Monday 7 September 2015
On Saturday two days ago, what you could call a 'worship disaster' happened.
Close to the transition to the song 'Good to Me', one of the strings of my guitar gave way. It didn't gave way cleanly and it got in the way of the other strings, effectively muting them so my guitar was rather unplayable at that moment. (The idea of how just one 'member' of the guitar strings failing could affect and lead to the rest of the strings not working brings to remembrance a certain verse to me). At that moment, I just felt sian and thought, 'Man those strings were new', rather than going on to full panic mode (maybe if I was new to serving that could be the case). Switched guitars while Elissa led the congregation to sing acapella, but then we were plagued with persistent, intrusive feedback problems. That however, still didn't stop everyone from worshiping and praising God.
I didn't realize this until thinking back, how fitting this lyric from the song is.
"Though fires burn all around me, I'll praise You my God"
Yes, even though fires (in this case, technical audio problems) may burn all around us, we can still, by the grace of God, give praise. Even as I'm moving on to academic week 5 of this semester -and my fires come in the form of piling assignments, extremely difficult concepts to grasp, trying to survive the hectic workload, etc. - , I'll praise God for His goodness. For the blessings in my life and how He holds it all together. Certainly, academics and achievements are not all there is to this life. May God continually remind me of these truths.
@ 1:42 am
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Maybe it's the spirit of SG50 or something, but I found myself wanting to write down and remember this particular memory that happened a year ago.
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The mission team had just boarded the Scoot Singapore-bound plane and we're just settling in for the trip that would take us home after spending a week in Thailand. As we stowed away our luggage and found our seats, I was struck with a sudden realisation. All around us was the unmistakable banter of Singlish, if not the various degrees of accented Singapore English.
It may have went something like this (not too sure, was too long ago)
"Eh what did you buy?"
"The food on the plane so expensive sia"
Spending a week in Thailand being immersed in its culture and language had made me miss this all so familiar Singapore trait. Hearing Singlish that wasn't just from us but everywhere around you was quite surreal. Despite the flak that Singlish may have drawn, I felt proud and grateful that we have this identity as a Singaporean. In that moment, even though the plane had not taken off yet and we were still hundreds of kilometres away from Singapore, it kinda felt we were already home.
@ 1:38 am
Reverse Pickpocketing
Sunday 19 July 2015
A rather fond memory.
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We had Love Beyond today as there was still work to finish up for the house that was in Clementi.
For lunch, the team (about nine of us) ate zi char at some coffee shop nearby; I felt it was quite something since I've the impression that zi char was more of a dinner thing heh. Through some series of events, Rachel K. ended up footing the whole bill and she refused to accept payment from any of us. (I kinda thought they were joking about it). The bill amounted to about a hundred dollars!
A group of us waited until she stepped back into the house before making a rush to her bag. We fumbled around to get her wallet (or perhaps it should be called a purse..?) and began frantically stuffing our money in without letting her find out. But of course, with all the ruckus and excitement of doing so, she quickly caught wind of what we were up to. Initially, she was like "Nooooooo stop it" but in the end, she relented after probably seeing how 'no' wouldn't be taken for an answer.
It was the first time I witnessed a reverse pickpocketing in real life...with an unwilling "victim" involved. It was quite an amusing sight to see heh.
@ 11:59 pm
Monday 13 July 2015
What a stinging feeling...Can't have this carry on any longer
It would be a lie to say that it's not affecting me
After much prayer and thoughts,
I think I know what I should and must do.
Delaying would only make it worse;
Giving the devil the potential to horribly warp it and make a pitfall
Now it's just a matter of execution...
@ 1:53 am
Thai Day Seven
Tuesday 11 March 2014
2nd MarchAttended the church’s Sunday service which starts the same time as WAC’s service on Sunday! They had a bible study session before that though at 9am. It was in Thai and I could roughly figure out what it was about with the little Thai vocal that I know. Something about prayer and worship.
Played guitar for worship as they had a lack of musicians for the church. Jeraldine played the bass.
We sang ‘Come, Now Is The Time to Worship’, ‘Our God’, 'There Is None Like You', 'Here I Am to Worship' and 'Still'.
On that day itself, another dude came to look at the songs that we are playing and joined in playing the drums just like that without practising with us the day before. Quite grateful for the percussion although he is not really good at knowing when not to play. Didn’t know how to correct him =\ . It was really interesting to play the worship songs in Thai. As the whole Thai congregation was singing the songs, I was singing them in English and it’s amazing how though we have different tongues, we are still praising and worshipping the same God at the same time. It’s just like what the Bible describes in Revelations 7:9 and I’m experiencing this in real life and this is just one of many other tongues that Earth has.
The sermon comes after that and it’s quite different in the sense that we had to rely on the translator to interpret what the sermon is about. We also shared with the congregation the video that Bynes made over the night on what we did in the school. Aunty Janette shared her testimony again and we sang Still in Thai for the congregation. Afterwards, we were given farewells gifts by the Pastor. Rice crackers with pork! The packaging was really nice heh.
Had lunch after the service after the chairs were removed. After being in Thailand for seven days, I really like and appreciate how we tend to sit in the long table style and have lots of food spread before us. Realised this is our last home cooked Thai meal and I really enjoyed the meal. There was this really good egg omelette, watermelon and non spicy tom yam soup.
After eating we had to rush to the airport and we got all our luggage ready. All of the Thai helpers wanted to come and see us off heh. Had our final goodbyes after checking in and the helpers presented us with farewell gifts as we entered the gate! Got a nice notepad and pen :D.
On the flight back, I was already missing Thailand and everything in it. From the serene countryside to the school, students, helpers, the people that we have met and the culture. Had quite a heavy heart as the plane took off. Funny how initially I was wishing the mission trip could be shorter as I was afraid but at that time I wished we could have stayed longer. Definitely did not regret choosing to come to Thailand. Hope I do get another opportunity to come back and by then hopefully I would have learnt Thai enough to converse!
#36: Again witnessing a glimpse of how 'every nation, tongue and tribe would bow down to Him’ would look like as the sermon and worship was conducted in a different tongue but is about the same God.
#37: For the farewell gifts that we got
#38: For the safe flight back to Singapore
@ 5:15 pm
