[64minutes]

Beyond Love Beyond 2013

Saturday 29 June 2013

On Saturday, instead of our usual D.I encounter today we had a thanksgiving lunch to thank everyone for their hard work during Love Beyond! I'm kinda disappointed though, cause many of our new friends who joined us in Love Beyond were not present. Not sure about the other groups but I know mine had no new friends joining us today.

Started off with reflections! Each group had to draw three questions from a bin and all of us had to choose two to reflect on them. Since I actually already did my own reflection (previous post), I shall not write about it heh. Interesting to find out what everyone thought about Love Beyond and the funny stories from the other groups such as...

Jeremy Pang and Yue Mun's encounter with the two dead cockroaches (and fleeing the room),
Nicholas Lau accidently stepping on a bowl of hotdogs cooked by the family and then just covering it up with newspaper, how the Kairos group in group unicorn lost the game multiple times (sigh typing this made me lose the game) and some fish painting story which I don't know the full details about.

We then had an award ceremony to thank some people for their extraordinary hardwork and attitude, along with some other joke awards as well heh. Ended off with an enjoyable video put together by the imagine team (thanks for the hardwork!) and then we broke off for lunch!

Had an enjoyable time of jamming afterwards in Honour Room with Kairos/Encounter Team members. Wow I played till my fingers are aching so badly. Haven't touched nor played the guitar this long in a vey loooong time. Before we knew it was already time to go home/dinner.

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2013's Love Beyond may have ended but our work is not yet so. It's time to impact the mission field(s) that God has placed us in!

@ 11:59 pm

Love Beyond 2013

Saturday 22 June 2013

Had a rather bizarre dream (or more appropriately nightmare) this morning. In fact when I think about it, there were actually two of the same ones. Why bizarre? Cause its actually the first time I experienced a dream in a dream in a dream haha. Inception much?

Dreamt that I woke up super late for Love Beyond, around 10am and was puzzled as to why my alarm didn't work. I would then wake up and be relieved that I was having a dream and that it was still early, 7am. Then I noticed that it was strange that every time I looked at the clock it keeps showing a different time. I was like 'woohoo!' I'm definitely dreaming and I can do crazy stuff like shoot fireballs but then I woke up. I would then proceed to have a re-run of the same dream until my actual alarm woke me up. Some crazy shit there. And it made me terrified twice that I was late.

So anyway, part of two of Love Beyond! After the completion of the first house, we went on to the second house. The first house was in a really good condition and it really surprised me the first time I went in. The second house, however, was worse than the first...and perhaps at the same level as the house I did for the very first Love Beyond in 2011. Finished painting for today, and tomorrow would perhaps see some cleaning done and then it's finished. Got to relieve some good PJ times as the house was in the vicinity of PJ!

This year's Love Beyond was more memorable and fulfilling to me at least. There was more interaction between us and the families we are impacting. I also got to interact with the neighbours passing by questioning us on what we were doing and where we were from. Most would guess we were from a school doing our CIP project.

Perhaps what God has showed me this year was the power of a parent's love. In this case more so on the motherly side. For the two houses, just watching the mothers taking care for their disabled son in a such a affectionate manner was really moving. I can't imagine just how much grief they must have felt and how they could manage to carry on in a positive manner. What would happen years later? Who would take care of the son?

I'm just glad that we can help these families (however small it may seem) and hope that we have impacted their lives in a way that they may know God. (Though I would agree its really difficult. For one, we cannot revisit them).

Oh and the haze subsided in the afternoon and for the first time in many days the air is (relatively) fresh and the sun is back! Oh how I missed the sun heh.

@ 11:22 pm

Haribo Carnage

Sunday 2 June 2013

I have witnessed a great Haribo craze yesterday in DI. Once my 1 kg box of Haribo has been opened, it got swamped pretty fast. It's quite interesting to see the reactions of those who took and ate the Haribo. Their faces (and actions) were screaming 'zomg the best thing ever'. Haribo really lives up to its slogan, 'Kids and grown ups love it so' heh. And here I thought I was crazy about Haribo. In Germany I would exclaim HARIBOOOO (like a battle charge) when I saw them and would rush to buy them while other people are more interested in the chocolates like Ritter sport and blah blah.

Anyway, great to be back in DI. After spending 3 weeks with the same people in an army culture/environment, I got really tired of it and honestly wish I was back in Singapore (but not for the weather heh).

Yay Love Beyond is coming soon! Too bad I don't have school holidays now. And my CSM is rather stingy when it comes to us taking off/leave hm...

@ 11:21 pm

End of Germany

Saturday 1 June 2013

Was supposed to post this on Sunday when I got back but oh well...

So here concludes what can be called the best times in my NSF life. Really thankful for the opportunity to train in Germany! Turns out, I actually did manage to document my daily life in my journal. Once I got the flow going it's quite easy and it becomes part of the end of day routine I developed in Germany. 6 more months to ORD, can't wait.

Back in Singapore there are a couple of things I now have to get accustomed to. The jet lag of six hours, my habit of now looking left then right when crossing the road and the temperature and humidity. (Sigh, haven't sweat in a long time). Also, it's going to be interesting to catch up on what DI has been doing while I was away heh.

@ 12:36 am