Jurong Youth Ministry

Hehe for fear of lagging any more than I already am, here’s about Survivor Day 1!!

First met up early early in the morning in church to run around being happy and to wait for the bus to arrive, to take us to the ferry terminal. For some reason everyone but me managed to bring really tiny bags (ie: no larger than a backpack)!!

And so we were split into 2 busloads and partnered in 2’s and 3’s, so if we lose someone the lost someone would have another lost someone to talk to while being looked for. After getting there and being assigned our rooms, we put down our stuff and were split into 2 groups (red and yellow), then started cooking maggi mee in the bbq pit with mass tins!! Okay, from my team mostly Wayne and Shannon gave instructions while we all followed and fanned the pit with all our might, because nobody else has experience with it

It was the best maggi mee ever.

Made the team flag after lunch with sticks and markers. Salamanders VS the LCJS!

After that it was time for games!

First off wrote our team names on a big piece of cardboard, then cut it up into little pieces. Then proceeded to me (for my team, who was yelling for the other team..??) screaming my lungs out to my blindfolded team members who had to run around half-cocked (literally!) looking for the little pieces and putting them together. And Salamanders won! Yay us!

After that, went to the chess grounds and played King’s Checkers (Yellow won!), then went to the courtyard for a game that was kind of like a relay race, except it involved spinning around with a hula hoop and SEARCHING FOR A TINY ROCK IN A BOX OF MEAL WORMS BLINDFOLDED (so sad can’t find the pictures of worms!!!!!). So we got gloves, but that doesn’t stop you from FEELING THE WORMS THROUGH THE THIN PLASTIC AHHHH!!!!!

Went back for dinner with more maggi mee, had cold showers, threw chopsticks and broken matchsticks around the table, played cards, and then it was time for the first tribal council! Gathered up group and Salamander flag, then trooped up to the tribal council area on the hill (so grand!). Candles were lit all around and we played Truth or Dare while people went through to the back to vote on the most helpful team member…

The first day was super fun all over with thanks to Christon, the planning team, and all the people who attended <3

The survivor video Part 1 of 3 (thank you jeremy!!!) can be viewed by clicking on this sentence (:
[just click next on the video to get to part 2 and 3]

An elderly grandma, whom I figured was in her 80s, who looked healthy but clearly aged, walked up to the distribution booth to collect her food stuff; two bags weighting over 5 kg each. She was happy and we were too, to receive and give respectively. Most of the youth were out in charted buses helping other elderly folks carry their heavy goodie bags home. The elderly grandma told us that she lived at the block just behind the church so I offered to help her carry the bags to her place. She was courteously reluctant but we were enthusiastically insistent, so she finally agreed to let me carry it for her. She spoke in some dialect which isn’t one I’m decent at, but I was still able to figure out what she was saying. She told me about her family and daily life… at times we all just need someone to talk to right. When we reached her place, she was very happy and expressed great appreciation for the help of the church. Her smiling face gave me this nice warm happy feeling. It’s moments like this I feel proud to be a Christian.

yes!!! after an arduous and painful process to retrieve my password (no thanks to pK) i am finally blogging so hihihi! fatfish reporting on Pay It Forward, the community outreach project held last sunday, 18 January 2009!!

let’s give some background on this Pay It Forward, shall we!! Firstly, you might have heard of the movie with the same title, starring Haley Joel Osmont (sp?) of Sixth Sense fame (i see dead people). The movie narrates the story of a boy, who for a school project, initiates a altruistic scheme, which starts small but has vast potential to snowball. Basically, he does a good deed for 3 different people, and these 3 people will have to, in turn, pay the good deed forward, by helping another 3 souls. Hence the name!!

So!! Jurong church organised a one-day event in collaboration with the Yuhua Community, and with special VIP MP: Mrs Grace Yu Foo Yee Shoon!! Involving about 90 recepients from low-income families, a special food hamper cum goodie bag was prepared especially for them. On Sunday morning, they were invited to our church, given free health screenings, and for their family members too! they then attended a speech by Mrs Fu, and were personally handed vouchers by her, which they could then exchange for the food hampers.

i helped out with the health checkup station, and handled the height measuring station with finesse and utter professionalism! at the health check point were also aunty Arlene, Pastor Ericksson, Ruth, Nathaniel (photog), and some other aunties i don’t know (haha oops). the people came in droves but it was pretty fun (i’m just glad i wasn’t in charge of the body fat percentage measurers. those machines are horrors). i also helped to translate some health advice to chinese aunties (cos one of the ACS aunties was indonesian) that was pretty COOL!!

BUT we are coming to the point!! throughout the entire process of Pay It Forward, starting from packing of the food hampers (which included scooping rice and lovingly unwrapping mandarin oranges) to moving the hideously heavy parcels from point to point, to greeting and manning the registration and other booths, to ushering and even acting as a beauty queen (i.e. Truddy), and to following the families back to the houses and helping them carry their food hampers, the YOUTH of Jurong Church helped out mightily!! (no joke hor, one serving of food hampers consisted of 2 large canvas packs weighing about 5kg each, (my rough estimation ok)) Thank God for all the help.. haha. and Thank you everyone who helped out!!! Mr. Cheang promises NUTS!!!! NUTS FOR EVERYONE!!!~~

Now for some gratuitous shots =)

three girls forming an unsuccessful human chain to pass MMMM Korean Kimchi Ramen!!!

while en route to Jurong East MRT Stesen, Tricia eats hair

acting like tourists on the mrt (look!! we even have orchids!!! the emblem of tourists!)

more orchid power

ok the orchids are gone but the tourist feel remains

to round off this splendid amazing awesome post, here is a picture of unbridled brotherly love. <3. one, two, three, everyone say: AWWWW…

(PS Bernice!!! u are lagging!!! haha i have already posted on January event and u havent post December Survivor!!)

(OH PPS!!! Feb 7 we’ll be having the first POWER UP for 2009!! be sure to come, there’ll be “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” in the evening..!!!)

On the Saturday of 8th November, Jurong youth made their way to West Coast park to play some games with required more space. We started off with songs led by Christon and Joash (who organised the entire outing including games).

The first game we played was Last Train Standing, which included the leaders of 5 trains of people playing rock paper sciccors, the group that lost surrendering the last people in their train to the winning team. In the end, there was one long train of people. This hilights Romans 12:5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ.

The second game we played required us to split into groups of 3, and each group was labeled with a character in the bible. Other groups then acted out the character so the former would be able to guess. On top of being fun, this also helped us all to understand and learn more about the characters and their roles in the bible.

Finally, we played the old favourite eagle catch the chicks (lao ying zhua xiao ji?) with 3 groups. It represents God wanting us to give up our material possessions, but we being stubborn don’t.

Overall, it was aenjoyable and helped us learn alot more from the bible (:

Found it on Brian’s blog. Thanks Brian & Mandy!

Yearly we celebrate Parents’ Day which falls on Mothers’ Day (just so dad’s don’t feel left out ha) This year for Parents’ Day, the youth and young adults worked hard to organize church worship service and prepared lunch for our dear parents… or at least we tried too!

On Sabbath, after the worship service and lunch we had a special “Parents Children Dialog” where both parties had a chance to voice their views on “FREEDOM! vs. CONTROL”.

I say its not easy being a parent neither is it easy being a kid. As kids, we need to earn our parent’s trust by acting responsibly. And as parents they too need to earn their kids trust being approachable, loving and accepting. Neither sides always get it right but whatever it is we want to thank our parents’ for all the love they have showered on us!

I took great pride in the Design Ministry. In fact like an over-protective mum, Design Ministry is like my baby and I’m willing to pump in a big portion of my time and energy to run it.

However, I was reminded by a friend 4 months ago that all ministries belong to God and that I’m not indispensable. With that reminder, I decided to let God took charge of this year Christmas decor. It started with this ‘Web’ idea that Lionel came up with as we brainstorm the decor for the sanctuary. I remembered sitting in sanctuary for hours that evening picturing the ‘Web’ idea and refining the idea with Lionel. Lionel’s summaries it, there’s only 2 outcome, either the ‘Web’ look like crap or people will be blown away by it. I told the team to give me time to work out the feasibility of the idea and went home to pray about it.

We didn’t have any budget this year for the decor and I requested the church for $150 to carry out the ‘Web’ idea after much calculation. It was up to God to decide then and I received the approval from Pastor in a couple of hours. I prayed further for manpower to create the ‘Web’ idea and the youth kept coming, offering their talents, time and help in the last few weeks!

24 hours before the Christmas Eve service, Pastor called and asked whether is it possible to decorate the tent with balloons to create a festive mood. He summaries it, if it’s possible, do it else forget about it. I prayed about it almost immediately after Pastor and I ended the conversation. I figured 80 balloons will be enough for the tent and asked God to decide, if He provides me with just 7 youth so including me, each of us have to blow 10 balloons and hang them, I will do it. I smsed 15 youth and within an hour, I have 7 youth who said yes. On the day itself, I actually had 9 youth helping me to do the balloons decor!

There’s this appreciation dinner that I want to throw for my core Design team of 8 (including me) in Jan 08. The final decision was dinner at Sizzler and it’s going to cost me a bit so I prayed that God will provide. I was grateful when Peng Kong offered to split the cost with me and dumbfound when Pastor came to me a few days ago and told me, he really want to affirm the Design team for our hard work and told me to bring them out for dinner! I told him about my planned Sizzler treat and he declared that he will join in and will pay for the dinner!

I’m dispensable and Design Ministry belongs to God. J

It’s been amazing working with my core team (Lionel, Andrew, Peng Kong, Christon, Marcus, Jared and Clara). I’ve been touched by their talents and commitment. Thank you very much! I also want to appreciate all the youth in JYM who have helped out in 1 way or another. Thank you everyone! Most importantly, thank God for allowing me to be in charge of this year Christmas decor and for providing me so much to complete the decor.

I lost count of the number of compliments I received for the ‘Web’ idea! It’s definitely an idea that blown people away.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone.