Category: Church and God

2017 passed by in a blink! The most amazing that happened this year was that we travelled 4 times! To Israel, which is life-changing, to Cebu, during Liz’s birthday, to Korea, which was unplanned, and finally to Hokkaido with Lizzy’s Mom. Israel is where we experienced where Jesus walked in real life, especially on the Sea of Galilee. Cebu is where I realised I don’t like holidays that do nothing but I sacrifice for Liz. Haha. Korea is when I realised I missed Liz after she went USA for two weeks. And Hokkaido was like our dream road trip.

And of course, this year marks one full year working in a new place. Working here is like family, where there’s no politics, no gossip and not much red tape. Although there’s some ups and downs when I feel bored, it’s also a year with alot less meetings compared to my previous work place, and where I learnt a lot more programming stuff than ever, getting to play with PHP and Laravel. Some of the things I learnt this year include:

• Playing with different HTML5 video players (Azure, Haivision, VideoJS)
• Interaction between React, AJAX and Backend Laravel
• A bit of DraftJS
• Basic Laravel collections and routes and views
• Building Single Page Apps with React and Material UI and Firebase
• Best practices for webpack/mix/scss/BEM/CSS compilation and JS frontend loading order
• Best practices for Google Analytics and Enhanced eCommerce + advanced event logging + Data Studio
• Best practices for responsive image loading with Imgix
• Testing of meta tags / schema.org
• Design Thinking process and research
• Sketch App

Ministry-wise, one of my wishes was greater ownership from the youths that they can run the service themselves. This was certainly fulfilled as the graduating bunch of Sec 4 is the best batch so far, with many great leaders like Daniel and Dominic who can run the lights board themselves, design and programme their own songs without much guidance. The best thing that happened was I managed to pair up Dominic and Ivan from Arrow together for the Christmas service, and they managed to learn and sharpen each other. It’s always the teacher’s honour to be able to train someone who becomes better than me! A very proud moment indeed.

The last two days of 2017, we had the privilege to spend time with two unofficial caregroups – one is a “dream” cg with a bunch of awesome people from work. All married couples, but our lives intertwined together by a common calling, not by coincidence, not by chance, but by divine appointment. It was a great moment just to share openly without our titles or responsibilities. During the interaction, we also realised that as a couple, Liz and I achieved a pretty healthy rhythm in the 2nd year of our marriage – having home-cooked breakfasts almost every morning, and going to work peacefully everyday. I’m glad our marriage dynamics are not very complicated, although Liz is a complicated person 😉

The other fun thing that happened at the end of 2017 was we hosted a random bunch of “lonely cg-less” people for watchnight at our place. We had fun watching a documentary “Christ In Me”, spending time in worship, eating ice cream, and playing Secret Hitler. Jesus visited our humble living room during the worship and declared that 2018 shall be a year of His-Presence-With-Us. It has been raining the past 24 hours and we wanted to go cycling initially, but this was so much better. I think Liz and I have kinda settled that our CG is not really an official CG per-se, but random bunch of people whom we hang out with in and out of office. Along the way, we also have couple friends whom we can walk this journey with. Praying for more to come!

Praying that in 2018, I will have no more strain in my wrists as I continue to use the mouse and computer!

Legacy Camp 2014 was a camp like no other. It was pretty different from many other camps in many different ways. Life-changing.

Really really awesome and honoured to be literally serving alongside my favourite person. This was a camp of firsts – the first camp which I’m officially serving as lights, the first time Senior Pastor shared at men’s session, the first camp in which we have a giant ultrawide 30×10 screen, the first camp with so many different pastors preaching at different sessions, and of course, the first camp I get to serve with my girlfriend. Like what someone said, 1+1=2. Her design + my animated smoke = the backdrop. Production value wasa super upz at this camp with the graphics screen in the middle.

This level of production is what I always dreamt to be part of and now I am part of one. When Angie was singing Sanctuary, suddenly I had a flashback of what I dreamt of a few years ago when I was church hopping, that I always wanted to be part of a big-scale production like this, and now, I am part of one and doing the lighting. Truly, God is amazing. It is not by my self-effort that I can be here. I am really honoured and privileged to be. Initially, I was only going to be at camp for film, and then I was pulled out, and then I was going again for lights and it is no coincidence. I realised that God orchestrated for each and everyone of us to be there, to be part of His dream team, the video, the sound, the musicians and everyone. And to get to do what I dreamt of doing is really amazing. Wow. Much more so with the love of my life by my side. Never thought that this would happen but always dreamt that it would and indeed it happened.  It’s like we are compatible with each other in that we can serve together and talk about production stuff together in the same frequency. And much more greater things to come!

What I learnt at camp is that I can never ever be fully prepared. There are always unexpected things coming along, and whatever I programmed will always go haywire at the wrong time. I can never be over-prepared. There are some things which I thought that I could do on the fly, which could be better off if I had prepared beforehand. There were some things which I could never prepare for. Also, at this camp, I was more focused on my work and less focused on the worship itself. I learnt that humility is very important and the flesh would always want to exalt itself, but ultimately only God is to be exalted. On the first night, I was not prepared as the lighting board is quite new to be, hence I was observing the vendor. But from the second day onwards, I was taking over the board already.

Pastor also talked about upward stumbling. How that whenever we fail, let it not be a downward stumbling but an upward one. Joseph obtained his gift only when he fled from his temptations and practised the presence of God.

I have just graduated from an overseas university, and job searching has been a journey. Pastor Prince always says God will grant you not just a job, but a position, and I have been speaking that in faith during my search process.

Even though I am bonded with a statutory board scholarship, my bond allows me to work with a private company in Singapore. I am originally attached to Company A because that was the original agreement when I signed up for the bond. However, after various talks with the Company A, they are not actively hiring this year and hence they do not have any opportunities for me. I was disappointed.

Hence, that started a job search together with the help of the statutory board. I told them what other companies in their approved list which I am interested in. Initially, it was really cold and quiet for about one month. However, the closed doors for a month allowed me to plant myself in the house of God and resuming my serving duties actively. After a long wait, I even tried to apply myself through the various companies’ career websites but to no avail.

Suddenly, God opened many doors to me in the 3rd week of August. I was called down for an interview with Company B. And during the interview, I received a call for not one, but two interviews with another Company C. All three interviews were of different job scopes, but they were all something which I am interested in, and they were more interesting than the jobs at Company A. Finally, I was called for a second round of interview with Company C, and they were very interested to offer me a job. Moreover, the boss interviewing me said that he would create a position for me such that I will get to roam around the different teams of his department, and not just stay in one team. That is truly unmerited favour.

In the end, Company B did not manage to offer me any job position. However, Company C offered me with an job that not only meets my expectations, but also is the best fit for me as compared to all the other positions I was interviewing for. God certainly has a plan for me when he first closed the doors with the other companies and then opened the door into this divine career position! What Pastor said has finally come true!

…forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal… – Phil 3:13-14

Last week, I went for my first Marked Camp with Genrev to Malacca. How I managed to go to camp is a miracle, it is just like the previous Legacy Camp. I did not meet the attendance requirements because I just came back from overseas, just like how the last time I didn’t meet the requirements because I was on exchange. But God wanted to do something special and he opened doors for me to go to camp.

I asked God for an understanding of the seasons (eth) of my life – based on Pastor’s Gabriel’s sermon which he preached last Genrev. I prayed for wisdom (understanding) of the seasons of my life

When Pastor Benjamin led the song “I Press On (Thank You)” on Thursday morning, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotions and started tearing. Actually, I wasn’t feeling well that morning, hence I decided to sit at the back at the lights board, and thought that I won’t participate in the service and just sit behind and rest. However, I felt led to stand up during worship and when Pastor started singing the song, I just started crying. I got reminded of how I first heard the song in Legacy Camp in 2010, and how the verse speaks to me personally. Pastor Whitley chose the verse as my baptism verse back in GTC in 2008, and forgetting what is behind refers to what happened to my mum in 2007. Suddenly, within a few miniseconds, I got a fast-forward flashback of the past seasons of my life, from the time of mourning in army, to my baptism, to coming to NCC, to the past 4-5 years of studies of how God has brought me through and transformed me from glory to glory. And how God is so kind and faithful even when I am faithless. How God has helped me to forget what is behind and helped me to keep pressing on. And how his hand has always guided me, every step of the way. =) God is pretty funny, when I was unpacking my bag after the trip, I realised that the pen inside my bag says “The Zone 2009”. That was the year I first came to NCC. That’s his style.

During another separate session for financial planning, Pastor Benjamin asked us to write down our faith tithe figure which we wish to tithe within 3 years’ time. Why tithe? Because it is more of a faith picture than just writing our salary. Our tithe will determine our salary. So I started praying, and then uncontrollable tears just overwhelmed me as I felt the tangible presence of God, and how he has provided for me with more than more than enough over the past few years that I did not even have to worry about my finances at all. He is my El Shaddai.