What do you get when you put six girls and their fun-loving leader and mentor in a van?
Never-ending songs sang at various pitches and melodies.
We just can't stop singing about Jesus~
Anyway. I just got back from a very hectic/tiring/fun/mind blowing seven day trip. Five days were spent in Malacca, at the Fight for Christ (54 C) conference. If you want to learn about all the amazing things we learned and experienced, go here. I'll just add snippets to it.
It was an annual bilingual convention organized by the Powered (or was it Empowered?) Youth from Calvary Life Assembly Church. The youth is so organized and so on fire for God that they make really good role models for us. The praise&worship was in Mandarin but the sermons in English because the speakers were from America. The theme was World Changer, but it honestly changed me first so that I want to change the world. Each sermon touched a very important and sensitive issue in our lives. God was really working in all of us. On the last night, God rained fire upon us. Ps Jay, the speaker, had asked to to pray and cry out to God and demand that we be given power and authority to reach out to the rest of the world. I literally prayed till my voice broke. I had never prayed that fervently before. When Jay touched my forehead with his burning hand, I just went limp and fell into the arms of a waiting usher I didn't know about, and cried out praises to God. Later all 600+ youth stood together, hands linked, praying for revival in our hearts. Again the Holy Spirit manifested itself and half of the group was knocked down, literally knocked down to the floor by an unseen force. I was in that half. Someone later commented it was like a wave, starting from the front row down to the end. God is simply amazing.
Among sermons was a topic on sin. On how unconfessed sin will kill us, we can't just avoid sin, we must HATE sin etc. Then Jay showed us a video similar to the one below. To all readers, I really want you all you watch the video. Just watch it, please.
I started crying within 2 minutes of watching it. The video that was shown was about 10-15 minutes. I finally realized how much Jesus did for me. All the pain, suffering, torture, humiliation. And the video probably wasn't 1 percent of what Jesus had to go through. I really hated myself then. Every single lie I uttered, every bad thought, was a lash on His back. I am so glad to know that He loves me. He loves you. He loves all of us. Every single wretched soul.
In the span of 5 days, I was broken, broken through all defences and walls, broken so much that no words can explain. Then I was healed. God blessed me with inner healing to make me whole again, this time without my past threatening to overwhelm me, without sensitive issues to bug me. To earnestly feel loved by the One who is the Most High.
God didn't just revive me without purpose. Matthew 28:19 said "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,". Sarah, our leader, challenged us to reach out the the ignorant ones. The very next day, during the last session, Ps Jay too challenged us. The amazing thing was Jay uttered the EXACT same words as Sarah had previously, and issued the same challenge. Is that not more confirmation from God than what is needed? We came to realise that EYM is too inward-thinking. Yes, we need to care for and spur ourselves forward, but that was not enough. Whatever happened to those outside the church who still need the word of God and need to be saved? This had me really challenged to the core.
Well that's all I want to say concerning the conference for now. Among other trivial things, the food wasn't bad, the other youth are really friendly, the place was ideal for the convention (it was an abandoned resort, so we could have the conference without being disturbed by others). We stayed in apartments. Oh and there's about 5 of us sleeping in one room. Esther and I shared a huge blanket. We would go to sleep, and a few hours later I would wake up feeling really cold and see that Esther had taken the blanket for herself and wrapping herself in it so that there was no way I could get it back. So I went outside to sleeping on the floor with a pillow. And there's about Naomi who was addicted to Coke so we tried to wean it off her, but it only resulted in her getting addicted to chocolate milk instead. That girl needs a lot of sugar in her blood. Caryn and I learned the dance moves of 'Thorns', a powerful Christian song. Go look it up in YouTube if interested. Caryn taught me 'Lean on Me' too, though she's not done teaching me. I'm now really interested in dance, though I don't know what kind yet.
Lets move on to KL. This I have to share about this in more detail as Est only shared bout Malacca in her blog. We took a bus to KL Sentral but instead ended up in Pudu Raya, a station not far away but didn't have the LRT to send us straight to Taman Bahagia, where Wai Leem & Co lives. So we had to walk quite a distance to the nearest LRT station. It was raining, cold and the floor was slippery. But we still made it in one piece. Wai Nyan and Wai Peng picked us up. Subsequently, we went to the 'pasar malam' for a look-see and dinner. The guys treated us to a very filling dinner with a seriously looong 'roti tissue' for dessert. It was fun to see Phoebe and Esther playing scissors-paper-stone, loser ate a piece of roti tissue. Upon returning to their homely and comfy house, we divided our sleeping places. The girls quickly booked the couch, leaving me and Phoebe the carpet-ed&sleeping bag-ed floor. Little did we know that it was the most comfortable place to sleep on. Sweet.
The next day, we went for a shopping spree in Mid Valley, from 9a.m. until 5+p.m. Poor Wai Leem had to bear with us. XD When we met him, all the girls said that he was very much like my brother, Jia Ahn. Apparently, the way he spoke, acted, dressed etc was like JA. So I asked for his help in finding a cheap T-shirt that JA might like. WL couldn't find any, so I bought Gardenia's Twiggies that JA always misses. (when I reached home, JA took the bag and immediately munched on a Twiggie.) Anyway, we all bought a lot of things. We asked WL how it was like to shop with a huge gang of girls, he said ".......tiring...." At night, Wai Peng and Wai Leem accompanied us to 1Utama while Wai Nyan and Sarah went to church for a college group meeting. It was the only night that Sarah wasn't with us. A few hours was enough for a adventurous experience to happen.
It started out fine. We ate dinner, got to talk quite a bit with the guys while Est and Naomi who hadn't shopped enough in Mid Valley, went to shop. The rest of us just chilled in Burger King. Wai Leem choked on his burger when he found out I was related to Chin Peng. Lol. We went to MPH after half an hour or so. Then we met up and got into Wai Peng's car, all ready to go home. Then Ashley realized her RM1000+ camera was missing. She dashed out of the car to look for it with Wai Leem. Ten minutes later, Phoebe and Caryn too went to search for it while Esther, Naomi and I prayed in the car with Wai Peng. Suddenly Ashley's phone rang. We didn't pick it up until the fourth time. It was a MPH worker who discovered the camera! God is gracious. Me and Esther ran for our lives to retrieve it then ran back down. Esther later told me she had wanted to exercise and had prayed for a chance to do so. God answered all our prayers and Esther had her short-lived workout. After we all settled down, the girls went to sleep while Caryn and I helped Wai Leem with his first Kid Zone PowerPoint presentation. I crashed at 4am. The other two slept at 5am.
We were woken up at 9 to eat dim sum for breakfast. The food was good and in abundance. I don't know why people enjoyed stuffing us to the brim the entire trip. But its a good thing =) We met Jeanette and family there too. Small world eh. Time flew by and it was time to go home. After saying our goodbyes, we boarded a train from KL Sentral to KLIA. At 6pm, we touched down in KIA.
Ashley, Caryn, Esther, Naomi, Phoebe, Sarah and I forged a bond as a result. The bond among us will not waver for years to come. The love and trust between us will not be broken by the evil one, but will be strengthened further by Jesus Christ. We will go through the mountains and valleys together. We will reach out to others together. Friendships made with the youth of 54C and the boys, with God's grace, will last too. Most of all, God will reign in our hearts, forever.
Amen.
LINK TO OLIVER's BLOGGY
1 year ago
