Sunday, September 28, 2008

It was the annual Bluesky camp last weekend (26-28th Sept) and 2 days sure does fly by. It's kinda depressing that it's over. I reckon 2 days is far too short for camp hahahahaa. Anyway, i'm usually a very wordy person but i'll try to use photos to tell the story as much as i possibly can.

I think this camp is definitely one i'm going to remember for a very long time. The adventure actually started right from the word GO when we spent 3 and a half hours (instead of the expected 1 hour) trying to navigate our way in pitch blackness in the middle of the Australian bush. Even though we had been given explicit instructions on exactly how to get there, my brother decided to follow the instructions given by the GPS instead and that's how it all went downhill. See, it just so happens that there are 2 roads with the same name within 50km or each other and yeps, the stupid device led us to the road we didn't want to go to! That was just the beginning of our worries however. So we were 50km west of our intended destination and the only way to get there was to cross the Hawkesbury River and drive riight down and around. To our absolute horror, the only way to get across the river was to drive onto this ferry thing which shipped you across (you'd think they would build a bridge). When it's already 11pm at night, it's dark and you have no idea where you are, the idea of being shipped across a river doesn't seem all that thrilling. The guys however seemed rather excited about it so i guess..it made the situation not so bad afterall. So to cut a rather long story short, we arrived at the camp site at midnight and that was pretty much..all friday night of camp gone. Poor Peter and Hendy attempted to give us directions over the phone but when they had no idea where we were it was a bit hard. It was quite funny calling Peter while we were on that ship though and going.."Hey...you would never guess where we are at the moment!" *moral of the story: do not trust a GPS*

So anyway..we got there, and there were so many spare beds I pretty much could sleep anywhere i wanted (within the girls dorms obviously) and I really couldn't have asked for better room mates:


theres nothing better than starting your day singing and jumping up and down for God! So anyway, I forgot to mention. The topic for camp was Holiness and more specifically, holiness in relationships (yeps, bgr) as well as our own individual pursuit for holiness. The message preached that morning was on holiness in marriage. I think what really stood out was the importance of committing our relationships to God and to never ever compromise the standard of God's word. Finding a life partner really is the second most important thing in life and it's true that we should be praying very hard for who ever that person may be whether we know them yet or not lol. Here is our relationships experts panel: (we could pretty much fire them with any relationships related question we liked)
we then had discussion groups. After lunch it was games time!!! So we were split up into our discussion group teams and there were i think 9 different stations. we were given 1 and a half hours to score as many points as we possibly could. The whole point was about making wise decisions.
So here I am in a mine field blind folded. If being blind din't make it hard enough...the mines could move!!

Team James Brown!! WOOOO!!
Here you have a bucket full of water, 2 pieces of string and 2 sticks. The challenge is to try and pick the bucket up and move it outside the circle. It seemed impossible at first but every team eventually managed to do it. I realised physics does come in handy afterall.

This was the weetbix challenge. So..you eat as many weetbix as you can in 4 minutes. Gross. Chris and Justin both came on top. They did 14 each!!! that's just crazy. I love this photo! chris is doing the hardwork and dave is giving him a massage. It must have worked though!
Anyway, after all the fun and games, the mission team got together and spent some time in program preperation, spiritual and mental prepration:
and physical preperation:
Saturday night started with Hendy's fruit and vegetable eating class during dinner. Since he eats ZERO fruits and vegetables I have made it one of my goals to change that (on the up side, i have found someone to eat the meat and stuff I dont want and i get double share of vegetables instead!).
yayyy!! he managed to eat half a mini piece of pumpkin and a carrot. Which really is a huge achievement. Didnt get very far with the fruit though. He accidently got the tiniest bit of apple from the apple crumble on his tongue and he whinged like a baby before washing it all down with a glass of water :p During dinner we also attempted a challenge where for FIVE MINUTES the only words coming out of our mouth had to be positive words about each other. We failed miserably LOL. it just goes to show how much we tease each other and we're supposed to be brothers and sisters in christ hahahahahaa!! oh dear...

That night's session was on our own individual pursuit for holiness. It was extremely challenging and at the end of the message an alter call was given where people could go up to be prayed for. Some of us stayed back at our seats and prayed for each other =) I think we could all feel the Holy Spirit moving through the place that night. We then moved outside to the campfire where we wrote our struggles, sins, bitterness and ambitions on a piece of paper and threw it in the fire symbolising our surrender to God.

The marshmellows then came out and the marshmellow party began!!
the marshmellow party then died once all the marshmellows and ran out and the guitar came out instead. The worship session then began =)
I know it sounds corny but as everyone was singing, I lay on the grass and looked up at the stars and the stretch of sky that seemed to go on for ever and it was one of those moments where I was just totally in awe of God. It was also a time where we seeked God
and prayed for one another as a family of God. The way bluesky prays for one another is just truly amazing and incredibly encouraging. It was one of the first things that struck me when I first went to Bluesky.

That was one of the best nights I've had in a very long time and one I will definitely treasure. The night didn't end there though!! The prayers continued for the next 4 hours in fact.
Although...I have to confess, I wasn't one of the people praying for 4 hours. We were writing encouragement cards instead. hahaaha!! it was almost like a competition to see who could write the most number of encouragement cards.
We ended up sleeping at 2 that night which is considered pretty early considering most of them ended up sleeping at 3 or ever later.

So the next day was Sunday and it was sad because it was already the last day of camp =( Camp couldn't finish until group photos were taken though! The first years will never throw away an opportunity to get on camera:

And then it was time to say farewell and head home. The journey back home was not quite as eventful as the trip there which I guess isn't a bad thing considering it took us one third of the time.

This is a special camp for me =) It's my first ever camp with wesley and I've been told it's definitely not the last. There's truly nothing better than spending a weekend with God and your church family. I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.
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Friday, September 19, 2008

i am feeling COMPLETELY out of it as i type this because i didn't have a second of sleep last night and i've only had a 2 hour nap to try and keep myself from collapsing over. Anyway..if this post doesn't flow or make sense it's probably because my emotions are all over the place at the moment and i haven't slept :p

SO...it was Bluesky's 24 hour prayer today/last night (technically it's still running). I'm so annoyed coz i took my camera there but then realised i left the battery in the charger. Why am i so retarded sometimes? Looking back, it's probably a good thing i didn't bring it coz camwhoring durig 24 hours prayer probably isn't the greatest thing. So basically from 12 am saturday morning to 12am sunday morning we pray without ceasing! Before u think we must be completely insane because no one could possibly pray non stop for 24 hours, you can stop thinking that coz we actually don't individually pray for 24 hours. What actually happens is: we get broken up into groups of 5 and rostered to pray for an hour/2hours and then another group takes over. Hence, there is constantly at least 5 people praying at any one time during the 24 hours. Every few hours or so we came together as a group for corporate prayer and worship...so a lot of us stayed over at church last night..and staying over at church usually means one thing: no sleep..hence by lunchtime today everyone had massive eyebags and on the verge of collapsing..so luckily a new batch of people who didn't stay over last night came to take over so we could head home to catch up on some much needed sleep. A few are actually staying for the 24 hours..RESPECT!

It was so incredible the way we could just worship God during the crazy hours of the morning, the way we could just reeealyy be in that spirit of prayer and just cry out to God and just the way we could build each other up as a body of Christ. There was singing, there were tears and yep..A LOT of prayer. It's really cool how even though we can feel completely drained physically, we can still worship God and jump around like we have all the energy in the world and that we can still pray in faith...that's the kinda joy God brings =)

hahaha it was soo much fun just being able to hang out with each other when we were not rostered on..and to just sit around, jamming on the guitars and piano, singing songs. I would love to say we were singing worship songs the whole time..but i would be lying. Songs we sang also included "ooh i'm into you and girl no one else will do...with every kiss and every huuug you make mee falll in loveee" and..."keeep bleeeding..keeep keep bleeding love" oh yeah!! Hendy taught me how to play the guitar yayyy! So..i can now play..Emin, G, D, C2 which makes up half of hillsongs music (actually..i've probably forgotten already lol) aaaand i was also taught how to pluck the intro to Getting into You-Relient K! what an achievement, but i seriously don't think i remember anymore.

But not everybody managed to stay awake, it was funny how we can be in this little room singing our lungs out and people can just start drifting off one by one, which allowed us to check out everybody's sleeping habits. lol! peter and su-yin sleep with their eyes open arghhhh!! *sigh* i was sooo close to carrying out a practical joke on hendy while he slept..and i'm kinda disappointed i didn't go ahead with it. There he was completely in dream land...sleeping on the hard table with his hand dangling over the side and the thought immediately came to me: "this would be the PERFECT opportunity to test out the hand in hot water theory and see if it's really true!!" We also happened to be armed with toothpaste so the other option was to squeeze toothpaste on his hand and then tickle his nose with a feather. So we all got really excited over the possibilities..coz it was 5 am in the morning and there was nothing better to do. The only problem was..nobody was wiling to actually carry it out! I tried to get Rob considering they're like best friends and so hendy probably wouldn't mind but then rob tried to get me to do it coz i'd probably be the person he'd least suspect but we all chickened out. Pity tony wasn't there or he would have just done it without any second thoughts. =( so there goes our fun. oh well..camp next week! so plenty of opportunity then hahahahaha!! lol..i'm so mean..

alright..it's 7:30pm and even though it's really no where near normal sleeping time, i reeeallyy need sleep. so nite!

P.S i had the weirdest deja vu moment today! no i will not elaborate but it was reeeallyy strange. All of a sudden it was like..i was 14 years old again hahahahhaa! how it's all so similar is just so biazarre
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Sunday, September 7, 2008

I've just had the craziest yet most spiritually refreshing weekend and as I type this my head is still spinning.

Friday night was the first time I formally played keys (and sing) in worship since arriving in sydney. hahaha it was awesome. It was probably the first time I have ever felt like i could truly worship and play at the same time. There's too much to say..but i think all i will say is..Blue Sky was awesome that night!

Mission prep has started which took up a lot of yesterday and part of today and from the very first minute of the meeting i knew that this is not a mission trip I can take on half heartedly. Many deep and extremely challenging questions were thrown our way yesterday...questions like..."what is the one word God has said to you that has rocked your world?" and..."what are your expectations for this trip?" Even though they were incredibly hard questions to answer, it was amazing being able to share from your heart and know that 12 other people share the same heart, visions and passions as you.

Dave led us into a time of worship and sometimes I get so used to worshipping with a full band with a theatre of people but even there, as 13 of us sat around a circle worshipping with just a guitar and the voices God has given us, you could feel God's presence with us and the tears flowed. It was such an uplifting experience as we bonded as a mission team and prepared our hearts. I still feel so overwhelmed that God has blessed me with this opportunity to be part of a team of people SO passionate about God..SO desperate to see the lost saved and it's just so exciting that we are going to be spending so much time together, growing together, praying together and living out our calling together. I have been on mission trips before but each time the teams have been huge which isn't a bad thing but i'm reeallyy excited about being part of a smaller team of about 13-14 people because in terms of logistics it'll be so much easier to manage but most importantly, it's so much easier to grow together with a small tight-knit group. I also know there's a lot of preperation to be done before we leave. We have been given the task to read our bibles every morning before we step out of our front door and to journal. lol! i have no idea if i'll be able to keep up with the journaling thing. I love to journal but i seem to only journal when I feel like it just like how i only blog when i feel like it..hence..it'll be itneresting to see if i can keep up with it. So as corny and cliche as this is going to sound...the journey has definitely started and I cannot wait to see how God uses me, how God transforms me, how God transforms China and how God will be glorified through this trip and beyond. (we bonded over korean bbq last night LOL..most of the time we had no idea what we were eating but it was a good experience)

Continuing on the missions theme, today our special guest speaker was the guy who is the head of OM (operation mobilisation), the organisation under which the Doulos is run. (for those who don't know, the Doulos is a big ship that travels all over the world preaching the gospel to countries that are so poor and so desperately need God..it is also a floating Christian bookstore) Anyway! it was such a privilege to have this guy speak at our church. He truly is a man of God and a man that God has used so mightily to extend his Kingdom. He truly has such a heart for the nations and such a heart for the lost and he truly was an inspiration to us..espescially to those of us whom God has placed a nation on our own hearts. He challenged us to make ourselves available, and once again, all i could say at the end to God was "Here am I, Send me"

Of the many, many conversations I was a part of today (all deep, profound and God-related) the one conversation I probably found the most encouraging was the one we had over lunch. Even though everyone else had ditched us, (just kidding..i think it was more like..we ditched them, unitentionally of course) it was really nice to be able to really fellowship with each other (something which is sometimes hard to do in a big groups) One thing I have realised is how much I admire honesty and the love and support we receive from our brothers and sisters in Christ. It was so nice to be able to just admit to each other that yes a lot of the time we don't feel close to God at all...a lot of the time the passion just isn't there. The fact that we do not need to pretend with each other that we are so 'holy' when it's quite far from the truth, that people in ministry go through rough times too. It's nice to be able to just encourage each other in our walks with God.

I can't thank God enough for the way he has placed such amazing people in my life that I have come to know and love. It has been one huge weekend and God has truly been working.
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Thursday, September 4, 2008

wow it' such a strange feeling being at home during this hour. I'm soo glad that this week is over. Had a massive assignment which i just handed up before so now i'm freeee!! So yeah...i dont really have anything to blog about since my week has pretty much been 'wasted' doing assignments which is rather depressing considering i had such an awesome weekend. anyway..the weekend has arrived again so yayyy! I have a feeling this weekend is going to be really hectic..bluesky, mission trip meetings, church...church...more church OH and it's father's day on sunday as well. Well there goes any plans for a quiet and peaceful weekend. Oh well, i'm excited!wouldn't spend my weekend any other way =) Yess i get to play keys tonight! that's a change hahahaha
We're both looking for something
We've been afraid to find
It's easier to be broken
It's easier to hide

Looking at you, holding my breath
For once in my life I'm scared to death
I'm taking a chance letting you inside

I'm feeling alive all over again
As deep as the sky, under my skin
Like being in love, she says, for the first time
Maybe I'm wrong, I'm feeling right
Where I belong with you tonight
Like being in love to feel for the first time

The world that I see inside you
Waiting to come to life
Waking me up to dreaming
Reality in your eyes

We're crashing
Into the unknown
We're lost in this
But it feels like home
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