Mission Trip (17/6/05 to 19/6/05)

Well, on the whole, I must admit that the mission trip was an eye opener for me. This time, our group really interacted with the teenagers, children and adults much more as compared to the previous mission trip to the same church in Kuantan, Malaysia. Perhaps we were all too scared to converse with the people in chinese during the last trip or maybe it was due to the fact we were all too used to speaking English that communicating in Chinese has become 'foreign' to us. Whatever the reason, I felt we all did a good job this time. Not just the interaction portion and bringing across God's word, but also the 'numerous' programmes we organised considering that there were only 13 of us. Compare that with the last trip where we had about 20. Could it mean that the lesser people, the more effective? I'm not sure about that........

What struck me nost on this trip was the way God arranged all the programmes for us. Take for example on Friday evening just before the YPM service. My Dad was supposed to speak on Husband and Wife relationships but then just an hour before we were supposed to go to the church from our hotel, he received a call from Uncle John telling him that he needed to alter his topic to suit the YPMers needs. He had to speak on BGR now..... By God's grace, the tides were turned... Within a short spanse of an hour, he managed to come up with something to say and later at the YPM service, he's talk about BGR was almost flawless. It was also wonderful to see so many Teenagers turn up for the YPM service. The last time I was there last December, I did not see any YPMers. So to see so many was truely a blessing from God.

On top of that, we had to do many things just right on the spot. 'Impromptu' as they call it... This was especially so for the praise and worship sessions during the children's and YPM services. Most of the time, we did not have enough time to prepare, so we just quickly picked a few 'singable' songs on the spot and then led the service. Actually the greatest challenge was not selecting the songs but singing and leading them because they were all in Chinese. It was not an easy task but we soon got used to it.

Some of us could not speak Chinese that well also and this posed a real problem especially if you have to give a talk. Nevertheless, Uncle Henry did his very best with his limited vocabulary when delivering the Saturday morning devotion. Good Job! Uncle Eric too did his best by speaking to the youths at the Saturday night class in Chinese. I could see they were 'thick skin' enough to speak in Chinese... Maybe if I were in their shoes, I won't have been able to accomplish that........

The Sunday Main Service was of course the climax of our 3 day mission trip. However, unlike most of the praise and worship sessions, we had some time to prepare for this.. In the end, it was a job well done and everything was kept short and sweet.... After the Sunday service, we had about an hour to interact with the children, Teenagers and adults that were present for the sunday service... I talked to a few of them as well, but the person that really was an inspiration was CALVIN... Haha...... So it turns out that CALVIN looked like one of our COS church members eh?..... Well not quite...... Take a closer look at him, Michele and my Sis........ Haha.......

So it was time to proceed back to S'pore after our fulfilling 3 day experience serving the Lord...... We headed for GIANT Kuantan for some last minute shopping (someone bought a sack of rice, haha) before we left for the causeway for S'pore. Even at 11:30pm, the causeway was jammed, cannot believe that! So we ended up arriving home at 1am while the van I later found out only just cleared immigration.... What a way to end this trip!

HS band camp and Catholic High concert

The past one week has basically been quite fine.... There was the HS band camp and the Catholic High School band concert that were the main highlights of the week. On the whole, the HS band camp was not so well organised because of the lack of discipline especially among the year one's. They were not paying attention to the seniors most of the time and most simply could not be bothered with what the seniors had to tell them. It's simply ill-displine, but they have to learn how to respect the seniors soon or else.....

From what I gathered while I was at the band camp overseeing what was happening, I realised that the sec one batch actually had a lot of potential. That was according to the band teachers. It's good that they have the potential, in fact, the teachers have already indentified a few potential candidates for the band major and drum major posts. At this point, I shall not mention who have been identified due to confidentiality. This band camp was supposed to be a training camp, but in the end, I felt that it was more of a leisure and training camp fused together. Not to be bad or anything, but the band committee should have done more to control the band. Will not further elaborate on this........

As for the Catholic High concert, it was good, not fantastically good, but just good. They played Jericho and some other songs. Their Jericho I felt, was the best. It was flawless technically, very round sound by the lower instruments and beautiful melodic line. I especially liked their style, whereby the dynamics came into play. There was a distinct difference between a Forte and a Piano. Quite well done! I'm impressed! Generally the band was well balanced, intonation was quite good and expression was present which was one of the resons why they attained a Gold with honours for this year's SYF.... No complains about the concert.....

Leadership training camp (24/5-25/5)

Ok, the leadership training camp in NYJC was interesting and fun on the whole. Must say that I've learnt a lot from this short 2 day experience with my CT and with the faciltators. Speaking of which, I must thank the 3 faclitators that have made a difference to my group and myself. Firstly, Desmond- for silently inspiring the group and making us pause (that was very helpful). Secondly, Kim Hong- for encouraging us and inspiring us as well. Finally, Tim (an american who happens to be from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)- for his inputs during the small group discussions and his willingness to guide us through 'troubled times'.

When I first stepped into this camp, I thought that it was going to be boring and uninteresting. However, as the first day progress on, I started to change my mind. The final activity where we had to cross the spider web from one end to the other was especially challenging. It posed numerous difficulties because we were not allowed to touch the web at all. So as the natural leader of my team, I strategised with them on how best to cross the web. At first, it looked like our strategy was not working, but after some delibration, I managed to convince them we were indeed on the right track. We were afterall....

It was just that we were rather careless when carrying each other over the web. So I decided slow and steady since we had been in and out of the hall countless times and this had been costing us precious time. This strategy worked to great effect. At a single go, 15 minutes from the end, we managed to get 8 people across the web, an astounding achievement considering that we had tried and tried but failed. I was really glad that we had done it, motivation was the key factor in our push towards our goal. It was nice to see everyone so motivated and in high spirits. Nice job 05A4B! You people rock!

That was basically what happened during the camp........ A fulfilling experience that really bonded the class together and made us discover more about ourselves.