So I went to the screening of the 1040 movie with Jaeson Ma that was held at my church on Monday night. It has given me a lot to think about. It's definitely a lot to take in, but I really enjoyed the show.

The documentary was good. I'm not a huge fan of documentaries, but I enjoyed this one. It was funny too. Jaeson's message was powerful too. Messages like these do confuse me. Ones which ask, are you where God wants you to be? I think mostly because such messages also focus on the area that whoever is speaking is drawn to. Which was also such a case with Jaeson. But he did tell it differently, I just can't put it into words. He mentioned a lot of great stuff and I'm still processing everything. I can't even form sentences to describe what he said. It's one of those things where the words are lost, but the essence of the message is still there.

Then I got to enjoy the performance end of the night. Jaeson performed with EEG artist Sherman Chung, singing a song from a new Christian album by various artists. Loved the song, so will definitely look out for the CD. It's called Love for Real. Despite throwing myself into Jaeson's song Passion, I still felt awkward. I really don't do hip hop!

I still think that right here, right now is where God wants me. But I do have a passion for mission and hope to go on one next year. And maybe that will lead to something closer to what Jaeson is preaching to all of us. But until then, I'm still keeping my focus on the (mostly) Nepali kids here in Hong Kong

Speaking of which, the organisation where I help out with tutoring has found a new place. They had to move out of their current location because the owners are selling. Initially they found a place two suburbs away, but being so far away from the current kids, they would basically have to start from scratch, as most kids live close by and just walk and would not be able to make it out there. Not only would they have to start from scratch, but they would essentially be abandoning these kids, and the whole point of the organisation is to keep them off the streets. Thankfully, they found a place near by and will be moving over in two weeks. This organisation has developed a really special place in my heart, and the children too, so it has been something that I have made a point to really pray for.

Overall, a wonderful start to my week. Lots of goodbyes have been happening lately too, as people go off to university overseas. But it prompted me to spend more time with them before they left, which left me feeling more joyful rather than unhappy. I know I will see them at Christmas, so I'll just look forward to that.

Hmm.

Reflecting on the last few weeks, the theme of love has appeared fairly regularly. I’m wondering whether that’s telling me I don’t love enough. I know particular people I don’t love enough.

Last month’s Fuse passage was taken from Romans 13:8. Maybe a few verses after that too, but this verse was the focus. We watched the music video for “All You Need Is Love” to end it.

A while back, I saw photos on Facebook about a movie screening of a film called 1040, which is about the impact that Christianity has had in Asia over the last however many years. Interested, I researched the movie, and the actor promoting the movie, Jaeson Ma, has been doing 365 days of love, where he shares how he has expressed love with at least one person each day. Our church will be screening the movie next month, so I’m excited to see it.

I’m doing a study on the book Becoming a Woman of Simplicity, and this morning I read a chapter which focused on simplifying the gospel to what it is in its simplest form, nothing else. And it touched on love a lot.

So, the Lord is obviously telling me to love more.

On a different note, I normally spend my days off relaxing at home. And by relaxing, I mean being a total bum. I don’t leave my apartment if I can help it. And yes, for someone who doesn’t cook, and therefore has very little food at home, that means going without food some days. I mean, I have cereal and oatmeal and powdered milk at home, so I can whip up a quick meal, but sometimes I get bored of cereal and oatmeal, so I go without. I know, it’s so unhealthy. But I’m getting better at forcing myself out of my apartment to eat something decent.

On Saturday, I managed even more. I was up, out of bed by around 10:30 (maybe closer to 11am) and had left my apartment before lunchtime to head to Mong Kok. I have a wedding to go to on Saturday and I still hadn’t gotten them a present, so I went exploring. Since I’m heading home for my birthday, I also really needed to get my best friend a birthday present this year! I’d found the perfect present last year, but hadn’t gotten around to getting it ordered in time for her birthday, so I decided to get it for Christmas…. but I didn’t get round to ordering it then either. Since we’re both turning 25 this year, I thought it was landmark enough to force myself to get her something decent before heading home, so I got it ordered on Saturday and have been proofing it over the week. Can’t show you what it is, cos she might be reading my blogs, but I’m really excited, and hope she loves it. There’s a bit of an inside joke thrown in there, which I hope she will catch.

Phew! I spent a LOT of money on Saturday. After I had the two presents ordered, I had lunch, and then decided to reward myself by doing some shopping for myself. HMV were having a sale, so I managed to grab quite a few DVDs which I’d been wanting for a good price. Especially happy about getting my hands on Little Big Soldier for only $35 HKD. I went to HMV to find a really old, specific movie for work purposes (and I did, thank goodness) and eventually (I say eventually, cos I totally missed it for the first fifteen minutes) discovered some really good movies for $35. And I wasn’t even in the sale section. I discovered the $35 Sale section AFTER finding all these great movies for only $35. Haha. I got SPL and Flashpoint. I’ve seen SPL, and heard Flashpoint was made because of the success of SPL, so I figure it must be good.

Anyways, back to Little Big Soldier. Have been wanting to see this movie ever since it came out (don’t think I really need to tell you why), but no one else I know is interested in Chinese movies, so I waited til it was out on DVD. Except HK is Region 3 and my computer is Region 4 and I don’t want to change that. I didn’t really want to spend so much on a DVD I wasn’t even sure would play on my computer (I discovered that not all Region 3 DVDs have trouble playing on my computer) so I didn’t buy it when it first came out. But at $35, I thought it was worth the risk, and bought it. Haven’t gone through any other DVDs, so don’t know if they will work or not, but Little Big Soldier did!

Must say it is definitely one of my favourite movies. Converted it into a format my phone could play and have been watching it again on the way to work. I was reading a blog online about how we make undeserved fun of people who can’t speak a language properly. I know I’ve laughed at Chinese people attempting English, and Americans attempting Cantonese. She was right. We can’t expect everyone to be able to speak English, especially if we don’t intend to speak the national language of a country we visit. Anyway, the blog mentioned how one viewer couldn’t truly enjoy this movie due to constant laughing because of Leehom’s American-accented Mandarin. Another viewer couldn’t tell he had an accent. I couldn’t. I think he speaks Mandarin perfectly. I’m obviously no expert in the language, but I can hear when it’s fluent, and when it’s not. But because she knows he’s American, she assumes his Mandarin is bad, and therefore hears it as such. That blog convicted me to respect those attempting to speak in a language that is not their first. It takes a huge amount of courage to say something in your second (or third, fourth, etc.) language, especially if you’re not confident in the language and don’t even think you can say a simple sentence properly. Laughing at them will not increase their confidence. My brain is slower than my reactions, but hopefully I’ll get there.

Maybe that’s one way I can show love.

I also bought some VCDs last week some time, but haven’t gotten around to seeing them either. Not sure why, but they’re Korean movies! I was in the area for something, and went to Widesight just to see if they have the tv series I wanted. They didn’t but I ended up being interested in the Korean movies they had there, so I bought a few of them on VCD. One of the movies I happened across while surfing channels, but it was the very end. I searched up the movie. It didn’t sound overly interesting, but when I saw it on the shelf, I thought I would try it out. The others I haven’t really heard of, but the descriptions on the back were interesting enough to get me to buy them. Just not interesting enough to watch them yet.

I’ve also been watching (not following, but if I’m home and it’s on, I’ll turn it on – though there’s also a Taiwanese series on at the same time that I flick back and forth while watching this) a Korean tv series called Temptation of an Angel. It’s really interesting. A woman seduces and marries the son of a family related to the death of her parents (work-place accident) in an attempt to revenge their deaths. However, during the car crash, her husband doesn’t die, and instead, knowing of her affair with another man, and the reason behind their relationship, he gets a new face, new identity, and attempts to revenge her back by seducing her. The last episode I saw was really intense. Her (now ex-)boyfriend (because she fell in love with new-identity-husband) is trying to prove to her that this new man that she is in love with is her supposedly-dead husband. Husband is complete opposite of new man, which ex-boyfriend points out is too opposite, and asks her to think of something he could not possibly change. Her husband has super-high phobia of heights. Thinking that this man could quite possibly be her husband, she makes him bungee jump off a crane. Knowing she’s trying to prove he’s her husband, and desperately not wanting her to, he jumps. She believes he cannot be her husband and is back to trusting him. Episode ends. I’ve missed a few episodes, so I don’t know where they are at right now, but I’m sure I’ll eventually watch this one online to fill in all the gaps. It was good.

Anyways, I’m sure I’ve missed a few things about my last month. Oh, we’ve been doing proper lessons with the kids at ICM, since they don’t have homework now that they are on summer holiday, so it’s a much more structured time tutoring there. Plus, another church has joined us in working with these kids, so we have plenty of volunteers now, which is awesome. These kids are finally getting one-on-one (actually two-on-one, cos we have more volunteers than kids now!) attention, and have been really good with it. Still some rowdiness with some boys not wanting to focus, but overall, much better. Got to spend some time with the people who are at the youth group on Friday nights last Friday. Was asked to drop in by one of the kids (not in youth) and ended up just hanging out with the kids who were there (we even managed a bible lesson!) and after youth group, once all the kids had gone home, they all went for a walk and invited me along. I’ve met most of them before, but this was the first time we got to actually hang out and get to know each other. Tuesday and Wednesday nights are just the kids. Anyways, it was a long, hot and sticky walk, but I really enjoyed it. Not sure how much I’ll get to see them (since I help out with the youth at church on Friday nights, so when that starts back up, I won’t be able to join them) but will try and catch them before the new school year starts.

Hope you’re all doing well. Should really write more often so that there’s less for you to go through. It’s just that when I try to write more often, I don’t seem to have anything to write. Then, when I finally have something to write, I realise I have lots to write! AIYA!

Prophetic evangelism in action! AWESOME!! Jaeson Ma, Van Ness Wu, and Ed Huang.


Can't wait to see Jaeson Ma in person!

Okay, it's been a whole month, I should blog.

At the beginning of the month, I went to a concert called Passion. Targeted at Christian students of Hong Kong (well, actually, the world, since they're touring the world), basically two very big names in Christian music (Chris Tomlin and The David Crowder Band) come together to tour the world uniting students up to the age of 25 (though anyone's welcome) in worship, with speaker Louie Giglio giving a talk. I don't go to concerts very much, but I very much enjoy going to big Christian worship events. The passion and energy the crowd has is just so infectious. To come together and worship God freely with no boundaries is just so amazing. I have nothing against other kinds of concerts, but I just love the added bonus of the worship being directed towards God, rather than the singers themselves. I don't know if I'd be quite as passionate about Christian worship events back home. I was a very different person back then, and much more self-centred. I don't know if my worship would be directed in the right direction.

Anyways, I had an awesome time. I loved the part where they showed us the crowd at the venue before us (Manila). Their venue was much larger, yet still packed. Each venue prays for the next, so Hong Kong is praying for Sao Paulo, which doesn't happen til September. We were given wristbands as our tickets, and at the end of the night, we were asked to reverse them, where instead of reading Hong Kong like the outside, it now read Sao Paulo 3-4 Sep 2010. Each venue is supposed to wear the wristband until the next venue has their event, to remind us to pray for them, but since Sao Paolo is not til September, they didn't expect us to wear ours for three months. I would still be wearing mine if mine hadn't been put on so tightly. Mine was so tight that it took me ages to flip it round to the Sao Paolo (not til at least the next day or two, with many attempts) and was starting to feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, since my wristband was so tight, I had to cut it off, instead of sliding it off like everyone else and keeping it intact. Hate when I have to do that.

Anyways, check out their blog for more details.

Oh, and almost forgot. One of the message videos they played was in Japanese, instead of Chinese. Hehe, I wonder when they realised. Well, they couldn't do anything once it started playing!

The youth leader at our church was in charge of decorating for the event, so we spent time before and after youth group the night before folding paper cranes. Not sure what the connection was, but they all ended up decorating backstage!

The clock just turned past midnight. We are officially halfway through the year (depending on whether you count that by days or by dates. I'm doing dates right now, as it is now 1 July 2010) and when deciding on the title for this blog, I opened up iCal to see what has been going on since I last wrote and realised 2010 was already halfway through. Where has the year gone?!

Not too much has happened this last month. We had Nick Vujicic (Life Without Limbs) come speak at our church a couple of weeks back and ended up packing our floors of the building so full that we had to open up the kid's floor (where I was on duty) to 250 additional adults so they could watch from a video feed. The overflow room of the overflow room of the overflow room. Yes, that's right. What is normally our smallest service of the week, turned out to be our record high. We normally only use one floor for our evening service, but knew we were going to have extra guests due to the speaker, so we opened up our other floor as an overflow room. They also prepared the normal overflow room in case we overflowed the second floor. But, umm, when adults started streaming onto the kid's floor, I knew we were in trouble. Without any advance warning, everyone started turning up on our floor announcing they were looking for the overflow room. We had to set up the room with the feed right then and there! We also had two TVs in the hallway outside the nursery which receives feeds in the morning so that parents who have to stay with their children in the nursery can still somewhat catch the sermon and had to turn those on so that 60 or so adults could watch from there. It was way too late to move the kids from the room right next door to the hallway cos their movie had already started and the kids were all settled in, so when other kids were just turning up, we had to wade through all the adults to get them inside. It was both crazy and awesome at the same time.

I also went to a wedding where I saw a face I couldn't place. I saw him on The A Factor at Simon Birch's exhibition and recognised the face, but could not remember where. I figured he must have been from church since that's the only interaction I really get, but I don't ever remember seeing him at church. It really did bug me that the face was soooo familiar, but I couldn't place him. It felt like I had to have met him many times before to be so familiar, but if I had, why couldn't I remember him? When I saw him at the wedding, I pretty much figured I must have seen him around church and just couldn't remember him. But then I saw his picture in a blog, checked out his name from the tag, went to his blog and finally realised where I'd seen him before. Completely explained why I he felt soooo familiar, yet I couldn't place him. I've never met him before, but I followed him on The Amazing Race Asia for however many episodes. That's why he was so familiar. And I couldn't place him because it has been over a year since that season was shown, so I haven't seen his face for over a year. It's kinda weird that after a year of not seeing his face, I saw him twice in one month. Well, three times, if you count the photo in the blog that revealed who he was.

I'm rather suspicious of the use of the roof of the building I can view right outside my window. Recently, they've had a fluorescent tube light shining on the roof at night with nobody there. It's the rather large plants that are making me suspicious. Am I watching someone grow weed?! I'm not familiar with how marijuana is grown, but I heard lighting is required.

Anyways, it's almost 1am, so I should get some sleep. At least I get tomorrow off.

New Music Video for Metro Vocal Group. CHINESE SONG!!!!

My friend is in this, which is why I'm promoting, but the vocal group itself is awesome too!