Mini Alpha

In 2012, I started Alpha Course in church for our members in English Congregation.  The course was started because I wanted to help one of the member to come back to God.  Initially it was meant for a small group of people in my house.  Then I decided to do with the members in the English congregation at the same time.  So I merge everyone together to go through the Alpha course.

It went off quite well where we met regularly on a weekly basis.  Then towards the end momentum started to slow down.  But eventually we managed to finish it off after probably a year.

In 2014, I caught up with my ex-colleagues in SIA, 2 ladies in fact.  Both of them are full time homemaker.  It was a good gathering and we chatted a lot.  As I was passionate over Christianity, I shared about the alpha course that we have completed some time back and to my surprise they were not resistance to the topic.  The problem that they mentioned about how to know more about Christianity is that their free time is only time when their children is in school which is the time when people are working.  Both families are not Christian family and it's q challenge for them to go to church especially when weekend is the time they will be busy with their children and other activities.

I proposed to have a mini alpha course with them when their children are in school and they immediately agreed.  This was very surprising to me.  I went to check with Pastor Cynthia on the possibility of this Mini Alpha course to be held in church together with her and she was agreeable.  Thus this course was setup and manage to have our first gathering something in Mar 2014.

It was a great experience with many sharing and I'm glad that both of them have learnt quite a lot in the course.  Though we didn't manage to finish the course due to our busy schedule, both of them have accepted Christ.

As we didn't finish the course together, their foundation was weak and both of them have not been attending church.  I hope that we could eventually follow up with each other and encourage each other in the faith community.

This Mini Alpha was unexpected.  It's through the grace of God that we had this course and both of them have accepted Christ in their life.  I will keep praying for them to stay in Christ and eventually go to church and their family members receiving salvations.  Amen!

Parent supports in New Life

The children had an amazing 2 years in New Life and so do we.  Ser En & Rong En has 3 other good friends in New Life, namely Benedict, Zane & Isaac.  We had 3 other good friends too, the mother of the 3 children name Li Lian, Charm & Vanessa.

In New Life, we first got to know Li Lian.  One thing we love about New Life is that every morning there's an assembly where children will be singing praises to God before they start school.  Parent's will be watching from afar.  That's how we get to know Li Lian as it's our morning ritual to stand at behind the assembly area to watch our kids.  Slowly we exchanged glances and started talking to each other.  Then we'll have breakfast together once a while.

Li Lian is a Catholic and she has great passion serving God.  I enjoyed talking to her regarding biblical stuff, her husband is Michael who came to know God through her.  We have also observed Charm as she is exceptionally tall and quiet.  As she stays near the school, we may meet her occasionally when we go to provisional shop near by.  As we exchanged conversation, we realised that she is a filipino married to Singapore.  She is a Christian while her hubby Andy is not.  Andy worked for Air Force.  He had many experiences in his life that he felt sorrowful over and is indulged to drinking and smoking so as to numb himself from past memories.  We believed that God has been doing things in his life to lead him towards God.  There was a period when he was sick and due to the sickness, he felt that the taste of liquor was bitter and stopped drinking for a moment.  Then recently, he was posted to Brunei, a place where there was not much activities to do except to find ways to drink and smoke, but God gave him a roommate who is a Christian and leading him to study bible daily.  I'm waiting for the day he becomes a Christian.  And finally, we came to know Vanessa when we were having breakfast at the hawker center.  Vanessa is an active Christian serving in her church as committee member.  We shared a lot during various breakfast on serving in the church.  Her husband Jimmy is a businessman who is also passionate evangelising for God whenever there's opportunity.  He is also passionate is helping Andy to know God better.

With these people around me during this 2 years, it was an amazing journey as we shared many of our experiences on God's story.  We encourage each other and lifted up each other.  Our usual routine in the morning is sending children to school and then have breakfast together.  Other days, we may be celebrating children's birthday together, going out in Singapore for various events and event having holiday together in Bintan resort.  Awesome time together.

PCF to New Life

When approaching the end of the year during their nursery in PCF, we were considering if we should send our children to New Life Presbyterian Kindergarten.  The school fee at PCF & New Life are quite similar.  It's just a little costly because there's a component of the school (for computer enrichment) that cannot use baby bonus.  The other issue is that New Life is far from our house and I'll need to drive them to school every morning as compared to PCF that is walking distance away.  The thing that attract us to New Life is that it's Christian foundation.  We were having a hard time making the decision.  When we tried applying for New Life, there was no vacancy and the principal told us to pray about it and put us on waiting list.  In PCF, we were concerned about the principle who doesn't seems to be active in managing the center.  We left a message for her to call us back to address our concern on who will be teaching them in K1.

As we were struggling between PCF & New Life, we decided to wait for the answer from God as we are unsure what will be the best decision for us.  Personally I would love to stay put in PCF but I'm attracted to a Kindergarten with Christian foundation.  Thus we agreed among ourselves that whoever call us first, we'll send the children to that school.

We waited and waited with no news and getting nervous as days goes by.  Then one fine day, the principal of New Life called up telling us that the school decided to create a new space and open another class, thus our children got a placement in New Life.

The next day, the principal in PCF called us saying that she was busy with the preparation of the school's graduation, that's why she was unable to call till then.  Unfortunately it was too late and our decision has been made.  It is subtle but it's clear to me that God is telling me that all timing is under his control.

Lives in PCF

Lives in PCF was simple and I couldn't recall of any event that I can highlight about miracles from God.  Nevertheless, it was a fun time going through it.  All I can say is that regardless of the type of education that we send our children to, God is ultimately in control of their destiny when we let him.

Our children are blessed with the fun and laughters of going to PCF making friends and enjoying school as well as playing in the playground after school.  They may not have learnt as much as those who are in other expensive nursery, but I would say that they had an enjoyable childhood there.

Ai Wei & Ai Min left the school after a few months because they moved to Jurong.

Overall 2013 was a honeymoon period for us with our children.  There are so much fun.  Even Ser En's first stay in hospital due to Rota Virus was fun when it coincide with Joyce birthday.

Our 2 little bumble bees in the graduation performance.  One was too stunned to move and the other was flying all around.  What a contrast in characters:

During this year, we have lots of activities as well as exploring different things for our children.  Though it was fun, one thing I found that I couldn't recall much for that year if not of the photo album.

Blogging Restart

I'm back again after going away for a long time.  What brings me back today is starts with fact that I'm supposed to post something for everyday for this week in the whatsapp chat for SOOGI Prayer Warrier.  As I am new to this chat group and I don't really know the people in the chat group except Pamela who is the founder for SOOGI, I was thinking to share postings about my past testimony on the miracles from God that happen in my life.  This leads me to remember about this blog and I realised that there are so many things that I've left out blogging all these years.

I shall start in the post to list out the agenda subsequent posts coming along:

1.  Lives in PCF (2013)
2.  PCF to New Life (end 2013)
3.  Parent supports in New Life (2014)
4.  Mini Alpha (2014)
5.  2014 Christmas Celebration (mid 2014 - end 2014)
6.  A tough year in 2015 (2015)
7.  Searching for new Church location (Q2 2015)
8.  The next phase with Caleb Chia Kay En (Q3 2015)
9.  I AM message (Q4 2015)
10.  Journey to Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School (Q4 2015)
11.  Christmas Celebration (Q4 2015)
12.  Fellowship, Prayer & Count Down to (Q4 2015)

PCF

Ser En and Rong En has been in a playgroup for about half a year already.  There is a pair of identical twin girl (Ai Wei & Ai Min) in the same playgroup as them.

Few months back, we were planning to enrol our kids into PCF (PAP Community Foundation) nursery and the other twin's parent is also planning to enrol their children to the same PCF nursery as it would be good to have familar friends in the different environment.

Many parents does not want to enrol their children to PCF, but we don't have issue with that and it's good to find people sharing such common understanding.  On the first day PCF open for registration for next year's class, we went to register and it came to our surprise that there are only 4 vacancies left for the session that we wanted to enrol in.  The reason is that those who were already in the PCF playgroup are given 1st priority to enrol into the nursery and the session that we were interested in is the morning session which is more popular.  Perhaps it's also because Woodlands' residents are not as well off as compared to people staying in other estate for I heard that in other estate, there are plenty of vacancies in PCF.

We were a little disappointed as we are not sure if our children could be enrolled into PCF and even if they were enrolled in, Ai Wei & Ai Min may not be enrolled as the enrolment is not based on first come first serve basis.

Well, we didn't give up hope and start praying.  After months of waiting, we were notified that our children are successfully enrolled into the session that we registered for.  We shared the news with Ai Wei & Ai Min's mom and they were also enrolled into the same class.

God is really amazing and wonderful in answering our prayers.

Are you working?

On dear, I've not been writing for the past 2 years :p

Recently I introduced Alpha Course to our church English Congregation.  There are not many people in the English Congregation, only about 20+ people every weekend.  It is encouraging to see 15 participants for this course.

In the 1st lesson, there is a guy who happen to be around when he sent his son to Sun class organized by the church for children.  He saw us and join in the session to listen.

On the Sunday when we go to church for the 2nd lesson, something coincidental happen.  Few days back, a friend gave me a CCTV to install in my car.  He is the manufacturer of the CCTV and he gave the set to me for free, it's so good of him.  I've been playing around with the CCTV and exploring it.

This CCTV requires SD card for storage.  I've got a few SD at home and the night before, I formatted one of the SD to NTFS and clearing space for another SD (the one used by a camera) to be used as spare.

As we were rushing to go to church on Sun (as usual, always rushing), I left the house first to bring Beckham to my in-law's place for dog sitting as no one will be at home.  While in my car, I realized that I didn't bring the SD card for the CCTV.  Thus I called YiFei as asked her to bring along the 2 SD card on the table when I come back to fetch them later.

So I sent Beckham to in-law's place and come back to pick up the family to church.  I go a SD from YiFei and inserted it into the CCTV.  It seems like there's some problem as the CCTV doesn't seems to be able to record.  After thinking for a while, I figured out that it may be because I've formatted in NTFS and it's a format that is not supported by the CCTV.

Thus I asked YiFei to remove the SD and insert the other spare SD.  YiFei was struggling to remove the SD as she is not good with gadgets and tries to insert the other card.  She was asked to do it as I was driving.  As she tries to insert the other cards, it seems like she is experiencing problem and the card flew out.  Thus I got the card from her and inserted it into the CCTV.  I managed to get it inserted, but the CCTV is still not recording.

I couldn't figure it out what is the problem and thought that maybe I've inserted it wrongly as I was driving and couldn't really focus.  Thus I asked YiFei to remove the card and this time round she was not able to do it no matter how she tries.  As I was on the expressway, I couldn't help.  Then we I was approaching church and stopped at a traffic light junction, I tried to remove the card but I was also not able to to remove it.

As you can see, the whole journey my mind was focused on the CCTV and memory cards and I couldn't prepared myself for the Alpha course.  I reached the car park and spent 5 minutes in the car trying to remove the memory card unsuccessfully.  It's running late, thus I removed the CCTV and bring it along to the church.

I was a little late, but the session has not started yet as we were waiting for another person to arrive.  I was at a corner trying very hard to remove the memory card and getting frustrated.  As I examined my emotions during this period of time, I realized that something is wrong.  I had been focusing on the worldly things and getting frustrated and not feeling joyful of the good Sunday morning when we are going to have fun through the 2nd lesson in Alpha.

I decided to put it down and start praying.  When I gave up, God's work in my life started to take effect.  The new guy who joined us for Alpha last week was there observing me struggling with my gadget.  He figured it out that I was trying to remove a memory card and he offered to helping highlighted that he is in IT line.  It's good that someone can help though I'm not sure if he is able to help as I'm also in the IT line :p  Thus I passed the CCTV to him while I prepared to get myself ready for the Alpha course.

I saw him taking out some tools and started work.  Now I figured it out that it's a different IT line that we were in.  I'm in software, while he is in hardware... lol

After trying and struggling, he managed to get the memory card out for me and we found out that it was a wrong memory card inserted into the CCTV that caused it to jam.  Instead of SD, I inserted Memory Stick.  No wonder.

As I recollect all the events, I realized that there are so many things that has happened that is so coincidental.

1.  An IT guy put in the Alpha course when we only intended to plan it for our current members in the English Congregation.
2.  I formatted a SD in NTFS, left another SD in the computer, 1 MS on the table.
3.  I forgot to bring the SD when I left the house
4.  I bring the CCTV to the church to try to remove the memory card

If any of these events did not take place or happen differently, it will be a different story that I'm writing that makes me feel the presence of God when I'm so focused in my life and my own world.

I ought to give thanks to the precise construction of events otherwise I may have to throw the CCTV away as I don't think I'll be able to take out the memory card on my own without destroying it or I'll have no inspiring story to share.