Awww man! Its the last day of the June Holiday..zzz.. Haha I've had a blast this holiday with planning for Ignite games, Ignite itself as well as all the fun times I spent hanging out with friends! :) I've really enjoyed myself this holiday and I am in no mood to go back to school!!! Back to school means more homework, more stress, more scolding from teachers haha :P and just 6 hours of sianzness every weekday! Anyways on the bright side, I did back-up singing for the 11.15 service in church for the first time :) It was quite nerve recking as it was my first time and so I was not quite sure of what to do. But thanks to Ben's help and God's grace, I managed to pull myself together and not screw up haha! :D Sadly I missed the filming of our flash-mob dance going to be done next week during Youth Sunday :( Haha in any case I've seen the video and it was super funny! HAHA! Yeah Youth Sunday is coming up, gonna be EPIC! Haha! :)
Some people are really insensitive. People are already kinda upset and you still have to rub it in...You are totally heartless! The world would be much better without people like you! Really man I dunno what your problem is....Cheer up Kimberley! :)
This is where the healing begins
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
Wow it has been the last week of school holidays and there was nothing much to it except for the awesome potluck! Haha. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all taken up 'planning' for the potluck! It was kinda rush and so Nigel and I didn't think it'll work out well but in the end it did! All thanks to God's graciousness. It felt exactly like the days before Ignite where a couple of us were chionging to plan the games :) On Wednesday it was raining cats and dogs like the whole morning and afternoon but thanks to God, he stopped the rain at around mid afternoon and we were able to have a nice and cooling weather to enjoy our potluck. The amazing thing is that as soon as we finished it started to drizzle again! Haha, God does work wonders! :) At first we thought that there would be too little food to feed everyone but it turned out there was quite a lot of food left-over, especially the fried rice and bee hoon! Haha! Well anyways it was a great time of fellowshipping and eating (of course) just before the start of school term. Aww man school is starting in like 3 days and I'm in no mood to go back at all! I wanna stay in this holiday FOREVER!!! Haha well that would be a dream come true, perhaps one day? :) Well I'd better spend these last 3 days of holiday enjoying it ttm before 10 weeks of sianzness dawns upon me.
To change the broken world, we must first change the broken man.
Life will knock us down, but we can choose whether or not to get back up.
Tuesday
Today afternoon was spend studying in church with Emily, Russ, Nigel and Dominic. For like the first 20 mins it was really some serious studying. But soon it went from studying to playing and we were like not serious in studying at all, well at least the guys weren't, maybe except for Nigel haha! We landed up playing Billionaire for like 1 round before Emily got sian. It wasn't long before Blossom met us in church and we all went to the White Tangerine for dinner. There was only a basic selection of games to choose from so we decided to play Billionaire again haha! I won 2 out of the 3 rounds:) After dinner, 'down' by jay sean was being played over the sound system so me and russ decided to have a little flash mob of our own and did DDR! Haha it was super retarded but at the same time it was super fun to do! We should totally have more of these DDR sessions man haha! We started talking about match-making, I have no idea who started the conversation but after a while the conversation became quite 'intense' HAHA! We did surprise Blossom with a blueberry cheesecake as her birthday cake and a pink stuffed-toy bear for her present! Hope you enjoyed it Blossom! :) Once we were done we decided to be jews and payed $2 for 3 rounds of pool haha! We had to cover the pockets to prevent the balls from going in the first 2 rounds:) In the end we took quite a few pictures and I'm sure it was a happy day for all of us!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOSSOM! :D
Wednesday
I thought today would be a boring day since I had no plans for the day and was stuck at home. The morning and afternoon was basically like any sianzness holiday morning/afternoon. It was only at night where things suddenly got interesting! Suddenly out of nowhere Minqhee asks me to spam her formspring page...I was like ok... Woah it was super interesting chatting but not exactly chatting if you get what I mean. Haha alot of random and retarded questions started popping out and we got obsessed with a word beginning with 's'. Haha it was super funny and we were spamming each other's formspring like there was no tomorrow! :) 'lolz' and 'HAHA' were coming out all over our answers and questions and it was totally fun to ask and answer each other's questions! We should keep doing this man haha!
Thursday
Well today I had Service Learning at east coast with MCYC. Me, Martin, John and Adi went to east coast to prepare the games for the MCYC kids and their mentors. I met them at MacDonalds and we walked for 10 minutes trying to find the bike rental shop that the organizer had approach the day before. After 10 minutes we finally realized that the bike rental shop was just next to MacDonalds.....I was like..................weren't we just there like 10 minutes ago...Anyways the few of us cycled to some more ulu part of east coast where there was a large area of sand to play the games. We planned 3 games of Human Foosball, dig-up Dog-and-Bone and captain's ball. However due to time constrains and the weather, we could only play the first 2 games. It was fun watching the kids and their mentors play the games. There was much fun and laughter with the kids and their mentors really enjoying themselves. The dig-up Dog-and-Bone was quite funny as we gave them very small items to find. One of the rounds we asked them to find a small clip and after 10 minutes they still couldn't find. The last and decider round however we asked them to find the same clip and 30 seconds into the round a girl just found it! Amazing haha! It was good to see that everyone there was enjoying themselves. However on the not so bright side, I got burnt again! Burnt twice in 6 days at east coast...haiz... Well the trip home was quite interesting as I took the same train and bus home with one of the mentors as he just stays around my area. It was fun talking to him about school, army and found out that he was an ex Hwa Chong rugger. Cool!
Woah the past 3 days has really been a blast for me! Ignite 2010 was totally awesome! Awesome worship, awesome games, awesome sermons and best of all is an awesome God was with us! Ignite was just Epic and Awesome and no words can really describe the epicness of this retreat! Haha
Day1: Met up early at 8am for leaders and committee meeting to finalize some stuff and to just pray for the retreat. Soon people started filling up and by 9.30 all the campers were here. Hernshung smartly got stuck in the lift so we ended up having extra time for ice breakers. Whacko was really great, all the laughter and blur sotongs who had no idea what was going on haha! P.S sry Deon if i whacked u too hard. Watch Dog also rocked, super funny to see those who were blindfolded waving the newspaper rolls around like they were swatting flies. They all had that blur look on their faces when their keys were stolen haha:)
Russ, Minqhee, Tiffany and I had to go early to east coast park to set up the games. Woah it was like seriously uber hot under the afternoon sun...now i'm as red as a cooked lobster. The youths had an epic time playing the games, especially at the MUAHCHEE station! Haha it was super funny watching the youths get wet and roll in the sand becoming super dizzy and literally having the world around them spin!
It was a great feeling doing worship for the first time at a camp:) Pastor Aaron's sermon was really good, teaching us about how great out God is. The alter call after the sermon was a time of really experiencing God and encountering him. I really sat there and reflected on my life and how I was living it. I realized that my life was kind of stagnant and I did not know what I wanted to do in life or which path I should take. Thank God for Andy! Seriously! I never really realized till then that there was a friend, leader and big brother just a phone call away. Thank you Andy for praying for me and for lending your shoulder to cry on. I could really feel God's presence in the room and I'm sure everyone there had an encounter with God in their own special way. Praise God for that! :)
Crazy crazy stuff followed as I thought I could get a good night's rest before waking up early the next morning. However I didn't manage to sleep until 2am in the morning as we were up all night planning the games for day 2 of the retreat. The air con didn't help and my whole body was freezing.
Day 2: 5.30am wake up call kinda killed me haha. We arrived at MacRitchie Reservoir at around 6.30 and we then had a good time of mass worship and group devotion. In the quietness of MacRitchie, it really got me thinking of God's creation and how I could really use some time of m busy schedule to just sit in somewhere peaceful and quiet and just admire God's creation. Chaos followed as the games comm only had 30 mins to set up all our games. It was kinda rush to finish putting up the spider web but it still worked out in the end. Many funny photos followed of people being blindfolded trying to eat marshmallows. The skids were also super funny; Barney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Twilight were just 2 of the topics that the skids were about. It was really super funny to watch HAHA!
Pastor Aaron's 2nd sermon was next after we got back and had some time to wash up. It was about prayer and how prayer can cost us out lives. Our prayers are answered in God's time and if we pray expecting him to do something, we will surely find our answers in very unique ways. Sry to say that I was kinda very tired and so was nodding off in some parts of the sermon...sorry...
We had around 2 hours for lunch and to just chill out and I spent that time playing Bridge haha :P In the afternoon we had a meaningful time at Kranji War Memorial. The time that was given to us to just walk aroudn and let God speak to us was really enough to allow me to reflect on my life. It made me realize that I should really cherish how fortunate I am to be living in a time where there is peace and no wars. Group discussions followed with Daniel taking me, Jordon and Jonathan. Some questions asked were "how are you going to live your life after looking at these gravestones?" and "what do I want inscribed on my gravestone?". I guess my answer to the second question would be the same as Daniel's, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith".
Worship that night was really great! It was like totally awesome with people standing on chairs while the rest just crowding to the front to just praise and worship God. Pastor Aaron's 3rd and final sermon was about us rising up like stars or in shame. After his sermon was holy communion, but instead of the pastors serving us communion, we had to serve our friends. It was a first for me and I can really say it is a different experience altogether. Well following our tmc youth camp traditions, the last night was really one of just playing, fellowshipping and only sleeping for 1 and a half hours HAHA :D At night we just went retarded playing different games and having retarded forfeits! I also managed to write all my encouragement cards, YAY! :D
Day 3: Worship that morning was really epic! The first part of worship was great, people jumping and singing praises to God! After that was a time of sharing and testimony where a few of us went up to just our experiences during the camp as well as about our lives over these few months. We had a time of just prayer where everyone was kneeling on the floor and just praying for each other. I thank God for Russ and Jonathan! They are seriously brothers that I cannot live without, I LOVE YOU GUYS! :D Thanks for praying for me, it didn't make me cry as I thought it would make me, but still it was awesome! The closing songs were really awesome! Everyone was now so emotional and excited and it was a really great sight to see all the youths jumping for God! I hope that worship every sunday will be just like the worship we experienced as a closing for Ignite 2010!
All your promises won't let go of me!
Hey peeps! Ignite 2010 is only 2 days away!!! Intense intense man, planning for games and activities are still being finalized. Oh man can we make it? YES WE CAN! Haha okok anyways today was nothing much, just had my usual session of blackshot for a couple of hours:) Oh the highlight for today that I got to see Aunty Ann and Uncle Leong. Woah haven't seen them in like dino-years, not really la only 4 years but still thats long. It was good to see them again, although we barely exchanged words. I must meet up with Ben again, its been too long since we last saw each other! Haiz next came maths tuition homework and eventually maths tuition. Sucked man, integration is like crazy haha. Got to blackshot a while more till Russ, Minqhee and I started an msn conversation to finalize the Ignite games proposal. It was super funny when Russ started going about his business with Clint and Minqhee going crazy becoming like a mom ordering the younger guys around...bully sia haha. Best part of it was that Minqhee said she'll love us for the rest of her life if we did up the proposal well enough! HAHA I'll always remember that Minqhee ;D Woah its 1 am and I'm still not sleeping haha, super hungry though...
Oh yeah before I forget...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDY!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAMUEL!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARMSTRONG!
For greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city.
Today was the end of a sianzness week and its gonna be the start of an EPIC week. Ignite 2010 is in 5 days time man, woohoo cant wait to ignite for God man. Anyways today had the usual ym, went for service and had great fellowship over chicken rice:) Russ and I decided to join Zeon, Jared and Josh down at Serangoon Gardens lan. Haha we totally saved the world from zombies:) Landed up playing versus with china and japanese people, noobs and pros haha. It was an epic time of L4D2 and this is a good sign to the start of my EPIC week!
As soon as i got off a comp from the lan shop, plunged back into my own comp at home and started to catch up with Kimberley, was good to know a few new things haha:) Anyways the most epic moment was at night where the games & activities comp for Ignite 2010 mass convo-ed on msn to finalize our games and activities. It was hard work getting past the strict standards of our 'big boss' (literally and figuratively) Woah we had like 3 and a half hours of epic discussion, going off topic here and there and being totally anti-climatic at some points of time. Well i definitely have to thank god that we managed to come up with a skeleton and gonna hopefully finish the proposal for games by tmr.
Its the bond between brothers that is the sword that defends the nation.
