Put my hope in God.

The plus point about having a room that faces Johor Bahru is that when wind blows into your room, it means the winds are blowing down from Malaysia!!!!

Blow wind blow!
Blow what?
Blow all the haze back to Indonesia!

hahaha. ok, I'm really quite happy. the hazy weather has been making me rather grouchy. ok. fine. I've been grouchy either way, the haze just doesn't make me feel any better.

ok. today was a rather interesting sunday.

I woke up, er.. grouchy. the house was in a mess, and my cg was coming up. So, I didn't exactly pack the house in the most glorifying manner. No excuses. adeline was bad.

But service at church was good. Aunty Annabel led my favourite song, no prizes for guessing what it is. Sing with me! I think the main thing was that Ps Ivan gave a very good sermon. He spoke on Psalms 42, which is one of my favourite Psalms because of my favourite verse, Psalm 42:5a,

"Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise Him,
my Saviour and my God."

Ps Ivan brought up an interesting point. Often, when we are down and out, we would often remind ourselves of the "Happy Times" to pick ourselves up.

That's good. Just that we end up focusing on the wrong thing. Instead, we should be reminding ourselves of the God who brought those happy times. It puts the focus back on the Giver and not the gifts.

There is a second part to Psalm 42:5 which is often forgotten,

"My soul is downcast within me,
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon --from Mount Mizar."

Remember God.

sigh. oh well, after that, was cg time. Today, I teared a bit too much before cg. Had to stop myself before streams actually flowed. well, yes. See, I've been rather down lately. But I couldn't even work out tears for myself to vent my frustrations.

It so happened when one of my girls told me she was going through quite a down time, that tears sprung up in my eyes quite readily. If it wasn't for the fact that we were taking a lift up to my house, I would have really cried right on the spot.

ok, what's my point. now thinking things through, I finally understand that whole thing about feeling for someone. This was really one of those few times that I actually felt the person's pain. Can't say I totally felt it. but if it actually evoked tears in me, you can imagine.

After cg, the girls had a time of prayer, and it was a rare moment. For me, that was a breakthrough in ministry to these girls that Sulwyn and I are leading. I truly thank God for this.

I promise to put up pics of the girls.. I seriously have problems uploading pics from home. I need to put my dormant Flickr account into action!!

Then, there was Kairos business meeting from 2-4pm. oh boy. It was seriously quite straining. I have to hand it to Ps Jabez. Sometimes, I whince at having to lead 13 other people in arts comm, but, that's only 13 other people as compared to a total of 24 youth leaders.. to try to get everyone moving in the same direction is a huge feat.

It's exciting though, the plans for 2007 (time flies huh). They are mostly structural changes. And, if you know me, I don't really like structure. Especially implementing them. But, this time round, I think the pros outweigh the cons. And, to me, that's really exciting. In PJ's words, "Kingdom mentality".

It's my prayer that things will work out fine despite the need to change stuff, that God will continue to use our youth ministry to reach out to the youths here in Woodlands. I guess, that's me, getting kinda used to change. It used to be once every few years, then two, then yearly.. now, changes come like every 6 months.

And, with these changes, there will always be uncertainty. That's why there's a need to put our hope and trust in the one unchanging God, who will never fail Himself.