Old Videos!!!

While i can't wait to see Tammi's surprise video, i remembered that i have a few videos that i've forgotten to upload!! really sorry..first off, chronologically, is from A&B Wedding night..

Presenting, Chuck, flower, and Larry!!!!


And then Tanya's and Wen Yiing's birthday cake in church..i nearly forgotten to record so i missed the singing..


and lastly, THE. MOST. DANGEROUS. STUNT. EVER. DONE.
IN. CHURCH!!!!

sorry justin i didn't make the youths go crazy when you're not here.
Just watch already!!!!

16 August 2008, Sat: YF

Well, uncle Chin couldn make it for YF so uncle Kiok What took over. To make it short, it was about this poem wrote by John Newton, who also wrote the song, Amazing Grace. I don't have the copy of the poem as i'm bloggin here in school, but i'll just write out the gist of it.

The poem uses a kite as an analogy. The kite would be ourselves, while the string that holds the kite, could be anything in our lives e.g. parents, church, studies, responsibilities, etc. One of the questions asked by uncle Kiok What was, just like the string, is there anything in our lives that we want to break free of?

There's no fixed answers in the discussion that followed on, which the whole sharing was made of. We were told that when the kite's broken free of the string, it would eventually fall down to the sea (or land).

So another two questions to ponder on were if this 'string' is important or not and if this whole kite thingy is applicable to our lives.

Well, for those of you reading this who weren present in the discussion, feel free to ponder and comment on your opinions regarding this whole thingy and thank you.

And after that, we celebrated Timo's birthday. His aunt bought a cake from Hyatt, a really thick choco cake. And there's only a pic taken..didn't get to record or something as we sing the birthday song..i was playing the guitar, haha:

There was only a candle. Which i suppose Timo still wanna be young eh? well at least he still have 2 more teen years to enjoy after this year, haha..

That's all.

26 July 2008, Sat: An earlier-started YF

Well, here's a recap of what happened last sat. Here again i would like to thank you all reading this for playing your parts in making our YF started much much earlier compared to the week before even though you thought you might have done nothing. Man..we started about half an hour earlier, you know? haha..

Well, since i don't have much time and to avoid writing a novel about that day, so here's what we did:

We started having dinner at Damai about 6.35pm if i didn't remember wrong and with the help of Ivan and Edgar in transportation (thank you so much). And the YF worship team for that night returned to church earlier to practise after dinner by Ivan's car. Then, the other car with youths drove by Edgar arrived church about 7.25pm (if i didn't remember wrongly) and then we all started YF about 7.40pm..great improvement, people!

So after YF, Uncle Keat Heng took over sharing session since Uncle Chin wasn't able to come and he showed us a testimonial video of a mid-east Christian who was once a Muslim. And, just in case someone else read this blog, yup we know we can't try convert our fellow Muslims in Malaysia, ok? Moving on, overall the testimony was really something beneficial for all of us. The sad thing was that because of the audio system in Annex Hall, the clip's mid-eastern music basically drowned out the testimony. Really kinda hard to focus on what the guy was talking about because the music was really really disturbing. Really..if only i've recorded it. Or maybe, i'll try taking the video from Uncle and post it up here, haha.

Anywayz..the main thing was about the discussion we had after watching the about-17mins clip (imagine having the music blasting at you through out that period of time) led by Uncle Keat Heng. There were two really important and fundamental principles touched on by the guy in his testimony. As Uncle put it, if you take that 2 important principles away from Christianity, Christianity itself would have been pointless and meaningless.

What are the 2 principles? to be short:
1. We have to put our faith in the Word of God.
2. Only the Truth of God's Word will set us free from the bondage of sin.

So without the 2 points, it's meaningless saying you're a Christian. And the 3 verses that were related and brought out by Uncle was from Hebrews 5:12-14:

12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!

13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.

14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (NIV)

So, the point is, we should not stop at the infant stage, only drinking milk. We need to constantly study and live out God's Word. Then only we start to mature.

And another point brought up by Uncle was the danger of the Loop. A spiritual loop whereby say, this week you felt bad and have done wrong so you kept reading and studying God's Word and pray. Then the next week, feeling good, you push back the time with God and start feeling lazy, giving excuses to postpone your own Quiet Time with God, your own Bible Study, etc. The example given was just a brief one but i'm sure you all who are reading this know what i'm talking about. Everyone experiences this Loop thing, i myself included. And so we must fight. The devil is trying to pull us away and so let us pray for one another, unloop this Loop and straighten the paths of our lives, that we may move forward together to follow God in Christ's footsteps and to be mature, not being spiritual cisterns like what Uncle Chin has taught us previously.

Let us not reload ourselves to go on a spiritual loop but reload ourselves with the spiritual ammunition from God's Word to keep us going straight forward. For the Glory of our GOD!!

If you had listened to the background song for this blog,
ARE YOU READY, GRACE CHAPEL LUYANG ENGLISH ASSEMBLY YOUTHS??

Your answers are for you yourselves and for God.

19 July 2008, Sat: Celebrating Crystal's 13th Birthday

It was raining heavily in the afternoon and still drizzling in the evening. Amy, Sharon, Samuel, Wen Yi and I were in the worship team and man the practice was till about 7pm! Just when last sat's prac was so short. But well, this time's 'cause the songs are tougher and we had our own problems so it's alright. And so unfortunately we started YF late too. And after YF's worship, it was a time of sharing. Uncle Chin had Tanya and JeremyL out to the front to share to us what they know about their siblings in Singapore currently. Desiree wasn there so we dunno how Angelica's doin over there..thus, that's one of the reasons of the existence of this blog! haha..i only remembered to take a photo when it was Jeremy's turn so i didn't take Tanya's:
Tanya was very informative about Tammi's current situation but Jeremy..man..Justin, you have to stay in touch more with your bro man..but for now i noe cant la..since no internet access at where you are now till at the hostel and also Jeremy wif no handphone to sms with you, haha..
The updates are with Q&As too. And here's a clip of Jeremy..stopped halfway after my phone ran out of memory:











After the updates, Uncle Keat Heng (erm, dunno if i spelled wrong), who was also there, shared 2 events about how God has helped them in China. One was about how they managed to get a visa there in the last 3 days (if i din remember wrong) before they had to leave due to some problems they faced when they jz got there last year. Another one is about finding a good place to stay with incredibly cheap rental fee when their previous rental contract expired last month.

After that, Ivan and Wen Yi shared. Ivan's was about tryin to not fall back again repeatin the process of sin-repent-forgiven and said what Uncle Chin described as a very nice way to put it, "deep enough to learn somethin, and shallow enough to pull out of" somethin lik that..can't remember the actual quote. While Wen Yi's was about forgivin others since God has already forgiven us through Jesus. Sorry i just cant remember the verse right now..

AND, after that, we all went downstairs for the celebration of Crystal's birthday, which was an early celebration since it's actually today, 20th of july. And which i realised i've forgotten to wish her in church today..man..anywayz, Timothy help bought a cake from Southern to surprise her but it turned out Crystal bought a cake her mom made, so we ended having 2 cakes to eat! All chocolate-y ones lagi. So we sang the birthday song in the dark:











and gave a toast for her:












Then pictures that were taken that night:

the group pics were taken by Uncle Chin with ronan's phone so he went and blocked the people

"Everybody say 'Crystal'!", said AdrianL. I suppose my bad timing didn take pics of Crystal lookin at the camera..she's just all smiling

Well, i didn't go eavesdropping so i dunno what the guys were discussin about.
"Sharon!" and then *SNAP*

Distributing the cakes..thanks Vanessa!
And sorry Samuel..
hehe..

you too, Shelby.

That's all i've got.

Remember people, we GOTTA START YF ON TIME NEXT SAT!!

-ron.

12 July 2008, one more YF before Justin leaves for Singapore

After having an unofficial record for the shortest sunday worship prac ever led by Uncle Lim Eng Hock, we finished about 5:40pm. So after Justin sent his dad back home and came back to church, him with the drums, JeremyL on the piano and me with the guitar jammed a few songs that we've practised.

And then, with Jeremy stopped playing piano, with Ronan playing the guitar and Justin supporting with the drums, it soon turned into a frenzy singing of the names of the people with us near and on the stage. It started with Ka Shing's and then him and Samuel Wong Sr. started singin along with their own styles and it all basically sounded like we were howling to a nice accompaniment of guitar and drums. Amy (was on the projector), Ivan (came early) and Wen Yi (was singin backup) were also there. And Samuel even had this megaphone thingy which i suppoz was the church's. After much of the howl-singin he switched on the siren and man it just kinda sounded like when we were doing the how-singin.

Anyways, before i start writing a novel on what we did then, for dinner we had it at Damai's Pizza Hut, with 13 people in total present if i didn't count wrong. And i'll try listing their names:
Wen Yi, Wen Yiing, Amy, Aaron, Adrian, Samuel (jr.), Shelby, Sharon, Ronan, Ivan, Travis, Justin and Edmond. Yup..13 of us. After eating, used up the remaining 2 jug-worth of Pepsi in everyone's cup and we toasted Justin. I mean, gave a toast to him. Actually toasted "Yao Seng" instead of "Yao Long" at the 1st try. Man..i think i was partly at fault for misleadin the others, haha..here's a clip of the toast. I actually forgotten that i was recording so it's mostly facing the table.



That night, there was a UMS student outreach thingy so the annex hall was used. Suppozly the youths had to use the sunday skol upstairs same floor with Esther jiejie's office but in the end we got to use the main hall since the Chinese assembly had practised in the afternoon. After the worship, Uncle Chin proposed we all do somethin different that was by goin to Easy Way Damai since it's one more night for Justin before he leaves. There was about 22 of us there excludin Uncle Chin.
A special arrangement of the tables and Tanya, Wen Yi and Wen Yiing accompanied Justin in it.








And a 8 somethin minutes clip of toasts+random stuffs+our departure from Easy Way:



Then after returning from Easy Way we had a meetin about using floorball as an outreach ministry with Uncle Chin and Uncle Su Kiong. And finished near 10.30pm.

-ron.