Hey guys, preparation for the mission at the end of the year has confirmed dates now, and one of the things I'd like to do is to get a bunch of friends who would be willing to pray for me while I'm are in Japan & I'd love to keep in touch with you guys, updating you with what's happening in the preparation and while we're in Japan with a prayer letter/email/newsletter :)
Please let me know by telling me your email address and thanks so much for supporting us through prayer :)
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Personality Test
You are an ENFP (Extravert, Intuitive, Feeler, Perceiver)
ENFPs represent between 6 and 8% of the U.S. population
Curious, energetic, adaptable, and creative, ENFPs like considering unconventional approaches. They enjoy batting around ideas and finding creative solutions and are energized and intrigued by new possibilities and anything out of the ordinary. ENFPs tend to be talkative, enthusiastic, playful, and generally fun-loving people. Warm and caring, ENFPs have strong personal values upon which they base most decisions. Conversations with ENFPs can be very circular as they excitedly move from one topic to the next, making connections and associations.
Unconventional and occasionally irreverent, they pride themselves on their uniqueness and originality. Optimistic, and spontaneous, ENFPs have a strong sense of the possible. For them, life is an exciting drama. Because they are so interested in possibilities, ENFPs see significance in all things and prefer to keep lots of options open.
What's yours?:D
www.personalitytype.com
ENFPs represent between 6 and 8% of the U.S. population
Curious, energetic, adaptable, and creative, ENFPs like considering unconventional approaches. They enjoy batting around ideas and finding creative solutions and are energized and intrigued by new possibilities and anything out of the ordinary. ENFPs tend to be talkative, enthusiastic, playful, and generally fun-loving people. Warm and caring, ENFPs have strong personal values upon which they base most decisions. Conversations with ENFPs can be very circular as they excitedly move from one topic to the next, making connections and associations.
Unconventional and occasionally irreverent, they pride themselves on their uniqueness and originality. Optimistic, and spontaneous, ENFPs have a strong sense of the possible. For them, life is an exciting drama. Because they are so interested in possibilities, ENFPs see significance in all things and prefer to keep lots of options open.
What's yours?:D
www.personalitytype.com
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Reflections on Rice Revo & Kids Club MYE
Last night was the best 9 hours of sleep I've gotten in a really, really long time :)
Waking up late and missing the 10:53 train this morning was how my day started this morning, along with convincing my brother to skip Chinese class to come to Rice Revo; praise God, my parents actually were okay with it!
So met up with quite a number of Extremers at Central to go to UNSW today, got a bit lost, had a lot of bus ticketing difficulties... but overall, it was really a day that made me want to praise God endlessly.
Even just gathering together as youth from our church was extremely (ha!) encouraging, and getting time traveling, eating lunch, chatting with you guys were so so valuable to me.. just getting to know you guys better, and seeing you guys being fired up and being challenged for Jesus makes me love you guys more and more, just as if you were my own children (even though I'm only 2-5 years older than you guys!)!
Today's theme for Rice Revo was revival (from what I got!) and God through His word & His servants really convicted us about being lukewarm, and how we're missionaries wherever we are, whether we're at school, uni, work, in our social groups or in our families... God gives us so many opportunities in our everyday lives, and it's true when Steve said that as we get older, we get busier doing more ministry things but our non-Christian friendship circle fades so rapidly and there's less people to simply tell about Jesus from the bible, pray for them + ask to church..
What I really saw today (along with getting my own reminders about continuously fueling the fire and asking God to take away the things that rob my affections for Jesus so that we can be entirely consumed + satisfied with God), was a lot of young people who are a bit younger than I am being so passionate for God, who want to see their friends and family saved. It made me a bit sad that I didn't try going to ISCF when I was in high school (although God works in His perfect timing!) and I really praise God for the love and encouragement that the NSGB ISCF give to each other! I saw Sharon and Julia, whom are my peer support kids from when they were in year 7 three years ago, and I really praise God that He has made you His children and that we're sisters in Christ! As Una said, today was really overwhelming and emotional, and I saw lots of hugs and a few people in tears..
Coming back to simplicity, Matt x2, Jane, Emma, Andrew, Zoe, Nat & I have been serving at St Luke's @ Clovelly for the past week in their Kids Club. It was so much fun, and it has been a time where God has been showing me and teaching me more about kids! I'm really sad to hear that people don't think that Kids Ministry is worth the time and effort that others think it is, because kids are the most amazing people and Jesus loved them so, so much.
The K-2 kids we were teaching were sooo cute, so well mannered, so enthusiastic and most of all.. they really surprised me with their answers on the last day when we learnt about Heaven. On the first day, we learnt about how God created everything in 7 days and the talk I did... was pretty bad. I couldn't engage their attention all the time and I made the mistake of not sitting on the carpet with them :(
We had an awesome workshop on Tuesday with a lady who was a children's worker on storytelling, and I learnt some amazing skills, such as never raising your voice with kids but dropping your voice so they pay more attention and listen, and using your body, your tone, your facial expressions, using tone, volume, pitch, actions, cultural allusions, discussion questions, eye contact with every single child... it was really insightful and I definitely was really equipped by the brothers & sisters @ St Luke's when I was there so a major thanks to them and to God for the week, and really could see how different parts of the church could serve, whether it be by teaching, by playing with the kids, prepping food or playing the guitar!
So on Monday, we learnt about creation, planting cress seeds (which I didn't think would do anything because the packet said it'd take 5-8 days or something like 10-14 days!! but praise God they grew!), making animals out of marshmellows, biscuits and M&Ms (and it was truly by God's grace because I had no idea what to do because we didn't have bananas and we forgot we couldn't give them nutella :( ), played this memory game where we built up on what we thanked God for, and one of the boys (and no he wasn't Asian! =P) he shouted out, "Thanks God for CHEAP PRICES!", which got a laugh out of everyone after him who had to repeat it =P I was actually surprised by some of their comments/questions like, "Who is God's mum then?" "Everything is God!" etc etc which were quite interesting..
On Tuesday, we learnt from Zoe about the prodigal son and she really awesomely used a farm set which worked really well visually. We then made pig masks and kids love painting! I painted for the first time in ages too, and it worked really well. The seeds starting sprouting! We started learning our memory verse, John 3:16 by cutting up the sentence into little individual words and distributed them to the kids and they would collectively build the verse together after reading it together. I think their favourite part was shouting, JOHN 3:16! at the end; well, it was MY favourite part! :D
On Wednesday, we learnt from Nat about the lost sheep and coin, and Nat hid the coins around the room and they all had to find one each to demonstrate how happy they were when they found them, just like how happy God was to find us! We made sheep in a paddock from pom poms that Nat and I made and they loved them :) Who is this Shaun/Sean the Sheep by the way? All the kids named their sheep Shaun/Sean! =P I used Julie's story about Sam the Shepherd and his lost sheep Wooly, which was a really good interactive story where they repeat every line/action that you do to tell the story, it's really fun!
On Thursday, we learnt from Zoe how Jesus is the good shepherd and we made another paddock but with felt animals, and she led us all in a roleplay game where she was the shepherd and the kids were sheep around the room, demonstrating the roles of protecting, leading, guiding and fending off enemies that a good shepherd does. Nat was the tree and I was the wolf!! (complete with growls and teeth-baring, ha!)
On Thursday arvo, the minister there also gave us a handout about church planting and talked about how their church plant came to be and explained to us the process of how they did it, consisting of a core team of 17 entering the area and living as missionaries, getting to know everyone around the suburb and meeting up in someone's lounge room and eventually moving into a building and just forming friendships with neighbours. I've been thinking a bit about whether to move to Lidcombe or stay at Burwood next year, and for now I've said that I'll wait and see where most of the year 12 girls in my group next year will go, so I can encourage them :) the minister mentioned how it was good for us to consider being part of church planting, and it does sound very exciting and if I'm considering long term mission in the future perhaps it would be really helpful to be part of that... but at the same time, if everyone moved it would just be relocation! :(
On Friday, I gave my second talk and it was on HEAVEN - the best party ever :) I made a golden ticket (like the ones from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and it was a ticket to heaven (the best party ever) and it would start from when Jesus came back and it would finish.. well, NEVER!
Today I was thinking about why heaven is so special. To be honest, I hadn't really thought about it deeply until perhaps the end of last year; I had only read bits of Revelation by then but I didn't really think much about it, but Peichi led me to read through Revelations 21-22 with her while listening to a Mark Driscoll talk on it, and as Dan said in his talk, finding out about the end really changes how you see the middle of the story (which is where we're living now!).
To me now, I guess I see heaven as God's promise to us. It's where he promises he'll bring us at the end of the journey, the battle, the race; it's our prize - and the reason why it's the best prize ever is because we get to spend forever and ever with Him. It's spending the rest of eternity with the one person you admire, you cherish, you pine after. Then again, perhaps considering the alternative, which is spending forever away from Him and His love & everything that is good, because He's the giver of those good things. The bible says it'll be painful too, not a walk in the park...
So I followed Robin's advice and Nat's suggestion and split up the talk into two parts. The first part was on how God would only let us into his big party at his house if we were Jesus' friend, like how our friend's parents would only let us into their houses if we knew their children, while the second part was about how Jesus tells us all to give up everything and follow him, and I used the stories of the rich young man and Zaccheus to illustrate how some people did and were saved, and some didn't.
I actually found the talk quite hard to write, and didn't get much sleep the night/morning before haha. It was a really humbling experience, and through kids club I realised just how abstract some of these concepts were and how great the gift of the Holy Spirit is in being able to understand His word. Nicodemus asks in John 3 how one can enter God's kingdom, and Jesus replies that one has to be born again. When Nicodemus asked how old people could be born again, Jesus clarifies that they must be born again of water and Spirit. When Nicodemus asked how this could be, Jesus replies that just as the snake that Moses lifted up, so must the son of God be lifted up so that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life, because the son of God has been the only one who has gone into heaven and came from heaven. Man, that's really confusing even for a big kid like me! :(
Anyway, this snake that Moses lifted up was actually mentioned in Numbers 21 in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, as I discovered..
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, c]">[c] to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"
Which I find really interesting :) Another thing we were taught was to not sell the bible short, nor the kids short - teach them biblical theology, because they do understand it! I was really surprised but really praising God for their answers to the questions, when I asked how the people felt, why Jesus was sad when the rich young man walked away, whether they noticed a pattern in the game we were playing where some kids followed Zoe even though no instructions were ever given to them to (I said in the end how we followed Zoe in that game but in life we follow Jesus! - Thanks Matt =P)
Jesus also replies that:
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,f]">[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.g]">[g] 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
which is amazing to think that God's love and Jesus didn't come to blame us or make us feel bad but to save us so graciously. Later on that day we made paper lanterns with cellophane with Nat and sang lots of I am the Way, the Truth and the Life :) we played with the kids, the parents had a sausage sizzle and talked with each other and some of the people from the church and it was awesome! I really miss them so much now... they're so sweet and cute, and the things they said.. I was gonna melt! :D The minister there gave us books as gifts and wizz-fizz and fizzers.. yay! :) We really got loved so much by them! :) Nat and I then went to Bondi to go shop a bit, and I must say that I'm really proud of her, she didn't buy anything at JB HiFi! =P
Later that day I also got a call from PreUni about working there so I'll be working there from now on, and a call from one of my student's mum and we arranged a time so I'm pretty excited and really thanking God for answering my prayer for work :) Pete told me today that it's quite probable that we'll buy our plane tickets for the Japan mission this week, and perhaps God is opening more doors to make going overseas for mission for Him possible. At the same time, I'm not too worried if I don't end up saving enough for mission, perhaps it's just His way of telling me that He doesn't want me going which I know is for good & all under His plan!
Loooong blog tonight! :) sorry have had a lot on my mind. It's freezing! :( stay warm everyone & continue to live God glorifying lives (:
lots of love,
shirley :)
Waking up late and missing the 10:53 train this morning was how my day started this morning, along with convincing my brother to skip Chinese class to come to Rice Revo; praise God, my parents actually were okay with it!
So met up with quite a number of Extremers at Central to go to UNSW today, got a bit lost, had a lot of bus ticketing difficulties... but overall, it was really a day that made me want to praise God endlessly.
Even just gathering together as youth from our church was extremely (ha!) encouraging, and getting time traveling, eating lunch, chatting with you guys were so so valuable to me.. just getting to know you guys better, and seeing you guys being fired up and being challenged for Jesus makes me love you guys more and more, just as if you were my own children (even though I'm only 2-5 years older than you guys!)!
Today's theme for Rice Revo was revival (from what I got!) and God through His word & His servants really convicted us about being lukewarm, and how we're missionaries wherever we are, whether we're at school, uni, work, in our social groups or in our families... God gives us so many opportunities in our everyday lives, and it's true when Steve said that as we get older, we get busier doing more ministry things but our non-Christian friendship circle fades so rapidly and there's less people to simply tell about Jesus from the bible, pray for them + ask to church..
What I really saw today (along with getting my own reminders about continuously fueling the fire and asking God to take away the things that rob my affections for Jesus so that we can be entirely consumed + satisfied with God), was a lot of young people who are a bit younger than I am being so passionate for God, who want to see their friends and family saved. It made me a bit sad that I didn't try going to ISCF when I was in high school (although God works in His perfect timing!) and I really praise God for the love and encouragement that the NSGB ISCF give to each other! I saw Sharon and Julia, whom are my peer support kids from when they were in year 7 three years ago, and I really praise God that He has made you His children and that we're sisters in Christ! As Una said, today was really overwhelming and emotional, and I saw lots of hugs and a few people in tears..
What we learn can merely be taught to others, but what we experience we need to imitate and display to others... because we experience and encounter his love, we need to love one another and J loved us, displaying his love.Adrian also talked about how God's pursue of us is like a guy proposing to a girl, and how the girl doesn't need to prove if she's worthy of being a wife. Rather, she just says "Yes, I do"; it's her commitment that she gives, and she's committing to him and no one else; just like how we need to say "Yes" to commit to Jesus everyday and say "No" to other things everyday.
Coming back to simplicity, Matt x2, Jane, Emma, Andrew, Zoe, Nat & I have been serving at St Luke's @ Clovelly for the past week in their Kids Club. It was so much fun, and it has been a time where God has been showing me and teaching me more about kids! I'm really sad to hear that people don't think that Kids Ministry is worth the time and effort that others think it is, because kids are the most amazing people and Jesus loved them so, so much.
The K-2 kids we were teaching were sooo cute, so well mannered, so enthusiastic and most of all.. they really surprised me with their answers on the last day when we learnt about Heaven. On the first day, we learnt about how God created everything in 7 days and the talk I did... was pretty bad. I couldn't engage their attention all the time and I made the mistake of not sitting on the carpet with them :(
We had an awesome workshop on Tuesday with a lady who was a children's worker on storytelling, and I learnt some amazing skills, such as never raising your voice with kids but dropping your voice so they pay more attention and listen, and using your body, your tone, your facial expressions, using tone, volume, pitch, actions, cultural allusions, discussion questions, eye contact with every single child... it was really insightful and I definitely was really equipped by the brothers & sisters @ St Luke's when I was there so a major thanks to them and to God for the week, and really could see how different parts of the church could serve, whether it be by teaching, by playing with the kids, prepping food or playing the guitar!
So on Monday, we learnt about creation, planting cress seeds (which I didn't think would do anything because the packet said it'd take 5-8 days or something like 10-14 days!! but praise God they grew!), making animals out of marshmellows, biscuits and M&Ms (and it was truly by God's grace because I had no idea what to do because we didn't have bananas and we forgot we couldn't give them nutella :( ), played this memory game where we built up on what we thanked God for, and one of the boys (and no he wasn't Asian! =P) he shouted out, "Thanks God for CHEAP PRICES!", which got a laugh out of everyone after him who had to repeat it =P I was actually surprised by some of their comments/questions like, "Who is God's mum then?" "Everything is God!" etc etc which were quite interesting..
On Tuesday, we learnt from Zoe about the prodigal son and she really awesomely used a farm set which worked really well visually. We then made pig masks and kids love painting! I painted for the first time in ages too, and it worked really well. The seeds starting sprouting! We started learning our memory verse, John 3:16 by cutting up the sentence into little individual words and distributed them to the kids and they would collectively build the verse together after reading it together. I think their favourite part was shouting, JOHN 3:16! at the end; well, it was MY favourite part! :D
On Wednesday, we learnt from Nat about the lost sheep and coin, and Nat hid the coins around the room and they all had to find one each to demonstrate how happy they were when they found them, just like how happy God was to find us! We made sheep in a paddock from pom poms that Nat and I made and they loved them :) Who is this Shaun/Sean the Sheep by the way? All the kids named their sheep Shaun/Sean! =P I used Julie's story about Sam the Shepherd and his lost sheep Wooly, which was a really good interactive story where they repeat every line/action that you do to tell the story, it's really fun!
On Thursday, we learnt from Zoe how Jesus is the good shepherd and we made another paddock but with felt animals, and she led us all in a roleplay game where she was the shepherd and the kids were sheep around the room, demonstrating the roles of protecting, leading, guiding and fending off enemies that a good shepherd does. Nat was the tree and I was the wolf!! (complete with growls and teeth-baring, ha!)
On Thursday arvo, the minister there also gave us a handout about church planting and talked about how their church plant came to be and explained to us the process of how they did it, consisting of a core team of 17 entering the area and living as missionaries, getting to know everyone around the suburb and meeting up in someone's lounge room and eventually moving into a building and just forming friendships with neighbours. I've been thinking a bit about whether to move to Lidcombe or stay at Burwood next year, and for now I've said that I'll wait and see where most of the year 12 girls in my group next year will go, so I can encourage them :) the minister mentioned how it was good for us to consider being part of church planting, and it does sound very exciting and if I'm considering long term mission in the future perhaps it would be really helpful to be part of that... but at the same time, if everyone moved it would just be relocation! :(
On Friday, I gave my second talk and it was on HEAVEN - the best party ever :) I made a golden ticket (like the ones from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and it was a ticket to heaven (the best party ever) and it would start from when Jesus came back and it would finish.. well, NEVER!
Today I was thinking about why heaven is so special. To be honest, I hadn't really thought about it deeply until perhaps the end of last year; I had only read bits of Revelation by then but I didn't really think much about it, but Peichi led me to read through Revelations 21-22 with her while listening to a Mark Driscoll talk on it, and as Dan said in his talk, finding out about the end really changes how you see the middle of the story (which is where we're living now!).
To me now, I guess I see heaven as God's promise to us. It's where he promises he'll bring us at the end of the journey, the battle, the race; it's our prize - and the reason why it's the best prize ever is because we get to spend forever and ever with Him. It's spending the rest of eternity with the one person you admire, you cherish, you pine after. Then again, perhaps considering the alternative, which is spending forever away from Him and His love & everything that is good, because He's the giver of those good things. The bible says it'll be painful too, not a walk in the park...
So I followed Robin's advice and Nat's suggestion and split up the talk into two parts. The first part was on how God would only let us into his big party at his house if we were Jesus' friend, like how our friend's parents would only let us into their houses if we knew their children, while the second part was about how Jesus tells us all to give up everything and follow him, and I used the stories of the rich young man and Zaccheus to illustrate how some people did and were saved, and some didn't.
I actually found the talk quite hard to write, and didn't get much sleep the night/morning before haha. It was a really humbling experience, and through kids club I realised just how abstract some of these concepts were and how great the gift of the Holy Spirit is in being able to understand His word. Nicodemus asks in John 3 how one can enter God's kingdom, and Jesus replies that one has to be born again. When Nicodemus asked how old people could be born again, Jesus clarifies that they must be born again of water and Spirit. When Nicodemus asked how this could be, Jesus replies that just as the snake that Moses lifted up, so must the son of God be lifted up so that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life, because the son of God has been the only one who has gone into heaven and came from heaven. Man, that's really confusing even for a big kid like me! :(
Anyway, this snake that Moses lifted up was actually mentioned in Numbers 21 in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, as I discovered..
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, c]">[c] to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"
6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people.
8 The LORD said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.
Later on in 2 Kings 18,Hezekiah King of Judah
1 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother's name was Abijah a]">[a] daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done. 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called b]">[b] Nehushtan. c]">[c] )Which I find really interesting :) Another thing we were taught was to not sell the bible short, nor the kids short - teach them biblical theology, because they do understand it! I was really surprised but really praising God for their answers to the questions, when I asked how the people felt, why Jesus was sad when the rich young man walked away, whether they noticed a pattern in the game we were playing where some kids followed Zoe even though no instructions were ever given to them to (I said in the end how we followed Zoe in that game but in life we follow Jesus! - Thanks Matt =P)
Jesus also replies that:
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,f]">[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.g]">[g] 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
which is amazing to think that God's love and Jesus didn't come to blame us or make us feel bad but to save us so graciously. Later on that day we made paper lanterns with cellophane with Nat and sang lots of I am the Way, the Truth and the Life :) we played with the kids, the parents had a sausage sizzle and talked with each other and some of the people from the church and it was awesome! I really miss them so much now... they're so sweet and cute, and the things they said.. I was gonna melt! :D The minister there gave us books as gifts and wizz-fizz and fizzers.. yay! :) We really got loved so much by them! :) Nat and I then went to Bondi to go shop a bit, and I must say that I'm really proud of her, she didn't buy anything at JB HiFi! =P
Later that day I also got a call from PreUni about working there so I'll be working there from now on, and a call from one of my student's mum and we arranged a time so I'm pretty excited and really thanking God for answering my prayer for work :) Pete told me today that it's quite probable that we'll buy our plane tickets for the Japan mission this week, and perhaps God is opening more doors to make going overseas for mission for Him possible. At the same time, I'm not too worried if I don't end up saving enough for mission, perhaps it's just His way of telling me that He doesn't want me going which I know is for good & all under His plan!
Loooong blog tonight! :) sorry have had a lot on my mind. It's freezing! :( stay warm everyone & continue to live God glorifying lives (:
lots of love,
shirley :)
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