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.