Understand, if you may

Everything is in Him. He is EVERYTHING.

2010-04-28T00:07:00.002+08:00

i remember the first time i saw this. i cried when i realised the truth abt it. worst still, i've knew it my whole life. and yet, it seems timeless.

HE WAS THERE WHEN WE LEFT. HE'S ALWAYS THERE WHEN WE COME BACK.

kesha much?

2010-04-05T18:04:00.003+08:00

here's an interesting formula...

OOI LI MEI + ALCOHOL = KESHA? (GOSH I HOPE NOT)

WHY DO I SAY THAT?

COZ i like to say BLAH BLAH BLAH!

ok ok... thats not a song i would encourage you to sing.... just like the beat of it... the real song to hear is.........

oh yeah by the way....

THE PARTY DON'T START TILL I WALK IN.

ooooooo

2010-03-12T20:31:00.001+08:00

oooooooooo la la la!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

randomness prevails!!!!!!!!!!

seriously, the weather...

2010-03-09T01:18:00.003+08:00

All I want is a room somewhere,
Far away from the hot night air.
With one enormous chair,
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?

just for kicks:

Princesses gone wild XD

WITH A LITTLE BIT OF BLOOMIN' LUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

muahahha

2010-02-10T21:52:00.004+08:00

time slows down,
whenever you're around...

-Today was a fairytale (2010)

currently stuck on this song coz
1. Taylor swift sang it. duh. and i like her songs XD
2. It was used in the soundtrack of Valentine's Day, the movie in which Taylor will make her feature film debut. oh and did i mention that that movie has almost entirely every A-list celebrity in hollywood?! not that i wanna be them but they are good in what they do so i'm sure its gonna be a great movie!!! so exicited!!!

i even got jon jon to teach me how to play it on the guitar but something happened so he just taught me the go-around-chords... haiz....

fun fact:
exercise with the new SYM-ers is kinda both exicting and weird.... i gotta say....

freakin' facebook

2010-02-08T22:52:00.002+08:00

facebook actually said that i had no posts to view.

WHAT THE FREAKIN' CRAP????!!!!!!

fun fact:

there was actually a time when i could i dentify all of Pokemon 1.

AMAZING NO?

cry?/!

2010-01-14T20:43:00.001+08:00

oh crap!!!!!!!!!!!

wats gonna happen to us??? marketing? break even? 1 whole chapter and module gone liao la....

2010

2010-01-04T18:01:00.002+08:00

whats up everyone?!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! to kick off the new year post, here's a song that im pretty sure can get into your head one way or another :)

INine- Don't Wanna

Broke down, busted
Hot wired, dusty
I stole my car from the city lot
Cause last night's buzz is all I got -
Now I'm rolling, wide eyed, I'm never stuck on the sidelines
Ask me why I gotta leave this town again

I'll do what it takes to stay alive
Forget the rules; they don't apply
I'd lose my mind at your 9 to 5
Cause it's not my kind of life

I just wanna know why
Why I gotta be quiet
I don't wanna just sit down and shut my mouth
All these things I could do without
I wanna new life
I just wanna drive all night
Wake up in the sunrise and love myself again!

We're living on nothin'
Reachin' for somethin'
Cheap t-shirts, old blue jeans
Big black boots and too much caffeine
Yeah I'm a smart ass, I'm up tight, I never back down from a fistfight
Might be why I gotta leave this town again!

I'll do what it takes to stay alive
Forget the rules; they don't apply
I'd lose my mind at your 9 to 5
Cause it's not my kind of life

I just wanna know why
Why I gotta be quiet
I don't wanna just sit down and shut my mouth
All that crap I could do without
I wanna new life
I just wanna drive all night
Wake up in the sunrise and love myself again!

And who are they to call me crazy
(You see what you wanna see)
You know their never gonna change me
(Cause I'll be who I wanna be)
We gotta live the way we wanna
Cause nobody ever oughta just waste away, waste away

And what's wrong with being happy
(Ya know you'd love it if you tried)
I know that everybody can be
(If only for a little while)

We're gonna make it to the end
Ya gotta chase it till ya win, I wanna feel free, I wanna be free

I wanna new life
I wanna drive all night
I wanna wake up in the sunrise and love myself again

I just wanna know why
Why I gotta be quiet
I don't wanna just sit down and shut my mouth
All this s*** I could do without
I wanna new life
I just wanna drive all night
Wake up in the sunrise and love myself again!

(We gotta live the way we wanna cause nobody ever oughta just waste away)

i know its not something that i would recomemend hearing for real but i just like the melody of it :P

Merry Christmas '09

2009-12-25T21:44:00.004+08:00

the real meaning of Christmas is to celeberate the birth of Jesus Christ, who left His place in heaven to come to die for us, if not we're all gonna parish in hell. so celebrate it correctly, not just happily :)

BLESSED CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!

BigE 2009

2009-12-24T13:40:00.003+08:00

muahhaha!!!!!!!! BigE!!! so fun!!!! pr tom's car!!! 140kph!!!! away in Lumut!!! the speakers!!!! bro bobby!!! and sis susan!!!!!! so sad bernice!!!!!!! 5 salvations!!!! with my team!!! Ingin!!! from last to third!!!! swimming!!!! worship!!!! workshops!!! grooming and make pizzas!!!!! my rommies!!!! sheryn!!! dorm leader!!! and!!!! sherise!!!! and nicole!!!! hannah montana!!!!!! showtime!!! hair!!!! torchlight!!!! pei li!!! lovely!!!! hibiscus band!!!!! delton!!!! leader!!!!! issac!!!! itallian-chinese mix!!!!! mafia!!!! bus!!! tired!!!!!

God is good and so real and He loves us.....

u can imagine what happened there :)

Two Is Better Than One

2009-12-09T17:08:00.002+08:00

I remember what you wore on the first day
You came into my life and I thought
"Hey, you know, this could be something"
'Cause everything you do and words you say
You know that it all takes my breath away
And now I'm left with nothing

So maybe it's true
That I can't live without you
And maybe two is better than one
There's so much time
To figure out the rest of my life
And you've already got me coming undone
And I'm thinking two is better than one

I remember every look upon your face
The way you roll your eyes
The way you taste
You make it hard for breathing
'Cause when I close my eyes and drift away
I think of you and everything's okay
I'm finally now believing

That maybe it's true
That I can't live without you
And maybe two is better than one
There's so much time
To figure out the rest of my life
And you've already got me coming undone
And I'm thinking two is better than one

I remember what you wore on the first day
You came into my life and I thought, "Hey,"

Maybe it's true
That I can't live without you
Maybe two is better than one
There's so much time
To figure out the rest of my life
And you've already got me coming undone
And I'm thinking
I can't live without you
'Cause, baby, two is better than one
There's so much time
To figure out the rest of my life
But I'll figure it out
When all is said and done
Two is better than one
Two is better than one

who cares

2009-11-18T01:06:00.002+08:00

u want an update?

well here's one:

SPLAT!

how do ya like me now?!

Exciting 18th!

2009-10-29T20:36:00.002+08:00

ok ppl! im 18! the age where i can legally drink (not that i want to, alcohol makes me spit it out) and smoke (i can't even take the smell much more the stupid habit?!)

i woke up and went downstairs to shut off my hp alarm as usual. who knew that my mom would wake up and boil two eggs for me and dye them in red! there was a little note there that wished me a happy birthday.... awww.... yeah i know... usually i have to remind her what day it is but she can remember my birthday which she usually forgets :)

so i went to college and the first person to greet me was syereen followed by syaron after hearing her sis wish me and 1 of the september intake girls. haha. halfway during class when shu ying came in she wished me 2, mouthing the words la.... if not mrs oh sure tembak her 1.... during break time only the rest of the gang wished me.... haiz.... guess fb is not as reliant as it is.... hehe...

we went to prangin to celebrate by having secret recipe cake. we all get to choose a slice of whatever cake we wanted and mine is free! of course la.... birthday girl mah... (cheh wah :P)

towards the zebra crossing at penang road, shu ying had the craziest idea. take a photo in the middle of the crossing! i mean, this is penang road! one of the busiest roads of penang and u want to take a photo of us in the middle?! in 20+ seconds?!

knowing me, the-take-no-risk-one, of course i objected la... teased shu ying a little summore. but we did it in the end with kelvin taking the photo for all of us! we took it at 7 seconds and by the time he said ok it was 2 seconds left so we all cabut to the opposite road. all the motorists were laughing and shu ying said she wanted to do it again (0_0) maybe some other time la har.....

when we got back miss yee theng was supposed to sing a happy birthday song to me but me (dengan hati yang mulia :p) decided no need la... later i found out that she wanted peanut to sing with her but he "let go of the plane". so nvm la.... i got it in their hearts.

ps: i have a blog post abt me!!! its from my friend in sec school. check it out : http://www.wretch.cc/blog/Karmeiii/12940903

neat huh? seems like elfreda was right. don't expect and you'll be happy. thx freda! thx everyone!

I'm sorry I took your calls for granted,
it was my well-being that you wanted.
Admist all the wishes that did arrive,
my only wish is that you're still alive.

pla....

2009-10-27T00:08:00.002+08:00

don't you think that some of the best movie plots or quotes come from everyday life? sometimes we get in a situation where we spew out things that its so relavant and when something like that comes out of a movie you think to yourself, hey, they should use my line!

i donno.... maybe thats just me..... but hey:

life's a roller coaster :P it goes up and down but its the screams that you hear that makes you laugh :)

juju

2009-10-14T13:19:00.001+08:00

yeah if u don't watch the show u won't get it but its basically like derek's nightmare.... hahaha

fun fact:

i'm a pop country junkie :)

um

2009-10-01T22:59:00.000+08:00

ok, you know what?

THIS SUCKS.

jaka

2009-09-11T23:02:00.002+08:00

God loves everyone all the time.

Even those who wasn't thinking about Him at that time.

When He saves you,

Let that be a reminder that you should never take your mind off Him again.

note:
this was written after God intervened with my life again when I least expected.

Isn't He wonderful? =)

MERDEKA

2009-08-31T00:22:00.002+08:00

MERDEKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bandslam!

2009-08-28T11:56:00.001+08:00

i wanna see!!!!

Vivien=durian?

2009-08-27T20:20:00.002+08:00

Scene: kitchen. 2ko is doing something to his dinner.

2ko: *mumbles*
me: what?
2ko: *mumbles*
me: huh?
2ko: *mumbles* -ien...
me: tomorow u wanna talk to vivien? by msn or phone?
2ko: *looks up* who said anything about vivien? i said "tomorow i'll defrost the durian" la...
me: oh....
2ko: *takes out frozen durian from freezer* wow... how did vivien get in here?

vivien, congrats, your name officially sounds like durian. haha.

post carnival post :P

2009-08-24T23:42:00.008+08:00

hey ya hi ya, guess what i did? I ATE MUD!!

ok ok it wasn't that drastic but let me tell u all abt it...

yesterday morning was RGBC's Friendship carnival. it was held in youth park and in case u don't know anymore, look at my previous post. the one after june's bye bye post. got it? right.

anyways, it started out with a gloomy morning but i had to be there by 8 coz i pakat with camellia to be there then. i oso asked her to bring her mosquito repellent coz mine was taken by my bro to USA so i asked for hers lo.

so i was there at 8. ppl were already there so i just went along to greet the boys like delton and kar liang who already there. we got our free drink and buns coupon from zi yin who then asked us to help distribute to the ppl that were coming in. i told her i couldn't coz i was waiting for camellia to come and help me tie the rafia for the paintball stall so i just followed christopher koe and waited for ppl to come. christopher koe manned the 1st enterance and soon his frens came so i went over to delton's side to wait. i had the rafia in my hands and i was just basically waiting for the insect repellant to come coz my legs were being sucked the life out.

finally, the girl's cg leaders came. clara came carrying a baby pool and a bucket. she look so ko lian so i help her lo. good fren mah... haha... let me introduce the game stalls that were mostly manned by the frontliners:

1) Cans attack. a basic throw-a-ball-at-the-empty-cans-and-win-a-prize game. cell in charge: delton's cg.
2) Fish me up (or known as Catch fishy as clara puts it): the name pretty much tells u everything. u get to keep the fishes as a reward too. cell in charge: clara's cg.
3) Hamster race. yes i know it sounds "huh?!" but believe me, the moment u see the hamsters u won't wanna put them in a race. they were so cute!!! and jumpy too. the game? pick 1 hamster outta 3 available and with a leaf, get them to run across the track to the finishing line within 6 seconds. if u do that, u get 2 tokens. if u get it within 10, u get 1 token. i think. i dunno. i was eating fried pohpia after captainball and i had 8 tokens available so i decided to give it a try. camellia volenteered to play for me so i let her. she got it done in 8 seconds. i got a token. haha.
4) ring toss. this stall wasn't manned by the youth but u get the idea. the "older" cell was in charge of that.

with everyone busy setting up their stall, i quickly got christopher koe (whos earlier post was taken over by an aunty) to help me tie the rafia. after that we pretty much spent time looking at the petrified hamsters.

first up in the events was the line dancing. i really had no idea how to do this so i pretty much followed what everyone was doing. kinda fun when u have ppl who are just as clueless as you do it too. i forgot what was the first song but the second song was billy ray cyrus's song achey breaky heart. that 1 i could follow, problem is, i forgot which leg goes first. hahaha...

then we had the JCPT dancers do a hip hop/contemporary dance for us. they were good despite their look of nervousness in their faces. but they pulled off a wonderfull show. kodos to joanne chow for being able to teach them this.

then we had pr koe say his speach and steven led us in a time of praise songs. then it was the joy kindergarden kids to do a dance for us! cute man... yi wen said a few years ago that was her then suddenly became self consious and felt old. she went to comfort herself with zi yin. haha...
after the dance was the synonimous event of the kindergarden sports day and the carnival competitions. while the kindergarden had their sports day, we the older adults went to the field for the captainball competition.

the rain started as we were going starting the first game. we had a total of 6 teams. the primetimers sent in two teams: passion was represented by "Armpit Exposers" while courage was represented by "the annyonimous". the gen zone had "mighty ladies", group consisting of most aunties in church (actually, i call them all aunties, except for paster sooi lin of course), hamid khan sent in "cili padis", MBS called their teams "12 brotherhood" and "the revolutioners", the nepali workers also had a team; the NS who were invited by pr tom called their team "white resort" after their camp; frontliners youth were represented by "mighty king kong" duelly named by clara (its a combination of some of the boys from the guy cg and the girls cg) while campus had 3 teams!!! namely, power rangers, mighty eunice (named after eunice?? O_O) and flaming chicken (my team!!!).

the rain made it almost impossible to play but we all played anyways. the paintball shoot out counter wasn't having a lot of bussiness coz they were also under the captainball canopy. hamid khan played against the aunties first and while the aunties had a very good defender (Pr sooi lin), the boys still won. we kept shouting at them not to bully the aunties. hahaha. but the aunties were very happy and comforted themselves with "at least we know that we can still run!" gotta love their hummor....... gotta admit. playing in the mud and being knocked down by a bunch of boys but getting up too fight another round is a very admirable trait. the rain kept pouring and the field became more soggy and it flooded the field but we all still continued playing. falling down and diving for the ball just made the game all so much more fun. that's why i said i ate mud :)

we were the last campus team to make it to the wildcard round but we still ended up in 4th place. i was mad for awhile becoz i was open for a long time and i hardly got the ball. i also didn't get to watch the street dancing competition which was my highlight of the carnival coz by the time i finished the match the competition had also finished. so the only breakdance that i got to see was the openning CAM dance. pretty cool if i may add. the street dance competition had guest judges from celebrity fitness so they really know their stuff. ah if only i could see them in action... i went to exchange 10 bucks worth of tokens and used 2 tokens to buy fried poh piah and used 1 to play adriel's stall. adriel said that since i was older he had to give me a harder challenge. he placed 1 tin behind a stack of 3. he did the same for 3 others. i was given 5 balls to take out the cans behind the stacks.

no problem i thought. i really needed to let of some steam but i couldn't say alot coz pr koe was standing next to me. haha. so i took the first throw. i missed coz it went to the middle part of one of the stacks. so with poh pia at one hand and ball #2 in the other, i threw with more strength at the first stack. it contacted but the cans flew everywhere. my mind went into auto mode and threw the rest of the balls at the other stacks. all the cans flew off the table which meant it contacted but 1 can at the back remained.

everyone could see that i was releasing all the anger towards the can so adriel and issac were trying to calm me down. i realised the cans also hit an empty styrofoam box that in the end floated away in the river. i felt so bad but i was finally calm so i was awarded 2 tokens. ok i guess. haha. so i went to the next stall, the hamster race! (ok, adriel's stall was between clara's and jess's stall but since i didn't to want to catch ikan i decided to play with hamsters XD)

cute leh.... i secretly named them after the lim sisters since they brought it but camellia hated it so i decided to name them hamster #1, #2 and #3.

after the captainball prize giving ceremony it was pretty much it. i had 3 tokens so i used to exchange stuff. delton also gave away some of his spoils so i happily took some too :P

extra stuff that came home with me :D

see how much fun we had??? see what happens when u dun believe me when i say its fun??

bu ting li mei yan, chi kui zhai yan qian. :P

stay tuned for the next exciting event happening in my life!

Goodbye June

2009-08-22T01:09:00.004+08:00

hear ye, hear me..... big shoutout to the lady this post is dedicated to....

MISS JUNE KEW PEI ERN

will be leaving for IMU saturday 22/8, to be a super duper pro DOCTOR!!!!

i had no idea when she was gonna leave until during service just now when she annouced that her orrientation was this monday.

as usual we (her cell group and church) prayed for her before she leaves penang so we were kinda sad to lose one of Frontliners beauties :P

this may be my last encounter with her before she leaves which was kinda awkward for me:

scene: Me leaving main sanctuary door when accidentally bumped into june. (details are a little hazy coz i was really blur the whole time)

June: hey li mei!

Me: hi june!

June: come. (gives hug)

Me: (hugs back shocked) huh?

June: at least i got my goodbye hug from you.

Me: you're leaving already?

June: yeah....

Me: when?

June: tomorow. oh my gosh you didn't know?

Me: no... (details are hazier here) ok... well good bye then....

June: k... bye... (starts to leave)

Me: say hi to melody for me!

June: (gives funny look)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

thus is my final conversation with june. i really pray that she will continue to walk with the Lord even with the busyness of kl life + college life. end product? DR KEW (man even typing it sounds so cool... imagine saying it... :P)

June, all the best in your studies and God bless!!! KICK SOME COLLEGE BUTT :D!!!!

Carnival time!!!

2009-08-20T21:19:00.006+08:00

breakdance competition......... captainball competition........ food................ games............... paintball shootout.................... what's all this? well look down below and i'll tell yiz....

Ya'll see this??!!! this is my formal invitation to u in this blog..

COME ONE, COME ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is the most happening carnival in penang (sorry sabahans :P)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

in case u can't see the finer details on the poster (IF NOT HOW THE HECK R U READING THIS?!), its happening THIS SUNDAY (23/8/09) at YOUTH PARK AMPHITHEATRE from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm.

EVERYONE IS INVITED!!!! SO IF YOU ARE A FRIEND OR A STRANGER, YOU ARE ALL WELCOME TO RGBC/JNPC FRIENDSHIP CARNIVAL!!!!!

SEE YA'LL THERE!!!!!

done done

2009-08-07T12:24:00.002+08:00

ok ok... i know i've been putting this on limbo for a long time so heres it.

1. i did not kena ns.
2. the letter was some sort of mistake becouse im not an ex-trainee.
3. my friend who did not kena ns oso got the letter but my my friend who did kena ns did not recieve the letter.
4. the letter was an offer to study engineering at some kolej.

so? do i want it? u know me. guess for yourself :P

WTH (part 2)

2009-07-28T21:03:00.003+08:00

and so... with my newfound shock, i opened the letter to find out this next logo....

see that? that the alumini logo for ns... why wud it be on the letter? therefore, todays question is... WHY?

WHY? yes, good question. why did i get this letter with this logo if i never got into ns before?

and so it continues... my quest to discover the truth..... next time, on this blog.

WTH (part 1)

2009-07-27T11:30:00.003+08:00

this is funny...i got home after a 3 hour trip from perlis on saturday and found a letter addressed to me with this letterhead.....

yeap..... the ns letter.... as for all your WH- questions...i shall answer them part by part. today i shall start with "WHAT?!"

what?!
yeah.... its the NS letterhead. as if the big KHIDMAT NEGARA words didn't tell you that...

tune in next time for the next part as how i unrevell the mysteries of our goverment...

nothing for now

2009-07-27T00:13:00.001+08:00

ok, here's the thing. im too lazy to blog for now. so i will be ghosting for a while... u know... somedays i write somedays i dont. seems selfish? yes it is.

but hey, its my blog right XD?

back!

2009-07-14T18:01:00.002+08:00

hello again...so sry for not posting anything for a long time. i was in campus camp that so great and relaxing. granted that there wasnt alot ppl that went for it, but we were comforted with the words of the camp speaker, Pas- i mean, Brother (hehe) David Yeow who told us that the Holy Spirit allowed this to happen. wow, that was comforting.

The Spirit of God was so present there that when brother david prayed for me, i could'nt really lean forward. whenever i stood still i felt like i was going to fall backwards and i had to push myself to lean forward to stand straight. after that session nite 2 i couldnt sing much during worship cos as i reflected back at everything, i realised that God still loved me. isnt it wonderful to have a God like Him?

we were at Sufes Campsite, Tapah in Perak. i din realise that there was not much reception there until i saw ben-ji lifting up his handphone like he was trying to contact aliens. haha (lately we have been going to camps without reception...no more disturbance!) at least the yellow man was playing at the playground :)

playing mafia on the bus was so cool coz everyone on the bus playing mafia and we were so into it that at one point the radio was playing the soundtrack to the game. haha...so funny la that time. pr tom even managed to reveal his identity without showing it publicly. thank goodness that in all games CITIZENS WIN THE GAME!

the games were so funny. we had to build a fort out of bubblegum and toothpicks and explain it. we din really had a full explaination but jin siang, our wonderful group leader, managed to say a whole bunch of stuff with daniel ending by banging the drums. so funny la i tell u.

oh ya, the food, was GOOD. every time we ate the food so nice that we all mostly makan twice. oh the wonderful fried chicken....

we were given the opportunity to shop in ipoh old town. there we bought tons of chicken biscuits, salted chicken, pamelo's and chicken rice. we even had 80 sen tau hua and tau chui. walking all over that town was like penang. while waiting for the bus to come, we saw a pair of shih tzu puppies. they were brothers and they were the cutest dogs when they were playing. all of us were going ahh so cute when they lied down together. and when they yawned? *faints*

in all, we had a great time there. thank u to all the organisers and the camp speaker for planing all these out. and praise God that He made all of it a success.

fun fact:

1. never wear sport shoes when u go stream trekking. it makes ur shoes wet for 2 days.
2. king, queen and princess are so friendly! ( i think we overstuffed princess. she looks obeese)
3. there's a river of sprite flowing just outside... :P
4. sorry yi lin for throwing the water bomb into ur face and accusing u as the mafia even though i was the one. i was trying to save myself XD

college...

2009-07-06T12:10:00.002+08:00

i'm typing this from inside my college... yes u heard me.

it's so wierd here...its small, but the ppl who graduate here are actually very qualified! the libary is small but there's tons and tons of books about eng lit, buiness, econs, law (there's like a whole collection there!).

so in short, i look forward to having a new experience and i wish i would never wish to jump from the 18 floor (as what my new lectuerer said).

fun fact:

lalala.... i just always wanted to do that :P

micheal jackson is dead

2009-07-03T13:53:00.002+08:00

yes micheal jackson is dead. so what. i found out about it when i came back from work last friday and i din go nuts about it. if you saw cnn later that day, there was this guy in england that actually got down on his kness and facedown on the road crying when he heard it. i doubt he would be that sad if someone close to him died. i mean la, does micheal jackson know you? y so sad? u don't hear him making anymore new songs, just his old ones that is in mp3 la, cd la... those are the stuff that ppl like him for. yes maybe im being harsh, but hey, i would much like to mourn about bionic woman getting cancelled (why did it get cancelled?! it was such a nice show!!!) then to cry over micheal jackson.

had nice tau hua jsut now. from the guy that rides his stall at the lane behind my house everyday. i think he saw me grow up coz i used to buy from him all the time when i was small. haha.

was thinking about my sec school life this morning. how it all happened all the way from f1 to f5. all the frens and things we went thru. disiplin la, prefect la, calling our maths teacher by her full name la... man i miss those days. i miss teasing with my classmates. espeacially when i have one person telling me that naruto is the worst anime ever and i have to retaliate that saying haruhi suzumiya is not much better.

those were the good old days.

fun fact:

have u tried telling your fishes to die faster? don't. coz they will dissapoint u more.

:P

2009-07-02T18:29:00.002+08:00

today i drove....yes....i drove.

not much la...just to sungai nibong nia.... went to the petrol station and to the putra place apartments... waited for my bro at queensbay...at a double line...so freak-ass scared k.... if polis come i dunno whether i can use my soon-to-be-lawyer persuation voice toescape anot :P

oh yeah...regarding that, i have decided to go to kemayan atc....yes i know its very (huh where's that place) even though ppl say its very famous for its law facaulty... it stands for kemayan Advance tertiery college in the umno building in town... im not ready to leave penang just yet....haha...

my a-levels will include law, english lit (i cant escape this, even in sec school) and buissnes studies. so if there's anymore questions, it better not be about what im studying unless u cant read (i sound so evil :P)

toodles!

whaddaweekday(s)

2009-06-25T23:46:00.004+08:00

monday: i passed my driving test.

tuesday: i ate kfc as a reward.

wednesday: i nearly scraped the car with the gate.

thursday: i got my "P" license.

friday: i am going to work for my uncle.

see? my days are pure "joy" on some weeks.

gee, i need to go out more often before i turn into this.

A much overdue prayer

2009-06-21T23:03:00.003+08:00

Father in heaven,
i'm getting sleepness nights over this....
stupid confidence of mine is falling...
man, i'm so sick of this...
didn't even feel this nervous during spm...
oh Lord, grant me strength and everything that i need to pass this driving test...
and i'm sorry that i didn't know how to wish You a happy Father's day...
but to keep on asking from You...
You know me best Father,
let Your will be done.
Amen.

p/s: oh, and bless bernice on this day coz its her birthday. amen.

eww!!!!

2009-06-16T20:46:00.003+08:00

it was the most gross thing.... and its not fun when you are tired and looking forward to a nice dinner.... especially when its the same colour as your vegetables when you took like, half of the whole plate... and looking at your whole food on your plate... u can discover some of the best stuff to eat... and your face is stuffed with trotter... and you see it... there... undercovering as a vege....

wanna know what i found? look down...

yeap..... a catapillar!!!!

it doesn't really look like the one in the pic coz i din get to tae a photo of it coz i was to shocked to. when i saw it i shouted and ran from the kitchen to my mom who was watching tv in the living room (yes i am capable of doing that). when i showed it to her, she was like, oh, throw it away.

so i ended up throwing it away together with all my vege. oh the horror!!

disney is cool

2009-06-14T17:03:00.003+08:00

yes yes... i am bored. lately i found myself watching a whole lotta disney shows on youtube. first it was enchanted then mulan then beauty and the beast and then the little mermaid 3 and then a whole lotta songs. man i so like disney.....

yesterday campus had a day of bowling at penang bowl. wow. the last time i bowled was the virtual one on the Wii. and i hated it. i prefer reality. we booked 8 lanes out of the whole 16 lanes = a lot of ppl came. some of the players were first time bowlers. yes we all had our share of longkang balls but we all had fun. i expected my arm to hurt at night as usual after bowling but it din happen. why? dunno. but i'm glad.

i like this. a lot.

falalala

2009-06-11T18:40:00.003+08:00

hello hello... I have just come back from perlis darul...whatever. hahaha. just went there for a one day trip with my mom coz its just a 3 hour drive and we wanted to get home by 4 to avoid the traffic jam at the bridge.

what was i doing in perlis? my aunt stays there and my mom needed to give her something so we travelled aaaaaaaaaallllllllllllll(continue this for 3 hours) the way there and we spent some quality time at the kampung. the cage which usually holds the next chicken to end up in the curry pot was empty so that means the chickens are safe......for now.

reached penang by 5 which is pretty good considering the traffic. we din take the bridge back coz we took the ferry. pretty nice to have the wind whip against ur face while staring at the waters.

pretty? yeah i know, its just a dumb ferry.

fun fact:

to all those who can't get enough of touring islands, i live on one. and its not all that fun.

unless its Penang island :P

kl kl kl....

2009-06-04T16:16:00.002+08:00

KL Trip

pros: 24 hour air con hotel room, big malls, nice astro channels, different choice of food, things to see...

cons: stupid long roads, confusing signs, expensive food, so many people (even at 4 o'clock food court!)

overall:

KL IS NOT PENANG.

fun fact:

my uncle's dogs are so cute.

i miss my old dog.

hmm?

2009-05-28T15:11:00.001+08:00

I'M A-GONNA TO KL,
I'M A-GONNA TO KL,
HEY HO THE MERRY-O,
I'M A-GONNA TO KL!

WHEE!

currently.......

2009-05-26T23:40:00.002+08:00

here's something from phineas and ferb that i can't stop hearing...it's just so nice!

its from disney's phineas and ferb in case you didn't notice. watch it! its funny and has ashley tinsdale in it!

fun fact:

i was treated by a different doctor. my original doctor's second son. the third one is an accupunturist.

ouch.

still sick...

2009-05-25T11:42:00.002+08:00

yes...still sick...a bit better now though.... just a sore throat and a very painful headrush...oh ya, and a cough.
last night was so hot! even at the coolest part of the house with the fan at full blast, i was practically throwing all the pillows and blankets away from the bed. then only i realise, yesterday was a very hazy day...so naturally it is hot. STOP BURNING FORREST!!

i hate hot days.

and the smell of smoke.

sick

2009-05-23T13:57:00.003+08:00

yes i'm sick. no its not A(H1N1). dunno how long its gonna be. last time i checked my temperature was 38.6 degrees... but i still went for the anniversary dinner...after popping a panadol that is....even brought them there just in case. haha. eat all the nice food there...including the deep fried stuff. threw precaution outta window. :P

the entertainment was great. the dancers were wonderful. only thing was only 1 backup dancer was giving her all in every dance. the rest kinda lose to her. i bet she's a sanguine! after all that dancing, how could she still have so much energy to keep up with all the other dancers? haha...

but still, a dinner is still a dinner! my fav dishes that night, pretty much can't lose to this one...

BRAISED SEA CUCUMBER WITH MUSHROOMS!!!

yeah i'm high maintainence.

yadi yadi yadi....

2009-05-21T13:20:00.004+08:00

weird dream, hot weather, lone computer, one person.

and that's all you need to drive me crazy.

to my life.

oh yeah

2009-05-19T20:52:00.003+08:00

was supposed to go for my 2nd motorbike class but i forgot about it so when the ppl at the driving school called i told them to cancel it. crap. and i was sooo looking forward to it. i think i can pass already... just need to learn the hand signals and i'm good. i'm averaging at 8 seconds at the beam without falling off. YEAH!

fun fact:

people actually sell coconut jelly in penang. you don't have to go all the way to setiawan just to try it.

oh yeah, i went there (meaning not setiawan).

:P

2009-05-17T19:06:00.001+08:00

today i went through life like a normal person. if u would like to know more, live through today.

My day

2009-05-14T13:53:00.004+08:00

i went for my second driving lesson yesterday so i had to wear my sport shoes. i was really sleepy and i still was when i came back. so i left my shoes outside the house and i didn't wear them the whole day. i totally forgot about them being outside which is really risky because my neighbourhood has a history of occational shoe thievery. That's why the first time bernice and freda came to my house to stay i told them to keep their shoes inside. can't risk it being sold in lorong kulit the next day...

my dear sport shoes.... just got them this year so i'm super proud of 'em XD (ignore the date. i just set it to default)

later going for my first motorbike lesson. cool yeah! but wait, i have to go to melati for that. and melati is all the way in seberang prai. have to cross the bridge and stuff. haiz.... why cannot just find a big field and learn there la. so much more easier. but still have to remember that most green land in penang island are mostly cemetries. haha. but still, i shall be able to ride the motorcycles in my house soon!

muahaha... my transportation dream....

fun fact:

my friend called me yesterday. she's a primary school friend who i was very close to. she was in my class since standard 4 all the way to std 6. we didn't meet again since the last day of primary school and the last time we spoke was on the phone 3 years ago. first thing she ask was "did you kena NS?" yeah, nice to hear from you too.

nah, i didn't say that to her. people hardly make me angry. i only find people annoying but soon i enjoy them being annoying. as long as its friendly and doesn't hurt me physically. good case scenario? ask that guy in my class when i was in std 6. that whole sand papering my arm was not a good thing. guess what i did. haha.

so we talked and we found out stuff about each other. she was suprised that i was a prefect due to my craziness in primary school. lets face it, a girl who defies every warning a prefect gives isn't exactly a role model to be followed. but talking to her made me realise something. i had changed. she said i was more girly in school but currently, on the phone, i sounded a lot more louder than i was last time. don't get me wrong, she's sounds more confiedent than she was last time but now i realised, i have been rough. man, secondary school did make me louder. i sounded like one of those people who would threathen for fun. gangster in the making? i hope not.

now i gotta figure out a way to be nicer to people. as in speech wise. don't worry my dear friends, i will still threathen, but u would have already known that i meant the best :D

Lazy much?

2009-05-14T13:07:00.001+08:00

whoo yeah, the season of boredom is upon us.

i'm so happy.

Maybe...

2009-05-10T16:09:00.004+08:00

Little Johnny sat on the windowsill, facing the field filled with grass. The fluttering American flag hung outside his house came into his view occasionaly, but that didn't stop the boy from wondering where did people go to when they get hurt inside.

His mother stood behind him, smiling as his face reminded her of her husband, who was fighting a war that never seemed to end. Even Johnny had not seen him for half of his life, and being only 6, he didn't seem to worry because war was important in his daddy line of work. He protects the country and he leaves the house to do so, his mom taught him that a long time ago.

"Mommy?" Johnny asked suddenly. "Yes Johnny?" his mother replied.

"Where do people to when they're hurt inside?" he asked innecently.

"Why, to a place where it doesn't hurt anymore. Are you hurt?" the mother's voice grew with concern.

Johnny swiftly hug his mother, face into her dress. All she could do was place a hand on his head and the other on his shoulder. "I was hurt inside," came a muffled voice, "because daddy wasn't here for my birthday yesterday. But now I don't need to go to the place where it doesn't hurt anymore."

"Beacause it came to me."

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!

What used to be is now what i see

2009-05-08T12:27:00.002+08:00

went to botanic today. didn't realise that this year's merentas desa was pushed forward today rather then in June. oh well...

saw many teachers and friends. haha. majority was the prefects :) last time all my juniors, now all my fans! hehe... no la... play play mah... i understand la... whole half an hour stand at the gate doing nothing can be very boring.... summore got 4 teachers sitting under the tree so cannot slack... haiz... so sad...

met sally at the surviniour shop. turns out she didn't want to take eng lit anymore. all she focus now is form 6 bio at chung ling. wonder what the heck my school people are doing there? bring kettle to school to boil water? really keng la my school people... anything to make their lives better. thats why la, street smart number 1, studies number 2. haha. no la.... jk...

really miss those days. just run like nobodys buisness. haha. i always stand in front but never even qualified for a lucky draw. haha. nvm la. fun mah. waking up at 6, be at the gardens by 7, run at 8, finish by 11. man those were the days...

waiting.....

2009-05-07T20:31:00.003+08:00

sigh....... will i ever get it? only time will tell.....

been bugging my mom about it for so long.... but i guess its only when she can get a good price for it then only she will get it. dun blame her... last i checked, the basic set costs RM 3 990. even after discount its on RM3 280.

been waiting for years now. guess its no harm waiting few more months...

Looking at the screen, seeing how empty it seems...

2009-05-06T14:39:00.002+08:00

Looking at the screen, seeing how empty it seems...

yeah... i know... the line sucks... but that's what happens when u're bored. like me.

ever since finishing my series of my mission trip, i have literally no idea what to write. don't tell me put up pictures of my life because i don't carry a camera wherever i go ok? plus, my phone can't connect to my computer because its not programmed to do so.

my restaurant in facebook is doing fine. really lack of waitresses but i think it will hold up. i turned off the really cute sound in favour of watching music videos online. mostly jay chou songs. i started with wo pu pei and now i ended up with ben chao gang mu. super hip song with cool dance moves. heck, even the two little girls in there can do moves that i can't. i don't really blame them. i only really started doing hip hop last year. really cacat one la but at least got kai tarng to help polish them up.

been thinking about what i wanted to do after spm. last year, i had so many things, learn horse riding, learn driving, pick up where i left off in my wushu classes... so far? i'm just went to my first driving class. whoopie.

sigh... really don't what to do now. stupid dvd player is so fried that even a movie can't play properly after 10 minutes. ah!!! sometimes i wish i had those assignments in sym to do again. wait what? did i just say that? oh crap, now i'm really outta my mind.....

Mission Trip (final part) (Graduation,free,final day)

2009-05-04T11:57:00.013+08:00

Mission Trip (final part) (Graduation,free,final day)

i challenged myself to finish all my experiences in sabah within 1 month that i came back and darn it! i'm gonna do it!

Graduation Day

my handphone alarm rang at 6.30am but i just turned it off because i just felt really sleepy. so i zonked off again. haha. i din realise how long i slept until i heard freda's voice saying," Girls, u have 45 more minutes to get ready." if u dint jump out of bed the moment you hear that i think ur nuts. both yi lin and i lifted our heads the moment we heard the first word. fast leh....
freda has no problem getting up earlier than us coz she has to help her mother prepare breakfast for her brother and cousin. see? so loving... so me and yi lin got ready and we were on time because pr tom came abit later thanks to the morning kk jam. pr tom told freda that he'll pick her up later to go to SIB Lkas for practise. so we left for SIB Likas to meet up with the heng family.

we reached there and the heng family. the other 2 brothers weren't there coz, well, school, duh. aaron had a thriler book that he borrowed from the state libary. pr tom was to follow Mr. Heng's car to the breakfast place. i borrowed aaron's book and all the girls sat in the heng car while aaron sat with pr tom to show the way. when we were leaving, bobby came so he followed us as well.

in the car, we were talking mostly about what sabah has or something like that la. i can't remember :P but i remember reading out loud the state libary of sabah from the chop at the book. 1 thing led to another and i told them about how i got banned from the penang state libary. Mr. Heng thought that i was making up a story because it did sound ridiculous but i assure you, it was real.

we reached the kopitiam at the corner of a row of shop rows. we then found out the speaciality of the place: beef meat balls with koay teow soup. cili sauce is optional. u can choose to eat with bee hoon or mee as well. it was really good man. the cili sauce just amplified the taste of the meat balls. the soup was the best. so clear yet so tasty. if i ever go back i wanna eat that again. its very feeling some more. what they served me was the small bowl. in penang, that would be the big bowl. so you can imagine just how full i was from one bowl. but it was worth it :) we talked with bobby and aaron and bernice's parents for a while. then we thanked them for treating us and we went our seperate ways. i sat in bobby's car with some of us (i can't remember who) and went back to shalom while pr tom went back to pick freda up.

when we reached shalom, kevin and matthew were already there. i can't really remember anything from there onwards so i'm just gonna skip to the part where pr tom came back. we started practise again. after practise we decided to do everything back to detail. i finished the powerpoint slideshow touch ups while the boys were buzy changing the lcd monitor. they were being helped by Jamun, the caretaker. they took the lcd monitor from the powerhouse room and changed it with the original one from the shalom room. the wire wasent long enough from the computer to the lcd so with the electricity turned off, pr tom climbed into the roof to fix it. i could hear him talk and crawling up there. haha.

after trying to fix the stuff, pr tom decided to go and buy a longer wire for the job. so we who had nothing to do, lengan from all the work out. freda and yi lin both went to sleep in the music room; bernice went to sleep in the powerhouse room, aaron was...somewhere; juan, nat and i fell asleep at the "stage". i didn't where benjamin was coz i was sleeping before i knew where he was. haha.
we woke when pr tom and matt came back. we managed to fix the whole thing back and practised again. we managed to have our normal entrances back again for the drama. oh ya, since we didn't have a electric guitar, bernice took over freda's role as acustic guitarist while freda sang with us. she was also needed to open two songs in our worship. we managed a full dress rehersal and even managed to lay out the tables and chairs for the dinner, including the decorative cloth for the tables. it was blue. shining bue. u can imagine how happy freda was. pr tom then did a mission trip debrief outside with all of us. he gave an evalution to all the sabahans while us penangnites will be done back home. matt was in charge of the overall debrief after the whole thing and he had to mail it to pr tom. we left the place to come back later at 4.
pr tom dropped us back in freda's house to bathe and change and get all the stuff that we needed. it was very fast because before we knew it, it was time to go again. so we arrived back at shalom at 5.30pm, seeing ppl there talking. wow.

the guests had arrived! they were chatting and welcoming back the powerhouse ppl and stuff. the food had already arrived but we couldn't serve yet. so we went around meeting friends and the sabahans family. yi lin finally met the ppl aaron kept wanting her to meet so she had a blast. freda's family showed up moments after we did so it was quite funny for us. there was still no electricity so matthew called for a emergency meeting outside. just as he did, electricty came back. Halleluyah! the show can go on. we unwrapped the plastic covering of the food and served dinner. 15 minutes before the start of the show, matthew gathered everyone in the powerhouse room to give us a pep talk, something to get us excited for the whole thing. it did work and i had to get my makeup done for the final time. THANK GOODNESS!!!! (ya la bernice i'll probably have makeup on my face again but it'll be looooonng time from now:P)

the whole programme went well. it was smooth sailing all the way. everyone did a wonderful presentation: nathaniel's testimony was clear and humuorus, something he was working on very hard during practise; yi lin's eyes cleared up and her voice came back clearer than ever; kevin did a great job worship leading and did the best devil performance ever; juan's testimony was smooth even though he had a language barrier; matt touched people with his testimony; freda's father cried when he saw her up there giving her testimony because he could see the change in her; benjamin did a very smooth summary of the heart drama; bernice did her best performance as the *ahem* (u made ur teacher proud! whoops...hehe); aaron made people feel inspired; daniel did a great job as the drunk; me? i'm just glad that i didn't do anything supid or embaressing. i wore a dress that freda lend me, complete with a black shawl from bernice. guess i still need woredrobe help. haha. the pastor that spoke to us was the president of all the SIB churches, Pastor Jerry Dusing. his sermon of youth having to rely on God was motivating as we were entering adulthood and we must always rely on God for strength and wisdom. pr tom then handed the sabahans their plate (again) and gave them their certificate, officially declaring all of us graduates of SYM 2009.

after we were all prayed for, it was paparazzi time! jia jun and their media head, John, were holding professional cameras and they took many photos. those that brought their cameras had a great time snapping the night away. everyone had crazy poses and were talking non-stop about funny stuff. nat and juan did their "no smiling funny girlfriend stories" again in front of freda's friends and we did the open book way of reading the Bible. had a fun time with friends and family and more laughing haha.... pics of the graduation can be found here. just go to the post that says SYM 2009 Graduation and you'll see it all there.

people began to leave and we thanked them for coming. really it was a extream effort to come because not only was it a thursday, it was starting at the time people just finish work. so some people basically rushed over through the jams of kk. comitment man. we once again met up in the powerhouse room for a debrief. this time, pr tom led the debrief and we all relaxed after our last project together. then we confirmed final items for the Pulau Mamutik trip the next day and did our final "SYM 2009!" cheer together.

if u were wondering whether did we get to eat at all, yes we did. after the graduation. there was enough food left for us so we just hantam-ed everything. haha. our dinnermates included 2 youths from powerhouse named Andy, Daniel and John, the media guy. he came to penang a few weeks before we came to sabah for the livewire charge up conference in epcc. really funny la those guys. we cleared up the place and waited outside for pr tom to clear up accounts with aaron. aaron, bernice, matt and juan left for home with jia jun while the rest of us piled up in the van. we saw kevin's house for the first time which was quite far from SIB Likas but it was a really nice area to live in.

we reached home really late at night. by the time i checked my phone, it was nearly 1 am. and we had to get up at 7 because pr tom was coming at 8. so we changed and sleeeeeeeeep...............
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free Day

we woke up at 7 and took our stuff that we needed for the trip downstairs. waiting for pr tom was getting boring so yi lin and freda played the piano together. jay chou's secret. ...... when pr tom came, we left the house and got into the van, ready to go snorkelling!

we reached the jeti first to pick up nat and juan, then headed over to the place to meet. pr tom showed us the filipino market and the seas around. we were to meet at a street called "Gaya Street" but we couldn't find aaron or bernice or matt anywhere. we parked next to the sea so as we waited for them, we decided to look into the sea. there were little fishes there that looked alot like ikan bilis. hehe.

kevin arrived sooner or later and he led us to breakfast. we walked by several coffeeshops before choosing one. lo and behold! who was there? none other than mr. matthew loke and his parents. really didn't expect them there so pr tom joined him and his parents while the boys and the girls and benjamin found seperate tables. yi lin and freda had something that looked like wan tan mee, benjamin had something that looked like bee hoon while i had this really big bowl of koay teow soup with one big piece of taupok and fishballs and meat balls and fishcake. turns out i couldn't finish it. haha. the hengs arrived and we ate together. bernice joined her parents with matt's table while aaron joined the boys. they even brought their youngest brother along so he sat with us. he was really quiet so we talked to him for a while.

then it was time to leave. before they left, matt's parents paid for our breakfast so we were really thankful for that. we left the place and jalan back to the van, not by the same way that we came, but by passing through a shop where we bought tarts and char siew pau. they were meant to be lunch during the trip. so we reached the van and went to the jeti.

the name of the jetty is called Jesselton Point.

kinda like our weld quay but nicer and grander. they even had the entire history of the pier on the walls as u come in. the ticket station is big too. every counter had people calling out to you to buy their tickets. not suprising. this is the pier to go to if you wanted to go island hopping around the tunku abdul rahaman park. jia jun met up with us and we got to meet our guide, this sun-tanned dude (i can't remember his name :P) who has experience in this island buisness. he's the man to go to if u wanna go any island. we gave him the diposit money for the snorkling gear and he got it in his hands. then we left the ticket station for the docks.

there's so many boats! that was the first thing that came into my mind. even when i went to redang, there was only one dock for one boat. tourists were coming and going out.

see that? that's only one side. complete the picture in your head with the same amount of boats that u see in here to the otherside and u'll see what i was seeing.

our guide then took us to our boat where we all were given life jackets for safety.we were told to put all "flyables" under the seat so that they won't, u know, fly out. the ride there was so fun; with the speed and the scenary, you wouldn't missed it for the world. the boat man thought we were going to another island which was further from our intended island so he turned the boat so side that we were so close to the water. haha. it was so cool.

before we stepped out of the boat, our guide passed out our snorkelling gear and went straight to the docks. we asked our guide where the best snorkelling area was and he took us there. along the way, we saw that the island had chalets and hotel style buffet cooking. there were even people playing volleyball and stuff. a burial ground for the original settlers on the ground still remainds in the middle of it all. upon arriving at our spot, we immediately changed into our swim clothes and after an important tutorial on how to snorkel and the basic rules of it, we all jumped in.

the bottom of the ocean is so clear when the water is so clear. you could see the sand at the bottom of the ocean and the fishes swiming up and down from the shore. we saw corrals and many other types of fishes. i had to tell myself that these were all God's creation and that there were still alot more where that came from. they all had different sizes and patterns. isn't our God a creative one?

we stopped for a while for lunch. thats where some of us became confused as to where did we put our own food? everyone's food was in a black plastic bag so we just ate whatsoever that we could find la. there was also a slight problem concerning one of the snorkeling goggles but thank God that we managed to find it. with a lot more teasing of course. then we went to the deeper part of the ocean, mainly for divers, and we stuck our head into the water. all that we could see? a big blur of blue. you couldn't even see the bottom of the ocean because it was so deep down there. kevin even saw the back of a stingray. wow.

we went back to the safe zone and rested a while. i who is chicken, snorkeled somemore until a school of fish came beside me. i freaked when i saw the number of fishes that i stuck my head out and screamed "FISH! FISH! FISH!" usually ppl scream like that when they're drowning, but i was being touched by fish. slimy and cold. eww or wow? eww for now. kevin was skipping dead pieces of corrals and they skipped 7 times! wow. then we decided to go to the other side of the island for a different view. some of us bought fish food and fed the fishes there. i saw a unpuffed pufferfish, a blue starfish, some really big looking fishes and a corral that looked liked a brain. seriously, it did. when me and bernice came up to the beach, the others were covering kevin in sand. i must say, kevin looked very "curvy", if u know what i mean... next was nat. we put so much sand on him that it took him so many times to try and get up. haha. then we went back to the spot with everyone. we showered briefly and went back to the boat.

the boat dropped us at the docks and we bid our guide goodbye. as we left we passed by the tourist souvinior shops and played with them. it looked interesting, espeacially when they made music. we went back at 3pm and reached freda's house. unfortunately, no one was home and freda didn't have the keys so she called up her father to pass it to her at a kopitiam that we decided to wait. it was called 818, one of the best places to eat in kk, according to pr tom. we had our full lunch there and there was a cantonese movie going on at the same time. after lunch pr tom dropped the girls and the penang guys plus aaron at freda's house while he left to drop the rest of the guys back.

while waiting for everyone to be ready, freda's mother, brother and cousin came back. it was around 6.30pm at that time. this was the time they usually came back because of band practise which both freda's cousin and brother were involved in. while pr tom talked with freda's mom, yi lin and freda played the piano again. soon, they were joined by elroy, who played a piece with freda. the whole family is musically inclined. wow. we were going to 1Borneo next to meet up with lavinaia and we asked if she was interested in a movie via sms. pr tom really wanted to watch "the international" so we asked if she wanted to watch that. she said that'll watch the movie with us and have dinner with us too.

i chatted with elroy and eva. well, elroy mostly, he was talking all sorts of stuff about me being a girl looking like a guy and crap stuff. don't worry, i deal with this stuff all the time. he's no exception. :P then we left for 1borneo for a night out in kk. we went to SIB Kingfisher to pick up somebody that pastor danny arranged to take us to 1borneo. he took us there and was the one to take the van back from pastor tom before we left sabah.

1borneo...big right? you should see the inside.

we reached 1borneo and we split up. penangnites minus yi lin went to see the pc fair and wanted to go to the cybercafe (yes, they do have one in the mall) while the rest went shopping. everybody else would just meet up later. so we (meaning my crazy over games and gadgets group) went down to the pc fair at the basment. we looked at some stuff and then went to the cybercafe. only problem is, we couldn't find it. so we asked the consieage, twice. with a half and hour interval. finally we managed to. it was called cyberzone and the place was quiet for cybercafe. ppl weren't shouting at their games but playing so calmly.

we decided to play counter-strike source, a game that we always play when we go to a cybercafe. bernice and jia jun came with the other group and then we were all playing cs together. juan was with us too. and....the lady that we were all anticipating finally came: MISS LAVINIA LAM!!! she went shopping at giant before she came so she had some stuff with her. we greeted, sort of. i mean, how do you greet somebody in the middle of a battlefield? i did, scarificing myself. how noble of me. haha :P i introduced lavinia to the rest of the team and taught her how to play cs. she even managed to headshot pr tom! not bad for a beginner... so we played until we went for dinner.

we jalan to a restaurant called new york. western food la basically. i had a nice chicken while the rest had beef, burger, spaggetti (that was nice), chips and even ordered a shared platter. that was huge because it was meant for four people. matt and nat couldn't make it so they didn't join us. jia jun had bought our tickets including 2 tickets for "the confessions of a shoperholic". even freda deflected from wanting to watch a thriller movie to watch the international with us. so after paying the bill which all of us were wondering how to split including using a scientific calculator, we dashed off for our movie which were starting very soon.

the international was...boring. i fell asleep within 20 minutes of the movie despite my biggest efforts to stay awake. the only time i woke up was when it was the gunfight scene because it was really loud and action-loaded. it was cool until after the scene because i fell asleep again. guess the whole snorkelling thing was more tiring than i thought. i woke up again i heard people laughing. the movie was over and i was the only one still in my chair. thank goodness it my own friends that laughed at me because it was other ppl it would really embaressing.

we left the theater with pr tom wondering something. he was anticipating the movie to be about a man doing anything to get his daughter back from a kidnapper but all he got was a political movie. we went past the movie posters and then he found out: we watched the wrong movie! we were supposed to watch "taken" but the actors lokked alike so pr tom confused the two movies. ah well, we managed to watch a movie still :)

the main actors looks alike, no?

we waited for yi lin and jia jun to come out from finishing their movie. it was ok, they said. nothing spectacular.

so we arranged transport for each of us. juan, lavinia, bernice, aaron and me sat in jia jun's car to drop lavinia and us at freda's house while pr tom dropped the rest. juan sat in front because he lived near jia jun i think. we had to drop lavinia back at UMS but there was a slight run in with the guards. but thank God we were able to drop her back at her hostel safely and we waited at freda's house until she got back with pr tom. pr tom informed us that our flight was 7am in the morning so we had to be at the airport to check in at 5am. which means, we have to get up at 4am. and we got home at 12.30am. we had about 3-and-a-half hours to sleep so went to straight to bed. bernice was spending the night with us but aaron went back. she slept with freda in one room while yi lin and i snoozed over in the other at our final night in sabah.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Day

i was charging my phone which was at the table next to the bed. because it rang at 4, i quickly jumped out of bed and turned it off. we all bathed and got ready as we packed everything and brought it all downstairs. i nearly forgot m towel that was hanging at the banister. haha.
pastor danny was the one who was going to take us to the airport so we said goodbye to freda's mother, who couldn't come because she had to take elroy and eva to school. we left on pastor danny's jeep and went to the airport.

we met with everybody else at the airport. all the sabahan's parents were there to see us of. pr tom did a final debrief and said goodbye to everyone. we took photos and i finally gave my farewell presents to bernice and freda. i just hope they weren't broken inside :P

soon, we had to leave. the sabahans waved us all goodbye at the security check and we (meaning penangnites) went in. at the waiting laouge, yi lin and i went to the souvinior shop to look around. i finnally remember to buy something back for keat siew so i bought her a wooden purse thingy that has the word "sabah" in front. pr tom told us that after the flight, we were to wait at the tar mat like we did when we arrived in sabah and we were to be the last to leave the plane. before the plane left i thought of each and everyone of the sabahans. man, i missed them already.

the plane took off earlier so we reached PIA 20 minutes earlier. i saw 4 chek and 4 chim at the terminal so i figured they probably came back from somewhere. while waiting to claim our baggage, pr tom gave us some kuih and drinks that matt's mom gave us. i got the coffee milk which really refreshing after the long trip. i gave my mom a call to let her know that i've landed and she was already at gelugor.

so we went to the arrival hall. i never knew that the way there was so short. it was my first time :) when we walked out the gate, benjamin's mother and brother was there waiting and she welcomed us back. nicholas said that he missed kevin. we said goodbye and benjamin went home first. we waited outside where pr tom's parents came first. we were told when we got back, we were to rest the whole day. he also waited with us until our parents came to pick us up. my parents came next and after saying goodbye, i left with my family, including my 2ko.

the first thing my parents noted about me, was that the smell i was emitting as well as i have gone dark. the smell was inveitable, i sweated everyday. the skin colour... well, i might've stayed in the sun too long at the island. the first thing i did went i got back? food, of course! i had curry mee which i had missed for the past 2 weeks. ah...

all in all, i had a great time in sabah and i strongly encourage everyone to go for mission trip. if not, then go to sabah for a holiday. its really a nice place. as for u sabahans, u guys are so missed here in penang! you guys left a great impact in all of us and i hope to see you guys anytime when the Lord permitts. good luck in your future endevours!!!

SYM 2009! YEAH!!

Mission Trip (part 12) (rehersal day)

2009-05-02T19:58:00.002+08:00

Mission Trip (part 12) (rehersal day)

We woke up at around 9, i think. as usual, we prepared ourselves and got dressed. we packed up most of our stuff because this is the day we go back to kk. that's right, our mission trip is over. sob. but our trip in sabah isn't. yeah!

walking to the meeting was a bit of a drag, coz we knew that this was gonna be our last meal here at this asrama. while waiting for breakfast, i got a call from 2ko, asking me for my big-e camp book.pr tom then decided to help out in the kitchen, by making a different kind of milo. while waiting for breakfast, i got a call from 2ko. from there i talked to my dad and then my mom. pr tom even talked to my 2ko. thank goodness i charged my phone to full. if not my batteries sure mati 1. then breakfast was served. halfway into breakfast, the pastor in charge of the entire kota marudu area came. he ate with us so we talked with him. the conversation topics varies a lot. from his family to the satanic bible. we even talked about the SDA beliefs and cults. he had read a satanic bible but he burned it after reading a little of it. he said that in it, wrote that love is God instead of God is love. see how the devil twists God's word?

after makan we continued to talk while matt flipped through the newspapers. i can't remember the name of it but it was a newspaper that covers mostly sabah. kinda like one of our chinese newspapers here. the day the newspaper came was the day after our SPM results day i think. the frontpage itself had students who got straight A's in SPM and stuff. Matt's school was SM Luk Yok so it was only natural that he reconised some of the ppl there on the paper. SM All-Saints, bernice's school, was also featured so she was kinda excited. i shudda bought sin chew or kuang hwa that after the SPM results came out, wanted to see if my school was featured. haha.
talking was the pastor was informative. he didn't mind explaining lots of stuff that was happening in the world and in the kota marudu area. really cool guy. then, freda's brother came to say goodbye. it was time to go to work. later a van arrived. guess who came into the meeting hall? it was none other than the pengerusi from Kg Tagaroh! it felt like a reunion after the entire mission trip. we laughed and shook hands with him. he was the one that was gonna take us back to kk in the van. him coming meant that it was time to go. so we prayed for both the head pastor and pastor jul for their work here in the area. then we went back into our rooms to take all of our stuff and gathered outside at the porch.

the van was one of those big square mercades van that u see occationally. which means, it was a really, really, really cozy van. it was fully air-conditioned, something that we were really thankful for, and the radio was playing nice songs. pr tom arranged us in such a way that some bags were on our laps while most of us had enough space to sit. we thanked pr jul and left the asrama.

we stopped by a petrol station. we were in the pekan so the area kinda looked like perlis town. motor shops and coffeeshops were the most i saw. sure there was still houses everywhere but they were mostly stilts houses. then we left. the road was like a highway with lots of trees by our side. we talked and stuff but since it was a long way, some of us fell asleep. oh ya, lavinia sms-ed her time that she could go out with us, which was the day after this day. so i confirmed with her and just enjoyed the scenary. we even went past our first village so pr tom winded down the window and all of us yelled hi to them. haha. the songs that were being played were indonesian christian bands. they had songs that we usually sang in church translated into malay and even had a song which had both english and malay verses. cool man. because the air-con was so cool and the radio was soft, soon i joined everyone in sleep land.

by the time i woke up, we were already in the outskirts of kk. some of us were already awake so i took this time to take in how kk looked like. it was quite a nice city. trees and buildings joined in harmony. there are a lot of wide rivers and bridges. one tall building even rivaled the height of komtar. they call it the wawasan-something. as freda put it, it looks like a giant battery. it did.
the plan was this, we were to drop freda and pr tom at SIB Kingfisher, where they will borrow the church van from freda's father, pastor danny limpakan. the rest of us will head over to SIB Likas to start preparing for rehersal. so we reached SIB Kingfisher first. it was a shoplot in the highest floor of the row of shoplots. the sign of the church, complete with a blue cross that will evn light up at night. when we reached there, something that was going on in the church just finished, so pr danny was waiting there, and he could see us coz he was leaning on the cement railing overlooking the road. we all waved hi to him while pr tom and freda got out of the van, taking some of their stuff along with them. then we went to SIB Likas.

we came into the Likas district, where kevin kept pointing out some wierd structures inside some houses, including dinsours and bears. wow. and to think i nearly got fooled by him... sigh... i gotta stop being so naive. soon we travelled until we could see SIB Likas by a cross on top of a red roof. that red roof was covering a big building, to which bernice said that it was their main santcuary. we drove into a place in front of some apartments. appearantly, that was where freda and her family had stayed before. the church had dorms. check it out! haha.

but that was not our destination. we were suppose to be at a place called shalom in the church. so after clearifying that mistake with the pengerusi, we drove across the road to a banglow. a sign there says "shalom." guess u can't run away from that.

since its a banglow, there was a field. the floor on the porch had nice moziac tiles on it. there was even a bar top thingy with a high chair. lockers lined the way to the office while a libary was located at the left side of the building. bernice is one of the libarians but she..... :P so we took out all our stuff and put it in front of the libary and prayed for the pengerusi. then we waved goodbye to him as he left. the church office was behind the main room. bernice went in there the first thing because she was gonna work there this year. she was all so happy so see her church people there which see considers wierd coz it was wednesday and her church office dosent open on wednesday. they changed it to monday, according to a woman who bernice introduced me to as aunty vivien. she was the first person that u see when u step inside the office. since i was desperate to go to the toilet after the 2 hour journey, i had to cut short bernice's reunion (sry bernice!) and ask her to take me to the toilet.

we went inside the banglow through what the SIB Likas ppl called the "Powerhouse Room". the youth of SIB Likas (e) is called Powerhouse, just like ours is called Frontliners. it was a room with all sorts of stuff about their youth. they had a surround sound system for watching movies, a carom board (courtasy of bernice and aaron), sketches of their youth leader by one of their members (its really good) and pictures of their events like parties and baptisms. i even found bernice's baptism pic on the wall. younger versions of kevin and matt are also there. i'm guessing when they were 15 or somewhere there. haha. they even had blue couches surrounding the walls. basically, its their hangout room. oh ya, manilla cardboards posted on the wall also stated the rules of the room. cool leh...

we then went into the place where we were to have our graduation. it was a room bigger than the powerhouse room, obviously, and it was carpeted. on the walls hung amour shapped cloths with words that lifts up a heavy soul. a table at the back was there, including a little corner for sound stuff and a adjoining room called the music room. thats where they put all their musical equipement including amps. the bathroom was beside it as well as the other bathroom which was next to the powerhouse room. oh ya, the bathroom, was so nice you could sleep in there. it felt more like your own personal bathroom rather than a public bathroom. it had blue tiles and a mini plants around and a shower corner. really nice.

matt straight away had a meeting. we had to get our stuff ready before pr tom arrived so he asked me to add the names of our lecturers and the subject that they taught into the slideshow while the rest had to do music practise.

bernice led me to the office where i was introduced to bobby, her head youth leader. he was sitting across from bernice's place which was a table with a table, along with lots of files on it. i couldnt say that it was her mess because she hadnt worked behind her desk yet. as i got started bernice began to meet up with her co-workers? as well as updating herself up on all the church events. she left soon because she had music practise. their office was big. it was air conditioned as well as the floor had tiles. u had to walk quitely because the tiles werent cemented on concrete floor, they were laid on planks. the tiles were cold as well so walking on it felt so nice. aaron came in later. he gave me his SYM calender so it was easier for me to type them out (thanks aaron!) he even taught me a better way of doing my naming and labeling the slideshows which did make it stand out more. then he also left for music practise.

halfway into my job, a girl came in. she was talking to bobby really excitedly and as i could see, sanguine type. haha. i kept on doing my stuff until bernice came in to check up on me. she was so happy to see the girl that she intro me to the girl. the girl's name was jia jun. i was like, oh... so this is the jia jun i kept hearing about in their telephone conversations... i was basically done with the powerpoint but i had to ask bernice's opinion. i needed the touch up on it. i just could'nt figure out what. leave it to the pros i guess. halfway through touch up, pr tom and benjamin came in. pr tom came to give a courtasy call and left while benjamin came to tell us to go to the shalom room.

when we got there, pr tom had already given orders to place out the chairs and we were getting ready to practice. we only had until 3 because kevin to leave by then for his JPJ scholarship interview. his mother had already arrived inside the room andjia jun was also there. so we had to posisition ourselves for the performances presentations. since there was no extra doors by the sides, we had to do a one way entrance. the music room would have to be our changing room. the programme would be the same as the grad in penang. just that the testimonies had to be done by the sabahans. it was their moment to shine and we penangnites had to do all that we can to suport them, just like they did for us when we graduated back in penang.

when we got to the worship part, bobby came in to observe us. as soon as yi lin said "pass the time to kevin wong!", he exclaimed out loud, "KEVIN WONG?!" wow. guess kevin being worship leader was a bigger thing than i thought. after the worship practise, kevin's mom was so obviously proud of her son. you could just see it on her face. kevin did change after 3 months. at 3 kevin left with his mom so we continued on with the practise.

with kevin gone, we had to improvise during the drama. it was so funny during the "blinded" drama. because kevin was one of the main leads in the drama, we were all saying his lines to make up for his body. even matt did a super exsagerated removal of his blindfolds. it was really funny. aaron and bernice's father came at this point to see them. i already met him at the airport when we came so we like, hi uncle!" oh ya, and he brought food with him. goreng pisang and fried cempedak. can u smell it? haha. so, the accepted drama was ok because juan and i could cope without him. but the best was still the heart drama. because kevin's char had to be in the scene the whole time, matt decided to play his role. it was really cute because matt had an innocent face on him and he wasn't "bad" enough to play kevin's role. it was so hillarious. heng sr. went back before he could see bernice play her role. the best is to see it with everyone. haha.

it was raining very heavily at that time. so it was only logical after practise that we stayed inside the room. pr tom had a debrief and met jia jun officially. he shortened it to jun. y? dun ask me. i dunno. jia jun was the one in charge of overseeing the grad here. she's 18, just like us. she was supposed to join sym with us but in the end she couldn't. why? again, dun ask me. i wouldn't know at all. all i know is that she's a really fun girl and she knows the best eateries of kk. that is why after debrief, we all cleared up all the chairs because there was gonna be a prayer meeting later, we ate up all the goreng pisang and cempedak (did i mention that they eat goreng pisang with cili sauce?), we took our bags and stuffed it all in the kingfisher van. juan's mother came at this point to pick him up. and since we were going for makan, she followed too. the powerhouse people went with jun while aaron sat with the rest of us in the van to provide directions to the coffeeshop.

it was traffic jam because some schools just finished class so we were caught in it. we went past many housing estates and shops before turning into 1. we saw where the place was but we couldn't find parking. we then went to the back and found a spot there. and so we had our lunch/tea. which was meat ball with noodles. the noodles looked like wan tan mee. they even taste like it too! the meat balls were pork and they served it in a soup like koay teow thng. nice right...? it tastes even better. the sabahans suggested that we even try a drink called "kit chai ping". it was their empla sui phuey or sui phuey peng. i din try it. because i was really in the mood for a hot drink. haha. we talked and pr tom said that he was going for a movie at night together with the penangnites. freda was coming along and bernice too.

we left the placing while thanking juan's mom for belanja-ing us. it was a really kind jesture considering the amount of people and food that we ordered. so we all got into the van except juan who went home with his mother. pr tom dropped us, the girls, at freda's house. we took out all our stuff and met with freda's mom and her younger brother, elroy, and her cousin, eva. she's staying with freda's family because she goes to the same school as elroy. plus, elfreda's mom teaches there too. oh ya, we even met hiro, the dog freda was so happy about. it's gray and shaggy so its cute in a way. pr tom told us that he was coming at 8 and left.

since bernice didn't have her clothes with her, she took this time to relax in freda's room. freda had 2 rooms for us. one was a big room where she shares with her cousin while another was her own personal one. i put my bags in her personal room while yi lin put hers in freda's other room. bernice's hp spoilt at this point so i borrowed her mine. in one phone call, she found out something so she then told me that she couldn't follow us to see the movie. she was gonna go home with her family that will pick her up from freda's house. sooner or later she fell asleep so i used what little time left to bathe and get ready. yi lin bathed first then me. when i came out of the bathroom, yi lin was doing something on the bed but bernice had fallen asleep. i lied down on the bed but soon i also fell asleep. i woke up hearing footsteps and saw freda's father. he was looking for her so i said that she was maybe in the kitchen. then i couldn't sleep but instead i tried by lying down and closing my eyes. again i heard footsteps but i couldn't be bothered to look so i just lied down there. i heard freda's (thats right freda! i was awake! :P) voice going "woah!" and "woah!" at both rooms. assuming that it was because all 3 of us were sleeping, i took this time to "wake up" and she told us that it was dinner time. she went to wake yi lin up while i woke bernice up.

so we went downstairs. pastor danny was leaving for class so we bid him goodbye. then we went to the dinning table with everybody. it was a really nice meal. bernice's family came and we met with the entire heng family. bernice saw her two younger brother's for the first time in 3 months and she was like, they're so tall! i must admit, for a 13 year old boy, being taller than bernice is somewhat an achievement. her other brother was more shy and didn't say much. soon they left so freda's mother prayed for the food and we began to dig in. well, we couldn't eat actually because so ngam pr tom came. pr tom, daniel and benjamin joined us for dinner so those who were going to see the movie had dinner first. pr tom talked with freda's mom after dinner for about 30 minutes and then we left.

going there, i had the chance to see the night beauty of kk. its quite lighted up, espeacially in the high end areas. the cars arent as many as in the daytime so we were quite thankful for that. in the van, pr tom told us that aaron and bernce's parents wanted to take us out for breakfast the next day. this was to the penangnites only. the breakfast was at 8 in the morning while pr tom will come pick us up at 7.30, which meant yi lin and i had to wake up at 6.30 am the next day. ok fine then.

we went to 1 Borneo, best described as the queensbay of kk, only bigger. the place was huge. with even a conceiage counter at the front. we parked in the multistory parking lots and freda led the way to the movie counter. it was gsc to the peak. we decided to watch race to witch mountain. while waiting for pr tom to buy the tickets, yi lin and freda decided to go shop for a while . i saw daniel lining up to but popcorn so i asked him to buy for me as well. manatau when he gave me my stuff, pr tom was all "that" again. oh pls, even after the mission trip, i mean c'mon! freda and yi lin came back on time so we went to the counter where they tear your tickets. we asked if we could bring the video camera in and they said we could, only if we never take it out. so we thanked the guys and happily watched our movie.

it was so nice. i mean, the action and the superpowers, that was what i was looking forward to after all this. kinda was disapointed at the ending but who cares? i got my movie fill :) we left the cinema at around 11 something. let me tell you, the whole place is creepy when they are closed. the lights are mostly off, the people are all gone, and the escalators stop moving. go to queensbay at 12 and u'll know what i mean. they even close the toilets! so we were going around looking for open toilets and thank God we found one on the way out. haha.

then we left the place at 11.45 pm. the roads were practically empty so it was a breeze to go home. when we reached the house it was almost 12 midnight but thank goodness pastor danny was sitting downstairs watching a show so he opened the door for us. pr tom then left while all of us quietly went upstairs to change. we were so tired that we zonked off within 15 minutes after setting the alarm to 6.30 am.

Mission Trip (part 11) (SIB Pekan)

2009-04-30T20:22:00.002+08:00

Mission Trip (part 11) (SIB Pekan)

again, i woke up freezing and blur blur... haha... i had to. it was 7. breakfast was 8. we all got up and prepared ourselves to go to the meeting hall. we sat there and talked, waiting for breakfast. apearently, there was a funny incident between pr tom and freda involving the bathroom. i won't go into details but since this is my electronic diary, as long as we can remember, its good enough for me.

pr juliana came and served us the usual tasty and filling breakfast. pr tom then asked pr juliana whether she could guide us into the pekan because he wanted to buy stuff for his sermon. it was our last church today and we heard that all the SIB pastors in the district were coming to hear him speak. she said yes so we were pretty excited. but wait, there was one more important question. this was how it went (if i remember it clearly):

------------------------start of conversation----------------------

us: er... pastor, adakah pastor akan masak makan tengah hari untuk kami?
pr jul: um... kalau mau makan di pekan, tak payahlah.
us: oh ok. kami mau makan di pekan bolehlah?
pr jul: boleh. jadi tak perlu masak untuk kamu semua lah?
us: tak payah. terima kasih pastor.

-------------------------end of conversation----------------------

u can guess what was going on in our heads. KFC!!! here we come! suprisingly, we always had chicken in the kampungs. but this time, we were more hyped about this chicken. haha. and so after breakfast, we helped to clear up the plates. we went into the kitchen to put the plates there. that's when i saw a fishbowl with a goldfish in there. emergency dinner? i dunno.

we got ready by 10am and we (except juan) all walked to the pekan. on the way, we stopped by the milk collection plant to buy milk. pr tom had a bottle of 100 ml mineral water with him so he asked if he could buy the milk. the ppl said yes so they cleaned his bottle and sold it to him. nat also had his 1 litre mineral water bottle with him so he also bought some. it was already pasturised and cold so it was refreshing under the hot sun.

we walked into the pekan and jalan into a hair shop. why? coz pr tom wanted a shave. makes him look better for preaching. haha. we didn't want to go out of the shop coz it had air con but we still went out. pr juliana then led us to a cybercafe. sort of. it is one, but unlike the other cybercafes that we usually go to, this one was like a libary. everyone was quiet, doing projects or homework, and very soft relaxing music filled the place. they even offered computer classes. pr jul went off and said she'll be back in an hour plus. so we payed first before using the comp and went to use.

the first thing i checked was my email and facebook. when i saw all the comments about the grad pics, i suddenly missed everyone back home. i caught up with the progress of the youth who went to the salvation army to do charity work. they even did one of our dramas which was "blinded". i so wanna see! bet they had a great time doing it, just like we did. i even chatted with melody leong and she told me what a great time she had during City in Worship. that must have been a great scene coz it was held in esplanate. can you imagine the crowd? oh yeah, halfway into my computer time, guess who came in? pastor raynold from Kampung Soronsob! the fun guy that gave us eagle meat for breakfast! we were hey hi! he was suprised to see us there as well. he even asked me for my msn. i still have his. haha.

at around 11.45 pr juliana came back so we left the place. she took us to a souvenir shop at the cornner of a row of shop lots. there were some cute stuff on sale, including big, bendable, flower that matt has. there was also a soft and fluffly hand. appearntly, if u hit it, it makes a sound. something that nat really loved to do. haha. i bought a tube of super glue for the buckle of my pouch bag that broke in the last kampung. it was only 90 cents! talk about offers. bernice bought a dolfin thingy and a mug for her parents while yi lin bought handphone acesseries for freda and bernice. she also bought stuff for dorathy. so cute... i can't remember what else anyone bought but i know that we left the place for lunch.

we asked pr jul for directions to the KFC because that was somewhat the highlight of the trip here. she couldn't follow us because she had to go back to cook lunch for the students so she told us the directions to get there. we thought we were going the right way but manatau we were taking the long way. she pointed to us the correct way coz we were so far from her already. we walked around a building and then we finally saw it. we thanked pr jul and went on our way. we could smell it from the road across. we were happier still when we entered the place. mission trip go eat KFC. best mission trip ever. haha.

we ate to our hearts content. well, we did. matt just slept on one of the tables while we ate. we just make jokes that he was waiting for his "date" to arrive. maybe he was tired so we went on with our meal. suddenly, in the distance, a figure came. he walked past the field, and towards us. we saw, we guessed, we confirmed. it was pr tom. he was looking for us and he knew where. well, sort of. he was walking pass the KFC until we waved like nutcases at him inside the place. he finally saw us and came walking. when he came in, he was clean shaven.

well into our lunch, something happened. can't give you the details coz if i did, someone will hate me forever :P long story short, i had an extra orange fizz while some of them went to buy stuff. we bought some KFC goodies for pr jul and juan and went to the supermarket. we met up and i went with the others to go back first. i jom the bathroom first coz i felt so sticky and dusty from all the walking.

after bathing, everyone was back and rested for a while. later in the afternoon, we had devotion by pr tom. it was a continuation of the day's before about the 10 comandments. halfway thruout devotion, it started to rain heavily so we went to take our clothes that were hanging to dry in. oh did i mention, we can hang our clothes at the clothes line between the kitchen building and the main building. so anyway this church, SIB Pekan was our next and and final ministry . so after devotion was our practice time for our service later. since it was our last practise, we decided to go all out. nat and yi lin were picked for testimony. nat's testimony about his salvation was hilarious as he tried to find the right words. it was relaxing for all of us as well. then we practiced the heart drama. pr tom gave kevin some tips on how to utilise the steps of the stage to pull his devil act to be more extreme. yi lin then practiced her testimony which was pretty smooth. good job :)

after practice, we went back to the asrama to rest. we had some more snacks and rest. since we had like 2 hours till dinner, we were all super relaxed. since our dress code was the blue sym shirt and jeans, we just bathed and wore our shirt while still in our shorts. we decided that we will change only before dinner. kevin came in to talk, because he said girls are better listeners. now that's a man that's up for grabs! haha. matt came in as well as nat. we yabbered all the way until we had to change into our jeans. bernice went to bathe while matt said he'll give us only 30 seconds to finish changing. funny. considering it was our room! we changed within 30 seconds but matt never opened the door. we thought he was being gentlemanly but turns out he just left. bernice came in but she was in her shorts. (i will skip this part coz something very funny happened but not appropriate to tell u... this is only for the memory of the girls of SYM 2009)

skip to after all that, the guys came in again to gel up their hair kevin got his eyes done. the gelling was done on time but kevin's eyes were not. so we went to the meeting hall to finish up. yi lin borrowed my blush while i kena makeup attack again by bernice and freda. this time is extra bombing. my hair. bernice used gel to give my hair a wet look while freda used her sunsilk hair repair thing to get my hair into place. she kept saying about rebonding and stuff like that. wow. guess i messed up my hair that bad huh... bernice and freda likes to do makeup and hair for ppl so i guess i got help from the experts. well, give me few more months and my hair will be long and hopefully smooth. haha.

soon it was dinner time. we sat in the dinning room which was actually long tables in the midde of the room and chairs along the wall. there was a man and his wife who cooked all the food. we all sat in our places except yi lin and kevin who had to finish up. as we had our dinner, we talked with the man and found out that he's a teacher. freda's brother came later and joined us as well. pr jul came after and served us another dish. after doing kevin's makeup, yi lin came in for dinner. kevin followed but i nearly spit out all my food when seeing him.

he was pink! the devil was sorta blushing! it was so hillarious. everyone was asking yi lin why was he like that and she said made him look evil from afar. immedietly, finally, dinner was alive again with laughter. thx yi lin, for that. it was starting to get awkward when no one talks at the dinner table. and so we continued our dinner with lots more noise and laughter. since the group that i was in for children ministry had to do this last time, we asked for everyones sweets and got all the stuff ready. freda went to her brother's room to borrow his water boiler so that we could have out "slumber party" later. then we all went to the church after dinner.

at the church we were suprised to find the number of ppl there fewer than other churches. we were expecting alot of ppl including VIPs of the area but i guess the earlier storm prevented that. so we greeted the ppl there. the youth there were mostly girls that sat in the front row with pr jul. there were few more families around so we went to shake their hand as well. so far we only saw 1 kid there so pr tom said that there won't be any children ministry that day. yeah!!! now all of us would get to see pr tom's sermon which is supposely the most action 1. i went to ask about their ohp but turns out they don't have one because they were using lcd to project their lyrics. pr tom then told me to check whether they our songs in their computer but they didn't. so i had to type them out but there wasn't enough time so we had to stick with the old fashioned way of holding the mahjong paper. both me and kevin were in charged of it because he was next to me.

service started nicely. holding the mahjong paper with both hands and not being able to relax one leg proved to be a challenge. there wasent much vantilation going on so it was pretty hot. not to mention i was wearing a blouse inside of my shirt so i was sweating on my arms fast. i prayed to God that He would give me the strength to hold on and He did. Praise God. if not, i would have been lying on the floor, passed out from the heat. My testimony. :)

the drama went well. kevin's devil movements were the best in all his other times in doing it. utilising the steps were a great idea. pr tom's sermon later was different than the rest. the milk that he bought was used as part of his visual aids during the sermon. it kept ppl awake and attentive. espeacially when he gave out different kinds of milk to the congregation. everyone had a great time. even after ministry. we spent time with the youth and took photos with them. because it was getting late, we all went back to the asrama for debrief.

we came back to the asrama to find it out of electricity. appearently the switch tripped so we were walking around trying to get it back on. everyone had their torchlight on so it was disco minute. haha. the boys of the asrama were poking out their head to look what was going on. pr tom finally managed to get the electricity so we were all "yeah!". but the night was not over. we still had debrief. and so and 11 something at night, there we were, sitting on the couches, having debrief. suddenly, juan jumps up and says "yes!" all of us were like, huh? he then points to the ground in front of freda and shouts "freda! crockroach!" freda immediatly withdrew her legs and looks "where? where? where?" all of us were looking for it as well. manatau that juan said "yes! APRIL FOOL!" we looked at him like, are u serious? but in the end we all laughed. how could we forget?! it was the 1st of april already! freda whacked juan while we all became, u know, its a feeling. i can't explain it. u had to be there urself. after all that happiness, we all went to our rooms.

we the girls, thanks to freda's foresight, had hot water to cook our instant mee. word spread quick and soon juan and kevin joined us as well in our room. all in all, we had a great time of fellowship and fun. slumber party SYM 2009 style. only we can pull it off. haha. we all only had few more minutes till lights out so we finished our food and went to bed at the final night at the asrama.

Mission Trip (part 10) (Kg Lotong)

2009-04-27T23:21:00.004+08:00

Mission Trip (part 10) (Kg Lotong)

let me first clarify that some of the timeline maybe out of order in this post due to my forgetfulness. hehe. dunno wat was wrong with me :P

we woke up at 9 which was a fresh new change in our schedule because we have always been waking up at 7 or 8 to get ready for our transport but since we were already in our location, we got the extra sleep. i woke up aching at the neck and freezing because i was sleeping on the top bunk and i was really really close to the celing fan. plus, the place gets really cold at night so i kena tembakan sejuk by the place. but hey, who says u dun get air con when u’re in mission trip
right?

so we all woke up and got ready by 10am. the toilets are a separate building by itself. the men are in one side while the girls next to them. theres also a sink outside the toilets for you to brush your teeth and stuff. the bathroom was a bathroom in a room next to the kitchen which was a separate building from the main building. i know. confusing, isn’t it? actually its not. its just the way i explained it. thats why bernice says my words are too hard to be understood. haha. we met in the meeting hall for breakfast which was mee goreng with egg omelets and fried rice and milo. all this was done by pr juiliana herself. a really good chef and self-sacrificing pastor if i may add. while we were eating, pr tom anounced that he was going to the pekan to shop. we were allowed to follow if we wished or we could stay back in the asrama. our answer: oh yeah!
so we all got ready and by 10.30am, we left the asrama without kevin and bernice coz for some reason they didnt want to follow. kevin was in his room when we left while bernice was standing at the main door, telling us as we walked away to “oi! remember to buy snacks ya!” good reminder. i was wondering what to do there other than to just jalan for fun. haha.

we walked along the road for a while. we passed by some buildings you don’t really see in penang. such as, a milk collection plant, a driving range (i have no idea what’s it do but its defitnetly not learning how to drive), a latex collection plant and such. we walked somemore into the pekan and it really is a nice place. the place is like a park, with trees and grass and concrete “benches” that u can sit on and u’re oso surrounded by shops. pr tom went into a cyber cafe to check up on his email. because the cyber cafe is kinda small, we decided to keep on walking and stopped by a coffeshop nearby.

i ordered my usual kopi while freda had tea and matt had some sort of lemon tea thing. its made by themselves thats why penang dosen’t have it. its even more sour than “sui kam peng”, he claims. oh well, i could never tahan sour anyways the tv in the coffeeshop was on and the channel was WWE. we watched the ppl doing smackdowns, punches, fake kicks and bla bla bla. we saw pr tom wondering around looking for us outside the coffeshop so we called out to him. he came and sat with us while watching WWE with us. there was a whole story going but none of us couldn’t figure out what was going on. so we basically watching all the fighting for fun. then we left to buy essentials.

we went to a kedai runcit to buy snacks and stuff. we almost paid when some1 anounced that there was a superstore nearby. so we dropped everything and went to it. i was wondering what was a superstore until we reached the place. its a supermarket. yes i should have known from the word “store” but i thought it was something different, you know? we even went to this place where its a wet market downstairs and a supermarket upstairs where everything is bought in bulk. bernice thought that penang dosent have this kinda stuff. obviously she havent been to mydin. haha. well, except the wet market but yeah, you get the picture.

so we walked over to the supermarket and bought our stuff. i bought cereal fun packs for only 6.90 when the kedai runcit was selling at 7.20. talk abt timing! yi lin and freda bought some sort of sunsilk hair repair thing and some snacks and mee cup (i think). after all the (white chicks style) “shopping”, we all headed back to the asrama for lunch.

we had a nice lunch at 1 so we were quite stuffed. later we went to the church in front for devotion. after praying for Kg Soronsob and stuff, we had our devotion which was led by pr tom. (fast forward to sometime later) we went back to freshen up for the next kampung. we (the girls) had snacks for tea and we all were preparing for the next kampung.
our transport then came at 4 (i think). there were 2 vehicles: one was a mini van while another was a car. i got into the car with yi lin, matt and kevin if i’m not mistaken. the journey there wasn’t as long as the one to the previous village. in fact, we went past a KFC so we were all kfc……. haha. the road was dusty again but it was ok coz we were all covered up in the car and we went by lots of padi fields.

we then came a empty space with lots of houses and grass. we stopped in front of a wooden house with long tables and benches. we said thanks to both the drivers and greeted the ibu-ibu there. they were preparing tea for us so we went to the church to practice. the church was moderately big. there was a big alter space and a door by the side as well as a main door in front. after practice we prayed for the service as well as the people there. it was then the ibu-ibu had finished preparing tea for us so after prayer we went to eat.

we were served donuts and tea. we talked with some of the youths there as well as those who cooked for us. it was about 5 and the sun was going down so some kids came to play badminton outside on the empty space next to the church. we played with them and got to know the kids there as well. then some of the teenage girls went to the church stage and started playing the instruments. they played everything. the electric guitar, the bass and even the really new looking drums. wow. talk about an all female ensemble. some of us followed them and when it was too dark, the kids went back to bathe while the rest of us went inside the church to watch them.

some of the girls were also the dancers for their church so they started dancing. yi lin and bernice followed them in dancing and then hyper-high nat oso joined them. freda, who reconised the song they were playing to, decided to sing with them on the mike. kevin played along with the acoustic while aaron took over the bass. daniel tried to follow the beat in the drums but he couldn’t so pr tom showed him. when daniel tried again i also tried to follow by pretending to play air drum in front of him but all i got was yi lin filming both of us. don’t ask me why. i deny “it” all! matthew then took over the drum from daniel and i watched the dance. nat asked me to dance along but i refused because i know can’t follow the steps. he told me that he couldn’t follow it as well but he was following just for fun. these words encouraged me (thx nat!) and soon i found myself dancing the dusun dance along with them. my actions were really “rough” if compared to their graceful moves but it was still fun.

after all that jamming session, the girls left to bathe and get ready for church because there were people coming already. we took the time to cool off (it was really hot) and we greeted the people that came. while waiting for the service to start, nat met his aunt and cousin who was really cute and shy. i asked nat if he came from this kampung but he told me that only his aunt lived here, not his family. freda also spotted her brother who came just to see her ministry work with us so she was pretty…. i dunno what she was feeling. haha. but i knew the pain in my neck was hurting so much that i couldn’t even turn my neck to the right so i asked freda to help message it. it did feel better but i was making too much noise that she told me to keep quiet. so i bit my finger to muffle the noise. aaron was sitting next to me and judging by the intensity of me closing my eyes and the drool that he mistook for tears, he told freda that i was crying. she stopped immediately.
i was like no no u didnt! aaron was eh? not meh? i went no…… we would continue but service was starting already so we just got ready. we did the acceptance drama while daniel did the salvation testimony and bernice did the thanksgiving one. then elfreda’s group went to do children ministry in the house where we had our tea, leaving all of us to listen to pr tom’s sermon.

after the sermon, the pengerusi of the church asked us to do a performance. we were like, what?! what r we gonna do? so we ran and got freda, who was finishing up, to come over and help us. we sang of of the songs that was meant for arrangement 2 of the song list but the villagers were singing it more than we did. haha. we had to do one more but we had no other malay songs to sing so we decided to do a english song. we sang My Redeemer Lives (if i’m not mistaken pls confirm) and matt had to explain the song after singing it.

the remainder of elfreda’s team came back and distributed their sweets to the congregation. we were then invited for a very late dinner at the house where we had our tea with the other villagers. it was a very wide varity meal and we had a fun fellowship with the people there. bernice and i had a conversation with teachers and 2 sets of twins and few more people.
soon, we had to leave the place. some of the youth there took photos with us and we got into our transport. i got into the van with nat, aaron, bernice, yi lin, freda and daniel. pr tom sat in front with the driver. we waved goodbye to the people as we left and went on our way. it was a very dark place with no street lamps and the road was dusty. we joked all the way back to the asrama.

when we got to the asrama, freda went to the toilet first while we went to the church because the students who will be going to school the next day needs to wake up at 5 in the morning. we sat on the pews outside of the church had had our debrief. pr tom then told us that we can go to the pekan tomorow to do whatever we wanted. we could even eat kfc if we wanted, provided that pastor juiliana doesn’t cook lunch for us. can u imagine the feeling in our hearts? haha… and so we all went back into our rooms and went to bed, only to awaken to another wonderful day that God has made.

Mission Trip (part 9) (Kg Tallas)

2009-04-23T02:01:00.003+08:00

Mission Trip (part 9) (Kg Tallas)

we sat on the truck talking and laughing as usual. we went past some paddy fields and came across a SDA church that was having service. seems like we had to get the people before they did. the roads were also dusty as to the fact u can see the covering of dust on the cars that were parked along the road. some unpleasant words were writen there as well but i won’t eleborate more after travelling for quite a considerable distance and time, we realised that we were in a town. i was a bit happy to see something familiar after 6 days in the interior. we went on futher away from the town and were going past some land with alot of lalang. suddenly we were slowing down and we turned into a church. oh wow, i thought, what happened to the village? i read the sign in front of the church that said “SIB Pekan”. freda then told us that this was where she got hiro, her dog. we stopped in front of the church but only pr tom got down. appearently, our next transport was late so we stayed in the truck. aaron and nat were playing a game where each person took turns to say a really depressing story of their make believe girlfriends and see if they can keep a straight face the whole time. nat was the obvious winner coz he’s face never changed while aaron couldn’t stand it and laughed everytime he heard nat’s story and every time he told his own story. juan was asleep which was a miracle considering the loudness of the laughter that came from matt, aaron, kevin and me.

after waiting for around half an hour, another truck came. the people in there greeted us. so we took our bas and we went to…the back of the church. there was a building there and a lady who greeted us. she is Pastor Juilina or something like that..hehe.i can’t really remember. but she’s the youth and children’s pastor of the church in front and the building is an asrama for the kids who live in the kampungs and need a place to stay as their school is in town. shes the head of the whole asrama and according to freda, her eldest brother is also staying in the asrama coz its closer to the school where he works as a teacher. he just wasen’t there coz he goes home during the weekends.

we put all over stuff in a room that was stated “pelawat”. cool. i quickly change into my skirt and left my jeans on the bed and got outta there. it was a narrow passage way so if we nothing to do we were to stay outside the asrama. a dog came by and freda became super friendly with it. reason? that dog was hiro’s mother and another dog that soon came after was hiro’s brother. i forgot their names but who cares, right? well, freda cares but lets go on with the story.
we werent going to this church but another one in a kampung so we all climbed in to the new truck (this time with pr tom at the back with us) and we set off for a wonderful journey ahead. wheee…………………

……..ouch! woah! ah!!! i’m falling off! those were the screams and shouts of the poor 12 ppl who were sitting at the back of the truck. haha… we went by a lot of differnent terrain such as paddy fields and a lot of trees. the roads were so dusty that i tried to minimise as much talking as posible. the roads were almost like no ending, as bernice calls it. then we came to a hill. the slope was like more than 45 degrees that the driver changed the motor into a 4 wheel type. when we went up, you can feel the change in energy of the truck just go up. we passed by a lot of rubber trees and the road became rockier and rockier. we went up and down the whole time and we were all holding on to the railings for dear life coz we could fly out the back. it was like being pulled into a black hole at the same time we were having fun. espeacially with freda who couldn’t stop “melatar-ing” the whole journey there. we went by beautiful scenery along the hills. the roads was also super rocky to the fact that some parts of the road were actually rocks.

after travelling for an hour, we came by a clearing with a real-life buffalo in front of us! for me, it was a new experience because i have never seen a buffalo so up close before! i know, what’s so great about seeing a buffalo and yada yada… u kinda had to be in my shoes to know this feeling. we went in futher to see more houses, all of them on stilts. the driver parked the truck under the garage and we all pilled out. an old lady walked by us so yi lin and i said good morning to her but the lady seemed to be “scolding” us, i guess? we looked at each other confused until the driver told us that she was “off”. oh…. that makes sence.

we then procceded into a house right next to where we were and ushered into the living room. the kitchen was in another section of the house where all the ladies and kids were at. the living room was big. 2 single couches were at one end of the room while at the other was the double and triple couch. pr tom and i sat on the double couch while the other 3 girls sat on the triple couch. the guys sat on the floor next to the single couches and benjamin sat on one of the couches. matthew was practicing with the guitar together with kevin while everyone else rested and slept because we all didnt really have enough sleep. did i mention that it was a HOT day and there was no fan there. so u can imagine the heat and sweat that was coming down our necks, wave by wave. thank God that an occational breeze came by once in a while. hey, can’t blame for wanting to experience nature as it is. its like when u r in a “hot” situation, God comes in to refresh u so that u can face the troubles. i still believe the best way to experience God is by nature, not manmade stuff.

anyways, after waiting a while, an elderly man came in. he’s the man of the house so we went to greet him. he sat on one of the single couches and talked to us. turns out he has 5 or 7 sons (i can’t remember). the eldest is already a father and the youngest is still studying. his eldest son was sitting on the varendah outside, carrying his newborn child. so cute… we talked to the old man more and realised that he was the pengerusi of the church and the entire congregation consisted of his family members throughout the kampung. the pastor of the church then came to meet with us and suprise, suprise, he was our driver to this village. guess if u didnt have someone from the kampung to take u here, u wont be able to find it even until the next day. he had a friendly chat with us and invited us to have breakfast first.

man were we full after breakfast. i mean, who can take in more food after the eagle meat meal? not to mention that we were more tired than hungry so we just ate up. it was nice btw. the cili just made it even nicer. no wonder we were able to eat the second rounds. after breakfast, the bell rang for service. we went towards the church after putting on our shoes and yeah, remember tat i told u that i should have brought my flats? well this is the prob. becoz my stupid heels were 2 inches high and they were strapies, i took a long time to put on my shoes and was the last person of the group to reach anywhere. seriously, its not nice to bend down and fasten the buckle of ur shoe when u’re standing 2 feet in the air and on the edge of FALLING DOWN!! so anyway, we walked over to the church which was like just 3 metres away from the house we were at.

the church was like the houses around it except that it had a brass bell hanging in front of the doors and a sign above it that says SIB Tallas. it was all made by bamboo. we went up the steps (yeap, steps) into the sancutary. it was a really cute church as to the fact that it had wooden benches and a stage with the musical insturments. we were to do the acceptance drama but we were seriously drained out, as evident when we were doing practice. but we all prayed for strength and that we would be able to give our best during ministry.

it was a service of change for all of us as we usually did our service at night but becoz this was a morning sunday service, we all were abit more “hot” than usual. the guys were wearing their long sleveed shirts and tie while we the girls were covered neckto feet. well, freda and yi lin at least. bernice and i were only covered to our knees. doing the drama on heels wasent as bad as i thought. i didnt fall down or anything embarressing so it was a smooth show all the way. yi lin’s group was in charge of the childern’s ministry and it was their last time so pr tom told them to give away all their sweets so that we wouldn’t have to bring back to penang all of it. the congregation wasnt as much as the other villagers but i can tell they had a good time. they were mostly rubber tappers as seen from the number of tapped rubber trees near the village. pr tom’s jokes kept the old man laughing so much that he held his stomach. must be really funny to him i guess. i suppose after hearing pr tom’s jokes again and again made me “immune” to it so i just smiled everytime he made a joke. after service we all headed back to the house to rest.

we went back to the house to see the kids running around yi lin and aaron while holding their lion masks. some of the kids were really getting into the character of a lion that they were so cute roaring. i took some photos for memory sake and plus the little girl was so adorable. the eldest son of the old man then turned on the tv and put on a hillsong live album. i was like, yeah! hillsong! were all sitting at the same place as we first came with the exception that kevin had switched places with yi lin. she was on one of the single couches playing with the ids. everyone who needed the rest slept again. i wanted to, but with the song going on and the heat going on, i just couldn’t. so what i did was sing along softly along with the album. at that time, they also took out a stand fan so we wouldnt feel so hot so it was really kind of them to do so. we had lunch with them as well and the dishes were as good as the amount they served us. man it was so good that i didnt realise that breakfast had gone away so fast and we were really hungry! during lunch they changed the cd to one of a indonesian christian singer doing a large scale concert like hillsong. really good man i tell u….

soon, we had to leave because it was going to rain and with that kind of terrain we had to go on, it was advisiable that we go while its still dry. so we had a group photo with the old man’s family and we again, climbed into the truck in similar fasion. well, not really, the truck was backed to the steps so it was much easier to get into the truck. oh ya, we had an extra passenger with us! he was a 13 year old boy who needed to go to back to the asrama after his weekend back home. so he came with us in his school uniform and sat in the middle of the truck. it started to drizzle as we said goodbye to the people and off we went to the jungle of rubber trees.

the journey back was just eventful as getting there. we were going down slopes of rocks and the eldest son of the old man and his son (i think) followed the truck at the back with his motorbike. it was nessesary coz we needed his help to remove rocks that were blocking our path. halfway through the jungle, we stopped. we thought that the driver was gonna change the motor of truck but manatau we were actually changing drivers! we took this opportunity to take photos and videos for the final editing. it was fun making the truck shake as if we were travelling.

then the new driver came in a car with other people inside. pr tom shook hands with him and so the old driver stood at the edge of the truck as he was also going into town. pr tom decided that since he was already outside, he wanted to try doing what the old driver did. we then left after waving goodbye to the old man’s eldest son and parted ways at the juction. while we were travelling we stopped again on top of a hill in front of a giant rock. appearnently we were being given the opportunity to take pictures in front of the rock. we climbed out of the truck and climbed up the rock and posed for pictures. felt like on top of the world k... it was fun climbing up all the rocks in baju kurung and heels so the pictures looked really gaya man...hehe...we went on and on until we got back to the asrama. we were given time to relax all the way till dinner. so the girls took our bags and went to our room. there was a double decker bed as well as sleeping space on the floor so we were quite happy. ah…nth beats cleaning off all the dust than a nice bath….

during dinner, we were treated like vip’s by the students who were staying there as well as the pastor. the assistant head of the SIB pastors of kota marudu were also there as well as other AJKs. we sat outside due to the limited space of the dining hall but we had a great time as well. after giving as a brief history of SIB Pekan, pr tom introduced all of us to the people present and then we all had dinner. after dinner, freda’s brother came back so she was so excited to see him again. she went to find him in his rom while the rest of us minggled with teh students. i found bernice in our room doing stuff when she told me she had a splinter. thanks to that, i did my very first, on my own, no one there to bug me, “sugery”. haha… i used a needle and *i don’t u wanna know what i did, its quite taxing on the heart* and i got the splinter out! good thing bernice didnt scream or anything if not i’ll panic and end up poking her hand instead. her pain resistance, way off the chart. i think. haha.

i went out again to join the rest in talking to the students. nat was the main star as he constantly made the group laugh. if u wanna know what he did, don’t coz its quite contagious anyways, we all went to bed at 10 pm and had sweet dreams coz we

really

were

tired.

zzzzzzZZZZZ………..

Mission Trip (part 8) (Kg Soronsob)

2009-04-21T17:33:00.000+08:00

We again sang songs just for the heck of it and we were driving on tracks and untarred roads again. dust was everywhere. freda and yi lin were trying to cover their face from the oncoming dust attacks while bernice and i were facing the “facial treament”. though the many fun time, we only travelled for less than half an hour when we reached our next village, Kampung Soronsob. a sign made by a trackter wheel states the name of the village and the houses there were all cemented stilt houses.

we stopped in front of a yellow house just like the rest and a man and some women came out to greet us. ps tom had a chat with our driver who was apparently the assistant head of the church. the man who came out of the house also greeted pr tom and the rest of us. turns out that the man is the pastor of the church and he was the former pastor of SIB Tagaroh. he moved out of there to pastor the church in this village about 3 months ago. we would be staying in his house which is the house that we stopped in front of. we put our bags in the living room , took the stuff that we need for practice, and went to the church which located on top of a small hill.

the church was quite big. it was quite sometime since we saw a big church so we were a bit relaxed. we sat down on the front pews and rested while pr tom and the pastor talked. a lot. after talking, the pastor went out so we started our practice. the pastor dropped by again during our “heart” drama and i garrentee i could’nt stop smiling and laughing the whole time.

after practice we went back to the house for lunch. at the dinner table, the pastor told us we could speak in english. the reason? because he wanted to learn. wow. not a problem for us. so we started joking all in english. this pastor was also quite a joker. he made alot of jokes that made all of us laugh everytime, kinda like aaron. but he was cool and stuff. he also played some music during lunch. the songs were all the vbs soundtrack that the SYM team did last year. he was the pastor then and he really liked the children’s camp so much that he copied the soundtrack into his handphone and plugged it in for us to hear while eating. yi lin, freda and i were singing along to some of the songs. wait, freda? yeap. turns out after her sis did vbs last year, she copied the songs and played them at home and taught freda all the steps. cool huh?

during lunch 2 cats were walking around. the pastor rears them and they recently had 3 kittens. they were being kept upstairs. so after lunch we went upstairs to relax. the stairs were located at outside of the house so we kinda had to get out of the house to go up. the first thing i noticed when i got upstairs was the tv playing. i was like, that’s a tv. what’s a tv again? and how do u work a tv? seriously, i haven’t seen a tv in 5 days so i was a bit “out” i guess….? it was playing GMB concert music so it was nice to hear christian music in a different language for a change. the kittens were there on the couch and every1 was happily playing with it. they were so cute; they kept climbing up and down u and their claws, well, werent so shy to stay in their paws.

the pastor changed the cd to one of a guy named nick vujicic. he is an incredible man who is living his life as a testimony unto God. he was born without arms and legs and he still praises God for everything in his life. the video shows of how he lives his life and a sermon that he gave to a congregation in america. i tell u, the things that u might think is impossible for a guy in his in posistion to do, he can do it. the pastor then took the kittens into his room and dint come out for some time. i was watching the video intenstly until, it felt better to stretch my legs towards the tv and my head on the floor…man it feels so good to lie down like this…oh my eyes are so heavy…i’ll close them for a while….maybe i can listen while closing my eyes…

the next thing i knew, the tv was off and someone had woke me up with some of us just waking up. i woke up finding the pastor sitting down on one of the couches looking and smiling at me. man that was embaressing. but then it was time for devotion so we went downstairs to get our stuff. after devotion, we prayed for Kg Lampada since we didn’t have time to do so when we were there. we also prayed for the pastor here and the ministry that we were going to do.
after praying, we were given time to relax and bathe. those of us who needed to hang our clothes were given hangers and pegs to help us. it did feel like home for a change. around that time was also the exercise time for the villagers. the youth and parents all came to the vollyball court in the middle of the village which is also across from the pastor’s house. since the house had a varendah, those who were waiting for our turn for the bathroom watched the ppl play sepak takraw and badminton. even the pastor went to play with them. its kinda like pr tom playing cs with us sometimes. haha.

after an hour, the pastor went to check on the villagers and there was a big commotion at the house opposite our house. appearntly the villagers managed to trap an eagle and they gave it to us to eat. we all so excited about the eagle that we took alot of photos with it. its dead btw. the pastor then plucked some of the feathers and gave them to us as a surveniour. i still have them in my house and they serve as a reminder of what i had encountered there. the pastor then announced that it will be cooked just to let us try how it tastes like.

we didn’t have the eagle for dinner but after dinner and drawing the devil patterns for kevin’s face, we prayed and relaxed for a while. we also took some photos just for fun (wait for the pics, they’re really cool!). when pastor told us it was time for service, we went to the church for ministry. when we went to the front door of the church, the congregation lined up to the door, children first, then adults. they were all greeting us in a line and all of us greeted them back. it did give a wonderful friendly feeling. the youth were all so excited abt us that they were the most enthusiastics ones there. when we were doing the drama, they all pulled out their super-more-canggih-and more expensive-than-mine-or-the-rest-of-us handphones and cameras and started recording it. after that it was my group’s turn to do children ministry so we gathered all the kids and went to pastor’s house to do ministry.

we played an icebreaker and when it was time for worship, we realised we forgot the guitar! what to do? sing accapella lor. easier for a person who is tone-deaf (yours truly) to lead the kids. haha. children ministry went on as usual until it came to craft time. i can’t help but realise that there was someone looking in the room from the window outside. i thought it was the boys outside who didnt come in but they told me it was a 12 year old girl who was too shy to come in. the boys tried to get her over but she was still too shy. it really reminded me of when i was that age, i was just as shy but i was being hostile coz i wasent ready to join a new children’s group after being pulled out from my last one. i wanted to meet her but my duty called. so i went back to help the kids with their colouring and stuff.

when service ended, the parents came to retreive their kids and kevin and nat took the remainding kids back to the church while bernice and i stayed back to clean up. some youths came knocking at the door to meet us. we got to know them and soon freda and yi lin came as well. we talked for a while then we left the youths who came to help prepare our supper to go back to the church to meet up with the rest. the other youths were praticing the songs for the next day’s (sunday) service while some of them who were dancers were practicing their steps. the music was so upbeat i couldnt help but to jump along with them.

when we went back to the house for supper, we talked with the elders of the church. supper was milk biscuits and tea. it was nice and refreshing after all the work we did. after a while the youths of the church came and we all chatted with them into the night, kinda like what we did in tagaroh. we showed them the video of the entire sym journey and encouraged them to go for sym next year. because i was at the back of the living room, i didnt realise just how much time we used just by talking. and we had to wake up at 4 the next day to get to the next church for sunday service. ah!! how could i forget! some of us had already gone to bed and i was nearly a walking zombie.

when i went to bed, i was so super sticky and i became mosquito food for so many of them. i kept walking up coz i was so itchy that i had to put my mosquito repellent on so much. thank goodness i was covered myself entirely with my sleeping bag so the mosquitos couldnt get me. muahha! take that suckers (litterally)!!! unfortuantely one of our team members got a stomach problem in the middle of the night but by God’s grace, God healed ‘em (name is kept ayonomous for a reason that this author will not get into trouble later ;p)so we were relieved.

we all woke up at 4 to bathe and we had the fastest bath we ever had. i bathed for only 3-5 minutes and we had to wear our sunday best because hello?! its sunday and we had to dress appropriately according to sym rules. i wore a long sleeve blouse while yi lin and freda wore baju kurung and bernice wore a blouse with a something like a flowing skirt. because my skirt was black, when we travel i would get dust all over my skirt and it would be very visible. so pr tom gave me permission to wear my jeans but i had to change into my skirt once we get to our next location. we had to trade our sport shoes for our nice shoes and i brought my heels with me. bad choice. why? i’ll tell u at the next post. shouldda brought my flats. haiz… oh well, too late to cry now. so we packed up everything and put all our stuff downstairs like how they were went we came.

then we had breakfast. remember the eagle? it was so kind to be our breakfast in the form of a soup. haha.

yeah i know that eagles are endangered and all that but hey, think of it this way, no 1, the eagle was stealing the villagers chickens. no 2, they caught it with a trap, no 3, this is the villagers way of life so the govorment can’t do a thing about it. satisfied? good. no? then tell me the last time u had eagle meat. jkjk…now lets continue on with the adventure.

the meat was tough coz according to pr tom, all carnivours meat were like that. gee, does that mean human flesh are like that too? dun think i wanna know that right now. the truck came during this time and the driver had breakfast with us. after the wonderful breakfast, we prayed for the pastor and his family. he is really a brave man for taking up this role of pastoring a church of a kampung that he was not born in. in spite of all this, he still manages to keep a smile on his face and make jokes with everyone. he really is a man who desires God for his church and village.

after praying for them, we got into the truck. we never had a problem with getting into the truck but this time was an exception. the girls are in skirts! so what we did was the girls got into the truck first by stepping on “strategic locations” while the guys turned their head away to avoid being “flashed” at accidently. soon everyone got into the truck and we all waved goodbye to the people there as we left for kampung no 6.

Mission Trip (part 7 con't) (Kg Lampada)

2009-04-19T01:21:00.000+08:00

Practice was…. yi lin was trying to figure out what freda did during the drama and i was going nuts about how to show money. i kept coming out at the wrong timing so we had to play the song all over again and again. i think i made some ppl really mad so i’m really really sorry for the trouble and thank you all for ur patience we practiced all the way until 12 something then we went back for lunch. the pastor was also there and he said that he came at 9 to pick us up to go rubber tapping but we were all at the river at that time. so he just cancelled the whole visitation.
lunch was nice, espeacially when u don’t realise the amount of time and energy used to do that drama over and over again. it was really energising. then after clearing up, we helped yi lin’s group do stuff for her children ministry. after that we just slept becoz it was raining and the weather was like a natural air con that we just couldn’t help but just sleep. i took this opportinuity to look outside of the house.
at the outside of the house was a little shack that the little kids were using to play teacher. it was both inspiring and awakening. the little kids weren’t playing some silly daily life in school. u know what were they “teaching”? they were reciting bible verses and singing all the children songs used in church! i mean, if little kids are doing this, then y r we adults not? these kids werent forced to do any of these, they were doing it out of their own free will! arent kids supposed to follow what adults do? it seems like we have to follow their example.
after resting for an hour, we all got ready to help yi lin’s group for childern’s ministry. it was around 2 pm and the kids were all already waiting for us. we came down and did it normally. appearntly it wasent a school holiday and some of these kids were from different villages and they all skipped one day of school just to come for this ministry. i was so touched. plus this childern ministry is differnt in a sence that we had to pray for all the children by laying our hands and personally whisper a prayer into their ears. after that we released them back to their parents.
we went back to rest and get ready to go to the river to bathe. this time we just bathe and didnt wash our clothes. the river was so nice and we played the water theme-park thingy again.haha. then a little boy told bernice that the river higher up was nicer so both of us followed the boy up. it was really nicer than the lower part of the river. remember what i said about the river water was clear eoungh to see the rocks at the bottom? this place was even clearer. aaron, nat, juan and kevin followed us after a while and soon we were having a skipping stones lesson/competition. i skipped stones for the first time in my life and it skipped twice! i was so happy that i finally got to do something that i only read and watched on tv. kevin was good. he mananged to skip the stones for 5 times or so. hero man, hero... after playing for 2 hours, we, the girls went back first to the house. who did we see sitting on the varrendah playing with kids? freda! we were like, yeah u’re back! and she brought food supplies (chipsmore!) and extra sarong for all of us and that jacket that i asked her to bring coz i left mine at home.
and so we were all yeah we get our old parts back for the drama and i was super glad becoz if i acted my new part, the whole thing would be a disaster. so we all had dinner and we went to do service. well technicaly, they did the service as in praise and worship and we just did the drama and pr tom preached. freda’s group was in charge of children ministry so i had to go along to help take pictures of it. a slight miscommunication on my part nearly threw the whole thing into crazyness but at least it was ok in the end. then we all went back to the house for debrief.
after a whole lot of teasing and debrief, we went to bed hot but because it became cold at night, i thank God that i was wearing my long sleeved white frontliners shirt to keep me warm. one thing though, we woke up scratching because we forgot the mosquito coils! oh well, what to do. i went to the toilet b4 going to the river. man that toilet was even cleaner and not so smelly compared to the one at the second village. who said it was unbareable… 5 years of school toilets really make u immune to smells i guess. we went to the river again for the last time to do our morning stuff. then we had breakfast and prayed for the village.
the truck came around 10 but we didnt know that. i was buzy accompaining bernice to the toilet when kevin was shouting to us to get our stuff into the truck. so we quickly went to the house and packed everything. we walked to a bus stop and prayed for the pastor there. the truck was waiting there as well. it was the same kind of truck that brought us here and we had to sit just like last time. while yi lin was saying goodbye in the truck, a mak cik stuck her head and hand out to shake her hand. yi lin see her but when she saw did, she freaked out. it was so funny… anyways we all got into the truck and went on our way to kampung number 5.

Mission Trip (part 7) (Kg Lampada)

2009-04-16T00:44:00.000+08:00

the road there was dusty and uneven. but despite all those untarred roads, we had a fun time going there coz we were singing our songs for the churches and children ministry all the way there. not only that, aaron and kevin were trying to make it sound upbeat by adding disco sound to it. so what do we do? try to make it sound rappy and all R&B but we ended up laughing beczuse it sounded so funny. even the youths that followed us smiled at us like they were laughing. oh well, we needed the fun we passed by alot of rubber trees and a whole lot of reeds until we came by some houses. the driver got out halfway and started doing something at the tires. i was like, what happen? tire pumchet ah? then kevin said that he was changing the truck into a 4 wheel mode. its necsisary to drive up steep hills and it has to be done manually coz its an old truck. the new ones gets it done automatically. oh… so thats a bit of knowledge for us who don’t have a single clue about interior transport. like, me. haha.
and so we reached the village and the truck stopped at a church. yeah i said a church. its because its the seventh day adventist church of that village. turns out the SDA are also quite prominant in their missions as well. but enough about that. after climbing out of the truck, we saw the first thing that will catch anyone’s and the sound that caught all our ears. the river.
it was so long and wide and fast that we could hear the rapids and see them as well. it was like white clouds on the river. and on both sides of the banks are rocks. big ones that u have to step on to walk around. i’ll tell u why later.
after marvelling at the river, we went to the house for us to stay. it was a typical house, with stilts and all. we went up and put our stuff in the living room neatly (ps tom’s orders) and we grabbed our stuff that we needed for the raptai and headed straight for the church which was right down the slope. the SIB one, not the SDA one.
it was a not so big church compared to tagaroh but it was ok. there was a main door in the middle and a side door at the side of the stage. the windows were big squares with wire on it. the benches were made of wood and it had around 7 rows (i think) on each side.
practice was alright and we had to do the heart drama. problem? freda’s not here with us right now! so pr tom told me that i had to improvise and play both her and my role. it was very hard because she and i although we come out together, what she does is very different from my role. i had to keep up with the timing and i was pretty lost for a while. but in the end it was all good. after practice we thanked the youths who accompanied us here and went back to the house to get ready to bathe and wash our clothes.
we went down the slope of a hill to reach the river. we walked on the rocks and some kids came along to join us. we walked for some distance and the girls settled on some bigger rocks to put our stuff. the boys went a bit more futher and settled there. the water wasn’t as clean as the one in the second village but at least u could see the rocks at the bottom. after putting on our sarong, we went into the river.
wow. the rapids are fast man. the moment u get in there, it starts pulling u so fast u start grabbing on anything to keep steady. since there wasn’t any reeds or trees around, i grabbed the rocks at the bottom that were steady. the whole bottom was filled with rocks. not just small ones, big and huge ones as well. i was going, i’m gonna die! i’m gonna die! but the kids gave me strength in a way. you know how?
they just stood on the rocks by the side of the river and jumped straight into the water. i was like, kid! r u ok? he just poped out of the water smiling. i went, duh… all of them, it was routine of them to do that. i was so shocked. i mean, here i am trying to hold on for dear life but these kids were so used to it. and then i saw what they did for fun during bath time. they would climb to the high part of the rapids and just relax. the water would just carry them down so fast its like something you pay for at a water themepark. only differnce is, they get to do it for free, 24/7! soon the boys of our group decided to try it too. the only problem was, their body was bigger compared to the little boys so they wernt floating on the water, they were going down while saying “ow! ow! ow!” the whole time. pr tom was the funniest. he was going “ah! oh ouch!” the whole time. nat was being a kampung boy all over again. he looked so natural at it the whole time. i was a bit skeptical of the whole thing but bernice was all “i wanna try! i wanna try!” and so she went. she came down yes, but with a price. 2 bruises on her back. yi lin and i were playing with the little girls while washing our clothes.
soon, it was time to go back. the girls went up first because there’s only one room to change in. then the boys came and the girls took this time to do their makeup and stuff. well i couldnt. thank God yi lin and bernice was there. haha. then the wonderful ibu-ibu served us dinner and we had a fun time eating with the pastor. and when we finished, we all went down to do ministry.
everything went well, including the drama. then bernice’s group was in charge of children minstry so that means i had to go too. i tell u, the kids were so obiedient. they listened to every word you tell them and they did everything you tell them to do. hands down, best children ministry for our group. then we all released them back to the church and we all closed up for the night and went back to the house for debrief. turns out that the pastor of the church is a rubber tapper so yi lin asked to follow him to work to see how the work of a rubber tapper is. i wanted to follow and so pr tom told us to be ready by 5am. but the funny thing is that the pastor told us that he’ll get us at 9am. plus we had to perform the acceptance drama. since freda wasnt with us, yi lin had to take over her role while i had to take over yi lin’s role. since i wasnt really that type to do her kind of stuff, kevin playfully joked that i might as well just give them money. pr tom liked that idea so he told me to do that. i was like, God help me. and yi lin’s group had to do a major children ministry tomolo at the church in the afternoon. but i still dunno lor… so we had our maggie and chipsmore for supper and we all slept. girls in the small room, guys in the living room with all the boys bags in the space cut out from the living room.
i woke up at 4.30am to wake yi lin up. prob is, we were both still so sleepy that we went back to sleep and by the time we woke up to get ready, it was already 5.20. oh crap! i quickly woke yi lin up and we both waited outside for the pastor. he didnt show up so i thought he probably left when he din’t see anybody waiting for him. so both of us fell asleep outside, waiting for him. it wasent so bad. we saw lots of different big and colourful bugs. the sunrise was beautiful too.
we went back into the house to sleep at 7am. but i woke up again when i heard knocking on our front door. i opened it abit to find the ibu-ibu outside waiting to cook our breakfast. i was like, ok, boleh tunggu sekejap? then i went to wake aaron up coz he was sleeping really near the kitchen door and i din want him to kena steped by the ppl. after asking aaron to wake up, he began to wake most of everybody. soon everyone was awake and we all got ready to bathe in the river.
we all went down to the river to bathe, brush teeth, wash clothes and play at the same time. this time, i decided to try the rapids with yi lin after been convinced by bernice that it was fun. well, we tried it out. my legs got caught in my sarong halfway so i was struggling for my life in case i drowned. well i din. thats where i realised. the rocks by the side were probably left after the river slowly dried up last time. so im guessing that the river was much bigger than it was now. after that, we the girls, left for the house to change. after all of us had changed, we all had breakfast. then pr tom got a call from freda. she said that she’ll be with us around 5 in the evening, most likely. there was a chance that she could be later than expected.
uh oh. and we had to perform the acceptance drama. and freda is the main star. we were doomed. oh well, improvise. so after breakfast, we headed over to the church to practice the impromptu drama.
*this post shall be continued in the next port when i am fresh and awake :)*

Mission Trip (part 6) (Kg Tagaroh)

2009-04-13T17:30:00.001+08:00

and so with rain just stopping, we reached a kampung called Tagaroh. a lovely clearing for a village and a huge church if may add. we stopped in front of the church and ps tom came out. we came out as well and there were the pengerusi and some of the woman folk that came out to greet us. the ibu-ibu there came and shook our hands and greeted to us “sonung kesua bon!)
huh?
yeah…then they translate to us that that was dusun for good morning or good afternoon. oh… so we greet them back the same sentence but since they saw us having difficulty in pronouncing the words, they just switched to selamat petang to us. haha. pity us.
then ps tom told us why he’s so relaxed here. last year, the team came here to do the serengeti trek. so he’s feeling very at home at this place. we took our bags and went to the house for us which is just opposite the church. it was the same house they stayed in last year but with a few changes. they reno-ed the place to give it extra space. the bottom part of the house was covered up to become the living room while the outside was painted pink. it really did have a homey feel to it.
and so we went to another house to have tea. the house belonged to the former pastor of the church who moved to pastor another church. the pengerusi was elected just a month ago and it was proving a challenge to him considering he just had a baby 8 months ago. we chated for some time and got used to the place. the kitchen was big and the toilets were good enough for privacy. the girls talked with the mak cik mak cik and they showed diff types of vegetables and fruits. some of us even tried to cook the vege! we then requested to hang our clothes that we washed at the river at the previous church (did i mention that? washing clothes in the river was so fun!) and the pengerusi said that we could use to clothes line at 2 different houses. so the girls took the clothes line at the pastor’s house while the guys use the clothes line at another abandoned house and after hanging all our clothes, we went to the church to do a raptai.
wow. the church has a big space. the alter area is long and big, the stage is big, and by the looks of it, the whole santuary is big. they also have ohp so i was put in charge of it. the whole raptai was good and soon it was time to go and get ready. ps tom told us that the next village that we went to will require a 5 hour climb (oh man!) and also informed us that we also had to do a youth service for them as well. the pengerusi wanted us to specificaly address the issue of the youth there who go to town and get their faith shaken there. so we were required to share to them one by one on the pulpit.
who was not scared at that moment? no idea. coz that was what was going thru our head that time. 5 hours to think of something to say to a bunch of youth for 5 minutes. if stage fright din kill us then, maybe the whole what topic to say to them might. i was going nuts at that time. but that wasn’t the issue yet. we still only had less than an hour to change and get ready for dinner.
this is how the toilets were. four rooms. one bathroom for the guys and one for the girls. the other 2 were toilets for both gender. wow. who ever knew that bathing would take so long. espeacially with 8 guys waiting to use one bathroom. the girls were first to finish bathing (oh yeah!) and got started on putting on our makeup.
we went for dinner at 7pm. the food was nice and we had a nice chat with some of the youth there as well. some were working already while some was the same age as us. soon after eating we went for service. we had to use our torchlights coz it was really dark then.
when we were there, yi lin quickly drew devil motif for kevin’s eyes since he was playing the devil in the heart drama later. introducing him was a funny coz he look weird smiling in his makeup. service went by as usual and yi lin’s group was in charge of children ministry.
after service, we had the youth service. we played games with them while i met a new friend name Fet. she was one year younger than me and was pretty nervous about spm. we talked alot and got along pretty well if u ask me. then we prayed for all the youths and went back home. so we din do the sharing thing with them.
since the ibu-ibu had prepared us some supper, we got to eat doughnuts, some sort of really nice kuih and sago desert. really nice man… since some of the youth didn’t go home yet because the next day was a holiday, we invited them in as well. man did we chat. they came in and talked and we shared our experiences abt sym with them as well. pr tom showed them the sym video and some of them expressed interest to join next year. only thing holding them back was the cost of the whole 3 months. we all talked until 2.30 am and the youth went home. we had a mini debrief and soon we all went to bed.
the next day, we woke up at 8 am. after doing that we do every morning including having breakfast, we went downstairs when we were ready to have devotion. freda had already left for kk to recieve an award from her school (gratz girl!) and pr tom took juan to the hospital or klinik to see a doctor abt his nose. when i went down to the living room, aaron and some others were there already and was just relaxing for a while. aaron was playing the guitar and we had a fun time trying to translate “My Redeemer Lives” from english to BM. then bernice came down and we started devotion. after that we prayed for the previous village and this village as well. it was at the middle of prayer pr tomand juan came back and so they joined in as well.
let me tell u this, in all our prayer times, we never had such a frevernt prayer b4. everyone was passionate in their prayers and 2 ppl became so “high” on the Lord that all of us were suprised at their beheviour. we were all praying halfway when suddenly nat starting clapping his hands. kinda like auntie hannah when she prays. juan also prayed loudly that his words were not stuttering like usual. the power of God? i would say yes. God’s spirit moved.
after prayer, pr tom told us that the hike to the next village was cancelled as the road to that place had closed. both the hiking trail and road to that village had a prob coz it rained last night. so we were to skip to the next village. we all packed up our bags, had lunch and swept up the house.
the pengerusi came in a lorry. yup, that was our transport to the next kampung. it was a truck with a roof over the back, metal bars to keep u from falling out of the sides and a long bangku to sit. after praying for the pengerusi, pr tom arranged us all in a way that the bags is both on our laps and between our legs. then we all sat in it with some of the youth with us. we all waved goodbye to the ppl there and went happily on our way to kampung number 4.

Mission Trip (Kg Manggin)

2009-04-10T09:52:00.001+08:00

over the bridges and the rivers, our butts hurts with evry single bump. seriously, the roads were so rocky. well i had to take photos while the sabahans were playing some sort of number fingers game. they played it so many times thru out the whole trip but i still dun get it. haha. well we travelled for a good 20 minutes, i think, where we reached the church, SIB Manggin.
its quite a cute church. one main door in the middle and one door on the side. again, we were greeted by the pengerusi or the pastor (i can’t remember). then he led us to our house to stay. just a tiny slope down from the church. the place was completely wat u wud have to pay if u went to a resort offering the same type of accomadation. one small room to sleep and the kitchen was directly at the other end of the living room. there were coconuts there 2. the toilet was a little shack outside of the house. the walls were made of zinc, one hole in the middle of the roof, four planks to make a hole on the ground, and thats it. thats the toilet. can’t complain since it wasn’t dirty. believe me, if i say a toilet is dirty, it is dirty. all this is thanks to 5 years of training in my school. u wudnt want to go to my school toilet. even this toilet in the interior beats my school flat. anyways, just another slope down is the river.
ahh….the river…. it was so relaxing. the water is so clear u can even see the rocks and sand at the bottom. i tell u, penang has lost this. where else can we find this untapped source?
and so we went to the church to do our rehersal. same thing as the last time so i wont say much abt it. after our rehersal we went back to the house to get our stuff needed for bathing. some kids were there and they agreed to follow us after striking friendship with us. at the river, all four of us were going “ahh! rocks! cold water!” while the kids just hopped from one rock to another. amazing. the guys took the upper stream while the girls went further down. we changed into our sarong and thats where i got my nickname from a little girl, “Si Mata Kecil”. izzit true? oh and becoz she could’nt really say li mei, she decieded to call me “mee” or “mee goreng”. funny.
after bathing in the clear, cool, clean, cold, and did i mention clear? water, we went up to get ready for ministry. the girls got to use the small room first then the guys. ah… so refreshing…. and we left for the church.
same thing. greet the ppl. talk to the kids. and then they pulled me to the back of the church to show me their dance for christmas last year. and they din’t even have a torchlight! they just went up to the stage, grabbed the tamborines there, went to the back, and sent a representative to get me! wow! the boldness man. no wonder Jesus said faith of a child. not being scared at all when u know u have protection. but then i had to cut short their performance halfway coz service started d.
service went as it is. we did the blinded drama and testimonies as usual. then bernice’s group, which is the group i’m in, did children ministry. we sent the kids off to our humble house to begin.
this was how we did it. bernice started off with a simple prayer, followed by nat doing games. he did follow the leader or ikut pengetua. i just kept the kids in the small room to hide em knowing who’s the leader. then it was worship. i was in charge and with bernice playing the guitar, we did 2 songs, anak monyet and bahasa cintaMu. since it was kinda my first or second time worship leading (if u wanna count the time in rkc where the switchbox exploded which btw bernice, i still think it was God telling me something), i didn’t really did a good job. then kevin took over and he did Bible storytelling. Bible story was abt the three friends of Daniel who did not bow down to the statue King Nebucanazaar made. he did a good job and the kids really liked it. and so it was time for craft. bernice, the most artful one with her hands, handled it 2. our craft was a paper fire, stuck on with a lidi stick. all the kids had to do was colour the fire and write the memory verse on it. we kept looking out to the church and realised that the adults were finishing so we hurried the kids up. bernice went into overdrive and taped all the stickers and scotch tape so fast i wonder whether her eyes went still anot. we finally gave the sweets to the kids and sent them off to their waiting parents outside the house. they thanked us, we thanked them. and we went back to the church to meet up with the others.
when we got back it was about empty. but there were still some ppl there so we just hung around and talked to them. suddeny bernice called for her team to come for a debrief. and so the verdict was… we cud be better. games was a bit too long, worship was super long, but overall it was ok. then we realised, we didn’t close in prayer! so we just said we have to buck up next time and we miggled around with the ppl. ps tom took out his laptop and showed the ppl our SYM video. after more talking, we left for home…..
well at least a place to relax and freely talk in english. u see, in this mission trip, when around the ppl there we must speak only bm so being able to speack english freely is a very big bonus. so we had our debrief, ate our noodles and the food that the ibu ibu there cooked for us, ps tom went for a midnight dip in the river with some of the guys, and we all went to bed.
the next morning, i woke up 1 hour earlier coz i really needed to use the toilet. and since ps tom said going to the toilet requires a partner, i thanked God that bernice also woke up. coming out of the room was kinda hard becoz teh guys were all sleeping everywhere on the floor in the living room. wats worse? kevin was sleeping directly in front of the door. somehow we managed to get out of the house. i went to the shack and bernice was my lookout buddy (thanks girl!) then it was time for every1 to get up.
we all went to the river again to freshen up and then we went back to the house for devotion. after that we all relaxed until 12 noon. the sabahans were all confirming the ppl coming for their graduation while the rest tried to sleep in the more and more hot house. u can sweat while lying down. but it was good coz we get to sweat all the toxics out of our body.
remember the coconuts? yeah ps said we can only open them at 12 noon. and thats what we did then. we were all so thirsty that we all told nat to quickly open them. since there was 12 of us, nat had to open 12. man did those coconuts have water. super alot man. there are more stories abt the coconuts but since i’m not too sure abt them i’m not gonna write abt it.
and so we packed up and went to the church to wait for our transport. we were told that our transport wud arrive around…i forgot ;p so while waiting, the kids gave some notes to some of us and we prayed for the church and went to do our stuff. while some of them played with the guitar, some just talked and played with the kids. pretty soon it ended up with everyone sleeping while yi lin taught the kids how to dance while playing the tamborine and me showing the other kids the photos that we took at our previous location while uploading them into ps tom’s laptop. at around 3.30pm, our transport arrived.
we all lined up outside the church, and one by one ps tom arranged our bags in the van while we said our final goodbyes to the kids. one of them kept saying,” janganlah pergi…” but we had to, as much as we din’t like to. after everything was set, we all went off to kampung number 3.

Just a copy from the friendster blog

2009-04-09T11:58:00.001+08:00

Mission Trip log

My Team :)

Name Job
1. Pastor Thomas Barnabas (RGBC) (unknown) Team Leader
2. Benjamin Tan (RGBC) (Choleric-Melancoly) Asst. Team Leader
3. Aaron Heng (SIB Likas) (Phlegmetic-Sanguine) Treasurer
4. Bernice Heng (SIB Likas) (Choleric-Sanguine/Meloncoly) Prayer Coordinator
5. Daniel Mak (EPCC) (Phlegmatic-Choleric) Video Camera
6. Elfreda Floria Danny (SIB Kingfisher) (Meloncoly-Choleric) Medic
7. Juan Ling (Basil KK) (Sanguine-Phlegmetic) Time Keeper
8. Kevin Wong (SIB Likas) (Phlegmetic-Choleric) Equipment Manager
9. Li Mei (RGBC) (Sanguine-Phlegmetic) Camera
10. Matthew Lok (SIB Likas) (Meloncoly-Phlegmatic) Worship Director
11. Netheniel Austin Pong (SIB Kingfisher) (Phleg-Chol) Property Manager
12. Yi Lin (RGBC) (Sanguine-Phlegmatic) Secretary
as u can see, my team is very “colourful” u can bet that we had a blast with one another ;p

waddup ppl! i’m back from “the land below the wind”, SABAH. haha. i know….finally i managed to sit on a plane. and i got outta peninsula malaysia too… so thats 2 things i can cross off my “i have never….” list.
let me start by getting to the airport. i nearly got my team to be disqulified becos of the prob at tesco and the morning traffic of mondays. u know bayan lepas…. benjamin was like “hurry, we’re checking in already.” and i was like “i’m trying here!” sish………
so finaly i got to the airport. i quickly did the whole security thing and ran like mad to the counter. luckily pastor tom delayed time by checking in the others first. haha… after giving my ic, i was at rest….

sitting on a plane is fun. well for me its fun coz its my first time and jin keet was like, its ur first time?! haha. so the whole procedre of the safety thing, the lift off, the sound, the senery of penang from the top which btw looks alot like mini monopoly if u ask me, and the the view of the clouds in mid-air is so nice. after all, whats a lot to see in the air for 2 and a half hours?
we arrived 25 minutes earlier than expected. really, i tell u if there ever a thing called saman for flying too fast, air asia will kena so many times man. anyways, we got all our luggage in 15 mins. bernice got her floorball stick from the cabin crew coz it came out or smth i guess. then we “how how tang tang” went out of the terminal and into the airport arrival area.
the sabahans were greeted by their families and to take stuff that they needed for the mission trip. who would’nt after not seeing ur kid for 3 months? i realised that bernice and arron got alot from their dad. aaron looks like and talks like his dad while bernice gets her adventurous side from him. i guess when she’s quiet she becomes like her mom. matthew’s sis doesn;t really look like him. maybe if he took off the glasses. kevin’s parents were….. i dunno, his parents? juan borrowed the heng’s travel bag and dumped his whole luggage into it. haha. nat went home with his parents to return the textbooks he din returned so he wasent present for day 1 in mission trip. elfreda’s dad was waiting for her and he was the one who led us all to our first sabah food. we sat in a “van” persiaran and we went to a kopitiam in sabah.

we went to eat at a kopitiam where i had lemon chicken rice. basically its just fried chicken pieces with rice and lemon sauce poured all over it. its nice at first, but the sourness of the sauce just makes ur tongue go numb after a while. oh ya, did i mention the cost? 6 freakin 50! for a plate that the highest i wud pay is 5 bucks! well it is their signiture dish anyways so who am i to critize right? now i know penangnites tend to be a bit picky with their food when they go to other states.haha. bad penangnite. me.
after the whole big meal and mistaking elfreda’s mom for juan’s mom (they work at the same school! its an honest mistake!) and reuniting with the majority of elfreda’s family, we set off for our first village and church, SIB Manggeris 2.
the senery there compared with kk is totally different. i mean in kk right, looks like a mixture between batu ferringgi and penang town. the route there looks more like on the way to balik pulau if you take the paya terubong road. seriously, its all just trees.

we reached some huts, but we were wondering where the church was. some ladies came and helped us carry our bags but we were like, no its ok then we realised that the church was located on top of the hill! luckily its a small climb so we din die or anything… for a while i thought the whole all the stamina training we did in air itam dam and team building was gonna kick in but since it was just a few meters from where we were so what the heck la….
when we got there we were greeted by pengerusi raphael (i think). after introducing ourselves, we went to the church to do a raptai. looking at that place, the space was like one third of the rgbc sanctuary with no side doors. ps tom said to improvise coz we had to the the aceptance drama. after a slight rehersal, we went back to the house desinganated for us to stay to get ready. after changing, we went out and talked to the ppl that were arriving. appearantly they walked over a hill just to get here. thank God they were teenagers. if they were old ppl.... i dunno what to think. they said that this village has the most number of babi hutan but unfortuantely we din get to see one. although, we did get to see a baby asian sloth. kinda cute... well it has to be, considering all the girls were going "so cute!" at it. Someone rang the "bell", meaning the service has started.

and so the whole ministry went on. first the pengerusi intro us to the congregation (jemaah), ps tom took over and intro us to the ppl 1 by 1. we stood in one line, according to what we wud be doing next and the drama. worship was ok, except the part when we had to keep looking at the lyrics halfway coz some of us havent really memorized teh whole song. haha. pity the guys who had to hold the mahjong paper with lyrics coz they dun have ohp.
after worship we had testimony! elfreda did the salvation testimony. then we did the drama! since space was limited, we tried our best to stay in timing with the “made to love” song. anywho, we made it and testimony again, this time it was aaron who had to share how God had blessed (memberkati) him. then ps tom took over again and send all the little kids to our hse for children ministry. for more info on that, pls ask elfreda’s group coz it was her group that was in charge that day.
ps tom’s msg to the villagers was started off as funny. he used the malay Bible (Alkitab) to speak and the verse that he used was Ibrani fasal 5, ayat 13-14 which translates as Hebrews 5: 13-14. its about christians having to be mature and stop playing church with God. then he passed the time back to the pengerusi and he called for an alter call which every1 came out to be prayed for! we were all like, wow? so we went, guy to guy, girl to girl, and began to pray, all in bm. IN BM!!! i mean, i’m at the border of passing my bm in school and i had to pray in BM?! eh who cares? i just prayed anyways, as the Lord leads la. supprisingly the words came as simple as it was. God’s miracle, if u ask me.
after we were done, we all went to bathe at 10 something at night with no electricity. the bathroom was down at the slope, a zinc shack with running water (thank God) and that was it. 2 girls showed us the way and it was hillarious for them to see 4 city girls with no idea how to bathe together. it was funny i tell u.
no light. use torchlight. no soap. use other ppl one la. —this section is closed and classified and is stored in certain ppl’s minds only. no more writing abt it.—
ok…….. after we came out and yi lin falling down, we, the girls, sat in the house, waiting for the boys to bathe finish. man the stars there is uncountable. seriously, its like a star wallpaper. thats one thing sabah has against penang. sad. so there we were, sitting, talking, eating chipsmore.
ahh chipsmore…. nth like a nice cookie after ministry time. SYM 2010, remember, buy chipsmore for mission trip. its one thing u can look forward to if u want to munch. anyways, after talking and bernice trying to sleep, the guys came back and we had dinner and debrief. we talked about what we saw God work in and through us. we had to write those stuff down into the mission trip handbook. and so after that we went to bed. well technically, yi lin and i shared a room while bernice and elfreda slept in the other. the guys were all in the main room. and ps tom was snoring away 2 minutes after he opened his sleepin bag. i went to bed after reading jessica’s sms.
the next morning, we went to the bathroom. since it was a school day, we knew where we were going to bathe. after that we had our breakfast (can’t remember what it was) and we packed up everything. kevin, being the property manager, checked everything we had and distributed the stuff in the ministry box to all of us becoz we cant carry that long box everywhere we go. and so we played with some of the kids as we waited for lunch to be cooked. –skip to lunch time–
lunch was nice. the chicken, super good man. and bernice was like, i wan summore watermelons! since we suposed to take 2 rounds, i was happy. but pastor tom told us to take not so much coz we had to leave sum for the villagers to eat. it was the ibu-ibu of the village that cooked for us….
oh and did i mention? mr. netheniel left us at the airport to settle some stuff at school and so did not join us at the ministry. but, it was at lunch time that he came to the village to join us, with his dad, mom, and cousin and his aunt i think? anyway, he came back and we were all, austin! and our fellowship continued with matthew sketching a building and yi lin and elfreda playing games with the kids there. those of us who felt emo all of sudden went back to the house to sleep. soon every1 went to the house to sleep.
well, at least i wasent sleeping. the kids followed us into the house too so me being the then most energetic 1, entertained the kids while every1 else had their naps. i took the time to do what i planned to do b4 i came, learn the dusun language. the kids were a great help (and elfreda too) and soon i learned how to put sentences together. after that, our ride came and we all had to go.
the kids were playing something called tikus or something. its basically a game of tag but they dun mind playing it even how old they are. no wonder they’re so thin, they exersice everyday for fun! gone are those days for me…
and so we all gathered outside to pray for the pengerusi with benjamin closing. then we all said goodbye, gave our number to the kids, and we all took our stuff down to the suvournier shop at the bottom of the slope. some of them who were hungry for tea bought jagung that was bbqed. not bad if u ask me. tastes just like steamed ones. we joked with the kids and soon, our transport, a van and a kembara arrived. after ps tom arranged our bags, we left for village number 2.

From friendster blog to blogspot

2009-04-08T22:01:00.000+08:00

hmm.....should i? or should i not? hmmm........