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6th Jan, the 6th day of the victory year 2007.

HALLELUJAH!!!

My uncle received Christ at the Lighthouse Evangelism Church. This salvation comes with great price and in the Lord’s perfect timing. My brother and I brought him to the miracle healing service as my uncle is terminally ill with last stage lung cancer.

My uncle has always been a staunch Taoist throughout his life and is just a simple man. He is one of the heartlanders you find at the kopitiam but never tied down by his age of 70. He goes for walk everyday and still works as a garang guni man. Life is still great till the haze clouded our sky. His condition deteriorated and began coughing out blood. The doctor diagnosed it is cancer and in its last stage. Worse, he has less than 3 months to live.

Thank God for allowing him to receive Christ in time. He is still able to speak briefly to confess his salvation with his own words. Shortly thereafter that week, he is admitted to the hospital and condition began to worsen even further. My uncle is one with lots of determination and desire to live than anyone I’ve known.

On the hospital bed, my aunties and other relatives heard him calling and crying out for the Lord Jesus. He is literally asking for God to heal him and grant him strength to stand up and live again. This does not happen once or twice but many times that my mother called me to go and minister to my uncle. He kept persuading me to call the pastor or my cell to go and pray for my uncle.

Overnight, everyone in my extended family knows I am a Christian and being made “famous”. Jesus Christ is now the talk of the town during my mum phone conversation with my relatives. Every time when I visited my uncle, my relatives will give me some “airtime” to talk and pray for my uncle. Please note that they still recognize Buddha as their god, but now they give some space for the Holy Spirit to come in.

Even as you read this testimony of the Lord’s grace and love, I just came back from visiting my uncle. The doctor has announced that 48 hours is the maximum time left for him. Everyone has gathered by his bedside, attending and speaking to him. I don’t know what will become of him, although I know death is not a sad thing for us as my uncle is leaving this painful place for the Lord’s loving arms.

I am praying and desiring to see God works mightily and miraculously. I hope that my uncle will die and resurrect again, he will stand up and testify that Jesus is Lord. No one can stop him and God now. Haha, Halleujah!!!

Lastly, I am also blessed, humbled and thankful of God’s deep deep deep enduring love for us. It’s all by grace and God alone that my uncle receives Christ. I didn’t do anything but only fetch him to the house of God at the Lord’s divine timing and place. It is the Holy Spirit who grants salvation, we can’t do anything and neither do we deserve it. We only deserve death. But Jesus Christ has been the death for us that we can have Life.

LORD, YOU ARE GOD.
HALLELUJAH!
THAT’S IT

I SURRENDER

Written by: Michael Lin (Leong Keng’s tribe)

As we set off to Muar Prayer House for our LKKD (Leong Keng, Korine & Doris) retreat, I prayed that God would reveal more of Himself to us as we seek Him together as a cell group over the weekend and as faithful as always, He did.  

During one of our worship sessions, God touched me profoundly with His presence. As we were singing the song, “Through It All”, God spoke to me that He is always in my life and He sees me through all the seasons of my life. Even in the season where I had been disobedient, He had lovingly watched me from afar, knowing that I would somehow return to Him someday.  

Over the weekend, He continued to reveal the love that He has for each and every one of us. However the full extent of it was revealed through our leaders in one of our worship sessions when they washed our feet, just like Jesus who washed his disciples’ feet 2000 years ago. At that moment I grasped the depth of love that our leaders had for us and I realized that the relationship between us was not just a leader and a cell member but father and son, mother and daughter.  

Thank God for His presence in our retreat and for our leaders, LKKD who have painstakingly planned it just for us. And most of all, I thank them for accepting us as flawed individuals but at the same, loving us the way they would love their own children and praying for us that we will become more and more like Christ each day.

Written by: Michelle (Korine’s Tribe)

We held the planning session on Friday night. For a 2-hour programme, it was mainly games and Breaking the Barrier. For those who don’t know, Breaking the Barrier (BTB) is a sticker book which is used to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with children below the age of 12. Strange, we thought of many games and even thought of going down. But with the 2-hour constraint, we decided to play the games in the house.

I was supposed to go through BTB with my cell leader on Sunday. Turns out that there was a salvation at Barnabas club so I managed to run through it, and in Mandarin! Well, we went through BTB. I’m surprised to note that practically the entire cell had not even seen BTB. Strange huh. But it’s the same as the John 3:16 sharing for adults and teens, except that it’s in a sticker format instead of drawing lines, circles, and arrows. While sharing with my cell leader, I observed something interesting. I have been doing BTB for the last 10 years. No, I’m not that old, but I did it even as a child. I used to wear the sash at Come Celebrate Christmas and share BTB with children. If my memory serves me well, I started sharing BTB at the age of 12.

It’s interesting to note that, at that time when I shared, I never had any difficulty. I was always confident and never had to think about, “How do I explain life forever?” or “How do I explain sin and death forever?” Yet, while we were discussing BTB at Expo, we had to think through questions like these. And I concluded, as children, we are indeed much simpler. Actually, come to think of it, children do know when they do something wrong. It’s not too difficult to explain sin and get them to understand it. I guess, as adults, we do look too much into details. That is the beauty of the child-like faith. Simple.

My cell leader was worried that they may not understand and I told her that BTB can be understood by children from 5 years old. Personally, even when I speak to the parents of the children we manage at Barnabas club, I realize that, as adults, we tend to wonder if the child really knows what he/she is doing and we doubt their faith. Thinking about that makes me sad. Even for the Lord’s Supper, as long as they are aware of the significance of the elements, I don’t see why they cannot participate in it. Even I myself sometimes question the child but I remember this, “The Holy Spirit in an adult is the same size as the Holy Spirit in a child.” Never ever underestimate children. They are more powerful than we can ever imagine. Jesus, Himself said, “Let the little children come to me for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” I truly believe that. Alright, back to the party.

On Christmas day, we got there at 12pm to prepare. Mainly blowing the balloons and packing the party packs for them.

The children are from my cell leader’s tuition group and they’re aged between 7-12. This is the best age to do BTB! Golly! And they’re all chinese speaking. Hmm, sharing BTB in Mandarin is a huge challenge for me. Ah well, cell leader doing it, so as long as she knows, that’ll do.

They began streaming out of the room at about 1.45pm and they starred at this bunch of adults sitting in the living room amongst balloons and gift packs. We had lunch before we started the games. Usually, I take this time to sort of mingle with the children and play/talk to them to get them comfortable with me.

Getting me to lead the ice breakers is not a problem, but when it comes to doing it in Mandarin, sheesh, it is quite a challenge, even if to 10 year old children. I did Simon Says in English and I had no idea they could not differentiate left and right yet. It was quite funny, but I suspect that they did not really understand the game. The next game we played was Pass the Fish. Music plays, pass the fish; music stops, person holding fish must do something. This was really funny because the boys were very sporting. He insisted on doing a 黃飛鴻 stance.

We continued to play Blow Wind Blow in Mandarin. 大風吹 was also quite challenging for me. It’s a tongue twister! The children enjoyed this game the most because they were already familiar with it. After that, we played the last game of Squirrel & Hunter. No photos of the games because I was also the photographer! So I couldn’t possibly lead the game and be the photographer at the same time. After a water break, we gathered to hear the Christmas story before launching into BTB.

The story is a simple one but I think it was too short so it was kinda abrupt. Basically, it’s the story of Joseph and Mary not being able to find a place to sleep for the night and they landed in the stables with the horses. Mary gave birth to Jesus that night and the three wise men followed the star. Upon finding Jesus, they worshipped Him and gave Him gold, incense, and myrrh. It ended to a chorus of Hark the Herald by the group of “angels”. After this, we gave out the BTB sticker books to the children.

2 leaders attached to 3 children and as my cell leader started introducing God, we facilitated the session. All the children were very attentive.

The time came to make their decision with the gold feet. As each leader explained to the child, the children were left to decide their direction. BTB wrapped up with the Sinner’s Prayer. Everyone prayed out loud together and they all personalized John 3:16. It’s really cool to get the children to read the verse with their names in it.

Cell leader’s husband sang a song talking about their new friend, Jesus and we took some group photos.

100% salvation for the children. I believe we did BTB with 8 children. So hallelujah for the new 8 precious children that have entered the kingdom of heaven! With all my heart, I truly believe that children are fully conscious and aware of what they are doing when they pray and ask Jesus into their heart. Never doubt their simple faith; you might even learn something from them if you stick around them. I have never stopped learning from children and they have always imparted great joy and faith in my heart.

Writers of this entry
Camy & Kristy (Cynthia’s Tribe)

First Posted on http://camy.livejournal.com/437933.html

19th December 2006 will always be a part of my memory as that was the day where a team of us departed for our mission trip to Cambodia. I was extremely excited as it was my first ever mission trip! Although I was physically tired due to a lack of rest from the previous night, I did not catch a single wink on the plane ride. Instead, I spent the time talking to my friendly flight neighbours – Bipeng and Sharon – where we shared our feelings and thoughts about going for the mission trip. One common element amongst us had to be our overwhelming enthusiasm for the trip (apart from our heavy eye-bags and tired faces!).

Upon arrival at Phnom Penh, God was very faithful as He blessed us with great favour from the Cambodian customs, and the entire team managed to clear the customs without any unnecessary delays. Immediately we went to the Human Resources University (HRU), to recce the venue where three day fun-filled English Study Camp with more than 170 students were held. We had our first Cambodian meal at the university’s canteen and I must comment that the food was pretty delicious (although Junyan stressed that it could be attributed to our hunger at that point haha!).

What happened next was a real surprise to many of us! We were treated to an unexpected formal greeting from the authorities of HRU. Yet, Ps Roland managed to ease the tense atmosphere with pockets of timely and witty jokes. We spent the rest of the day visiting popular places in Phnom Penh, and took the opportunity to purchase intricate souvenirs to appreciate our kind sponsors! Our first night was spent on re-planning and making major changes over our intended programme for the students due to the limitations in the venue and infrastructure. Indeed, many of us were uncertain if our planned programme would be well received by the students, but we had complete faith in God that He will provide and all things will fall in place.

Then came the first day of the study camp, and I was somewhat nervous (a feeling shared by many others I’m sure) as I had no idea if I could communicate well with the Cambodian students. Each of us had to play the role of a tutor to a group of 5-6 students, and I was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and sincerity of my group members, as they were extremely forthcoming in making conversations. In fact, the warmth they displayed soothed my nervousness instantly. We then proceeded to share several interesting ways of learning English, and the highlight had to be learning English through music. I can still remember the vivid scene when the entire lecture hall burst into a heart-warming rendition of “I Believe I Can Fly”.

The day ended with a time of games planned by our games team, and I was particularly impressed by the enthusiasm and zest displayed by the Cambodian students. Although they were all formally dress, none of them complained or held back when they played the different station games. In fact, the child-likeness of many Cambodian students surfaced as they enjoyed simple games such as ‘scissors paper stone’ and ‘table soccer’, and many of them shared that this was the first time they ever had so much fun in their life! I was really humbled by their sharing as it totally revealed their simplicity and sincerity. Through them, I was reminded to give thanks for all that I have been blessed with, and not to take things for granted. I also thanked God that the time of games broke most of the ice between us and the students, which brought an appropriate closure to the first day of the camp.

Personally, the highlight for the second day had to the Phnom Penh city tour, where the students played host and brought us sight-seeing on foot. It was particularly meaningful because it gave the students an opportunity to share their knowledge with us. I enjoyed the conversations with my group members, and I sure learnt a lot about Cambodia, the Khmer culture, and the raw beauty of the country from my dedicated “tour guides”. =) I have also learnt the art of jaywalking the busy roads in Phnom Penh, and it sure took skills which many of us Singaporeans do not possessed! Before the day ended, the students had to submit their reflection journal to us, and it was a pure joy reading their journals. I was really touched as I read about how much my group members benefited from and enjoyed the camp.

The final day of the camp was a big day as the students had to make a group presentation on a project completed with our guidance. I was extremely proud of my group members as I sat through all three presentations, because each piece of work amplified their hard work and sincerity! It was gratifying to see the Cambodian students present confidently in English as well. Through the standards of their presentations, I am sure that all of us will agree that the study camp was highly successful. More importantly, close bonds were built and we managed to open a door for evangelism with the students.

The camp concluded with us screening a video montage which captured memorable moments throughout the camp, and singing in unison the awe inspiring song “Friends”. Many students teared during that finale, and I felt my emotions charged as well because I have become close friends with my group members during those 3 days. The students expressed how much they will miss us, but I assured them that we will make an effort to keep in contact with them through emails!

 

Although the majority of us left for Singapore thereafter, a team of 10 remained behind to partner with a local church to organise a Christmas outreach for the HRU students. We want to thank God for 116 salvations amongst the Cambodian students, and we pray that God will show us how we can consolidate each and every one of them. As what Ps Roland mentioned, we need to treat these Cambodian students as members from our cluster as well. Let us keep them in our prayers always!

This mission trip will always be etched in my memories as I saw the power of reaching out to gateway cities. Although we were there only for a short period, the impact we left was remarkable because God blessed us with extraordinary favour from the Cambodians. This is indeed a strategic cutting-edge ministry that we can leverage on. In essence, I am humbled by the entire trip as the Cambodians were ever friendly, humble, simple and sincere. I am looking forward to return to Cambodia with love!

Contributed by: Casey Low (Derrick’s tribe)

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