A Signpost from God...

Just a moment ago I had the idea to write something about something. God just revealed to me that many things are really not coincidence but it is Him who engineers many things together so that His glory may be made known to all men.

I just sent Christopher to the airport. He came back just for a few days from JB though his holiday is much longer. Many may ask why. He'd just say 'For the Kingdom's sake!'. Each time when I see or think of this brother, I will always remember God's grace, faithfulness and goodness in his life. From the impossible, God can do the possible. He managed to get into his choice of course, Architecture and into his choice of university after his STPM. Despite of the education system and everything else when God moves, nothing can stop Him.

It is so good to see Chris each time his confidence increases over time; being sure of what he's doing in his studies, ministries etc. Thank you Chris for being the vessel that God uses to be the signpost for many others to see. I will always remember His great work in your life & knowing that this is only the beginning makes everyone excited.

Salute salute to you :@)

Jia you!

p.s: That reminds me too about looking at life in different ways. Many things are NOT in our control, therefore we don't have to try so hard to change it. It will be better if we could seek God's way in our situation...easier said than done huh? Jia you everyone in the journey of discovering more about Him who has set us free!

authenticity...

It's the 2nd day of July. It's exciting and at the same scary to see how time flies SO fast! Someone mentioned this 'the older you get, the quicker you feel time flies'. How true it is? It is VERY true indeed. If you don't feel it now, you just have to wait; your time will come, and it's rushing really fast.

Quarter 3 is an important season for many; Secondary 3 & 5 will be having their public exam soon, for the church many big events are in the calendar waiting to be launched. One of them is the Official Opening of the New Church Building. From the day when I stepped into the church in Nov 1999, people have been talking about this since then. Finally after 10 years, the day is approaching. Soon and very soon we will have a permanent place called 'home'; a place where many can find hope because this is where God's presence dwells. I pray that this memorable 20 09 2009 will come true. Argh...if we still can't move in by then, maybe few of us should really just go there and camp there for a night! Anyone wanna join in? It will be a fun night, I'm sure!

Just a week before that, Bible Conference (BC) will be held in MBKS Auditorium. We'll have Merdeka Worship Retreat just 2 weeks before BC an the Youth will have our very 1st Anniversary the day before the Worship Retreat. Scary huh?! Not forgetting some members are going to Singapore to attend the 1st Global Conference (GC) a week before the Youth 1st Anniversary.

Aren't we 'worked' harder than our 'real' earthly work? To certain extend, yes we are. But that shouldn't be a surprise, should we? From the day we sign up as Hope Family Member, we knew all these were coming, sooner or later. Actually when we really think about it, Jesus really never promises us a bed of roses after believing Him. Maybe in certain times, there are so beds of roses somewhere, but they come with the irritating thorns. Argh...don't you want to take out your scissors to cut off the thorns? It's annoying, isn't it? Yes, of coz it is annoying! Otherwise Jesus won't ask us to Deny ourselves, Take up the Cross and Follow Him! What a tough thing to do huh! Yes, its tough, but that's the price to pay.

I pray that my Christian walk with the Lord is not just based and seen as what I do in the ministry alone. If people recognise me as someone leading worship on stage that's good. If people see me as someone who play great music, that's ok. But if we all can be recognised as a person who love Jesus so much that we are willing to love His people in many practical ways, we indeed hit the mark!

I love Paul Baloche's song 'Jesus My Reward'; where one of the lines says 'I just want to hear You say Good & Faithful Servant...'. That's all we need to hear from the Lord when we see His face.

Till the day...

unleash the potential...

Ever since the change of the government, few things have been happening. One of them is the issue about limiting number of subjects to be taken in the public spm o-level exam in the country. Why do we have such thought? Thanks to the inefficiency of some kind of scholarship department in the country who fails to manage the scholarship entrance requirement properly; maybe there are a lot of academically smart students who managed to get 15A1s and yet did not get the scholarships. Therefore by limiting the numbers of subjects taken to 10, it will help. This is a JOKE, don't you think so? The Biggets joke from an educator point of view. By the way, anyone can tell that this is a joke. You don't need to be a teacher to tell you this.

After a few days later, I received another sms news alert. Here is the headline 'BM teachers in Chinese Independent Schools will be given training by Education Ministry to help them teach the language better'. What do you think? No doubt most students from the Chinese schools are poor in BM. But that's just the fact! The learning of any languages need a lot of time to practice both in spoken and written forms. In the Chinese schools, Mandarin is the main medium. Unless those 'bm specialists' really know the context of the situation, it is absolutely a way of wasting time.

A day after that, I received another news alert. It says 'Education Ministry wants feedback from the public on whether passing SPM English should be compulsory in order to obtain SPM certificate'. Actually anyone who wants to give their views on this, can call 03-7723 7070 or email kpkpm@moe.gov.my. I did! I sent them an email and surprisingly I received a reply after 2 days. It's either very few people wrote to them, or they are just too effective. Let's have good faith that they are just too effective now and walah... Malaysia dah ada harapan huh?! Hope is on its way! I told them that our Malaysian English level is already very low (look at the way I write the blog, you'd know!) In my mail, I also mentioned that if I were the employer, I won't even employ a person who just gets a Pass in English in SPM. What so big deal about getting a Pass? Arghh...Geramnya aku... I better continue with my report writing...

t.w.o camp 09'

What do we have after the O.N.E camp? T.W.O camp of coz! T.W.O stands for 'Together We Overcome'; the theme for our very 1st Youth Boot Camp. We spent a night over the weekend in Santubong Resort for a time of fun & fellowship. The camp started on Saturday morning, ended with lunch feasting at church on Sunday afternoon. In total 101 signed up, 3 last minute couldn't make it.

We took 2 big buses + 1 church van. Apparantly the buses must be quite comfortable that people felt alseep while on the way to the camp site. Eric was meditating, very seriously.






Few of the 'obstacles' that blocked our way


Great Tent of Meeting!

Love the tag!


The Black & White!
Love the colours!

It started off by completing 2 ice breaking games. There were 6 groups each with 14 members. The biscuit eating game was really fun. Thusan was one of the big winner for this!

Biscuit-eating competition

Apart from this each team had to work on designing their own group flag. I must really compliment every group. It was absolutely amazing to come out with such design in such a short time! Clap Clap Clap!

Ngajat dance before designing the flag?

Hard work paid off finally!

Guess whose is this?

The main activity 'Amazing Race' on the hot Saturday afternoon became the big killer. This activity meant to 'help' youth to exercise their 1-year accumulated exercise into just 2 hours. You can imagine how 'jia-lak' that was. Overall however it took them 3.5 hours to complete the race. For many, it could be torturing in the beginning but when the whole thing was over, it was indeed pretty rewarding.

Run for life!


Guess what were they doing?

There were singing NEGARAKU!

Various game stations; torturous?

Big sacrifice huh?!



This is the first time I saw Santubong beach. It's not bad at all. Different ones have been telling me how terrible the beach is.

Dropped Dead!

Dinner prepared by Family Group!

Evening Saturday service was great. Everyone was in the relax-mode & this made the praise & worshipled by Sam really great! No more proper long pants, shoes, etc which always hinder people from expressing fully in their praise & worship. Ps Laurence shared the story about Samuel that we should respond to God immediately when He calls just like what Samuel did.

Evening Service!
I received one comment from a young leader. He says this: Wow, I never know we can praise & worship God in such a good atmosphere by just using a guitar & keyboard'. Well, the bottom line is, the heart that matters. On the top of that, in a casual setting, it's easier to get different ones to participate too.

We celebrated Jonathan's bday that evening. He had a good surprise!

After the service, different groups were busy preparing their group presentation for the next day. Wo...many didn't even sleep; some hang up at the pool side, some in the room chatting & having pillow fight etc etc. I couldn't take it anymore so I slept at 1am. Hehe...

These kids never stop growing; looking up & down for plates, bowls basically anything that can contain the food!

Morning High Praise is always refreshing!

The presentation on Sunday morning was hilarious. I must say this is one of the best presentation ever, looking at the limited practice time that they had. It exceeded my expectation. Well done guys :@)

We love you Rex! U Rock!

Group presentations; thumbs up to everyone!

Lunch at church was great. Thanks to few of the working adults who helped to set up the main sanctuary for us. Thanks to the family group too who willingly cooked the dinner for us on the 1st day. The food was fabulous!

For the next camp, we must organize a 2-3 night camp. However though it was a little short, the impact of the camp was great. Looking forward more getaway trips!

Great group of Committee. I trust that through the process of organizing this you guys have learnt much from one another!

'Lotax'

Anyone recently has been to the post office near kenyalang park? I was there 2 weeks back to renew my 'lotax' (road tax to be exact) and since I'm 'eligible' to go to school a little late on Tuesday morning therefore I decided to make full use of my Tuesday 2 weeks ago to do it. I woke up early as usual, and arrived at the post office by 8am not knowing the opening hours. Only then i found out that it opens at 8am till 4pm.

When i arrived, there were already a few aunties & uncles waiting there ahead of me!

Well, as usual, we were all quite impatient, waiting for the door to open. Somehow being punctual is a bad habit. They opened the door late!

Few months ago when i was there, with the renovation going on, the whole place was quite dusty but it looks quite different now.

One interesting fact about government offices is this; we always lots of counters but only 1 or 2 are operating. Sound familiar? See, there was only 1 counter serving us.

So how does the ticketing-counter looks like? It's quite 'cool'. It looks like this!

But maybe something that they can improve is the little notice that i found, right beside the machine. It says this:

Doesn't this reflect what a typical malaysian would normally do? Don't tell me you have never done this before; taking more than 1 q-ticket. Well, i must speak on behalf of many thousands & millions of malaysian here that normally the instruction is quite unclear; we really don't know which number should we take. So, to be safe, the more numbers we have, the merrier!

Thank God i only waited for 15 minutes before my turn. That's quite effective i thought. Now while queuing in the line before the office was open, i saw this 'tutup' sign being put up. When i left the place, it was still 'tutup'. i couldn't help but took this picture :@)

So yea, i finally got the 'lotax' renewed. Now, how many of you find it really tough to remove the old one before putting the new one up? That old thingy is SO sticky and for years i have been trying hard to rip it off whether is by force of gently, it would never come off completely!

Anyway, this is how mine looks like now. Pretty ugly, don't you think?

Is your 'lotax' expiring soon? Unsure? You better check mate!

Final LC!

'Leadership That Lasts' - our very 1st hOPE Leadership Conference organized by hOPE Kuching. My itchy fingers urged me to do a quick write-up here. Well, it was quite a different LC for many, including myself. Many felt that it was more like of a MNC kinda thing. The venue and the whole set up was rather different than many other LCs. I only managed to attend the evening sessions. It was really great. Great in the way that God spoke in different ways; as the whole body of Christ & also individually. It is always good to be still again and I know I needed that.

Other non-Kuching delegates must be so blessed too. They had the opportunity to learn more about the historical side of Kuching where many of us don't know much about (or maybe it is just me), they had lots of time spent fellowshipping wth one another; very balance indeed. I heard that the food was really good too. Man, I really missed the curry-puff in the Goodie Bag on the 1st day. It was SO nice, and huge hey! Anyone knows where they got it from?

Kuching International Airport was extremely busy since last Sunday till yesterday. While fetching the delegates at the arrival hall, no one realised that there was a banner right at the top of us! It was sitting there nicely but unfortunately many of us didn't realise its existence. Hehehe... maybe we were just too short.

Wanna take a guess who this is? Hehehe..the Hand 'Mimer' performed for the Opening on the 1st nite. Great job guys!

Wanna see how hard they have been practising? Here is the proof:

'O-chay' legs: they needed to 'kneel' most of the time. But I guess this make them more 'manly', so it's ok

Here is our dear KK. I didn't know he was there till the 2nd day.

Many might have missed seeing the glowing thingy in the Opening done by our dear bro. Alex. Who's fault huh? The LP's horrr..

The last LC's over and the 1st GC's coming in August 09' in Singapore. it's time to get back to the real world now and do something about it. See you all in the Combined Service tomorrow.
:@)

Terima Kasih Cikgu...

Many of us have most probably forgotten this day called Teacher's Day. My school celebrated Teacher's Day last Friday. Did we get a day off? Nope, the kids got half day off. The teachers had to stay back for staff development program. But we got our lunch catered for though. Thanks to the Parents Association thingy. We had a proper sit-down lunch in the school hall with waiters serving us. Though the ambiance was a little odd, it was generally quite nice; simple & simple.

Don't deceive by the picture. It's really nice!

Just this morning, many of the teachers received 2 cupcakes + a card from a student. Immediately that became my breakfast this morning. I've never tasted cupcakes with coffee before. Indeed it was ichiban neh! What I like about the content of the card is this. It says 'Some things are just worth repeating'. Hehe... to certain extend, it does give dual meanings. Teacher can take it possitvely or the other way around. Hehe...

To all the teachers out there, whether you are the official ones or not, just wanna wish you all Happy Teacher's Day - and continue to impart the right values!