Friday, December 26, 2008

2nd Bersatunite Promo Video!

Yay! Finally finished my 2nd video for this event. Sorry Esther for the delay...if you read my previous post, you'd understand why...




Please comment! Really value feedback so can continue to improve...

My wife and I will be attending this event to lend our support as counsellors. Do pray for this event that God will touch lives and more young Christians will be committed to pray and seek God about their place in our nation!

God is good - pt 3

It's been a while since I been updating. LOTS of things happening, what with Christmas preparations and such.

Anyway, significantly since I last blogged:

1) We had our Thanksgiving Open House on 20th December. We invited so many people that we thought we'd better have it at our condo's poolside. We had invited about 100 people, but in the end only about 80 people came. So there was LOTS of food leftover.

We really wanted to celebrate the end of an eventful year and to just express our thanks to God with a little generosity. But it was a real challenge for us to have our open house.

MONEY! We were on the verge of broke as usual and catering an event was definitely out of our budget. So I finally decided to cook myself - what to do...no money, use own strength lo...fact of life! Anyway, I quite enjoyed the challenge of working out the menu and budget. When I saw the guest list and realised how much we needed to spend (estimated about RM1000!!) just to buy raw materials, I was a little stunned...

But as usual, God is FAITHFUL. One of the Sunday sermons spoke to me and I decided to "pursue my right to earn money" as the speaker said. I had several people who owed me money for work done, and had not paid for several years. So I decided to get tough on them. Shortly after, they decided to pay - at least in part (better than nothing lo)!

And when we went shopping for the materials we needed, we actually shaved about RM300 of my initial estimate. So there's some more savings! In the end, we had enough to pay for the Open House AND buy myself a camera to pursue my photography hobby.

TIME! It was near Christmas time and I was involved in Church activities and also work and other commitments. So stress!! But thank God, He gave me the strength to survive on just a few hours sleep, so I could get all my things done on time!

STRENGTH! Cooking for 100 ppl is seriously no joke, man! Thank God for my wife, who helped me throughout the day. Also thank God for our good friend, Annie who helped us a lot too! We were at it since 9 in the morning and until the final dish was served at 7pm. After that, I was soo pooped! I guess I wasn't a very good host...didn't have much energy left over to entertain! Especially cos I was up until 4am the previous night baking 3 cakes!

2) Wai Ling passed her Kumon test and interviews and will be officially getting her Instructor's license. We can now officially take over the Bukit Damansara Kumon Centre. This is really great news and brings tears to our eyes to see God's goodness to us! After years of struggling, we can finally look forward to getting ourselves more financially secure and have some money saved up for our future!

Wai Ling was so exhilirated cos Maths and exams are her two great fears. And to pass a Maths Test for such an important reason...It's really God's grace.

She went into the test with confidence on that day as she had felt the assurance from God that all would be well. I hope she can fill in the blanks for you herself on this blog...

3) Mesra Jiran Christmas Party. This is one big event organised by my church, Life Methodist Church Puchong, on Christmas Eve Night. Let's see...I was in charge of the night's games, the entire night's slides - including setting up the projection screen, designing the event bulletin.

GAMES! Wow...first time had to lead games for 300 people!! REALLY wondered what we were going to do cos we can't get 300 ppl off their seats and running around in a small space! Thank God for the Internet!

SLIDES! Total of 96 slides! Prepared over 2 days...and this was coming in the heels of our just ended Open House. So more sleepless nights...

BULLETIN! Nearly forgot this! Thank God remembered it at about 6am on event day after finishing most of the slides (yes, I really meant it when I said "sleepless nights"). Print halfway, RUN OUT OF INK! Thank God Auntie Alexis from church could photostat the rest for me!

As with all big events, there was crisis after crisis at the last minute. But praise the Lord, with teamwork and passion for serving God, we managed to pull through and everything (well, almost) turned out fine!

All in all, it was a great event! The games were well-received, the children's fancy dress contest was a blast, the youths were great in their musical play and we went home exhausted, relieved and marvelling at God's grace! Finally fell asleep at about 2.30am.

4) CHRISTMAS MORNING SERVICE! Woke at 7.30am and started to cook for church. Reached church a little late. Was so tired, I slept through parts of the service - snored some more! Aiyoo...so malu!

Anyway, reached home at about 1pm. Wanted to sleep, but there was a great commotion at my condo's poolside. So I went to check it out! And discovered a VERY INTERESTING THING going on there.

Will blog about that in my next post.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Check out this blog!

Politics and social commentary without racialism! And definitely more than just complaints about how bad Malaysia is!

http://notsleepinganymore.blogspot.com/

Monday, December 8, 2008

New video...

Finally! Finished one video promo for the Bersatunite concert!



This is another small step for me into the world of movie making. please feel free to feedback & comment. Thanks!

What's Bersatunite? I'll let the youths organising this speak for themselves:

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"Bersatunite" is pronounce as "Bersatu-unite" with a common 'U'. It is a concert initiated by the Methodist Youth Fellowship of the Selangor and KL district (12 churches all together).

The details are as below:

Venue: KL Wesley Methodist Church
Time: 7.30 pm
Date: 10th January 2009
Guest performance: Juwita Suwito

Its aim is to ignite the passion to unite in prayer. We want to see youths especially, on fire for God and praying as a community, regardless of what denomination you are from, as long as you are a follower of Christ...we must be united to pray.

Pray for our country, our nation.
Pray for our leaders, our Prime Minister.
Pray for justice and freedom and peace.
Pray for our churches, pastors and elders/leaders.
Pray for our family, friends and ourselves.

There is so much to pray for! Like the apostles in Acts 1:12, "They all joined together constantly in prayer..." so we should also gather among ourselves to pray. 1 Corinthians 12:12 says "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ."

Yes, we may be from different churches, different denomination and have different way of going about things, BUT we are very much in common for we worship the same God, read the same bible passages and have the same earnest desire to seek God and do His will!!!

Though we are many, we are ONE BODY in Christ.So come, we want to connect with you, especially if you are from Selangor or KL! We want to establish a prayer network among the churches in this district, to pray and encourage each other, and see where He leads us.

We are also working together with Malaysian Youth Prayer Gathering (MYPG) in the hope of recruiting more young people to come and pray together. We are now in the midst of starting a LYPG - Local Youth Prayer Gathering in the KL/PJ area. For more information on this and more, do visit http://bersatunite12.blogspot.com/

Any further enquiries, do not hesitate to drop us a comment at our blog or email us at bersatunite@gmail.com

God Bless ;)

http://weedaphne.blogspot.com

Monday, November 10, 2008

Police Attack Anti-ISA Vigil

I was almost there.

Almost.

But I stayed home cos the past few days had been very hectic for my family and I was pooped. I actually wanted to go. I already had my paper cups and I was thinking of decorating them with "No to ISA", "Yes to Freedom & Justice", etc.

But thank God, I changed my mind.

According to reports the roads leading to the field where the vigil was supposed to be held were sealed by police since the early evening. Then as people gathered, the FRU surrounded the crowd. At first, they harassed the crowd to the Amcorp Mall parking lot. Then they harassed them to the PJ Civic Centre.

There a few bloggers spoke. The last one to speak was RPK. Then as the people were singing Negaraku, the cops stormed in. 24 people were arrested, including 2 State Assemblymen and an MP. Also arrested was Father Paulino, a Catholic priest.

How are men, women, children who are participating in a quiet gathering such a danger to society that fully armed riot police have to be unleashed on them? How are politicians advocating a just and fair society and a Catholic priest a danger to society? I fail to see any reasonable reason why the vigil had to be stormed.

I had been to one of the vigils a couple of weeks ago. It was a very quiet affair. People gathered. Lighted candles. Talked politics. Mostly, people just sat/walked around, smiled at each other. A coffee shop at lunch time was more noisy that the 300 people gathered at that place!

Why? Why? Why?

And to think that I wanted to bring my family there yesterday as part of their political awakening as citizens in this dear land of ours.

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I post here some info from Wikipedia about the Gestapo - Nazi Germany's ruthless and much-feared secret police. You may draw your own conclusions...

"The Gestapo had the authority to investigate treason, espionage and sabotage cases, and cases of criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany."

"The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called Schutzhaft - 'protective custody', a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings."

"By February and March 1942, student protests were calling for an end to the Nazi regime. These included the non-violent resistance of Hans and Sophie Scholl, two leaders of the White Rose student group. However, resistance groups and those who were in moral or political opposition to the Nazis were stalled by the fear of reprisals from the Gestapo. In fact, reprisals did come in response to the protests. Fearful of an internal overthrow, the forces of Himmler and the Gestapo were unleashed on the opposition. The first five months of 1943 witnessed thousands of arrests and executions as the Gestapo exercised their powers over the German public."

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I for one will not allow our beloved Malaysia to become a Gestapo State!

P.S. The Nazi regime eventually collapsed under the weight of their own evil, done in by their own greed, pride and lust for power.