CSI

The theme for the Filipino Camp 2006 is CSI… Crossing Seas of Impossibilities. Christie had wanted to impart a spirit of faith to the whole group that we can indeed overcome all challenges to reach 1000 locally as well as to make global impact.

I really enjoy being with our Filipino group. They are such loving, sincere and open-hearted people. It is so evident to me that many of them are madly in love with Jesus. It is such a joy to serve with people like that.

Esther, the camp OIC, told me that they had to move from YMCA in 2005 to YWCA for this time round because YMCA simply could not contain the growing number of campers. She also told me that they are already on the look out for a much bigger and fresher venue for 2007! This is forward planning with great faith.

Among the many highlights in the camp, I would like to share a few that touched me deeply.

I was very inspired by the Filipino band. A couple of months ago, it was only a keyboardist and a drummer. The rest of the band (bassist, electric guitarist & acoustic guitarist) have to be imported from other congregations to fill the gaping holes. Today, they have a full band; and a very good one too. The singers and worship leaders sang beautifully and they were able to lead the whole group into a deep recognition of God’s presence.

In almost every country that I visited, Filipino bands are everywhere. They have this ‘gift’ of singing and playing music. May God add to our band in even greater measure to make music unto Him!

During the camp, 40 people also got drenched for God through water baptism. This is really exciting!

Some of the Filipino groups from our overseas Hope churches are also requesting for training and the sharing of what God has been doing in our Filipino group. God is certainly calling us to make an even greater global impact. We are connecting what we do in our local context to the global work that God is doing in every nation.

Thank you all for the partnership in our local and global venture for Jesus. God loves you and so do I.

Below are some photos from the camp...






Pastor Christie giving out prizes










All in the family!







Super-hero kids getting in the act










Some of the key leaders (Gina-standing, Tess & Rowena-sitting L to R)







Those who dunked!








One that is happy to be dunked!!

Manchester United vs Chelsea

After preaching in 3 services and attending a wake, I was wondering if I had enough energy to watch this big game at around midnight. Boy, was I energized. In fact, I was so energized that I could not even sleep after the game. So I decided to blog.

My wife and I watched the game with LO, Pat and Sharon. Sharon, LO and I love the beautiful game greatly and we were totally transfixed on the game. Pat & Claudia would talk about other stuff from time to time (like lightings!) Who cares about lightings when we are playing against Chelsea?

In the end, I guess it was a fair result as Man U dominated the first half while Chelsea had the better share of the second half.

Looking back, it had really been a grace-filled week. I spent most of the first half of last week recovering from preaching in the 5 services from the previous weekend as well as to prepare for the 2 sessions in the Filipino Camp. Then I was only able to start preparing my weekend sermon on Friday morning. It was madness!

Nonetheless, God was so gracious to me. He sent my wife to give me great ideas for the sermon. He also gave me mental and spiritual strength to sustain through another weekend of preaching in 5 services. As I looked back at how my week unfolded, I was just amazed again at how God had graced me through. There is just this sense of gladness in my heart.

However, another week of madness is looming on the horizon. I had been tasked to preach and teach in 4 sessions for the upcoming Malaysian National Convention from Thursdays till Sunday. At this moment, I really do not feel up to the task at all. I am just so tired emotionally. I do not think that I can preach or teach for another minute more.

Then again, wasn’t that how I felt at the beginning of last week? So in a sense, I am both anticipative and fearful to see how this week is going to unfold for me. It sounds ironic but absolutely true of how I feel at this moment.

Time to sleep…

My Thailand Trip

As promised, I am blogging on my recent trip to Thailand with Claudia.

Both Claudia and I have always enjoyed going to Thailand for some different and similar reasons. For me, one of the reasons why I enjoyed Thailand is because of the food. The food is really tasty and affordable (by Singaporean standards).

Below are 2 dishes that I enjoyed immensely. One is the fish maw soup and the other one is the Thai salad with baby crabs. The other dish, the Vietnamese Spring Roll, is very challenging for me. It is so fresh that you would actually feel like a cow while chewing it. I literally feel like I am eating grass! It is just too fresh for my liking. It is probably Nebuchadnezzar's fave dish...






This is the grass lover dish!






Here is a picture of me and my food with my new specs. Am I cool or am I cool!?!













For Claudia, one of the many reasons why she enjoyed Thailand is shopping. I am sure many Singaporean ladies are responsible of pushing up the Thailand’s GDP by at least a few percentage points with every visit.

One of the many common reasons why we enjoyed Thailand is because of friends. We have nurtured many deep relationships during the many trips that we have made over all these years.



Us and Chue (Claudia’s long time friend since the students days)



Me and David Chen (I know him while both of us still had thick hairs!)













Besides the above factors, the other more spiritual reasons why we enjoyed Thailand are the fellowship and teachings from the other Hope leaders from all over the globe. I had learnt so much from their teachings; over the pulpit and even more so from the sharing for their lives with me.

Since my first trip to our Hope Bangkok in 1993, my life has been impacted in so many ways. I had learnt what it means to really be a servant for Jesus and what it means to be biblical in our mindset and worldview. All these precious takeaways have blessed me enormously.

Here is a picture of us with the leaders from the European Continent. (Prakich, Jana & Andrea)













Two of the Hope Hong Kong Leaders and the Hope Singapore Team













Henry & Lerato Sabata (Joburg leaders) with us













Claudia, Joesph (Hope Seoul), Joseph (Hope Tokyo) LO & Pat













It is so good to belong to this big family of God. Claudia and I are convinced that Hope Singapore can and must play a significant role in God's global redemption plan.

Outwardly Tired, Inwardly Renewed

After saying Amen as I led some of the new people to cross the line of faith in our Filipino Service, I could literally feel the rapid movements on the soles of both my feet. Not only was the sermons done, I was completely done too!

My body was really tried but within me, my joy really knows no bound. The words of the Paul kept resonating in my mind…

2 Corinthians 4:16
Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

I guess I am just a joyful tired dog!

As I reflected on how panicky I was when the torrent of preaching and teachings responsibilities stormed my way on Wednesday morning to the completion of the preaching in all 5 services on the weekend, I was just amazed of how God had sustained me and brought about great victories in His church.

This isn’t the first time that God has bailed me out and I doubt it would be His last time. In fact, that really is the story of my life. God bailed me out again and again since the first time I come to a personal relationship with Him.

Allow me to take some time to reflect on all the 5 services that I had attended over the weekend.

Firstly, the Youth service had a really wonderful electrifying atmosphere. You can feel the high energy level in the air. Credits must really go to the leaders who very wisely created opportunities for the youth to exuberate their energy and express their creativity in such God-honoring ways. The youth were also really responsive and I was thoroughly blessed.

For the Tertiary service, I enjoyed the diversified feel among the congregation. It was a wonderful mixture of the Poly students, the University students and many working adults embedded within. Even among the Poly and University groups, the people from various campuses were rather different as well. Different but one. I enjoyed this very greatly as it is a representation, to some degree, of the cosmopolitan society that we are living in.

The 1st English Adults service had often been one of my favorite services to attend. The main reason is because many of the contemporaries that grew up (or older and bigger!) with me attends this service. As I preached, it was obvious to me that we have a group of committed veteran soldiers in our midst. The wholehearted commitment is reflected through their longevity of service and love for the Word.

At 1130am on the Sunday morning, this is when the 2nd English Adults service commences. I love his service for the responsiveness of the people. They are responsive to my preaching (I’m externally grateful!). One good friend actually told me that he was so challenged by the preaching that he went on sending sms to connect with his pre-believing friends while the sermon was still going on! Talk about being quick to respond to God’s Word. This service brings back memories of the early days of our church when the young adults group was really dominant and prominent. May this tribe increase greatly (the rest too!)

Quite a few of the working adults from the Sunday morning English services had told me that they really enjoyed attending the Filipino Service. The main reason, they told me, was because of the spiritual atmosphere in the service. Not unknown to many, our Filipino group is the group that fasted and prayed the most. It is not surprising to me that the spiritual atmosphere of the service is high. The corporate atmosphere is basically the summation of all the individual heart’s atmosphere. When there are so many among our Filipino group that have such a desperation for Jesus, it simply culminates in the corporate settings as well.

Simply put, I love Jesus and I love our church family. Thanks all for being a part of my life.

Enough said… time to yield to the call of the bed monster…Zzzzz

Am Back… Finally…

After I have been away from Singapore since 2nd November, it is good to be back. I was a little bit stressed when I stepped back into the office this morning. There were so many things for me to follow up and to do. There were also many preaching and camp speaking slots in the coming weeks till the end of December.

On one hand, I was a bit over-awed by the responsibilities. But on the other hand, I was anticipating a much greater dosage of God’s grace to be poured in my direction as I go about His business.

For this year’s staff retreat, the theme was solitude and prayer. To be honest, I was not very looking forward to it at the initial stage. As the program sheet was being passed out, there were too many “solitude time with God” slots than I would have appreciated. To make matters worse, these slots can last up to 3 hours at one go.

Not very willingly, I followed through with the program anyhow. I spent the first 30 minutes of the 3-hour slot fidgeting with anything and everything around me. It was terribly hard for me to settle down.

But after I had finally settled down, I began to read the articles that were given as part of our solitude time material. There was this particular article that spoke about the need to be totally present when we spent time with God. The author wrote that too often, we come before God but not with our complete presence. We had engaged in a form of being with God but we were not really there.

That article struck me right between my eyes. Just a few weeks ago, one of my friends told me that when I talked to him, I was often not present. He said that I would be looking around, wandering in my mind and waiting for the next thing to happen. There I was in front of him but I was already somewhere else. In fact, this friend has told me twice before about the need to be completely present while talking to people.

We do live in a multi-tasking world. In fact, I had just downloaded IE7 and one of the new features is that it enables you to have different tabs to different web pages all in one screen (dear tech-savvy people, please forgive me if I had explained it wrongly). All these things enable us to tend to more things at one go. Waiting and being fully present are becoming challenging virtues to develop in our fast paced society.

With God’s help and grace, I really want to be present in everything that I do. I may not get a lot of things done at the end of my day but I sincerely pray that whatever that I had set to do, I would do it to the best of my ability.

Most importantly, I want to be fully present when I am in God’s presence. God has always given me His full attention whenever I called upon His name. Anything less from me towards him would be unthinkable. I suppose this is an expression of loving God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength.

Writing From Thailand

I am just stealing some time from the conference break for this entry. I had been here since last Thursday. It had been a refreshing (in the heart & spirit) and yet tiring (physically) time. I look forward to sharing some of these adventures on this blog soon and very soon...

A Moment With Bon Jovi

Today, I had a great moment with a friend. We were just catching up on life and stuff while sucking apple juice in a small eating place. I did not like the drink at all. It was like gulping down concentrated sugar. Apparently, my friend enjoyed it. He must have gotten a rush from all the sugar consumed.

We shared about our marriage, our plans and our dreams for God. I was really glad that although we had been serving God for more than 13 years, our zeal and passion and dreams had not dwindled a single bit. We were still as wide-eyed and excited about God and His vision as ever, while adding greater wisdom between our ears (I hope!)

I sincerely do not believe that as we grow older, our zeal for God should reduce in any way. If for anything else, we should love God even more as we gather more experiences with God in our lives. I had seen people grown to become cynical about God and His dream for our lives and our world. To grow “mature” and not believe in biblical idealism could be termed as cynicism.

As we grow older, we should certainly not be as ignorant or simplistic as we were in our younger years. We should have added wisdom under our belt. To not grow more mature while only living off pure zeal could possibly be termed as naivety.

Thus, as we mature, we must grow in both wisdom and zeal. In doing so, our idealism in God should be further reinforced and lived out even more powerfully.

My friend and I encouraged one another to live out the ultimate fulfillment in life and not settled for anything less. Just as our conversation digressed to a less serious topic, the music of Bon Jovi came blasting through the in-house speakers. It was a song that both of us know (I sang part of it but I could not recall the song now). It was a song of our growing up era. My friend could even quote a whole chunk of the lyrics off the top of his head.






Bon Jovi







Like what my friend said, it was indeed good to do life with friends. And if I may add further, it is even better to do life together with friends for His purpose.