update in an emotional moment caused by some unfair mistreatment he'd suffered.

Re: supporting friends and supporting friend's decisions, i'd like to add this illustration: if a friend of mine decided to start abusing drugs, i'd be 100% against his decision, and i would not be shy to let him know that fact. but if as a result of that decision he ended up homeless, i'd be glad to open my house for him to crash in. i hope that helps to show the distinction between supporting a friend and supporting his decisions.

alright, why am i still in front of the computer? i should be enjoying singapore! tata for now, folks! =)

Let's get out of here! (...not!)

2009-06-05T13:42:00.004+08:00

hullo readers! =) i just got back from bukit bintang boys' school, where i did a session on Programme-Planning for the SCF with their SCF Committee members. the session went well, i think... thank God. seriously, every time i do a session or preach or etc, i am amazed by His grace that sees me through. =)

now, in reference to the title, i came across a facebook status update by a friend of mine that said [paraphrased and name changed], "Mr. X is not happy with malaysia.... and demands a move out." in the comments following this status update, Mr. X clarified his stand with these words: "I just need to move out as soon as my education finishes. Meaning degree overseas and never return."

the high frequency of Christians emigrating has long been a sore point for me. i responded with the following comments:

comment #1 (upon first reading Mr. X's status update):
what makes u so sure u'll be happier elsewhere?

Apostle Paul learnt to be content in all circumstances... i think that happiness ultimately comes from knowing God, regardless of outside circumstances. if you can't find it here, i doubt that moving out will help much.

comment #2 (after his clarifying comment):
i would then ask, is it right for a christian to move out of his/her own country simply because he/she thinks he/she'll be happier elsewhere? are we called to be comfortable and to seek our own pleasure? is this following one's own selfish desires, or following the calling of the Lord?

"statistics show that in 2001, at least 35 percent of Malaysian immigrants to Australia were Christians. This is a highly disproportionate figure in view of the fact that Christians form only 9 percent of the Malaysian population." i'm not saying that it is always wrong to emigrate - but looking at these figures, something is certainly wrong somewhere.

did God place us in Malaysia simply so that we can run away at the first opportunity?

Comment #3:
p.s. the figures quoted in my comment above are taken from bishop hwa yung's article, which can be found here: http://kebaktian.blogspot.com/2007/04/patutkah-umat-kristian-berhijrah.html

i think the article is a must-read for any christian who is contemplating emigration.

I welcome comments. hope i did not offend anyone too badly.=P

Other news in bullet points:

- i came back from DMSJ [the combined church camp i mentioned a couple of blog posts ago] 3 days ago. it was awesome! the weather was so hot that i ate an icecream everyday. a cold icecream on a super-hot day is a foretaste of Heaven. and 4 churches [not 3, sorry, got it wrong in the previous blog post] being able to worship, have fun, and learn and grow in God's Word together is, i think, an even greater foretaste of Heaven. plus, all my teaching and games sessions went well. thank you for supporting me in prayer! =)

- i'll be in singapore from tomorrow to tuesday, helping The Wife's bro move house. he's graduated and ready to enter the busy world of work! anyone in singapore wanna meet up? i may sms some of you after i post this. =)

- TUMC [that's my church la, Taman Ujong Methodist Church]'s church camp is on 11-14 June. original plan is for The Wife and i to go together on Friday evening, missing the first half of camp, but she suddenly has a conference to attend so looks like i'll be going alone. pray for a good time of bonding with my fellow church members. work takes me away from church so often, i don't really have time to get to know people properly.

ok, i think that's enough news for now. 'till the next blog post, God bless! =)

DON'T TURN ON YOUR TV!!!

2009-05-26T14:41:00.004+08:00

I was taking an online survey. they showed me the pic above, and asked me to write a story about it, being as creative as i could be within a limit of 1000 characters and including the points

What is happening in the picture?
Why did it happen?
If you were in that room, looking at the scene, and given one hour, what would you do, and why?

this is what i wrote (with some additional words and punctuation, since on this blog i don't have a character limit):

the picture depicts a teenage girl lying inert in a living-room.

she is lying thus because her soul has been sucked up by the television in her living-room. this is part of an insidious alien invasion. we have not been aware of it, but while we were sleeping last night, aliens switched every tv in our homes with these evil soul-sucking devices. DON'T TURN ON YOUR TV WHEN YOU GO HOME TODAY! not unless you want to suffer the same fate as this poor girl, with your soul trapped in the TV and your house wide open for the aliens to take over.

if i were there, i would get the *toot* out of that room before the TV sucked my soul out too. then i'd turn off the mains, thus deactivating the soul-sucking TV. then i'd get some tools and dismantle the TV, thus hopefully releasing the girl's soul and bringing her back to life. then we'd go on to help others and in the end we'd save the world from the alien invasion.

this might need slightly more than an hour, lol.=D

The End

An Ode to Frodo

2009-05-18T12:11:00.005+08:00

To be sung to the tune of the oldie, "Oh Carol"...

Oh Frodo

I am but a fool

Doggy i love you

Though you always drool

You lick me

And you jump around

But if you leave me

I'll be really down

Doggy i enjoy rubbing your belly

Almost as much as you

Though you're sometimes smelly

And i don't like your poo

I will always want you as my doggy

Though you sometimes run away

Oh Frodo

You're my sunny day!

lol! =)

In other news, i have a camp coming up, 30 May-2 June... it's a combined church family camp between 3 churches, and the SU team has been invited to do our Inter-Generational Camp thingy. do pray for me as i prepare sessions and games for this camp.

to end, here's a pic from the last IG Camp we ran (1-3 May). One of the IG games we ran was a station game, and this was the station i was in charge of: Scissors, Paper, Stone, Splash! =)

to know and follow hard after You

2009-05-12T09:40:00.008+08:00

Dear Lord,
Please give me one pure and holy passion.
no more foolish passions,
no more misguided passions -
just one pure and holy passion.

Dear Lord,
Please give me one magnificent obsession.
no more self-indulgent obsessions,
no more self-destructive obsessions -
just one magnificent obsession.

Dear Lord,
Please give me one glorious ambition for my life.
no more high-flying ambitions,
no more selfish ambitions -
just one glorious ambition for my life...

To know and follow hard after You.

~{O}~

This prayer was inspired by this song:

Give me one pure and holy passion

Give me one magnificent obsession

Give me one glorious ambition for my life

To know and follow hard after You.

To know and follow hard after You

To be found as Your disciple in Your truth

This world is empty, pale, and poor

compared to knowing You my Lord

Lead me on and i will run after You

Lead me on and i will run after You.

Amen.

penang! =)

2009-04-27T09:41:00.003+08:00

hullo everyone, greetings from the island of good food! =)

the past week had been a lonely, dreary one for me as The Wife left me forlorn and alone when she went back to penang on monday. she claims that it's tit for tat, as i too often leave her alone when i go for my camps.

tit for tat, butter for fat
you kill my dog, i kill your cat

she went back to penang because it's her semester break now.

anyway, after a sad, bleak week of The-Wife-less-ness, i took a bus up to penang on friday evening and am now blogging from DAP island! =) i took leave for monday-wednesday, so The Wife and i will be going home to seremban together on wednesday.

we've had a relaxing time so far. we've watched quite a few movies, as The Wife's father has an extensive dvd collection. yesterday we watched Inkheart, which has a plot failure. the movie ends in a way that makes the viewer ask, "if they can do that to beat the bad guys, why didn't they do it years ago?!?"

it's like those ultraman series where ultraman has to have his chest-light blinking before he brings out his super-power move and kills off the rubber monster. he could have done that at the beginning of the fight; but no, he has to wait until he's almost going to die first. (sorry to any readers who are ultraman fans, lol!=P)

apart from Inkheart, we've also watched Marley and Me and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Marley is a feel-good movie that i enjoyed, because it reminded me to appreciate the simple things in life. Benjamin Button was a good story, but i'm still pondering what the whole point of it was. i think that it carried a message about all of us being different and being alone. need to think abit more about this though...

besides that, i've been doing a fair bit of reading. have re-read "the Rediscovery of Genesis", which is about how the story of genesis was discovered in the ancient chinese ideogrammes, and am thinking of making a session or a sharing out of it. it would be an interesting topic for students who are literate in the chinese language, and i hope it may help open some of them to the gospel of Christ. am also re-reading "The Fight" by John White, as i'm supposed to facilitate a book study on it at a camp at the end of this year. and am also re-reading "Anne of Avonlea", which is just for fun, but is really good for my spirit - her idealism and optimism are infectious! =) lastly, am reading "Sacred Pathways" by Gary Thomas, which is about how different Christians have different ways of approaching God. for example the naturalist would feel closest to God when appreciating the beauty of nature; the traditionalist when participating in liturgical worship; the activist when confronting evil and injustice in God's name, and etc.

lastly, what would penang be without her glorious food? i've been enjoying the delicious home-cooked meals that The Wife's mother cooks for us. besides that, a couple of nights ago we went together with The Wife's parents and some relatives for a teppanyaki buffet dinner. only RM20 per person, eat all you can! and senior citizens have a discount too, only pay 14 ringgit! we ate until we almost burst. =) and yesterday we went to air itam to eat what is purportedly the best asam laksa in penang. it was indeed delicious. and while we were there, i bumped into gideon.

Image taken from http://rasamalaysia.com

gideon's an old friend from sitiawan. well, he's more of an acquaintance than a friend... he's about 4 or 5 years younger than me, i think (sitiawanites, please feel free to correct me... i've become quite blur about how old everyone is). we used to play basketball together back in the old days when i had a fully functional knee. so we chatted for a while and i found out that he was in a college in KL studying optometry. then i asked him,

"so, are you still going to church over in kl?"
"no la"
"why? go la... we have alot of sitiawan friends going to dumc right? follow them la"
"erm... i'll try... eh got to go already la"
"ok bye"

now, i know that one can't judge a person summarily and say that they are spiritually in bad shape just because they don't attend church. there are people close to me who seldom attend church and yet maintain a true and living faith. some of them are, however, making efforts to come back to church, which i applaud (you know who you are! keep it up, lol). this is a phenomena that will only increase in this age of postmodernity and the emergent church. i understand, and i'm sure God understands too, that sometimes there are certain factors, mitigating circumstances, valid reasons and etc for people being absent from church.

nevertheless, i continue to believe that our faith must have an element of community to it. we are not just indivudual christians but a body of believers. and therefore whenever i meet old friends or acquaintances like gideon, i always try to encourage them to come back to church. i'm not really sure if it makes any difference, if an encounter of a few minutes like that will actually cause him to think about church and his faith. i also am concerned if i'm too 'pushy' that i might offend people and cause them to go further from God instead of drawing them back to Him. but i just do what i can and pray that God will use my feeble efforts to do His work and His will in their lives.

do pray for Gideon and all of your own friends/acquaintances who are like him, ok? pray for yourself also la, if u fall into that category! heheh. and pray for The Wife and I: after we go home on wednesday, we'll be off for a church camp on 1-3 may (friday-sunday). i'll be doing a couple of youth sessions there, and the Wife will be facilitating and assisting in a couple of children's sessions. i'll be doing some games too, which are meant to enable campers of all ages to have fun together. do pray especially for The Wife - she's not very experienced in children's ministry and is having butterflies in her stomach.

'til the next post - God bless! =)

ZMax Photos! =)

2009-04-06T10:15:00.011+08:00

Profuse Praise to Shu, Leo, and other People, from whose facebook Pages i Pilfered these Pics.=)

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Uncle Allan with Ernie! =)
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Uncle Allan in action, doing a rope trick
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Team-building on the first day... desigining and building

a "racing car"...
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Time to test-drive the racing cars... my group won!=P

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Gila Punya Malam: My Station =P

Campers were blindfolded, led to a bucket full of rather disgusting-looking stuff, and had to guess what was in the concoction by touch.

Gila Punya Malam: the last station! =)

Campers had to eat bread with unknown stuff inside... it tasted terrible, but don't worry, all the ingredients were edible... =P

The Last Day: Genting Outdoor Themepark!

Here's Chris with a bunch of campers, sitting in the spinner...

The Last Day: Genting Outdoor Themepark!

Some Campers on the Flying Coaster... we had a deal with genting that gave us 30% off tickets for the themepark and one free ticket for this ride per person.

when i went on the Flying Coaster with my group of campers, we tried to sing "I Believe I Can Fly" together... not the most tuneful rendition, but it was fun! =)

So, those are some snapshots of ZMax 2009... action-packed, fun-filled, and best of all, (we pray, by God's grace) soul-saving; as the Good News of God's Love was sown into the hearts of the campers. =)

Save the blog!!!

2009-03-30T16:36:00.003+08:00

here i am, typing out a (supposedly) shortandsnappy blog post, in order to save the blog from the ignominy (that's one of those words for which i do not know the exact meaning, having never checked the dictionary, but still use anyway) of having only one post in the month of march.

as i look over the month of march, the highlight is undeniably (no, it's not earth hour) ZMax Camp!!! =)

we had 31 young people in Peacehaven, Genting, of which 11-12 were non-Christians. many of them were chinese speakers, which caused communication to be slightly problematic. to tell the truth, i was feeling discouraged on the second day of camp; like we were trying so hard to share the good news of God's truth and love with these campers, but they didn't really seem to be getting it. on the spiritual level, the Bible says that non-Christian's eyes are blinded to the truth of the Gospel by the god of this age; and on the physical level, the language barrier wasn't helping.

so well, even as we camp officers continued to have meaningful conversations with campers, have fun with them, and deal with all the nitty-gritty of running a camp, we also made time to get on our knees and pray. if these kids were to understand the gospel and respond to it, it would not be by our might nor by our power, but by the Spirit of the Lord.

and it was indeed exciting to see those young people begin to respond to the gospel and to the love of God. although these things are hard to measure and i dare not boast that such-and-such a number of young people have been eternally and irrevocably saved after this camp, i do dare to say that every one of those young people have a better understanding of the Gospel message. they know that, at least from the Christian point of view, we are not accidental products of a mindless process, but beings created in the image of God, with meaning, purpose, worth, value, and significance, and He loves us!

and quite a number of young people responded to that message. they raised their hands to indicate that they either believed or wanted to believe. there is nothing more amazing than to see young people respond to the Gospel like that.

i do not know how they will grow after this camp, when they go back to their hometowns. i do not know if they will persevere in their fledgling faiths, and truly come to know and love this God who loves them so. but i do know that God has begun a new work in their lives - and He's the kind of guy (if it isn't disrespectful to refer to God as a "guy") who finishes what He starts.

and there i had been, on the second day of camp, worrying that we weren't getting through to them. my faith has grown, and i thank and praise God for all that He is doing in my life and in the lives of those i care for, near and far.

no time to put pics or make it all nice and colourful. hope this blog post was not boring to you, dear reader. (well, if you read this far, i guess it's a success. but who knows if you are in the majority of readers? not that i have that many readers anyway...=P)

do continue to pray for these kids that they will grow in the knowledge and love of God. also pray for me, as i'll be speaking or visiting at various CFs over the coming weeks. in order, from this friday; i'll be at SMK Methodist Banting, SMK Sri Bintang Utara, SMK Taman Desa Rawang, and SMK Seri Kembangan.

God bless! =)

Letter to an Atheist

2009-03-05T15:19:00.002+08:00

in an effort to blog more regularly than once a month, i will now sheepishly post something i've already typed. i came across this atheist's website, and left this comment:

hi michael =)

my name is siehjin, and i'm a Christian from Malaysia (a small country in southeast asia).

as a Christian, i believe that Truth and Reality are rooted in God. i understand that, as an atheist, you reject this idea and believe that as humans we have to discover Truth and Reality for ourselves (which would be true even if God were the ultimate Truth and Reality, as we'd still have to discover Him ourselves... but nevermind that).

the problem, to me, is that there can be no solid basis for Truth and Reality in the absence of God... truth then becomes relative, some truths being true only for certain people and other truths being true for others. (am i making sense here?) in this understanding of the world, the only Truth is that there is no absolute Truth. perhaps this is implied in your second last paragraph, "it is impossible for anybody to be certain about anything".

now the problem with this relativistic truth statement is that, it commits suicide. if there is no absolute Truth, then it is not absolutely True that there is no absolute Truth. there may be no absolute Truth for you, but there may be absolute Truth for me. in the end, we have a confusing hodge-podge where there is nothing is essentially true! to use your own words, if it is "impossible for anybody to be certain about anything", then it is impossible for you to be certain that it is "impossible for anybody to be certain about anything". therefore, it is possible for somebody to be certain about something; but that isn't certain either.

i hope i'm not boring you with all this. it's like that statement, "i never tell the truth". if it's true, i'm lying; but if i'm lying, it's true.

not only is this relativistic position on truth impossible to hold on to philosophically; i don't think it works in real life either. no one can live in a continuous limbo of truthlessness. all of us live as if there were such a thing as truth, absolute Truth. atheists, for example (correct me if i'm wrong) believe that it is True that there is no God. the very logical and rational way you write, presupposes that logic and rationality lead us to Truth.

therefore, i reject the notion that there is no such thing as absolute Truth. i believe rather that there is such a thing as absolute Truth, and i call this absolute Truth "God". interestingly enough, Jesus claimed to be "the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life".

looking forward to your responses to my thoughts. may God, if He exists, bless you! =)

i'll post a real blog post soon. hopefully. heheh =P

at least i'm consistent

2009-02-26T10:14:00.002+08:00

as in, by spitting out this blog post as fast as my fevered brain can motivate my fingers to type, i am managing to maintain a steady pace of ONE WHOLE blog-post per MONTH! woohoo! =P

yes, i'm being sarcastic. i do wish i could update more often (oh those good ol' days when i was trying to update this blog at least once a week!) but i just don't seem to have the time... rebuilding the SCF Database is sucking up a fair bit of time. in addition to that, as mentioned in the previous post, i was in seremban for a regional ministry trip last weekend and will be in sitiawan for another ministry trip this weekend. so i've had a fair bit of sessions to prepare, too!

the SUSOMites [u know how in the Old Testament there are the Jebusites, Amalekites, Edomites, and Mosquitobites? now there are the SUSOMites, hahaha=)] are currently in Sarawak. they've split into 2 teams: 2 girls with Runa in and around Kuching, and 2 girls with Christina in and around Sibu. yes, it's an all-girl-power team. guys, where are you?!? rise up and come for SUSOM 2010 k! =)

last weekend the SUSOMites were with Runa and i in seremban. we had a great time of ministry, serving together with them; they shared their testimonies, organised games and icebreakers, did presentations and skits - good stuff. i also was "forced" to preach on sunday in my church... originally we had only asked for a 10-15 minute slot to do a presentation about SU and SUSOM, but on friday the church administrator called me to ask for my text and title! since it was too late to say no, i preached lor... and once again, no one stoned me. in fact, people were very encouraging, and scarily, suggested i preach more often! thank God for His grace, heheh. =)

i'll be going to sitiawan alone later, on the 3.30pm bus. i'm speaking at my old school, ACS Sitiawan, on friday afternoon; assisting in the Ultimate Goal programme with uncle Alan and the Camping ministry team in MES Ayer Tawar on saturday morning; doing a Quiet Time Seminar in my very own Wesley Sitiawan's MYF on saturday afternoon/evening; assisting in another Quiet Time Seminar in Chinese Methodist Church Ayer Tawar on saturday night; and visiting Wesley Sitiawan on sunday morning. whoa, packed schedule man! =P

ok, typing this has already taken up too much time. hope it helps you, my fast-dwindling readership, to know where i'm going and how to pray for me! God bless! =)

Happy not so New Year! =)

2009-01-23T09:11:00.002+08:00

hullo readers! =)

err, i know this is twenty-odd days late, but... Happy New Year!!! =)

and this is a couple of days early, but... Happy Chinese New Year!!!=)

my apologies for not blogging earlier. things have been hectic around the office. for one thing, during the december holidays, the computer which contains the school's work database crashed. the result is, the entire thing is lost. so now, this thing which has been my bane and my burden since it was assigned to me, has to be rebuilt...

besides that, there are necessary preparations for upcoming trips to seremban (20-22 Feb) and sitiawan (27 Feb-1 March); events like the KL/PJ SCF Convention (7Feb); speaking engagements at a church YF in Shah Alam (also 7Feb), and PPBC (8 Feb); and SUSOM (8 Feb-9 March).

i just realised that i haven't mentioned SUSOM here before. it stands for Scripture Union Student on Mission. basically it's a missions exposure programme, in which the students will have a taste of full-time Christian ministry. after a few days of training, they will follow us around to visit and do ministry at CFs and churches. the regional trip to seremban is part of this programme, and we're also working together with SU Sarawak for them to have a week's ministry exposure and involvement there. we were aiming for 4-6 school-leavers to come for this; at the moment we have three, and the registration is closing soon.

well, enough about work! i'm now in penang, happily reunited with The Wife. she came here a couple of days before me. oh, and only slept 1-2 hours the night before travelling here, because i was rushing to finish an assignment on The Role of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians for a module in my part-time masters. truly God's grace that i managed to get it done, footnotes and all. but ANYWAY, now i'm here - relaxing, finally having time to blog, and hoping i don't overeat too much because it's Chinese New Year! =)

God bless y'all! =)

the camps are over, hallelujah

2008-12-22T09:36:00.003+08:00

greetings! =)

i haven't blogged in AGES... and now so many things have happened, i dunno where to start... heheh

in order not to bore you all, i'll just give short-short updates on each camp... thank you so much to all of you who have supported me in prayer. you're part of the reason why i'm still alive and (relatively) healthy now... =)

1. NSCF Leader's Camp
- my responsibilities were carried out without mishap! truly thank God for His sustaining grace.
- i really enjoyed leading my group, chrysolite! i think we bonded well, became good friends, and were able to share our lives with each other in those few days of camp.
- on the second day of camp, i injured my left knee. i was doing a layup (that's a basketball thingy where you run and jump and put the ball into the hoop) and suddenly found myself rolling on the floor in quite abit of pain.
- subsequent attempts to run found the knee ok when bent but unstable when extended. since then i haven't tried to run, hoping that it will heal with rest. doctor says that it's probably a partial tear to the anterior cruciate ligament (hope i spelt that right). am going for physiotherapy later today, and have an appointment in january to see if surgery is needed.

2. Young Writers' Camp
- alicia, you asked for this so... here it is =P
- in this year's YWC, each small group functioned like a small media company which produced a daily A3-sized news-sheet.
- the camp schedule was pretty packed. we had outdoor assignments; interviews with a hunter, a security guard, an exotic foods restaurant owner, and a fish farmer; a caving adventure in Gua Kandu; a movie screening; and a mock press conference with Malaysian care. all of these things became news.
- campers were also given plenty of opportunity to be creative. some created news stories about imaginary campers, and others interviewed the dogs or inanimate objects like toilet paper (which incidentally, was the name of my group's paper, hahaha!)
- i'm not really a writer. real writers don't write blog posts in point form (this is an overgeneralisation but i hope u know what i mean). so, if you're really interested in how YWC went, check out the links from ethan's blog here, here, here, and here. they're all better writers than me =)

3. dNa
- i'm getting tired of typing this blog post, so suffice to say that all went well =)

and now... camps are finally over. i've had some time to relax and recuperate, and am now trying to finish up my master's assignments which are due in january.

btw, just an interesting note: i'm typing this blog post standing up at a free internet kiosk outside the bahagian pengurusan akademik which is in between the fakulti sains sosial dan kemanusiaan and kolej dato onn in universiti kebangsaan malaysia! what am i doing at my alma mater? i came here with The Wife, who registers for her masters today. =)

alright, that's all for now. wishing all of you a Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year! =D

just tryin' ta keep it alive

2008-11-15T19:28:00.002+08:00

Greetings, my beloved 10-15 readers! [i can agak how many of you there are because of sitemeter...=P]

this is just a short note from seremban [yes, we have internet! since The Wife got a laptop for work, and some makan places in seremban got wifi, viola... internet access! =)] to keep the blog from dying off again in my absence...

for through the whole of next week [17-22 Nov] i will be away for NSCF Leader's camp! this is the biggest camp we've had for the almost-three years i've been with SU: 137 young people. and they're all supposed to be leaders or potential leaders in their respective SCFs or YFs, so this is a strategically crucial camp! believe it or not, these are [we hope] the future leaders of our church and our nation... heheheh.

do pray for me... there have been times in the past couple of weeks when i've felt like i'm running on empty. and the camps haven't even started yet! this is the time when it's really crucial for me to draw close to God and really depend on His strength.

so as we go into this end-year camping season, may God work mightily in and through us for the furtherance of His Kingdom and the glory of His name! ...literally Hundreds of young lives will pass through our hands at various camps. please pray with me that not one will escape without being touched and transformed by the Master's Hand.

God bless! =)

Blog, come forth!

2008-10-30T11:55:00.003+08:00

the title is to be read in the same imposing tones as we may assume Jesus used when he summoned Lazarus back from the grave.

yes, with this post i do resurrect my blog. i did try to save it from the cold, cruel fate of being abandoned by asking The Wife to guest blog, but alas, she did not do so.

high school reunion was good. the joker of our bunch was late, and his first words upon entering the venue were, "wah, all so fat already!" heheheh. it was good seeing old friends again, exchanging histories, marvelling at how we've all grown up. why, can you believe it, some of us are even married! it's incredible.

at the same time there's a slight undercurrent of tension and awkwardness. i may be a natural extrovert, but still there is something unnerving about meeting people that one has not met in years. that feeling of not really knowing what to say, once the superficial catching-up is done. and, i couldn't remember some of their names. =P

i was very encouraged though, by one of my old friends. in ancient days i had shared the gospel with him and done abit of bible study with him, trying my best to pass on the basics of our faith as i understood it. i am thankful to God that he is still a christian and attending church to this day. =)

the Mizuno Wave Run was 10km of torture. not surprising, considering how lousy my so-called training regimen was. the surprising thing was that The Wife, who didn't train at all, beat me flat and won herself a medal. i guess life is just not fair. =P

Loading up on pre-run nutrition

Team Hasten, Mizuno Wave 10k, 19th October 2008. Left to right: Shelby, Joshua Hooi, The Wife and i.

(Photos courtesy of Joshua "Hasten" Hooi.)

Staff consultation was good, although there were some tensions and conflicts here and there. what's life without abit of fireworks to brighten it up? anyway, we've planned for the coming year, and it's going to be an exciting one... which means i'm going to be just about as busy as i've been this year, haha...

one thing arose is that Alice, our sole remaining children ministry staff, is planning to leave next year. this will leave our children ministry department staff-less, unless someone comes in... so dear reader, if you have a call to full-time ministry and an inclination towards children ministry, please come and join Scripture Union. or if you know anyone who fits that description, tell them about this wonderful opportunity to serve God and His people. =)

alright, looking forward, here's what's coming up for me over the next two months [my responsibilities in brackets]:
- 17-22 Nov, National SCF Leaders' Camp [Games, Logistics, 2 workshop teaching sessions]
- 29 Nov-2 Dec, Young Writers' Camp [Logistics, various duties shared with volunteers]
- 5 Dec-14 Dec, d'Nous Academy [Community Work, Visit to Hindu Temple, Worship]
- 6 Dec, Vincent and Maureen's wedding! [i'll ponteng 1 1/2 days of dNa and rush back to sitiawan for this... wouldn't miss it for the world!]

do pray for all the camp preparations that are underway even now... for those who will be speaking, facilitating small groups, running workshops... for safety in travelling and games... most of all, for the hand of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to do the work of transformation in the hearts of the campers. for it is a work that only He can do... Amen. =)

-

Do we really have choices?

2008-10-13T12:05:00.002+08:00

this morning, i saw a link on my facebook homepage. it led to a note written by a friend of mine, with the same title as this blog post. this is what he wrote:

--------------------

We can't choose our parents or families.

We can't choose the countries we are born into.

We can't choose the bodies we are born with.

We can't choose the society around us.

We can't choose the weather.

We can't choose the air we breathe.

We can't choose the principles and expectations the world imposes upon us.

It's a joke to think we really choose anything.

In the end, the only real choice we have is to live or give up.

--------------------

This is my response:

--------------------

We can choose to love and cherish our parents and our families, or to bear bitter grudges against them and hold them at arms' length.

We can choose to stay and make a difference in the countries we are born into, or emigrate into what may or may not be a better life in some other country.

We can choose to keep our bodies healthy and be thankful for the fact that they're mostly functional, or nitpick about our physical flaws and imperfections and never really see how wonderfully designed it is.

We can choose to engage with society around us and be an agent for positive change, or enjoy time alone in isolation away from society, or alternate between the two.

We can choose to enjoy the warmth of the sun, the elemental power of a thunderstorm, the beauty of cloud patterns against a clear blue sky; or just complain when weather isn't exactly as we want it to be.

We can choose to practice a lifestyle which improves the quality of the air that we breathe - carpool, don't smoke, etc - or one which continues the pollution and degradation of our air.

We can choose to accept the principles and expectations that the world imposes upon us, and be conformed to the pattern of this world; or have the courage to live counter-culture, according to the principles and expectations of God, and be transformed by the renewing our our minds.

It's no joke to think we really have choices to make.

In the end, it makes the difference between seeing life as a fatalistic choice between living and giving up, and seeing life as a great adventure full of choices to make... The most important of which, is the choice to enjoy it together with the One who gave us life in the first place.

--------------------

ironically, to believe that we don't have choices, is in itself a choice. =P

so, what do you choose? =)

Heroes of the Faith

2008-10-08T12:16:00.005+08:00

that was the theme of the UTAR Kampar CF camp i recently spoke at.

i did four sessions based on this theme. apart from looking at the lives of Biblical heroes of the faith (based on Hebrews 11), we watched some video clips on the lives of Eric Liddel and Jim Elliot. and in the final session, i challenged them to be the heroes of faith for their generation.

each of us who calls ourselves 'Christian' are standing on the shoulders of giants. we are where we are today in our journey of faith, because of people who've gone before us who've passed the baton of faith down to us. they were able to do so because the people who came before them passed the baton to them in turn. and so it goes, down the generations and the centuries, an unbroken chain of faith, all the way back to the heroes of the Bible. therefore, it is now our turn to run the race well and pass that baton on to those who will come after us.

here's a pic of all of us, courtesy of ee ling:

one reason i really enjoyed this camp is that there's a pretty big gang of sitiawanites (sitiawanians?) there. one of them is joshua, now a leader in the CF... another is andrea, who's fabian's li'l sis (fabe was my best man at my wedding last year!), then there's anna, who's father is the famous bald physics teacher in my school who was also our SCF teacher advisor for years and years, and ren jie from ayer tawar whom i knew when she was literally a baby! (there was also a girl named mei sing there, but i dunno her that well cos she's from a different church). in many ways, these are precisely the people to whom i hope i left a legacy of faith when i left sitiawan... the people i passed the baton of faith to. it was great to see them again and to know that they are continuing to grow in their faith and serve God through the transition into uni! =)

besides that, the other campers were great too... it was a pleasure getting to know them, and a privilege to minister to them. at least two of them shared with me that they have a call to full-time christian ministry... may they be true to their calling as God leads and guides them! oh, and mr. kuek is a really interesting character too... he's a lecturer in UTAR kampar and the CF advisor. he's a veteran SU camper, and we may even have met at some long-forgotten SU camp, because we have the same SU Theme T-shirt! =)

i was pretty exhausted at the end of the camp. my voice was already weak at the start of camp, because of my trip to genting with The Wife. someone gave us two free tickets to the theme park there, and because of the expiry date, the only opportunity we had to use it was just before this camp. all the screaming on the rides and roller coasters had given me a sexy (yeah, right!), hoarse voice. and then during camp, there was this crazy game in which one group is divided and stands at opposite ends of a badminton court, and they have to shout a message across the court while the other group makes noise to distract and disturb them. the pandemonium was insane, and i couldn't sing properly anymore after that... heheh

thank God for the two days of hari raya, i really needed that time to recuperate.

last weekend and this weekend i was/will be in pj, taking a course for my part-time Masters in Christian Studies. this module is about Methodism, and it's pretty inspiring to learn about the roots of this denomination that i belong to. at the heart of the Methodist Revival was the man John Wesley, after whom my home church in sitiawan was named. reading about his quest for personal and communal holiness and his formidable self-discipline, i find that he is truly a hero of the faith whom i'd do well to emulate.

Looking forward, i have a high-school reunion thingy happening on 18 October, followed by the dreaded 10km run on the 19th (i still can't run more than 1.5km at a stretch! die lah this time...=P) and then SU staff consultation on 20-24th October. staff consultation is a really important time for us as we seek God's face, bond as a staff team, discuss important issues and ministry matters, and plan for next year's camps and events. as always, your prayers are highly valued and appreciated. =)

'til the next post - God bless! =)

kuala terengganu and upcoming camp

2008-09-24T09:28:00.003+08:00

the trip to kuala terengganu was good and fruitful. people there were very friendly and hospitable. strangely, i had pork at every meal... it's like they were trying to make a point, "terengganu may be considered one of the most islamic states but we can still eat pork!!!" =P

the reason i was invited to KT is basically because i have a friend, a doctor who was posted there for his housemanship... he's the one that made the connection to me when the priest (it's an anglican church) said he wanted a young person in full-time ministry. so it was great to reconnect with this friend...

my preaching on friday morning went well, i got some encouraging feedback, as well as constructive suggestions... i do believe i'm improving, slowly but surely... thank you for praying for me =) i also had a good time sharing with the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu students... didn't really have enough time to impart all that i had planned, but i trust they gained something anyway...

there's a sense of isolation and abandonment in some of the christians over there... both my friend and the priest of the church mentioned that all the events, camps, seminars and etc were accessible to those on the west coast, but they on the east coast are always left out. if we can work something out, i may be doing more east coast work next year...

on the bus back to KL, i met this guy named Kashfullah... he's a PAS member and a really devout muslim. he could quote the Quran in Arabic and asked me if i knew Hebrew! malu man. we had a good discussion about some of the similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity. he has 3 bibles: an NKJV, an NIV, and a Bahasa Indonesia one. so... i pray that he will continue to read the bible, and the God will enlighten him and help him to see the truth... for aren't we all seekers of truth?

i'll be in camerons 28-30 september, speaking at UTAR Kampar's CF camp... i have 4 sessions to prepare for that. i have a rough idea of what i want to share, but still need time to organize and polish it... please pray for me.

thanks and God bless! =)

Now you see me, now you don't

2008-09-17T09:38:00.002+08:00

i pity The Wife.

just got back from melaka on sunday.

[ melaka was good btw. good food, good fellowship and ministry with teachers, pastors, and students. thank you for praying for us. =) ]

last night i had a Young Writers' Camp planning meeting. this means i had to sleep in the office. this means The Wife was home alone, again. =(

[ Young Writers' Camp is a great camp which aims to build up a new generation of Christian youth who can impact the world through the written word! if you enjoy writing, have RM180, and are 13-21 years old, it's a great opportunity to meet like-minded people and hone your wordsmithing skills. check out youngwriterscamp.blogspot.com and come! =) ]

and tomorrow i'm off to kuala terengganu, and will be there 'til sunday.

[ i'll be speaking at a church in Kuala Terengganu. it's their missions month, and they wanted a young person who's in full-time christian ministry. i plan to speak about calling, and challenge them to see calling not as "going full-time one day" but rather "serving and glorifying God right here, right now". please pray for me, as you all know, i'm not experienced in preaching from the pulpit. ]

[ i'm also doing a bible study on Jonah with a uni CF there. please uphold me in prayer for that, too. and please pray for The Wife, who's left home alone yet again.=( ]

thanks for reading and praying. may God bless you richly, as you have been a blessing to me. =)

yi jien, SOE, running, and melaka

2008-09-10T08:52:00.002+08:00

this is going to be a rambly sort of post...

most of you would already know, yi jien is missing. no point in me re-writing things that better writers have written, so i'll just put some links here. for email updates on the situation from Aunty Kim Guat (yi jien's mom), click here. for a discussion among hikers concerning his disappearance, click here. for a comprehensive news report about it, click here. for a description of his planned hiking route by an experienced hiker who was hiking in Glacier National Park at around the same time as him, click here.

i know yi jien from sitiawan days... he's just a year older than me. surprisingly i don't really feel the emotional impact of his disappearance. this may mean i'm cold and heartless, or i have feelings but suppress them, or don't know how to feel because he's missing and only God knows if he's actually dead or alive. i'm just praying that he'll be found soon, dead or alive (of course much preferably alive). so that family and close friends can either grieve with closure or celebrate with joy, rather than being caught in the limbo of not-knowing.

SOE (School of Evangelism) went well! thanks to all of you who supported us in prayer. i did a session on intro to evangelism, covering what evangelism is, why we need to evangelise, and an overview of various methods of evangelism. besides that, we had 4 sessions to help the campers understand the 4 basic points of the gospel more deeply (can't share what you don't understand) - God, Man, Sin, and Salvation. i did the God part, and i tried to cover arguments about the existence of God, the question of theodicy (if there is a good and all-powerful God, why is there suffering and evil in this world?), and a little bit about the character of God. i also did a workshop on how to share your personal testimony, and did the closing challenge.

on the last night of SOE, they had a Gospel Cafe Nite. the whole youth group was involved in this (only 17 came for the SOE), and they invited their non-christian friends. attendance was very good, and feedback from the visitors was encouraging. many said that they enjoyed themselves and would like to come to more of such events. there was a band performance; a magic show which illustrated some aspects of the gospel in a part of its' act; free drinks (very nice ones too, mixed and created or innovated by the youths themselves!) and free cake; a powerful skit which depicted how we were intended to enjoy a beautiful relationship with God, how sin spoils that, and how Jesus redeems us and brings us back to God again; and also a time for the campers to practice what they'd learnt in SOE, and share either the Gospel or their personal testimony at the cafe tables.

for many of them, it was their first time sharing the gospel. for some it was a positive experience, as their friends listened with interest. for others it was not so positive, as they had to share with strangers who were less interested in their message. but we encouraged them that it was a good start, and to remember that evangelism isn't just an event - it's a lifestyle. ideally, our whole lives should speak to those around us of God's goodness and love.

in conclusion, i think that the goals of SOE were met: campers left with a better grasp of the gospel, and new skills with which to share it with their friends. let's pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to convict and motivate them to be ambassadors of Christ, as we are all called to be.

i've let joshua (a different joshua from the last post's joshua) persuade me to join him for a 10km run. i must be crazy. i'm so out of shape, i have no idea how i'm ever gonna be able to run for 10km!

so far i've "trained" for this about 3 times. since my stamina is non-existent, i'm concentrating on time more than distance or speed. i figure that to run 10km, i'll have to run for at least an hour (probably more). therefore, the fact that i started off huffing and puffing after a mere 5 minutes of running is very troubling. this morning i just broke the 10 minute barrier - i managed to run for about 11 minutes. still a loooooooooooong way to go though =P

my aspirations for this run are: to lose weight, get fitter, get more disciplined, finish the race, and (if possible) not be the last person to finish. oh, and i may be crazy, but i got The Wife to be crazy together with me... she's running too! =P

this weekend i and the whole staff team of Scripture Union will be going to melaka. on friday we will be speaking at 3 SCFs (School Christian Fellowships), and have a fellowship and appreciation dinner with the SCF Teacher-Advisors in the evening. on saturday we will have a combined SCF training seminar on saturday morning, a Bible exhibition which will be open 10am-1pm and 6pm-9pm, and a Church Youth Fellowship meeting 3pm-5pm. on sunday, we will be visiting 7 churches, and speaking at 6 of those.

please pray for us for a meaningful time of ministry and interaction with partners in the ministry and students. many thanks =)

Pengalaman yang baru

2008-08-27T15:19:00.003+08:00

day before yesterday, i decided that i wouldn't go home yesterday night. this was because:
- The Wife is away attending Kursus Induksi.
- without her at home, the time and expense of travelling home becomes rather un-worth-it.
so, i called up joshua chin and asked, "eh, u got anything on tomorrow night ah?"

which was how i ended up watching "After Our's", a play, at KLPac last night. it was my first time watching a play (someone told me that "Beauty and the Beast" doesn't count 'cos it's a musical, not a play).

the play was, in my non-expert opinion, very well done. i enjoyed it. there was lots of smoking, swearing, and implied extramarital sex. now, i don't condone these things, but my friends tell me that the situations in the play are more-or-less representative of real life in certain segments of Malaysian society. so is it Art imitating Life, or Life imitating Art? is a moral judgement called for if the medium is seeking to honestly portray reality, and not necessarily condone it?

A pic of the cast, with one guy missing

those are just two of the many questions and thoughts which were bouncing around in my skull as i watched the acts unfold. there were 6 acts, each one involving a couple (straight, gay, or plain confused) who are having a conversation just after having sex.

in the aftermath of the play, we had some pretty interesting discussions. for one thing, we agreed that we had not found the play obscene. considering that the whole concept is somewhat risque, i wondered why. we concluded that:
- obscenity can be quite subjective, as different people (and cultures) are offended by different things.
- obscenity, besides being offensive, is designed to incite lustful feelings.
the play had deeper meaning and a message behind it, and was not overtly intended to arouse the audience sexually. i think that's what caused us to perceive it as not obscene.

but here there is a danger. i hadn't been warned in advance by joshua about the content of the play, and as such am only now able to practice hindsight. if it became widely known that i had gone to see this play, it might have negative repercussions on people's perceptions of me as a full-time christian worker, and also on Scripture Union's reputation. if you are one of those people, i implore you to consider the following points:
- it was an accident. i didn't know what i would be watching.
- it was my first time. if it is made clear to me that i ought not to watch such plays, then let it be the only time.
- it is necessary for us who call ourselves Christians, to understand (note: understand, not follow) the culture and thinking of the world around us. otherwise, how can we communicate God's love and truth to them?
- consider Jesus - He mixed with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes. who are we then to say that it is wrong to enter the world of those who need Christ?

then again, it's difficult. the person who tries to do this must be able to stand firm in their principles and knowledge of the truth, and not be influenced to just follow along in the ways of the surrounding culture. at the same time, they have to be flexible and gracious enough not to appear as prudes and holier-than-thou pharisees to those of that culture. a tall order indeed... if i have stumbled you, please forgive me. leave a comment if you would, so that i can be more careful in future.

anyway, before this post gets too long-winded, i'll just end with this thought. i think that the main point behind the entire play was a statement of moral relativism (there's no absolute standard of right and wrong; what's right for me is right for me, what's right for you is right for you). it's ok to lose your virginity before marriage; it's ok to be gay or lesbian or bi or exploring; it's ok to be a prostitute, it's ok to cheat on your partner, it's all ok. as long as you're open and honest about it and not pretending to be someone you aren't.

i agree with the high value this statement places on openness and honesty. good, true relationships and friendships can't be built without it. however, i cannot agree with the assertion that it's all ok. it's not. i believe in an absolute standard of right and wrong. i believe that this absolute standard has it's origins in the character of God, and because we humans are created in His image, we have it in our hearts, too - though it might sometimes be twisted and marred to fall far from it's original design. that's why we have conscience, and we know when we've done wrong... at least the first few times we do it. yes, we often fail to meet this absolute standard in the things we do and say everyday. but that doesn't mean that something's wrong with the standard. rather, it's an indication that something's wrong with us.

Christianity offers an explanation (a pretty good one in my humble opinion) of what went wrong with us, why we're so bent that we'd rather say "there's no absolute standard" than admit "yes, i've done wrong". and Christianity also offers hope of a way we can be made whole and right again, through the God who became Man. if you are struggling today with doing something you know you shouldn't; and if you're tempted to give up, give in, and say, "everyone's doing it anyway, and it's not like i'm harming anyone"; i encourage you to turn to Him. His name is Jesus, and i need His grace and forgiveness, every day. =)

don't know what it means to turn to Jesus, or how to do so? drop me a comment. i promise i'll do my best to help.

hate what i said, think i was wrong to watch the play, disagree with my conclusions? drop me a comment. i'm open and willing to listen, learn, and discuss.

p.s. will be leaving for batu pahat on friday afternoon for School of Evangelism. do pray for us as we travel, connect with students, teach sessions, impart skills, and motivate students to evangelise. it's a spiritual work and will bear no fruit without prayer. thanks! =)

A Letter to God

2008-08-22T14:15:00.019+08:00

Greetings readers! i'm (as you can read) back safe and sound from CSI Camp, and trying to get back into the blogging groove... heheh

one of the activities i was in charge of for CSI was "Solo Silence in the Night", in which we gave the campers an opportunity to spend about an hour alone with God... for many of them, it was their first time hanging out with God for a relatively extended period of time. some of them reported that it was too long, or that they couldn't stand the isolation and went and stuck to their friends; but many gave positive feedback, and really seemed to enjoy the chance to just relax in God's presence and enjoy Him.

besides enjoying God's presence and creation, meditating on Psalms 8, and thinking about their relationship with God; i asked the campers to spend their last 15-20 minutes of the time writing a letter to God. and since i've already written it, i thought i might as well post mine here:

Dear Lord,

Thank You for the beauty of Your creation. i really enjoy it, appreciate being able to see and experience it daily. from the intricate sub-cellular workings of a blade of grass, to the magnificent grandeur of star systems and galaxies such as we saw in "Indescribable" - Your creativity and beauty simply blow me away.

But even more amazing is Your work in my heart and my life. as i reflect on my relationship with You, i'm very aware that it's far from perfect. i know that i'm still shamefully weak and prone to fall, especially in certain areas. yet as i look back on the journey so far, i can't help but thank You with a heart full of gratitude. You have been exceedingly kind, gracious, and good to me. your forgiveness and love have truly been poured into my life to the point of overflowing. may i never take You for granted.

Lord, i just thank You as i look back over the way You've led me through the years - from the way You first worked in my parents' lives; to placing me in a good Christian family; to the time of spiritual awakening when i first began to consider the Big Questions of life; to the place where i was able to decide for myself that You would be my God and i would give my whole life to You; to being built up as a leader and trained in practicing spiritual disciplines in my teens and uni life; to meeting and befriending and loving and dating and courting and finally marrying Chen May (that's The Wife to you guys); to serving You in Scripture Union and beyond... You have truly been amazing, wonderful, faithful, and true to me. please, help me to continue to grow closer to You and deeper in love with You.

In terms of maintaining and deepening my relationship with You, i pray that You will help me to continue being consistent in my Quiet Times with You. i pray that You'll help me to develop an intimacy and closeness with You that lasts throughout the day; a consciousness of Your presence that is more constant and unwavering. in time, help me to regain ground that i've lost in disciplines like fasting, bible study, and scripture memory.

Thank You again for all You've done for me. may i continue to walk with You and serve You all the days of my life. And Lord - please hear and answer my prayer and cry that You would do a deeper work and form a stronger conviction in the hearts and minds of all of us at CSI Camp.

Thank You, Lord.

In Jesus' Name i pray, AMEN.

I think God did answer that last line of my prayer, i trust in faith, for most of the campers who were there. if you prayed too, thank you so much. =)

coming up soon, School of Evangelism, Batu Pahat! got to prepare sessions! die die die! ...No la, won't die one... with God's grace and help, and your prayers. =P

CSI and SOE

2008-08-06T10:20:00.002+08:00

oops! have left the blog cold again. sorry! =P

don't have time to write much. will just take this chance to update my 10-or-so readers (i know this cos of sitemeter) on 2 camps that i'm involved in running this august:

1. CSI Camp
- 16-19 Aug, tapah
- stands for Crime Scene Investigation... no la, Christian Scriptures Investigators, haha =P
- aims to help young people (who generally find the Bible boring and difficult to understand) get into the bible in interesting and exciting ways.
- pray that campers will leave this camp with a better overall grasp of God's Word, and that they will love it and want to know it better by using the tools we'll be giving them.

2. SOE
- 30 Aug-1 Sept, Batu Pahat
- stands for School of Evangelism
- aims to give young people the knowledge, skills, and heart to share the gospel and be an ambassador of Christ to their non-Christian friends.
- pray that campers will leave with hearts aflame to bring the good news of God's love to their friends, and that they'll be able to apply the things we teach them in order to do that.

preparations for these two camps are taking up most of my time and energy at the moment. have some other things coming up in september, too: a ministry trip to melaka, a uni cf camp, and a possible trip to kuala terengganu. i covet your prayers. thanks for reading! =)

take my life

2008-07-24T13:01:00.002+08:00

nothing much to blog about, beyond the normal, daily grind of work... at the same time, struggling with assignments... a report which is worth 30% of my grade on one of the modules i've taken is due this weekend... and, The Wife's college has just had their semester exams, so she's got hundreds of scripts to mark in just a few days... so last night, i helped her mark the objective parts... and the cough i was battling with in the previous post, is almost completely vanquished... but it stubbornly remains as an irritating tickle at the back of my throat, and threatens to make a comeback...

anyway, this morning, on the bus to work, i was singing this softly to God:

Take my Life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee
Take my Moments and my Days
Let them flow in ceaseless praise
Let them flow in ceaseless praise

Take my Voice and let me sing
Always, only for my King
Take my Lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee
Filled with messages from Thee

Take my Hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love
Take my Feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee
Swift and beautiful for Thee
[this isn't about pedicures by the way. it's a reference to Isaiah 52:7. if you don't know it, go look it up in your Bible now! or, search www.biblegateway.com...=)]

Take my Silver and my Gold
Not a mite would i withold
Take my intellect and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose
Every power as Thou shalt choose

Take my Will and make it Thine
It shall be no longer mine
Take my Heart, it is Thine own
It shall be Thy royal throne
It shall be Thy royal throne

Take my Love, my Lord, i pour
at Thy feet its' treasure store
Take Myself, and I will be
Always, only, all for Thee
Always, only, all for Thee

Hope i didn't irritate the other passengers on the bus! =P

and Lord,
May the Words which i sing and the Words which i say
Be Reality and Truth as i walk in Your way
Help me to keep stubborn self-will at bay
Striving to follow Your footsteps each day
Amen.

imagine a tornado going through your throat.

2008-07-16T13:15:00.008+08:00

you may have seen pictures of the mayhem and destruction that is the aftermath of a tornado, hurricane, or tropical storm. imagine what that would do to your throat. that's what happens every time you cough.

and i'm doing alot of that lately as i've been coughing since last week. the deep, chesty, hacking kind of cough that grips your whole body and makes you shake with each cough when a fit of them arrives. it starts as a tickle in your throat, of some mucus in your nose, which trickles down to become gobs of disgusting, yellow-green phlegm.

oh well. c'est la vie!

sorry for neglecting my blog again. here's what i've been up to:

last weekend i was in taiping on a ministry trip with colleagues from the ipoh office. we visited 3 SCFs there, ran a combined youth programme, took a youth fellowship, and visited 3 churches. for me, the highlight of the trip was meeting with old friends like chee eng and his parents. =) also got to meet up with some taiping youth i'd met in previous trips and camps, and it was good to renew those friendships.

i had to go to the office on monday, but took off on tuesday hoping to stave off the cough. i could sense it there, crouching to attack me at the very moment my immune system was at it's lowest. unfortunately, as you'd have known from my first two paragraphs, my off-day was in vain.

after that, it was off to STM (seminari teoloji malaysia) to take a course for
my part-time masters. a very interesting course it was too: Strategic Planning and Implementation for Youth Ministry, lectured by Dr. Herbert Tan (see pic). we have sitiawan roots, so apart from the course material being fascinating and practical, it was great to see Herbert again. =) unfortunately, now i have to do the assignment for that. and i'm still stuck on the assignment for the previous course i took, Intro to Religions. and over the coming too weekends, i'm taking one more: Intro to NT. after that i won't be able to take any more, unless i can cut down the assignment backlog.

on top of all that, over the weekend our house developer finally sent people to properly fix the myriad cracks in the walls of our house. 'finally' because we've been pestering them for months, and 'properly' because we've been insisting that we didn't just want patch-up jobs which would crack again before you can say 'cracked again'.

you can imagine the noise, dust and confusion. for one or two really bad cracks, they had to hammer the cement off that portion of the wall and re-surface it. we had to cover all our furniture, move away those which were flush to the wall, and worry about our things being stolen by the indonesian workers. (that last one was mostly the area of The Wife; she's naturally suspicious of people, whereas i usually give them the benefit of the doubt. hence, we complement each other.)

and of course, after that there was the pain of moving back furniture and cleaning the house when all i wanted to do was try to rest as my throat tried to cough itself out of my mouth. to give credit to The Wife, she did 90% of the work and only complained a little bit. i need to think of a way to show her that i really appreciate her... i know, i'll mention it on my blog!... oh wait, i already did that. see Dear, now your hardworkingness and goodness to me are famous throughout the world-wide-web. or at least, among my 10-or-so regular readers. =P

back to the office and i landed straight into 2 camp planning meetings, for CSI (Christian Scriptures' Investigators Camp, 16-19 august) and YWC (Young Writers' Camp, 29 Dec-2 Nov). the latter happened last night, which meant another lonely night away from The Wife, sleeping on the cold, hard floor of my office (it's not really that cold and hard, but it sounds dramatic to describe it that way). also, there was staff meeting and training which stretched over monday and tuesday; and i chaired the SUFES Prayer Meeting this morning.

with all that going on, it's no wonder that i've only just managed to catch up with my email backlog and found the time to type this post out. still have reams of work to do for upcoming camps in august... do pray for a speedy and complete recovery from the cough for me, and for God to continue to sustain me and teach me as i serve him in SU.

work and play

2008-06-30T13:51:00.003+08:00

hullo everyone! sorry i missed posting last week. busy busy busy! =P

Work
1. subang rally - it was very 'charismatic'. for my thoughts concerning this, refer to my post on kepong baru scf camp. i believe that God was present and that people were ministered to, and i am thankful for that. however, i felt that i had to remind them of the inter-denominational nature of schools' work. so, when we had our slot to promote SPM Bible Knowledge and our Camps, i took the opportunity to say something about it. later, i managed to talk personally to some of the committee members. they understood where i was coming from and said that i wasn't too harsh, so i hope that they will take heed and be more sensitive to this aspect of running scf activities.

one girl did say that i should have spoken only to the leaders and not the whole congregation. to tell the truth this had never occurred to me. when i was talking with God and wrestling over the question of whether or not to say something about the 'charismatic-ness' of the rally, somehow i saw it as a dichotomy - speak or stay silent. my brain did not come up with alternatives like 'speak only to the leaders'. if i had done that, it would have had less potential to embarrass the leaders, and also have avoided confusing normal participants who didn't see anything wrong with the way the rally was run.

however, in talking it over with The Wife, she brought up another point: if there was anyone in the crowd at all who felt uncomfortable with the 'denominationally biased' situation, my words may have brought relief and comfort to them. it let them know that they were not alone in feeling that way, and that they were not wrong. even if there were only one or two such people in the crowd, i think that it was worth it to say what i said.

2. speaking at PPBC - it was great to be back in PPBC, to see familiar faces and old friends there. my message was on 2 timothy 1:7. basically i tweaked my 2 sessions from Bukit Mewah scf camp into a sermon. thanks for your prayers and support; they didn't stone me. =P in fact, the very opposite: the church was very supportive and encouraging. people came up to me, thanking me for the message and some even telling me specifically which parts had been most helpful to them. thank God for all those encouraging feedback! =) may the transforming power of God's Word continue to be at work in and among them.

3. speaking at St. David's SCF - last friday i drove all the way to melaka to speak at this school's scf. the journey was longer than i thought! i was surprised to learn that the distance from seremban to melaka was actually further than the distance from seremban to pj. anyway, i spoke to them about Priorities, from Matthew 6:19-24. nothing new, but then as ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun... and i think that often, the problem with Christians is not that we need to hear something new, but that we don't practise the old things that we've already heard and 'known'. if our 'knowledge' of the Word doesn't change the way we live our lives, i wonder whether we really 'know' anything at all. and so, i hope that they will take the Word of God i've spoken to them and really apply it in their lives...

4. ZMax Planning Meeting - this is happening tomorrow night... probably won't be able to go home to The Wife. =( and i am no longer the coordinator for this camp after running it for 2 consecutive years; next year, christina is stepping up to the helm. i'm sure she'll do a great job. =)

5. taiping trip - this is happening this weekend... more time away from home. sighz... anyway, got to prepare for scf meetings, church deputations, logistics arrangements and etc... we'll be visiting 3 school scfs in taiping. please pray for meaningful times of fellowship and ministry with students, teachers, church leaders, churches, and youth fellowships. thanks! =)

Play
this has to be the highlight of last week... The Wife and i went to watch the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast and it was simply fantastic!!! the costumes! the props! the dancing! the singing! the music! the lighting and effects! wonderful, magical... words fail me. the songs continue to ring in our heads. and i fell in love with this fairy-tale, all over again...

this post is already long and wordy enough, so i won't elaborate further on this. suffice to say that we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and that we think our money was not wasted. =) i may write up another post about it some other time, though. unfortunately The Wife's camera decided to run out of battery, so i can't post any pics from this outing of ours. here's a pic stolen from the net, instead:

thank God for beauty, grace, music, and happy endings... indeed He gives us all good things to enjoy. 'til the next post, God bless! =)

p.s. the word 'play' has a double meaning... it can be the opposite of 'work', or it can refer to the Broadway production. just thought i'd point that out, in case you missed it =P

kepong baru scf camp

2008-06-19T16:28:00.003+08:00

to boot it up, here's a pic of us holding up our bibles at camp:

and now, here's the promised post about kepong baru scf camp =)

i mentioned in a previous post that this camp was interesting. one reason for this is that it was much more charismatic than most scf camps are. this has it's pros and cons...

a general principle of any scf is that the ministry is inter-denominational. students come from many different churches... some speak in tongues, but some don't. some have a full band in worship, but some have only a piano. some dance and jump up and down when they sing, but some stand stock still. some have worship leaders, but some have open worship. some have a set liturgy that they follow, but some just 'flow with the Spirit'.

this broad range of variety leads most scfs to be balanced, in teaching as well as practice. it's usually not good to let one particular kind of church 'flavour' dominate the ministry, because that may cause students from other churches to feel or think that the scf belongs to 'their' church, not 'our' church. also, it may cause confusion and conflicts. so sometimes for the sake of unity, certain compromises have to be made.

i think that this is great, because christians from across the spectrum of denominations are meeting each other, working together, and learning about their similarities and differences. in a way, this is just what Jesus was praying for when he asked that 'they be one as You and i are one'.

however, sometimes if the teacher-advisors or the majority of the student leaders come from a certain denomination, then things may begin to lean in the direction of that particular denomination. in this case, all the camp speakers were from a certain charismatic church, too, which explains my opening statement that the camp was unusually charismatic.

one of the speakers wanted to teach about speaking in tongues, but she's familiar with SU's ministry (she's sent her sons for SU camps time and again) and after a chat with her, she gracefully agreed to modify that section of her message. i'm thankful for that.

the dangers of denominational bias in an inter-denominational fellowship aside, the camp went well =) many campers testified that they felt God's presence and that they had been ministered to. so, let's thank God and pray that He will continue a deepening work in their hearts. Amen! =)

and to shut it down, here's a pic of us all at the waterfall we stream-trotted to:

p.s. this is gonna be a busy weekend. the subang rally is on this saturday, and i'll be speaking at People's Park Baptist Church on sunday. i covet your prayers. thanks! =)

i want to die.

2008-06-12T08:58:00.002+08:00

no no no, not in a suicidal way. this is what i'm talking about:

"i tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." - John 12:24

i guess all of us have something that we need to die to. a part or extension of ourselves which is not in line with what God wants for us, or a desire that threatens to develop into a lustful obsession, or a thing which is becoming more important to us than God.

some people have to die to DOTA.
some people have to die to shopping.
some people have to die to porn.
some people have to die to a dream, of being or doing something that they're not called to be or do.
some people have to die to calculative selfishness.
some people have to die to arrogant pride.
some people have to die to ____________

you fill in the blank.

just like anyone else, i have my fair share of struggles. sometimes things which are supposed to die insist on coming back to life though we kill them again and again. so tiring.

nevertheless, we do not give up, because the promises of God's Word are Yes and Amen. in Christ, the victory is already won. in that sense, we have already died; and yet, we must die daily.

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20

do you want to die? =)

p.s. kepong baru scf camp was... interesting. i'll post about it later, when i get the pics. in the meantime, u can read firsthand camper accounts here and here. =)

Bukit Mewah CF Camp =)

2008-05-30T08:53:00.003+08:00

the 24th of may found me at The Farm, Lenggeng with 42 young people from Bukit Mewah SCF! =)

the Farm is a really nice back-to-nature campsite. especially for kids used to the hustle and bustle of city life, it's an experience to be awakened by bird-calls in the morning. there are a couple of houses where campers lodge, surrounded by acres of greenery and fruit trees (it used to be an orchard). besides that, there are domesticated (caged) monkeys, a lemur, rabbits, tortoises, and dogs! =P

apart from being surrounded by verdant nature and exotic animal-life, the farm offered two other new experiences to our campers. there were a couple of fish-ponds at the campsite, and one of them was equipped with a boat and oars for campers to go boating with! this was a first-time experience that many enjoyed. the second one: we had to wash our own cups and plates for all meals, and we cooked our own eggs and ham for breakfast the next day. good training for those who've never had to lift a finger for themselves before! =)

Cooking Breakfast! yum, yum =)

apart from enjoying the campsite, i really enjoyed fellowshipping and speaking with this bunch of young people. although it was only a 2-day camp, i felt that i really got to bond with some of them. one major factor in this is that i already know many of them through previous year's combined SCF events, and also i've visited and spoken at their CF before a couple of times.

thanks for supporting me in prayer as i prepared sessions for this camp. my sessions were quite simple really; since 2 Timothy 1:7 has 4 key words ("for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.") i just concentrated on 2 key words for the first session, and 2 key words for the second session. throw in a couple of activities/games to introduce key points, and a couple of group discussions for them to discover and apply truth on their own rather than listening solely to me; and voila! 2 sessions were born. =)

Me speaking... =P

i do hope and pray that they'll take the messages which God has (i hope) spoken through me, and apply them in their lives. to overcome their fears with God's help; to develop and use their talents and abilities for God's glory; to receive, be transformed by, and show others God's love; and to discipline themselves to live God's way. but that's the Holy Spirit's work; i'll just do my best in presenting His Word, and trust that it will not return void. may He build each one of them up to spiritual maturity in Him.

there were around 10-12 non-christians among the 42 campers; isn't that great? one of the signs of a healthy SCF, is that it's reaching out to those who do not yet know Christ. i got to know the guys (6 of them) and am praying for them that they might be open to the good news of God's love and salvation. do join me in prayer for this bunch of young people; "Again, i tell you that if two of you on earth agree on anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven."

here's a picture of all of us:

Pray for us! =)

in other news, BBBS CF Camp has been cancelled for lack of response! aiyoh. this problem is not restricted to SU camps, apparently! so, i'll be going for Kepong Baru SCF Camp (3-6 june) instead. i won't have to speak there; my main responsibilities will be to open a book-table, to connect with students and teachers, and to share with them about SU's work and ministry.

i may not be able to blog next week, as most of it will be taken up by Kepong Baru SCF Camp. so, i'll probably update again in a couple of week's time. 'til then, God bless! =)

camps... again... haha

2008-05-22T12:04:00.003+08:00

yes, camps again. other ppl may think that it's fun to go for camp after camp after camp, but this is part of my work and it actually gets tiring after a while. still, the joy of the Lord is my strength! =)

IG camp went well, overall. i didn't have enough time for my youth session (the topic was God's presence, and half an hour just wasn't sufficient to discuss the 3 questions i wanted to cover: "what does God's presence mean to me?", "what have i done to hinder God's presence?", and "what can i do to welcome and cultivate God's presence?"), and the games session was as kelam-kabut as can be expected with 200 campers of all ages playing together... but overall most people had fun, and hopefully most people also learnt something from the camp.

Camp Chit Chat, on the other hand, has been cancelled with less than 5 campers. i'm convinced that this camp (for school-leavers) has an important role to play, in helping youth in transition to discern God's will and make good decisions as they stand at one of the first major cross-roads in their lives. in an age of noise, it may also help them to learn to "be still and know that I am God". however, with the gazillions of choices that youth have today, it's just not getting the response that it should. in the post-mortem i gave the analogy of us selling a line of really delicious, juicy, nutritious burgers; but people just ignore us and continue buying mcD's and Burger King.

nevertheless, since we do believe that this camp has something of consequence to offer school-leavers, there are some constructive suggestions of how to move ahead: perhaps with a 3-or-4-day retreat, rather than a long camp; or perhaps a one-day conference. school-leavers (form 5 and form 6 ppl) who are reading this, please leave a comment to tell me what you think would best meet your needs.

Sports Camp has been postponed to the end of the year (10-13 december) with about 10 campers. sad, no? but hopefully it will do better in that slot. this mid-year hols just seems too packed with church, yf, and school camps... no space for SU camps liao.

so, now i have two camps coming up, which are:

1. Bukit Mewah SCF Camp
- 24-25 May, at The Farm, Lenggeng
- Camp theme is "Arise a Mighty Warrior", theme verse is 2 Timothy 1:7
- i have to prepare 2 sessions based on this theme... please pray for me!

2. BBBS CF Camp
- 2-4 june, BBBS
- camp theme is 'Love of God', theme verse is 1 John 4:8
- as camp speaker, i need to prepare 2 sessions based on this theme...
i have some ideas, but nothing concrete yet... so again, please pray for me!!!

let me end this post with a pic from last weekend's IG camp... this is from the final night's Camp Special. =) the King is the guy sitting on his throne on the stage, while i am one of the lowly guards...

God bless! =)

Hadyai!

2008-05-13T12:37:00.004+08:00

sorry for neglecting my blog! i've been trying to keep to a once-a-week update schedule, but i didn't post at all last week. =P

lots of things have happened since my last post. for one thing, my cough has been vanquished! thank God.=)

besides that, i did get to go to hadyai after all! =) i went up to penang on the 6.30pm bus on friday evening (2 May), had a joyful reunion with the wife at midnight, and went up to hadyai with her and The In-Laws early on saturday morning!

i had a great time with her and the In-Laws there. well, it was great because of the interaction, fellowship and bonding we had. hadyai is mainly about shopping, and that isn't really my thing. [understatement of the year...] oh, and the food was good, too. =D

here are a couple of pics from hadyai:

This is us in the Sky Restaurant, where we ate a pretty good buffet lunch
for just RM12-RM13. it's on the highest floor of the Lee Garden hotel
and has a pretty good view of hadyai all around! =)

And this is us on my first tuk-tuk ride! The Wife has been to thailand before,
but this was my first time =)

i got back to KL on the 8.30pm bus from penang on sunday night (4 may), arriving at pudu around 1am. my good, kind, generous sister picked me up from there and brought me to my office, where i stayed the night. i know it's beginning to sound like my office is my second home; this only happens when The Wife isn't around.

the next two days were taken up with staff meetings. but on tuesday (6 may), after the meeting was over, i was off to penang on the 6.30pm bus again! =P

i went there to accompany The Wife home on wednesday. otherwise, her father would have taken leave to do it. long-distance driving is usually safer and more fun if you have a co-driver with you. and now, she's home! yay! =)

all the travelling and meetings sum up my excuse for not blogging last week... heheh.

to end, here are some camps coming up soon:
1. IG Camp
- 17-19 May, Puteri Resort Melaka
- IG=intergenerational; the concept is to integrate the generations rather than fragmenting
them.
- my responsibilities:
- leading one IG worship
- conducting one youth session (not every session can be fully IG, it isn't easy)
- conducting a session of IG games (serious headache... 200 ppl of all ages playing together)

2. Camp Chit Chat
- 26-31 May, SUFES Campsite Tapah
- School leavers' camp; the concept is to prepare students for transition into tertiary education.
- my responsibilities:
- coordinate trasnsport
- coordinate music and worship
- one session on exams and stress
- at the moment we have less than 5 campers signed up. closing date is 15 may and cut-off
point is 20 campers, so... doesn't look good. =(

3. BBBS CF Camp
- 2-4 june, BBBS
- i'll only be there 2-3 june, as it overlaps with the next camp.
- camp theme is 'Love of God', theme verse is 1 John 4:8
- as camp speaker, i need to prepare 2 sessions based on this theme... please pray for me!!!

4. Sports Camp
- 4-7 june, MGS Ipoh
- concept is evangelistic, using sports as a bridge and a tool to share the Gospel.
- my responsibilities are unclear. this camp is coordinated by the ipoh office, and not much
communication has been made.
- camper recruitment is slow. pray that:
- christian kids will come and bring their non-christian friends
- the camp will have enough participants to run!
- kids who come will be blessed, enjoy themselves, and be kept safe in all activities.
- kids who come will go home with a better grasp of the Gospel than before, and some may
be ready to accept and believe in Christ for the first time.

alright, that's all for now. 'til the next post, God bless! =)

Tired

2008-04-30T12:21:00.002+08:00

yes i am. partly because i'm still battling this cough from last week, and partly because The Wife is away. back in penang for her semester break. without her around, i seem to lack motivation to do stuff. including blogging. which is why i'm writing this today when i should have written it yesterday.

day before yesterday, as i was in the bus on the way back to seremban, i found the long journey rather pointless without The Wife waiting for me at the end of it. so last night, i decided to sleep in the office. nothing new, i've done it before after late-night meetings. and it saves me close to RM10 in bus/train fare.

the good thing was, i got to meet up with my sister. had dinner with her, and helped her pack and move a load of stuff to her new place. was great to catch up with her.

this week's not so heavy on work (thank God). in fact, i was hoping to take friday and saturday off and go up north to The Wife. there was even a plan to go to hadyai. however, all hopes were dashed when my Boss scheduled a meeting for friday afternoon. i tried to wiggle out of it but to no avail.

The Wife and The In-Laws are wondering if my Boss is a Monster who purposely schedules meetings so that his employees can't take holidays. i don't think he is and have tried to convince them that he did so because there were no other available dates. because next week we have staff meetings on monday and tuesday, and on wednesday christina and josephine (two of my colleagues in the youth ministry department) are going to Kedah. so then have to meet on friday lor.

anyway, thank God for the seremban trip which (i think) went well. hopefully the seminar we did there, "The Bible: Don't Play-Play!", helped the students get more grounded in God's Word and whetted their appetite so that they'll learn to read, understand and enjoy it on their own.

also thank God that tomorrow is Labour Day. hopefully i'll be more my cheerful self after a day of rest. =P

thank you for reading, and praying. 'til the next post, God bless! =)

The Chart

2008-04-23T00:36:00.004+08:00

here it is! (i hope this works...)

it was kinda small, so i resized it. now it's blur. nevertheless, i hope it's legible...

the starting-point is the blue box in the top left-hand corner, and from there you can follow my convoluted thoughts either to the yellow, deistic conclusion; or the green, buddhist/hindhu ones.

feel free to leave comments! =P

intro to religions was very interesting indeed. only bad thing was that i fell sick with fever, sore throat and aching bones on the second day of class. this eventually evolved into a cough, which i am now recovering from. now must do assignment, sigh. Dr. Solomon Rajah gave us many options to choose from, and i've decided to do the one which compares the Christian concept of salvation with the Sikh one. =)

apart from that, i'm taking the next two days off from work. want to spend some time with The Wife before she goes back to penang (it's her end-of-semester break) and leaves me all alone, sobz.

lastly, please pray for our seremban trip this weekend. we'll be speaking at 2 scfs on friday, having a combined scf meeting saturday morning, and jason will be preaching at my church on sunday! pray for anointing as we speak, for meaningful interactions with teachers and students, and for the ability to connect and build relationships through which the grace and truth of God can flow.

thanks and "see" y'all next week! =)

interesting thoughts on the bus

2008-04-15T10:16:00.002+08:00

a few days ago, while on the bus going back to seremban, i began to ponder about The Meaning Of Life. as it happens once in a while, i contemplated the possibility that i might be mistaken about Everything... about God, Creation, Redemption and etc.

maybe there is no God. maybe men are just monkeys who grew too clever for their own good. maybe human beings aren't significant at all on the cosmic scale - just part of the happy (or sometimes not-so-happy) accident we call 'life'. maybe there is no purpose or meaning to life, and our existence is utterly futile and absurd. how can we know? how can we be sure?

how can we be sure of anything? well, to start off, i reject the postmodern notion that we can't be sure of anything. because, in fact, if you're sure that you can't be sure of anything, you are already sure of something, thus making your original premiss invalid. and if you're not sure that you can't be sure of anything, then you're admitting that there is a possibility that we can be sure of something. either way, the statement commits suicide.

it's like this statement: "i always tell lies". if it's true, it's a lie, but if it's a lie, then it's true. the statement commits suicide.

so, believing that we can be sure of something, what is it that we can be sure of? i decided to begin with Descartes' famous words: i think, therefore i am. i think that this is a pretty good starting point, because it's obvious that some thinking is going on here and someone has to be doing the thinking. i call this thinking entity, 'myself'. if i don't exist, then who is claiming non-existence? looks like "i don't exist" is another of those suicide statements.

from that starting point, i drew a chart in which i tried to explore the possible origins of my existence. interestingly enough, i came to two possible conclusions. the first is a theistic one: we were created, directly or indirectly, by a First Cause (whom i'll call God). note that this is still very, very far away from the Christian God; this First Cause could be a polytheistic community, a monotheistic being, evil, good, personal, impersonal, and etc.

the second one is very close to the claims of philosophical hinduism/buddhism. namely, the world was never created but has always been, and has a cyclical existence. humans too have always been, and also have a cyclical existence - the cycle of death and rebirth.

i'd like to post up the chart i drew for you all to take a look at, and see if you can follow and maybe critique my train(s) of thought. but i don't know how. maybe later.

for now, work calls; i have a meeting to attend at 11.00 am, tomorrow i'll be in STM studying Introduction to Religions, and i'm busy preparing for the SU youth team's visit to seremban next weekend. tata! =)

hit and miss

2008-04-08T10:11:00.005+08:00

we hit horton hears a who, and missed the spiderwick chronicles.

what am i talking about? =) The Wife and I had a buy 1 free 1 coupon for GSC movie tics. we wanted to watch spiderwick, but sadly it was no longer showing in seremban's famous Terminal One. [well, it's famous in seremban anyway. if you're not from seremban, don't be worried about never having heard of it before.]

so, last sunday, after sharing with the youth of Cornerstone Baptist Church about Complacency from Amos 6:1-7, we traipsed off to midvalley hoping to catch spiderwick.

oh, before that some of the Church uncles treated us to a Delicious Lunch: Yam Noodles, Ulu Yam Lor Mee, Fried Mee Hoon, Taugeh, and Salad Yau Char Guai. nyum nyum! =)

ok, back to the topic. to our horror, the line for buying tics at midvalley reached to the moon! [warning: slight exaggeration here] but undaunted in our purpose, we proceeded to join the line. however, as we slo-o-o-o-o-owly approached the tic counter, we were aghast to observe that the only remaining times for spiderwick were 9.20pm and 11.00pm! no way we could watch it unless we planned to sleep in midvalley.

so, we ended up watching horton, at 4.30pm. now, i was abit apprehensive at first. my impression of the trailer had been, "hmm, a talking elephant. doesn't look very interesting." i'm glad to say that the movie was much, much better than its trailer.

for one thing, horton is based on a book by Dr. Seuss, and some parts of the dialogue and narration are taken directly from the book. this was great, because i really enjoyed the clever rhymes and word-play. for example, the movie opens delightfully with:

On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
he was splashing... enjoying the Jungle's great joys...
when Horton the Elephant heard a small noise.

Besides that, the movie was hilarious! to me at least. i laughed until there were tears in my eyes. =D those of you who've watched comedies with me before can imagine my hearty laughter ringing throughout the cinema. hope i didn't spoil the experience for any of the other patrons. =P

and finally, horton was really good because it has certain values and ideas behind it that make it really interesting to think about, even if it is "just a cartoon". for example, the Kangaroo refuses to believe in the Whos because, "if you can't see it, or hear it, or smell it, or touch it, it doesn't exist." very scientific empiricist isn't it? i think that the way she's proved wrong in the end, paves the way for people to believe in abstract constructs like love, beauty, truth, and yes - God.

also, there's the catchphrase: "a person's a person, no matter how small." to me, this speaks against discrimination. children are often overlooked in an adult's world. one could also take the idea and apply it to other factors. one's personhood doesn't depend on one's size, colour, race, or creed.

of course, there are also questionable values. for example, in the end the joey (that's a baby kangaroo) Rudy stands up to his mother and disobeys her. does this mean that it's alright for children to rebel against their parents? are there higher values which makes it legitimate for a child to go against his parents? is it possible to honor one's parents without obeying them?

There's alot more that can be picked up from this seemingly simple little cartoon. catch it if you can! =)

Work:
- i (and other SU staff) will be going to malacca tomorrow to check out the campsite for the IG Camp which will happen next month. this will take a whole day and will mean a night away from the wife.
- i'm preparing for a session at an SCF in Subang this friday. it's easter-based and meant to be evangelistic. i plan to explore the question of what happened to Jesus' body.
- the Camp Chit Chat outline session has been pushed back to this saturday and next monday. i have to prepare a session on 'exams and stress' for that.
- i will be in STM 16-19 April taking a module, 'Introduction to Religions'. should be interesting! =)
- i appreciate your continued prayer support! =)

two speaking engagements

2008-04-02T12:18:00.003+08:00

coming up this weekend! speaking at taman melawati SCF on the topic "Christ's Ambassadors" on friday, and at Cornerstone Baptist Church YF on the topic "Complacency" on sunday.

i have a dNa planning meeting at 2pm today, and the deadline for handing in and presenting our outline sessions for Camp Chit Chat is on the coming monday.

with all these things going on, i'm pretty busy. sorry about not having time to blog much. please pray for me ya. =)

switching to non-work-related-stuff: last saturday, chenmay and i went for a little reunion with some of my high school friends. we had chocolate fondue! =) here are a couple of pics for you to drool over:

the fondue... yum yum! =)

Friends! from the bottom, going clockwise:
me, The Wife, Michelle, Lavanya, Chung Ming, James, Gwen Ai, Malcolm.
Guen Boh, who was our gracious host, is behind the camera. =)

it was great to see these old, old friends again... to renew the bonds of friendship, and catch up on the years in between. =)

ok, back to work now!

ku sudah kembali! =)

2008-03-18T17:54:00.002+08:00

if you're wondering why the title of this post is in malay, it's because too many of my posts are titled "i'm back!" already =P

ZMax Camp was great! we ended up with 14 campers, as one pulled out because of fever at the eleventh hour. however, as i said to tristan in the chatbox, numbers are not the measure of a camp! i would that God use me to touch the lives of others (especially youths) and turn them to Him; but it's not for me to dictate how it's to be done. we must be faithful in little just as we claim we'll be faithful in much; and even if a single person turns to Christ, the angels rejoice.

i wrote those paragraphs last week. so sorry i haven't blogged yet (to whoever's still reading) but i've been swamped with work!

before i list down all the things i have to do, let me share some great news with you: there was a group of ZMax Campers who came from a certain church: 3 christians and 1 non-christian. well, the youth leader from that church recently contacted me and informed me that the non-christian kid expressed desire to become a christian after coming back from ZMax Camp! =D

i know that for a servant of God, success is measured in obedience rather than results (see Isaiah, called to proclaim God's message to a people who wouldn't hear). nevertheless, my heart is cheered and encouraged because of this camper's response to the gospel. =)

now, what am i so knitted busy about? (knitted is a cognate of darned. it's a joke. nevermind whether it's funny, just laugh.) here's the list:
- closing accounts for ZMax Camp. it doesn't balance by 40 sen! aarrgh! where could that 40 sen have gone? =P
- coordinating and preparing for our trip to seremban in April.
- clearing my email... i came back to over 200 emails in my inbox
- preparing for SCF meetings... i am speaking at various schools every friday up to mid-april. this friday's topic is prayer, at a school in klang.
- planning for camps in May/June. 3 camps there: a Church Inter-Generational Camp, Camp Chit Chat (SU's revamped School-Leavers' Camp), and Sports Camp (an evangelistic camp based on, you guessed it, sports)
- preparing for next week's staff meeting... it's my turn to prepare the Youth Ministry Updates
- preparing to speak at TOMORROW's prayer meeting... this one emergency, external speaker couldn't make it.

since i have my work cut out for me, i'd better get back to it. thanks for reading, commenting, and praying. =)

it's on!

2008-03-11T12:11:00.002+08:00

indeed, it is. ZMax camp is on with exactly 15 campers. how cool is that? =)

there are 2 or 3 campers who are non-christians, so do pray for them to be open to the gospel.

pray for myself and my team of staff and volunteers who wil be running the camp, too. we're pretty busy with final preparations now.

pray for a fun and meaningful programme; for campers to learn something even as they enjoy themselves; and for safety, especially in outdoor activities like games, stream trotting, and the night hike.

pray for meaningful friendships to be formed and for lives to be touched and transformed by the hand of God.

will be going off tomorrow til saturday; leaving The Wife and Frodo home alone again. =(

may it all be for God's glory; may His Kingdom come, His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Amen.

p.s. have u checked out the election results??? exciting changes are in store for malaysia!!! (hopefully). may God bless our land! =)

today is D-Day...

2008-03-07T15:16:00.002+08:00

...for ZMax Camp.

the day of decision: will the camp live or die?

i've been calling up every person who has expressed interest in the camp, asking them to confirm if they/their friends/their children are coming.

the cut-off point decided at our camp planning meeting a couple of days ago was 15 campers. if there are 15 or more campers, the camp will go on. if there are less then 15, even 14.9 campers, the camp will be cancelled.

at this moment, the number stands at 9 forms in my hand with another 4 promised; a total of 13.

there is still hope; a boy from last year's camp and his 2 friends, and the cousin of one of our camp committee members and his 2 friends. if one or both of these come through, the camp is on.

for now, all we can do is wait.

and pray.

Jim Elliot

2008-03-04T12:32:00.002+08:00

Thank God for a good trip to the south last weekend! =)

we visited 2 SCFs in melaka, visited a youth service in kluang, and spoke at 2 youth services (i was the speaker for one of those), as well as 2 worship services in batu pahat. God is good. =)

last wednesday, i shared at our SU/FES prayer meeting about the life of Jim Elliot... and in one part of my sharing, we looked at some quotes from his journal. since i've already typed them, might as well recycle =P

hey, don't look down on recycled blog posts k. these words are powerful, if u take the time to read them and ponder over them...

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

One treasure, a single eye, and a sole master.

God, I pray thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like You, Lord Jesus.

Father, take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar.

Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I might be aflame. But flame is short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul? Short life? In me there dwells the spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. “Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.”

Are we willing to build with a trowel in one hand, while the other grasps a sword?

Father, if Thou wilt let me go to South America to labour with Thee and to die, I pray that Thou wilt let me go soon. Nevertheless, not my will.

How few, how short these hours my heart must beat – then on, into the real world where the unseen becomes important.

Of the coffin: a swallowing up by Life. For this I am most anxious.

...don’t let the sands of time get into the eye of your vision to reach those who sit in darkness. They simply must hear. Wives, houses, practices, education, must learn to be disciplined by this rule: “let the dead attend to the affairs of the already dead, go thou and attend the affairs of the dying”.

“We are the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.” And what are sheep doing going into the gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy the company of the flock? No. Those sheep were headed for the altar. Their pasture feeding had been for one purpose: to test them and fatten them for bloody sacrifice. Give Him thanks then, that you have been counted worthy of His altars. Enter into the work with praise.

I must not think it strange if God takes in youth those whom I would have kept on earth 'til they were older. God is peopling Eternity, and I must not restrict Him to old men and women.

Only I know that my own life is full. It is time to die, for I have had all that a young man can have, at least all that this young man can have. I am ready to meet Jesus.

Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.

i really admire Jim Elliot for his focus; his single-minded devotion to love, follow and serve God to the very end. i might not fully agree with everything he says, but in this aspect of his life i want to emulate him. google him if u have no idea who he is or what he did. i promise (from my point of view anyway), it's well worth your time to get acquainted with this man of God.

leaving

2008-02-29T09:27:00.003+08:00

just a quick note to say that i'll be in malacca for scf today, and from there going with the rest of the youth team to batu pahat and kluang.

bye!

p.s. i'll miss The Wife =(

i'm so old...

2008-02-26T09:40:00.008+08:00

yes, i am. twenty-six years old, to be exact. i'm now on to the second quarter of a century... heheh

my birthday was last week... on the 19th of february. we were having a staff team meeting that day, so we celebrated birthdays together for all staff born from january-june. there was a nice pandan sponge cake, which jojo enhanced with chocolate sauce and frosting...mmmm!=D

then i went home, and my wife baked me a Birthday Biscuit!

yes, that's right, a Biscuit, not a boring, normal, ordinary cake. she didn't have baking powder, so it couldn't rise to become a cake... hahaha. and it was a very nice-tasting Biscuit, too... with my name on it in raisins! =)

here's a pic of the wonderful Birthday Biscuit (and that purple thing is a blueberry-flavoured candle that had the honour of suddenly being whisked into the role of Birthday Candle):

and here's a pic of me cutting the Birthday Biscuit:

so, what's it like to be another year older? to tell the truth, it feels more-or-less the same. no trumpets, no fanfare, no sudden increase in wisdom... and i haven't really had time to stop and reflect much. but in the short times of reflections i've been able to steal away here and there, i'm heartily thankful to God for His goodness and faithfulness to me these 26 years (and beyond). indeed, His blessings overflow in abundance and His love endures forever.

God is good, yes? =) so, many thanks to Him; and to The Wife who made my first Married Man's Birthday a memorable one; and also to all of you who so kindly wished me a Happy Birthday! =)

packed weekend

2008-02-18T09:53:00.004+08:00

that's what the just-over weekend was. packed, a little hectic, but productive and enjoyable, too. =)

on saturday, The Wife and i rose and shone at around 6.30 am. we rushed out of the house and were off to methodist boys' school, kl (henceforth mbskl). as sometimes happens, the rush caused a little bit of irritability and ruffled feathers... heheh =P

we were at mbskl for the kl/pj scf convention... a coming together of scfs from all over klang valley. there were about 200 youth in the hall that day. actually, i'm quite sure that there were many other scfs which were not represented there. if every scf in klang valley participated, it would be a really massive gathering... anyway, the theme of the convention was 'carpe diem', seize the day. hopefully, students left with a sense of urgency and a burning passion to do what God has called them to do. for they only have these few years of opportunity, while they are in high school.

after the convention, we went to ss2 to have lunch with a bunch of volunteers for Young Writers' Camp... the lunch was at some crazy expensive place. i mean, RM15-17 for a bowl of noodles?!? once we saw the menu, we decided not to eat. couldn't afford it. but then the volunteers insisted that we eat, and refused to let us pay. such kindness! =)

the end result of the YWC lunch was, we established that we do want to have the camp this year. also, the goal of the camp will be to nurture young christians who want to write [as it has been in past years] rather than trying to raise up writers from scratch [which is well-nigh impossible and would probably degenerate into a kind of 'how to score in spm english' camp]. next step is to pull a committee together and begin meeting to pin down camp dates, a camp site, and all the nitty-gritty details of running a camp.

after lunch, we went to ikea (this was The Wife's idea) and bought some stuff there. including two toilet brushes, a spatula, some rawhide bones for Frodo, and some hanging basket thingy that i tried to convince The Wife we neither needed nor wanted... [edit: but it does look nice now that it's hanging on our back door grille =P]

from ikea, we went to my uncle's house in SS1 to see my parents. after CNY, they had gone back to sitiawan to sort and clear out stuff from our old house. that saturday, they came back to PJ as they were flying back to KK on sunday. so, it was good to go and spend some time with them. they also brought lots of stuff from the old house for us. some of it was my own stuff, like my old tennis racket, a fishing reel that my dad gave me many years ago, and etc. others were household things, like plates and pots and stuff.

however, we had to tear ourselves away from being with my mum and dad in order to go for the dinner with the emmanuel efc youth advisors. this was made harder because my uncles and cousins on my mum's side were having a big gathering in another uncle's house in SS24. but i had to miss it, as i had already given my word and made and appointment to have dinner with the efc youth advisors.

anyway, no regrets. we were treated to a massive, RM48 german buffet at euro deli. german sausages! pork knuckles! lots and lots of meaty meat! hahaha. good food and good fellowship - what more could anyone ask for? we really ate enough to bust our buckles! =)

after a good nights' rest in my uncles' house in ss1, the next day found us rushing to kl. unfortunately we underestimated the travelling time from my uncle's house to bethel baptist church, which led to us arriving about 10 minutes late to the church. this church was the church where i preached my second sermon ever, and they called me back to preach again! [either i didn't speak too badly, or they are rather desperate for speakers... hehehe] thank God, all went well as i preached on the topic "start well, finish strong". an improved version of what i preached at changlun. [this was during the trip to alor setar, which you can read about here and here] =)

after that we walked from the church to Pudu LRT station. along the way, there were many little stalls selling all kinds of stuff. The Wife almost bought a bag, but decided against it because it wasn't roomy enought. as it was, we ended up going back with a pair of slippers, a lobster/crayfish/giant prawn for my cousin, and a pair of carp (!).

we then went back to my uncle's house in SS1, rested, packed all the stuff from sitiawan into The Wife's Car, collected guppies and plant cuttings from my aunty (The Wife has a 'thing' for fish and plants, heheh), and went to my other uncle's house in SS24. we visited for awhile, gave my cousin the lobster/crayfish/giant prawn, laughed at the surprised delight in his face when he got it, chatted abit with my uncle, aunty and grandma, and then left.

by now we were tired, and we should have gone home. but did we? nope. we went to midvalley megamall!!! haiz. it's all GSC's fault. they gave me a "free ticket" because it's my birthday month. so we tried to use it, but couldn't get good seats at any movie worth watching... bleargh.

but the trip to midvalley wasn't wasted, because we ended up going to to carrefour (seremban doesn't have carrefour) and buying broccoli, fish fillets, dishwashing liquid, and other assorted groceries. we also explored the gardens, but went back to midvalley's food court for a pasta dinner before heading back to home, sweet home.

we slept well on sunday night. phew! =)

p.s. sorry this post comes so late. i wanted to get it out on monday, but was caught up with staff meetings til tuesday. then wednesday was spent calling up teachers in klang valley to talk with them about ZMax camp and ask them to help us publicise it in their scfs, and preparing a session on purity which i delivered to the UNIM (uni of nottingham m'sia) vcf on wednesday evening. well, better late than never, right? =P

Happy 6th day of CNY! =)

2008-02-12T10:52:00.000+08:00

for those of you who want to gasak angpows from me, your time is running out! only 9 days to go, muahahaha...=)

CNY was funtastic! the FOOD... yum yum! all those cookies, and mandarin oranges, and pistachio nuts, and gor-lu (sweet-and-sour fish float, a hockchiew delicacy), and mee sua (long-life noodles cooked with red wine, another delicious hockchiew dish! mmmmmmm...), and steamboat, and i really need to go on a diet now. as usual. =P

this was our first year of giving angpows instead of receiving them. to answer kakiayam's comment on the last post, it felt bittersweet... there was the consciousness of our newly married status; the joy of giving to our younger cousins, nieces and nephews; the worry of how much we should give, in order not to be seen as stingy; and the pang of not being on the receiving end anymore. we still got a few though, from my mum and dad ["you'll always be my son, so i'll always give you!"] my por-por [same as before, only change 'son' to 'grandson'] and one aunty ["i'll stop giving when you have your first child."]. thank God for generous people! =)

besides that, there was the joy of reunion with uncles, aunties, and cousins whom i seldom get to see. but for The Wife, it was bittersweet (again) as it was her first CNY away from Penang and The In-Laws. still, she tells me that she had a good time and that she appreciated being accepted and welcomed into the Kiew family circle. so that's good. =)

after the big reunion dinner on New Year's eve, we had Family Worship. we sang a few songs (some of them chosen by me, as i was 'persuaded' to lead it), had a time of sharing and thanksgiving for what God has been doing in our lives throughout the past year, and a time of corporate prayer. apart from the children getting a little bored and fidgety during the prayer time, it was a good time of communing with God as a family.

Chinese New Year is a great time to appreciate and express affection for one's family. so, Mum, Dad, Sis, and any other relatives reading this: i really enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year with you all, and I LOVE YOU!!! =D

p.s. on the ministry side, here's what's going on:
- ZMax Camp planning meeting, tonight
- Rawang SCF planning meeting, friday afternoon
- KL/PJ SCF Convention, saturday morning
- Dinner with Youth Advisors from Emmanuel EFC, saturday night
- Preaching at Bethel Baptist Church (they called me back! heheh), sunday morning
- Word Surfers' Camp revamping and planning meeting, next monday morning
- Speaking at Nottingham Uni CF on 'Purity', next wednesday evening
- Visiting Bukit Bintang Boys' School, next friday
- Sharing in SU/FES prayer meeting on 'Jim Elliot', next next wednesday
- Ministry trip to Melaka/Batu Pahat/Kluang, end feb-beginning march
quite packed eh? so, do pray for me. thanks and God bless! =)

happy cny!!!

2008-02-05T09:38:00.000+08:00

this is just a short post to say....

Happy Chinese New Year!!! =D

The Wife and i will be going down to Johor to celebrate there. i have an uncle there who is hosting the Kiew Reunion Dinner this year. (there, i've blogged about Life with the Wife already...haha)

to those who have been pestering me and demanding for angpows, come and visit me in seremban and i'll give u one. no guarantees that is will be enough to cover your travelling expenses, though. =P

steven

2008-02-01T09:34:00.000+08:00

let me tell you about steven.

steven is this old indian guy who is often hanging around the place where i hang around when i wait for The Wife to pick me up at the end of the day. he's skinny to the point of scrawniness, has sparse, greying hair, a pronounced slouch, and a slightly not-so-nice sort of smell. not that i go about sniffing him, it's just one of those things that one can't help noticing. he would usually be wearing an old-looking checked shirt, a dark-coloured pair of slacks rather worn at the knees, a pair of black canvas shoes, and a pair of broken glasses fixed with a rubber-band around the left lense.

we'd previously exchanged pleasantries and introduced ourselves. he told me that he's a catholic, and he seemed pretty alone in the world. but yesterday, The Wife was late in picking me up; so, there was time for some deeper conversation.

though previously he had told me that he's a catholic, believes in God and Jesus and all that, now on probing deeper i found that he held some rather contradictory viewpoints.

on one hand, he believes in witchcraft. he insists that it's real and powerful and dangerous. he thinks that he lost his job because he was a victim of witchcraft. i said that as Christians who know and believe in the Almighty God, we have nothing to fear from witchcraft because Christ who is in us is greater than any of these evil forces. and his reply was that only a naive person who knows nothing of the reality of the world would say something like that!

now i'm not saying that witchcraft isn't real and powerful and dangerous. it is. but knowing the God who created the Universe, and knowing His Son who died to set us free from all such darkness, what have we to fear?

so after some argument, he asked me how i knew that God is more powerful than witchcraft. and of course i said, i read it in the bible!

and he proceeded to tell me about what an old, antiquated, irrelevant book the bible is. he claimed that science has superceded the bible. he told me about how men have gone to the moon, and sent monkeys to mars (i think he was mistaken about mars. we've sent unmanned probes there, but no monkeys as far as i know). he told me about the big bang. to which i replied, what was before the big bang then? why did the big bang happen?

i tried to help him see that the discoveries and progress of science have not disproved the bible in any conclusive way. i tried to explain to him how the existence of God is the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to life - science can't do that.

he didn't seem to realise that witchcraft and science don't exactly mix well, either. but i didn't have the chance to point that out to him, because finally, The Wife came for me. so i said goodbye and left. but i do hope that some of the things i said got through to him.

strange how a man can call himself a catholic and a christian, and yet seem so far from the saving knowledge of Christ.

The Penang Trip

2008-01-29T13:04:00.000+08:00

hullo everyone =)

i'm back from penang, as you can see. wanted to blog while i was there, but didn't have the time.

i spoke at penang free school's scf on the topic, "how to be a witness in the school". and i also spoke at the combined scf meeting on saturday morning, on the topic "building a strong scf".

thank you for your prayer support. =)

next in line: prepare for ZMax camp in march and the seremban trip in april.

if possible, i think i should blog about something non-work/ministry soon. i sense that readers are becoming bored because my posts are always about work stuff (readers, feel free to contradict/agree/comment). but at the moment, nothing else seems to be blogworthy. hmmm, what to do? =P

next weekend

2008-01-18T09:20:00.000+08:00

sorry for such a late update... have been very busy.

the trip to alor setar was great! people were incredibly hospitable, and they fed us really well...=) i especially enjoyed the time we had meeting up with youth who'd been at our camps. many of the youth in Full Gospel Church and Wesley Methodist Church alor setar have been campers at NSCFL and dNa over the past 2 years that i've been in SU.

the preaching at changlun also went well, thank God... there's a lively, friendly bunch of students from UUM there, and my prayer for them is that they will start well and finish strong (just as i preached, haha). the sad thing was, another ex-camper from last year's ZMax camp was having his birthday party, and i didn't get to go because i was at changlun. still, no regrets. =)

so, what am i so busy with, you ask? well, next weekend there's another ministry trip on, this time to penang island. apart from preparing for that, there have been meetings these few days to plan for Camp Chit Chat and dNa 2008. on top of that, i am very aware that ZMax 2008 is only a couple of months away and i am very worried about camper recruitment. and lastly, my desk looks like a war-zone and i desperately need to clean it up....

please pray for me. for grace and strength to get done all that i need to get done. thank you.

the susah-ness of leaving The Wife

2008-01-10T12:52:00.001+08:00

i left my wife behind me at seremban's terminal one about 2 hours ago. this was particularly difficult because today is a public holiday, and she will have the whole day to be lonely without me. difficult for her, difficult also for me. sighz...

in approximately an hour's time the SU youth team and i will be travelling up to ipoh. i will be driving the SU van. and tomorrow morning, we will be going on to alor setar. please pray for a safe journey, with no accidents.

thanks be to God, the changlun sermon has been birthed. an outline was formulated over the last few days and meat added this morning. the title is "start well, finish strong!" now with God's help, may i present it well and communicate His Word clearly to all who hear.

leaving the wife is made harder by the fact that i won't be home til monday evening. because there is a dNa meeting on monday, that was postponed from 11am to 2pm so that we wouldn't hv to rush back from ipoh in the wee hours of the morning and end up snoring the meeting. dNa meetings seem to bring me much grief, no?

but let us count it all worthwhile for the sake of the Cross and to hasten the coming of His Kingdom. once again, your prayer support is greatly appreciated. til next week, God bless! =)

farewell and greetings

2008-01-07T11:48:00.000+08:00

farewell to 2007! =)

the past year has been a year of New Beginnings for me. the biggest New Beginning was of course, The Wedding, which marked the beginning of my marriage with The Wife. =)

apart from that, it is also the year i began preaching in churches (only twice so far, still lots to learn); began speaking at youth camps (check out this blog post if u want to see about a hundred pics of the camp where i made my debut as a camp speaker); began my Masters in Christian Studies with STM; began learning about the sufferings and satisfactions of owning, paying for, and maintaining a house and a car; so yeah. an apt moniker, The Year of New Beginnings.=)

greetings to 2008! =)

i forsee that this new year will be a year of Marriage and Ministry. as The Wife and i pass the first-year mark of being together as Husband and Wife, our "dance" should be smoother as we learn not to step on each others' toes and to keep time with one another. as we adjust and adapt to each other, we should begin enjoying each other more and become adept at handling and resolving any conflicts that may arise. and ideally, we will grow deeper in love with each other as we grow deeper in love with God. i don't doubt that there will be challenging times too, but i have confidence that we can weather any storm with God's help. =)

at the same time, as i enter into the second year of my contract with Scripture Union, i should continue to grow and learn in the ministry. may i continue to develop to be a sharpened tool in the hand of God, fit and able to be used for His purposes.

and then of course, there's balancing the two things! =P

p.s. a quick note about my movements this weekend: i'll be off on a minstry trip to Kedah and Penang. and one of the things i have to do is preach in a church in Canglun! please pray for me as i prepare my (God's?) message. as they say, third time's the charm! =P

happy new year!

2008-01-04T09:46:00.000+08:00

yeah, i know. i'm 4 days late. nevertheless, Happy New Year!!!=)

not that it feels particularly new. still recuperating from the high-pressure, fast-paced camping season just over, coming back to work feels like... it's really, really old. does the work never end? i don't remember feeling this weary when i was a student. am i growing old or something? hahaha.

nevertheless, the promise of isaiah 40:31 still holds true: "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." so, i must learn to wait upon the Lord...=)

about emmanuel efc's youth camp, all thanks and glory to God. i survived, they didn't stone me. =P seriously, i think the sessions went well, and all thanks to God's grace. i did 5 sessions about True Reality:

1. Reality? What's That?
i questioned the nature of reality and how we can be sure what is real. perhaps we are all living in the Matrix now; how do we know we aren't? i concluded that as Christians we can be sure of truth and reality because we have a God who is True and Real. if there is no God, you're in big trouble because you can't be sure of anything.

2. Real Worldviews
different worldviews would give different answers concerning what true reality is. i briefly covered postmodernism, theism (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), pantheism (Buddhism, Hindhuism, and New Age), spiritism and polytheism (many chinese who call themselves buddhists actually fall in this category), and naturalism. yes, i'm aware that each of these worldviews can merit an hour-long session in themselves; so it was just a very broad introduction to worldviews, with the hope that it would start them thinking and challenge them to develop a true Christian worldview.

3. The World's Reality
the world constantly bombards us with a picture of reality which is at odds with what we as Christians believe to be True Reality. some of the skewed values of the world have sublty infiltrated into our churches. so in this session i talked about materialistic reality (money is of prime importance), aesthetic reality (beauty is of prime importance), hedonistic reality (pleasure is of prime importance), academic reality (education and results are of prime importance), and sexual reality (sex is of prime importance). for each of these worldly realities, we checked out bible verses to see what the Christian reality is.

4. Real Bible Characters
in this session, we looked at biblical examples of people who had the right ideas about reality and people who had the wrong ones. for example, samson (whose downfall was sexual temptation) vs joseph (who resisted portiphar's wife day after day). i did this session in a quiz format, in which the campers supposedly had to check the bible passages to find out who the biblical character was before they could answer. interestingly, on more than one occasion they just guessed instead of looking up the passage. apparently some people think being the first to answer is more important than getting the answer right!=P

5. Spiritual Reality
spiritual reality is an invisible aspect of reality. because it is invisible (or more accurately, intangible), many people dismiss it and ignore it. this has potentially catastrophic eternal consequences. i then talked abit about how the Christian portrayal of spiritual reality includes an element of spiritual warfare, and that if we take the bible to be true then we should know that we are involved in this spiritual warfare. i ended with some implications of spiritual reality, i.e. if what the bible says about it is true, then
- human beings are more than just intelligent animals
- there is such a thing as sin and morality
- death is not the final end of our existence
- questions of salvation, atonement, and etc arise.

so with that, 2007 ends and we welcome 2008. may God continue to lead each of us deeper into Himself as we journey on with Him. =)

dNa

2007-12-18T18:27:00.000+08:00

dNa was excellent. OT Prophets were covered by Dr. Leong Tien Fock, who made their often-crptic pronouncements understandable and relevant to us as Christians living today. there was a visit to the Maha Vihara temple in Brickfields, coupled with sessions on Understanding Buddhism and Chinese Religions, which really enlightened us about the worldview(s) of our buddhist friends. there was community work, in which we visited a place called Vinashini Home (the students were divided into groups and went to different homes - mine was Vinashini). we interacted with groups of people that we'd never interacted with before, and probably would never have interacted with if not for this module - the disabled, wheelchair-bound, down's syndrome, orphans, and etc. NT was covered by Michael William, who helped us realise that for a proper understanding of the Bible we need to see it through the eyes of the original recipients. context, context, context. and think, think, think. there were book studies on John Sung and Celebration of Discipline, which left us with much to ponder on and apply. and there were modules on the basics of our faith - the Sacraments and the Creeds.

it's impossible to summarise 10 days into one paragraph, but looks like i did it. =P am now battling with a runny nose that threatens to evolve into a cough. am also very worried about my Pastoral Leadership and Ministry assignment, which is due in *gasp* 3 days' time! die die die!!! and i still have to prepare for the last camp of the year: the one in which i make my debut as a Camp Speaker.

please pray for me. i really really really (we're going in threes here, if u hadn't noticed) need it.

not sure how often i will be able to blog, as i plan to take days off. 'til we meet again, may God be with you. Immanuel - God with us. it is good to remember Him, as Christmas once again draws near.

Blessed Christmas, to one and all!!! =)

p.s. if you ppl would like a student's eye view of what happened at NSCFL Camp and ZMax Camp, just click on the words 'NSCFL Camp' and 'ZMax'. many thanks to smkducf for the free publicity! =)

ZMax Camp! =)

2007-12-05T11:35:00.000+08:00

Camp went well. =) 7 Non-christians came. one chose to accept Christ, but is still abit confused and unsure of his commitment. some enjoyed the activities and games, but weren't interested in spiritual things [yet! with prayer, hopefully they wil grow to be]. others were open to the gospel, but not ready to commit. several christians rededicated their lives to God.

one of the highlights of ZMax Camp would be the trip to Sungai Congkak on the second day. we had a great time in the cold, cold water. there was a team-building exercise in which the small groups worked together to build a boat. my group created the ugliest boat; but it was the only one that successfully transported its' egg thru the white water of the river. =)

there was a forum on the second-last day. we had a very wide topic, "Life and Faith". a sample of the interesting questions that came up:
- does santa claus exist?
- is christian or buddhist better?
- if fortune-tellers aren't from God, how do they tell the future?
- my grandmother was a catholic. must i also be a catholic?
and many others. The Wife was one of the panel of speakers, woot! =)

and on the last night, we had Gila Punya Malam. the theme was Superheroes, and everyone came dressed up as something. my favourite was Toilet Paper Man. his superpower was very useful, as one could tear off a piece of his costume whenever in need of tissue paper. we also had sketches in which each group had random phrases, venues and props [e.g. Girl's Toilet, "May the Force be with you", a hockey stick and a hammer]. it was hilarious!=D

the last day was when the closing challenge was given. i hope to continue to keep the campers in prayer [especially the non-christian ones], keep in touch with those i can, and meet them again in future camps.

tomorrow, i leave for d'Nous Academy. my responsibilities include:
- leading worship at the Opening and the Graduation
- leading a small group
- leading 3 days of Quiet Time
- coordinating painting work at a home (part of the Community Work module)
- organizing games and icebreakers

10 loooong days away, haiz... keep me in prayer ya =)

National School Christian Fellowship Leaders' Camp

2007-11-27T09:17:00.000+08:00

or NSCFL Camp for short. it was great! =)

basically there were three tracks going on at this camp: theme talks at night, to feed the campers' spiritually; plenary sessions, aiming to help them develop practical skills like program planning and problem-solving; and workshops which focussed on relational issues like 'who am i?', 'BGR', and 'my parents and i'.

some short highlights:

monday, 19 Nov
this was the first day of camp. 98 young people from all over peninsular malaysia converged at Seminari Teoloji Malaysia, Seremban. there was even a bunch of campers from Tawau, Sabah! =)

one of the things i really appreciated and enjoyed at this camp was my small group. small groups were named after old testament prophets, and my group was named Hosea. the group bonded quite well really fast, and we had great times together at the end of each day reflecting and laughing over things we had experienced and learnt.

on this first day, however, i was abit worried about one group member who did not have a good command of english. it was obvious that he was bored and detatched as he couldn't understand half of what was going on around him. i made special effort to help the group converse in BM as often as possible for his benefit.

tuesday, 20 Nov
the second day of camp. i did my plenary session, "Why The SCF?!?" in the morning. it's basically about why there should be an SCF in their schools, and why Christian students should be involved in their SCFs. i challenged the campers to see it's importance and hear the call to be salt and light in their schools, especially thru the SCF. though in some ways i could have been better prepared, overall the session went well and several campers gave their camp officers encouraging feedback. i'm thankful to God for using me as His mouthpiece in spite of my faults and weaknesses. =)

wednesday, 21 Nov
The highlight of this day has to be the garden lunch. it was a team-building project for the whole camp, in which they had about 2 hours to plan, organise, and put together a lunch in which we camp officers were the VIPs. this included choosing an appropriate venue [they chose the basketball court. it was rather hot with the noon sun beating on our heads!], arranging the tables and chairs, finding and inviting us VIPs [i wanted them to carry me to the lunch venue. should have insisted, but in the end i gave in and walked there myself.] serving the food, and providing entertainment [some pretty good hip-hop dancing, excellent musical performances, one guy sang and original worship composition which had me singing along at the chorus, and a hilarious piece impromptu acting.]

thursday, 22 Nov
in the late morning, a team from TCF (Teachers' Christian Fellowship) came to challenge the campers to consider teaching as a vocation. Dih Ting, a fellow sitiawanite who was my senior back in ACS, shared about her experiences being posted to Spaoh, Sarawak. she did a pretty good job of depicting the challenges and hardships of being sent into a very rural area, as well as the joy and fulfilment of making a difference in students' lives. close to half the campers wrote on the response slips that they would consider teaching as a possible calling in the future.

the final theme talk was also on this night. based on Isaiah 6:1-8, the four theme talks were: "I saw the Lord!", as it's important for a christian leader to have a correct vision of who God is; "Holy is the Lord!", talking about holiness as a characteristic of God and His people; "Whom shall I send?", challenging the campers to see the white harvest fields all around them and to consider missions; and "Here i am! Send me!". this was the final challenge calling the campers to respond to all that God had been speaking to them. many campers came forward requesting prayer, and we camp officers ministered to them as led by the Holy Spirit.

Friday, 23 Nov
this was a foot-washing day. every day we'd have a Leader's Assembly to start off the day, where one of the camp officers would take 15 minutes to give a short sharing or object lesson about certain components or qualities of leadership. on this morning, the topic was Humility and the object lesson had the campers in pairs washing each others' feet.

this was also a day of fasting. we didn't have lunch. after breakfast, there was a plenary session on Spiritual Disciplines and the Leader. the campers then had 3 hours to be alone with God; to pray, worship, meditate on the Word, listen or His still, small voice... and for some of them, purposely or not, to take a short nap.=P

after that we came together for a time of corporate prayer, where we prayed for our schools, for our non-christian friends, and for our nation. the time ended with more foot-washing; first the officers could choose campers whose feet they wanted to wash, and then it was the campers' turn to wash the officers' feet. it was an emotional time, with many people crying as we served each other as Jesus served His disciples so long ago.

the day ended with a special dress dinner where everyone wore their formal wear, and a celebration which involved rather 'syiok-sendiri' presentations. after all that was over, we had about an hour of free time before lights out at 1.00 am.

and this brings us to what was, to me, the highlight of the whole camp. during that one hour of free time, i went to a camper's room to chat with him. it's the same camper i mentioned earlier, the one who speaks mainly BM. in the course of our conversation, the Holy Spirit helped him to understand the basic points of the gospel. and before i left, i led him in the sinners' prayer. this boy had been going to church with his parents for as long as he could remember, but no one had ever systematically explained the gospel to him. and i am deeply thankful to God that i had the privilege of being able to connect with him and help him take that step of faith.

Saturday, 24 Nov
the last day. goodbyes, farewells, and 'see-you-again's. all good things must come to an end. but hopefully the friendships that have begun at this camp will stand the test of time.

so, that rather long post sums up NSCFL Camp. now, i have to prepare for ZMax Camp. i'm going off again thursday-sunday (29 Nov-2 Dec). there will be a fair number of non-christian kids at this camp, so do pray that their hearts will be open to the gospel. and thank you so much for supporting me in prayer. =)

Leaders' Camp

2007-11-16T17:50:00.000+08:00

Just a short note to say that i'll be away the whole of next week for NSCF Leaders' Camp.

please pray:
- that i will be a sharp and effective tool in God's hands; in plenary sessions, small group discussions, and one-to-one encounters.
- that young people will meet with God and be transformed at this camp
- that hearts wil be set aflame to serve God and make a difference for Him as leaders of the SCFs in their schools.

and don't forget to log in again in two weeks' time to follow the exciting adventures of Superjin! (yeah, right).

Camerons

2007-11-13T14:32:00.000+08:00

The Wife and i were in Cameron Highlands last weekend, together with The Parents-in-Law and The Uncles-in-Law and their Wives. (only one wife each, as far as i know...=P) the only young'un there was The Wife's 13-year-old cousin, because The Bro-in-Law had exams in NUS and another cousin is sitting for her STPM.

we had a pretty good time there, although the travelling was a little hectic. up on friday and down on sunday. we were actually supposed to go up on thursday, but we were held up by the YWC reunion, where we wrapped up all the group projects. (to summarize, most groups started off well but got stuck and lost momentum at some point or another. main reason was that some group members did not have an equal passion/commitment/vested interest in the issue that their group was handling. in the group process, decisions were made by one or two vocal people and the rest just rode along; those had a tendency to fall off, post-camp. Lesson: if you want a group project to succeed, it pays to spend time and effort to build a core group that really buys the vision. without this, the project is doomed to flop.)

one of the highlights of the trip was the teppanyaki/steamboat dinner that we had at the apartment. most of the marinated meat and the cooking stuff was brought up all the way from penang. it was delicious, and the shared laughter and fellowship was good. apart from that, we visited farms and bought all kinds of vegetables. we walked around town and looked at souvenir shops. and we ate lots of yummy, fresh strawberries.

one thing i appreciate from this trip, is the opportunity i had to take part in one of The Wife's family traditions before it ends. this trip to camerons is a yearly affair for her dad, his brothers, and their families. such an annual holiday is possible for the kiamsiap penangites because free stay in the apartment is provided by the bank her dad works for, as an employee privilege. as her dad retires next year, it remains to be seen whether this tradition will continue or not. i hope it does; but if it doesn't, i'm glad i got to enjoy the last one together with them.

My First Saman

2007-11-07T16:30:00.000+08:00

Last last night, the 5-tonne lorry, that contained various beloved pieces of furniture from sitiawan to be deposited in my house in seremban, got lost. it couldn't find my house, possibly partly because the area is so new that the road signs aren't up yet.

so, i took our newly-bought, 3rd-or-4th-hand nissan sunny out to lead the lorry to our house from the nearby petronas station.

on the way back, i was happily leading the lorry along when to my mild surprise, i was pulled over by a police car. banishing thoughts of an exciting car chase (too many movies...) i stopped by the curb like the good, law-abiding citizen that i usually am.

my tail lights weren't working.

i tried turning the lights off and on again. the front lights worked fine, but the back lights were as dark as night. so the police wrote me a summons, i signed it, they left me holding the paper in disbelief, they left, and i continued leading the lorry to my house. slightly less happily, compared to before. and when i reached home and got off the car, guess what?

my tail lights were working.

the mysteries of the universe continue to baffle me.

since The Wife is currently having semester break while i have to work, it unfortunately falls to her to deal with the police, get the surat rayuan (letter of appeal) done, and etc. She has regaled me with countless energetic complaints about the police, how they make her wait, refuse to layan (serve) her, and generally act like jerks and arses. this was also a mystery to me, until a colleague gave me a possible hypothesis to explain their singular uncooperativeness:

"they want duit kopi laaaa!"
(duit kopi = cofee money, an idiom meaning a bribe)

hmmm. oh well. that's life, i guess. God is still good. =)

War Zone! =)

2007-11-06T10:30:00.000+08:00

now that we've moved a lot of stuff up from sitiawan to our new house in seremban, our house is full of stuff. the chaos reminds me of when our house was like a refugee camp.

however, now there is too much furniture for it to be like a refugee camp (i'm assuming that refugees don't usually have much furniture). so, i think it looks more like a War Zone! (in a war, there has to be lots of enemy furniture for our soldiers to blow up, and lots of our furniture for enemy soldiers to blow up. thus, a War Zone should have lots of furniture in it... heheh)

it's nice to have familiar things around though. these are the things that i grew up with in sitiawan, through the years of my late childhood and adolescence. i'm glad that they now help to make our new house into a home. =)

there is a danger in all of this though. check out this paragraph from Jim Elliot's diary, dated 4 Jan 1951 (from Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot):

"i have been musing lately on the extremely dangerous cumulative effects of earthly things. one may have good reason, for example, to want a wife, and he may have one legitimately. but with a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's proverbial dilemma - he must find a place to keep her. and most wives will not stay on such terms as Peter proposed. so a wife demands a house; a house in turn requires curtains, rugs, washing machines, etc. A house with these things must soon become a home, and children are the intended outcome. the needs multiply as they are met - a car demands a garage; a garage, land; land, a garden; a garden, tools; and tools need sharpening. woe, woe, woe to the man who would live a disentangled life in my century. 2 Timothy 2:4 is impossible in the US, if one insists on a wife. i learn from this that the wisest life is the simplest one, lived in the fulfilment of only the basic requirements of life - shelter, food, covering, and a bed. and even these can become productive of other needs if one does not heed. be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth!"

now, i love The Wife very much, and i am privileged to be able to set up a home and a family with her. but there is wisdom in the words of this martyr, that resonates with my soul. i must be careful about this danger of material acquisition. as the hymn says, this earth is not my home; i'm just a-passing thru.

Today is Very Happening

2007-11-03T09:25:00.000+08:00

do u know why today is very happening? it is so because there are SO MANY THINGS happening today:
1. Emmy and Sherman's Wedding @ STM
2. The Wife's MUET Invigilation
3. PPBC Youth's Orphanage Visit
4. iBridge Camp Reunion @ IKEA
5. dNA planning meeting
6. Trip back to sitiawan

woo hoo! isn't my life exciting? i get to miss so much stuff! =)

of this list, the highest in priority are the last two. i was supposed to go back to sitiawan yesterday to help my mum pack. cos we're carting lotsa stuff from there to our new place in seremban - stuff like washing machine, fridge, dining table, and much much more. my mum is there alone, and i feel bad because i can't be there to help her. my dad isn't happy about it either. he's worried cos he knows that it can be a very emotionally charged and draining process.

the problem is, i have a dNa planning meeting today. at 10.30 am. and i can't get out of it because this date was set long long ago. to further complicate matters, the camp is a cooperative joint effort between SU and FES. so if i were irresponsible enough to skip the meeting, it would affect inter-organisational relationships negatively.

i feel pulled in two directions. but i've tried my best to solve it by negotiating to leave early from the meeting so that i can scoot off to sitiawan. it may not please everyone, but it's the best i can do.

as i thought about this conundrum last night, i realised that i tend to crave approval and recognition from my parents, The Wife, my colleagues, and most of all from God. and if the last is not the greatest by far, this may be dangerous. i do not want to be a mere people-pleaser. this is something i have to watch out for in future.

this sounds rather strange coming from me. i'm supposed to be (or used to be) the devil-may-care guy, who does whatever he thinks is right and lets whoever disagrees go hang. i guess my prayers for greater sensitivity and consideration towards others have had their effect after all. now i just have to make sure a happy balance is struck. =)

Calling

2007-11-01T11:00:00.001+08:00

I am not in full-time Christian ministry by accident.
I am not in full-time Christian ministry solely by my own choice.
I am not in full-time Christian ministry because i was incapable of working effectively in other fields.

rather, I am in full-time Christian ministry primarily because i believe that God has called me to it.

these were my thoughts this morning, as i read thru some lecture notes from last june's Pastoral Leadership and Ministry. i'm preparing to write my assignment, due in december; and one of the questions is, "what is the significance of Divine Call in Christian Leadership?"

yes, by God's grace, i managed to finish my assignments for Biblical Interpretation and pass them up on time last month. phew! but now there's another assignment to wrestle with... i don't think the questions are as tough as the Biblical Interpretation ones were, but i'm having to deal with them at a high-stress time. 4 camps coming up at the end-year that i have to prepare for, and next year's camps to prepare for too (some camps are in the march hols and in the mid-year, so have to start preparing now) plus the SCF Database Update Exercise to worry about... i feel a little bit overwhelmed.

nevertheless, in the midst of all the busyness, it was good to be reminded again of Why i am doing what i am doing. may i not lose focus on the One i am called to love and serve. i continue to covet your prayers as the pressure rises. 'til the next post, God bless! =)

Mukjizat itu Nyata =)

2007-10-27T17:02:00.000+08:00

i learnt this new song from christina [thanks chris!=)] at staff consultation [she learnt it from epin of SU Indonesia, whom we met at ON institute]:

Tak terbatas kuasaMu Tuhan
Semua telah Kau lakukan
Apa yang kelihatan mustahil bagiku
Itu sangat mungkin bagiMu:
Di saat ku tak berdaya
KasihMu yang sempurna
Ketika aku percaya
Mukjizat itu nyata
Bukan kerna kekuatan
Tapi RohMu, ya Tuhan
Ketika aku percaya
Mukjizat itu nyata

meaningful lyrics combine with a beautiful melody to make this a truly heart-touching song. it gives encouragement to those who can't go on in their own strength; and reminds those who think they can, that they have to depend on Someone else.

for those who can't understand BM, here's a translation:

Unbounded is Your power, Lord
All things You have accomplished
Those things which appear to be impossible to me
They are very possible for You
The very second i have no strength
It's your love that is perfect
The moment i believe
The miracle is real
Not by might, nor by power
but by Your Spirit, oh God
The moment i believe
The miracle is real

of course the theology isn't 100% perfect. God isn't a vending machine that dispenses miracles when we put in enough 'belief' tokens. nevertheless, He is the God of miracles and i choose to have faith in Him and depend on Him for all things. and this song expresses that beautifully. =)

Apart from learning this new song, we spent 5 days in Tapah discussing various ministry matters and hammering out our plans for the coming year [oh, and also watching about 10 episodes of Heroes. it's soooo addictive!]. exciting things will be happening in 2008. watch out for updates here! =)

Update (26 Nov 2007)
my cousin sent me this:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hello cousin! :)

you got the lyrics of Muijzat itu Nyata slightly wrong on your blog. as far as I can tell, it's written by Jonathan Prawira and sung by Joy Tobing, and goes like this:

Tak terbatas kuasaMu Tuhan
semua dapat kaulakukan
apa yang kelihatan mustahil bagiku
itu sangat mungkin bagiMu

Di saat ku tak berdaya
KuasaMu yang sempurna
Selama Tuhan ada,
Mujizat itu nyata
bukan kar'na kekuatan
namun rohMu ya Tuhan
selama ku berdoa
Mujizat itu nyata

I really like the song... XD but what bugged me a little bit at first was that i've always though mujizat was spelt with a k(=mukjizat) - it could just be thatthe indonesians spell it slightly differently, like how they spell karena instead of kerana... but anyway, the way these lyrics go it would translate as "as long as God is present, miracles are real/the miracle is real". there's nothing, really, to suggest putting in belief tokens and God producing miracles like a vending machine... :P I know i'm nitpicking, but that's what editors do... >_<

anyway, take care and God bless you! :)

your (beloved! XP) cousin,
yean

PS: why is it that in your facebook photo you look as though you're in pain? ^o)

I'm Back!

2007-10-18T11:33:00.000+08:00

yes, i am back from iBridge camp.=)

camp was amazing. sessions were simply excellent.

david wong, the managing director of tupperware malaysia and their regional vice-president for southeast asia, spoke on the impact of Kingdom professionals in the workplace. he challenged us to see our work as a calling, rather than just a job. he gave testimony after testimony of how christians in the corporate world can and do function as salt and light in their places of work. it was really encouraging to see that it is possible to hold on to Christian values and principles, and still be successful in the 'real world'.

unfortunately it's rather hard for me to apply that as i'm working in a Christian organization. but it did spur me to think hard about how i could strive to be a witness wherever God places me - in the bus perhaps, or on the train. i can't exhort secondary school students to be salt and light with integrity, if i am not practicing it myself.

alvin ung, a vice-president at Khazanah Nasional Berhad, spoke about maintaining and deepening our spirituality and intimacy with God, even in the midst of the pressures, stress, and busyness of working life. he also covered topics like our attitudes towards money and things, and our attitudes towards people and our neighbours. once again, he really challenged us to examine ourselves and see to what extent we have blindly bought into the values of The World and our ethnic culture without even realising it. as christians, we are caled to live Counter-Culture!

i'm still mulling over and reflecting on the things i've heard and learnt at camp. it was a refreshing and renewing experience for me, and i trust that God was at work in the hearts of each of us 100-odd campers there in the cool highlands. now if only we'd all go back to our workplaces transformed, and let God use us to transform our workplaces, i wonder how different malaysia would be?

here's to the continuing journey with Christ. no matter whether we are students, employers, or employees, the Call is the same: Come, Follow Me. and as we follow Him, we shall be transformed from glory to glory. He makes all things new, and He works His works of grace and redemption in and through each of our lives. Amen.

p.s. - i won't be able to blog at all next week - will be away at staff consultation in Tapah. please pray for us as we plan and strategize for the coming years' programmes, activities, and ministry. in some ways, i don't look forward to it; it's going to be like 5 day's worth of staff meetings. but it's a necessary process; so pray for God's hand and the guidance of His Spirit as we go thru it. thanks! =)

first times

2007-10-10T13:54:00.000+08:00

last monday night, The Wife and i welcomed a guest into our home for the First Time! (this not including family).

joshua had a client in PD (he's still studying, but does some freelance computer stuff). he decided that he didn't want to go all the way back to PJ on monday night, so he stayed over at our house instead.

we had a good seafood dinner together (butter prawns, fried mantis prawns... yum yum!) followed by a trip to Jusco for dessert. we each had cornettoes; mine was tira-miss-you flavour, which sounded lame and mushy but tasted pretty good. =) we also bought some pasta, and some tinned sauces recommended by joshua. we tried the sausage one last night and it was delicious. =)

the last camp that i'll be involved in this year is Emmanuel EFC's Youth Camp. and this will be my First Time being the main speaker for a camp! The theme of the camp is True Reality. so please pray for me as i prepare my 5 sessions for this camp. pray for the leading, anointing, and creativity of the Holy Spirit. and pray for the youth who'll be coming, that God wil be able to speak to them through me. First Times are scary, so i really appreciate your prayers for me in this! =)