Splendid Saturday
after a week wrestling in the darkness with PMS,
something seemed to have clicked yesterday listening to Ed Chan's sermon on Ruth.
Something about her just quietly going about getting her stuff done with Godliness.
Perhaps i've been too uptight with certain expectations after being back.
"Why Christians here like that?" seemed to be my predominant thought, and i allowed it to consume me.
I really need to learn from Ruth. Just quietly go and do your thing. With Godliness.
-----------------------------
Today was a really packed day.
Early start to the morning at 7am.
I haven't been up before the sun for months now.
And then it was back to back appointments meeting lots of people, not all of whom i know.
Usually things like that drain energy out of me,
and with the early start and packed day,
i was wary that i'd be do drained before the day ended.
It was amazingly refreshing though.
I'm half concussed now,
but still spirited.
First up was volunteer training.
I wasn't sure what to expect since it's the first training session,
and coming soon after I just kana screwed (again) by volunteer mismanagment at another centre,
I wasn't particularly thrilled.
And so i wasn't even upset when us volunteers arrived and waited 15 min outside the locked gate.
my expectations not very high sia.
Thankfully, it was all just a misunderstanding.
Turns out there are actually 2 centres of the same name at 2 sides of the same block, and we were waiting at the wrong side.
Luckily the training coordinators solved the puzzle of why everyone was late and rushed over to the other side to get us all to come over.
The 5 hour training session was surprisingly refreshing, energizing and time just flew by.
On our table were 1 psychology student, 2 law undergrads, a husband-wife team who are parents of 3 missionaries, and WJ and myself.
In the room there were also a medical social worker, and this guy who is super pro government it is very funny listening to him (and he wasn't trying to be funny). I was trying to figure out if he is a master comedian and doing a paraody. It's like one of the elections where the MP turned up for a neighborhood Halloween party and everyone thought it was so funny to have this guy wearing a PAP costume and behaving just like an MP. Funny until they realised he was really an MP doing a walkabout that is.
The diversity in the room was united by one single factor,
we all wanted to know more about the poor and help the poor.
and we were willing to spent 6 hours early morning on Saturdays to do it.
The trainer taught us about the ecological theory today,
of how people are affected by their environments.
"micro, macro, eso, exo, meso" ...sounds like some bad word like that.
best thing was we were filling up the feedback form at the end of the session
and i forgot the name of the theory
so i just wrote
"I learnt about the ecosystem today".
I think someone else wrote "The bee hoon is not tasty."
We had a lot of discussion time on how we viewed things in life.
and it's very interesting listening to the viewpoints of different people.
it helped me see how much of my view point is influenced by the bible,
and for things not explicitly stated in the bible, what are the principles i can draw from it?
what is truth?
Is truth relative?
There was one view on cohabitation which i can fully understand where they are coming from,
and if it wasn't for the bible I'd agree on it, because without the bible, marriage is more of a custom and tradition, which can evolve with times.
but seeing the world through God's framework helps me understand why I cannot agree with it. not becuase God says cannot, but I understand why God says cannot, and I agree with it just seeing general examples of unbiblical family and structures and the problems that arise from them.
this is not to say I argue vehemently for my beliefs,
it was just an interesting exchange of idea session,
to understand what different people think,
and to solidify your own convictions by thinking through why you don't agree
Looking forward to the next training sesson.
---------------------------------------
After that it was a mad rush down from the west to the central area for a gathering.
We almost missed the bus and the bus stop was freaking far,
half way through i figured we wouldn't be in time and decided to tease WJ who was in front of me "Go WJ go! stop the bus for us!"
RUN she did.
and she really boarded the bus and got it to wait for us, so we must dash for it also otherwise we'll hold up the whole bus.
the bus driver waited a while for us and we boarded the bus panting and exhausted.
"you really ran??"
"I was going to give up, and then you shouted for me to go for it! So i kept running!"
"I was TEASING you!"
I havn't ran for the bus in years......
It was really cool meeting the folks from CG 5 years ago.
I was trying to tell them normal greeting means shaking hands, not touching my stomach.
---------------------------------
From central, it was now back further west to Boon lay no less for another gathering,
this time with people I didn't even know.
It turned out to be a really great gathering,
young, energetic friendly peeps,
delicious home cooked chilli crabs,
pple helping to clean up,
chatting and getting to know each other a lot more.
It felt right. Just like cambodia once more.
two of them are in my elderly visitation group.
one is super passionate about sharon au and ginger.
the other i've been whatsapp-ing for months and finally only got to meet now.
Oh and more people seem to be getting interested in Toastmasters.
I'm going around being a Toastmaster evangelist.
One day let's see where this brings me to.
after a week wrestling in the darkness with PMS,
something seemed to have clicked yesterday listening to Ed Chan's sermon on Ruth.
Something about her just quietly going about getting her stuff done with Godliness.
Perhaps i've been too uptight with certain expectations after being back.
"Why Christians here like that?" seemed to be my predominant thought, and i allowed it to consume me.
I really need to learn from Ruth. Just quietly go and do your thing. With Godliness.
-----------------------------
Today was a really packed day.
Early start to the morning at 7am.
I haven't been up before the sun for months now.
And then it was back to back appointments meeting lots of people, not all of whom i know.
Usually things like that drain energy out of me,
and with the early start and packed day,
i was wary that i'd be do drained before the day ended.
It was amazingly refreshing though.
I'm half concussed now,
but still spirited.
First up was volunteer training.
I wasn't sure what to expect since it's the first training session,
and coming soon after I just kana screwed (again) by volunteer mismanagment at another centre,
I wasn't particularly thrilled.
And so i wasn't even upset when us volunteers arrived and waited 15 min outside the locked gate.
my expectations not very high sia.
Thankfully, it was all just a misunderstanding.
Turns out there are actually 2 centres of the same name at 2 sides of the same block, and we were waiting at the wrong side.
Luckily the training coordinators solved the puzzle of why everyone was late and rushed over to the other side to get us all to come over.
The 5 hour training session was surprisingly refreshing, energizing and time just flew by.
On our table were 1 psychology student, 2 law undergrads, a husband-wife team who are parents of 3 missionaries, and WJ and myself.
In the room there were also a medical social worker, and this guy who is super pro government it is very funny listening to him (and he wasn't trying to be funny). I was trying to figure out if he is a master comedian and doing a paraody. It's like one of the elections where the MP turned up for a neighborhood Halloween party and everyone thought it was so funny to have this guy wearing a PAP costume and behaving just like an MP. Funny until they realised he was really an MP doing a walkabout that is.
The diversity in the room was united by one single factor,
we all wanted to know more about the poor and help the poor.
and we were willing to spent 6 hours early morning on Saturdays to do it.
The trainer taught us about the ecological theory today,
of how people are affected by their environments.
"micro, macro, eso, exo, meso" ...sounds like some bad word like that.
best thing was we were filling up the feedback form at the end of the session
and i forgot the name of the theory
so i just wrote
"I learnt about the ecosystem today".
I think someone else wrote "The bee hoon is not tasty."
We had a lot of discussion time on how we viewed things in life.
and it's very interesting listening to the viewpoints of different people.
it helped me see how much of my view point is influenced by the bible,
and for things not explicitly stated in the bible, what are the principles i can draw from it?
what is truth?
Is truth relative?
There was one view on cohabitation which i can fully understand where they are coming from,
and if it wasn't for the bible I'd agree on it, because without the bible, marriage is more of a custom and tradition, which can evolve with times.
but seeing the world through God's framework helps me understand why I cannot agree with it. not becuase God says cannot, but I understand why God says cannot, and I agree with it just seeing general examples of unbiblical family and structures and the problems that arise from them.
this is not to say I argue vehemently for my beliefs,
it was just an interesting exchange of idea session,
to understand what different people think,
and to solidify your own convictions by thinking through why you don't agree
Looking forward to the next training sesson.
---------------------------------------
After that it was a mad rush down from the west to the central area for a gathering.
We almost missed the bus and the bus stop was freaking far,
half way through i figured we wouldn't be in time and decided to tease WJ who was in front of me "Go WJ go! stop the bus for us!"
RUN she did.
and she really boarded the bus and got it to wait for us, so we must dash for it also otherwise we'll hold up the whole bus.
the bus driver waited a while for us and we boarded the bus panting and exhausted.
"you really ran??"
"I was going to give up, and then you shouted for me to go for it! So i kept running!"
"I was TEASING you!"
I havn't ran for the bus in years......
It was really cool meeting the folks from CG 5 years ago.
I was trying to tell them normal greeting means shaking hands, not touching my stomach.
---------------------------------
From central, it was now back further west to Boon lay no less for another gathering,
this time with people I didn't even know.
It turned out to be a really great gathering,
young, energetic friendly peeps,
delicious home cooked chilli crabs,
pple helping to clean up,
chatting and getting to know each other a lot more.
It felt right. Just like cambodia once more.
two of them are in my elderly visitation group.
one is super passionate about sharon au and ginger.
the other i've been whatsapp-ing for months and finally only got to meet now.
Oh and more people seem to be getting interested in Toastmasters.
I'm going around being a Toastmaster evangelist.
One day let's see where this brings me to.
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