Stained Glass Windows

It’s Valentine’s day!

And love is in the air! romantic ambience envelop my loved one and me….. except it ain’t love in the air but the characteristic smell of death and pictures of the dead glower down at my groupmates and me. People who work in the MORGUE, i imagine, have a strange outlook on life. I certainly got that when we entered the building.

It’s forensics. Forget CSI and their beautiful looking corpses. Forensics is the study of dead people with grossly deformed bodies. Thanks to the almighty media, I thought specialising in dental forensics would be a pretty grand profession (all the medical examiners look sooo good in CSI… including the old guy with limp… so smart… hey! my forensics teacher has a limp!). Honestly, looking at em dead people ain’t that bad, but smelling em….. it’s enough to make your stomach churn for years… it really makes you think about wat life really is about.

We spend a lifetime making ourselves look good physically and at the end, death is inevitable. Doesn’t really matter how it comes, it comes, and our bodies decompose respectively… there goes the hundreds spent on Clinique products and the thousands spent on shaping our anatomy.

Kinda hit me pretty hard cos we’ve been watching a lot of Las Vegas (Gosh Josh (Duhamel), so Fergie has humps, and mine are small bumps…so?.. :p). What does it all come down to? and what doesn’t it?

Christmas is coming. It’s just about the most busy time of the year for us (the CF). Not only do we have to run the whole show ourselves but we have to juggle our 1st sem exams too. We’ve have had activities every nite for the past few weeks. This year we’ve got:

1. Drama

A new thing that we are trying out. We’ve realised that we major in music and most of our items are music based, well so is our drama. But it’s something new and most of us are pretty inexperienced in it but as I’ve heard from Justin, who is in charge, the drama team is doing great. The purpose of the drama team is to involve the 1st years. Not ragging but giving them priority in taking up the roles in the drama and we, the seniors would fill in the rest. I think the 1st years have been blending in really great. Personally, I’m pretty glad i’m not involved in it, so that i have something to look forward to seeing on Christmas that i haven’t already seen or am involved in.

2. Dance

This is something new that we are trying out too. Person in charge is Nelly, and like all Africans, boy, she can dance! I’ve had the opportunity to watch the dance. It is a lyrical dance and I could really feel the song. Honestly, I’ve always felt that dances of worship can easily be either too sensual or too "kayu" but i have to admit that this dance surpassed all my expectations.

3. Worship

We’ve had our problems at the beginning with people going in and out of team and essentially, our lack of musicians. But for the past 2 weeks, our practices have been strong and we seem to be on schedule. Go Ian! This is something new for him, to lead a team. As he says, he’s so used to being a musician, leading a team takes some getting used to. But he’s doing great by God’s grace. He’s had some pretty tough decisions to make and some pretty difficult people to handle, but he’s overcame that.

4. Media

This is our one-woman show. Not many people have the skills to run this team and we are so blessed to have Jacy as our media woman, and the presentations i’ve seen so far has absolutely blown my mind. It’s been difficult, working behind the scenes and since these presentations involve the prep of all our teams, she has been running back and forth meetings taking pics and getting our itineries. All i can say is God couldn;t have sent a better person to do the job.

5. Caroling

Since our success last christmas, many people have great expectations of us. Our sign up at the beginning was about 35 people. Our number gradually dwindled to about 20 which is discouraging at first but great in the end because the thought of me handling a crowd of 35 is pretty mind-blowing. 20 is pretty good and despite early set-backs, we sound pretty amazing now.

Last nite we had a pretty interesting practice. Worship practice was suppose to end at 8 and caroling to start at 8. And just as our worship team was shuffling out and the carolers coming in, the lights went out. We soon found out that the hostel and even the 1st hostel had no electricity. We were in the basement and there is absolutely no light there because there are no windows (Not that there is much light at 8pm nowadays). I considered cancelling practice but there were more people at practice than usual, and i thought of people like stephanie and anya who have been faithfully crossing the miles to come to practice and both were already there. So we made do with wat we had; a guitar, a not-so-musically-talented leader and lotsa handphones. Jacy and Pearly came down with some candles which gave out just enough light to set the mood for christmas. After some lame jokes on my part, we set out to reading our already-badly-visible-under-normal-light scores with our handphones. And, me? I already have trouble picking out the tunes for each part using the piano (erm, cos i can’t really read notes) so using the guitar was quite the task. But God is GREAT. We sounded really good. Maybe it was the candles, but I thought it was the best practice we’ve had so far. And we all had a lot of fun. By the time the lights came back on at about 9.15, we had already almost perfected our 4 songs.

Well, I reflected on the practice afterwards with Ian. The lights had gone off at the right time because any sooner, we would not have been able to practice for worship cos all our instruments need electricity, save the acoustic guitar and drums. And during practice, the candle-light inspired us to use candles for the real day whilst we carol.

Pretty amazing eh? Please continue to pray for us. We are really a blessed team here in Russia and in spite of the fact we had a really successful christmas last year, this year, we want to have MORE. We all view christmas as a very emotionally and physically draining event but this year, in accordance to our CF theme for the year, "Strengthening the Inner Man", we want Christmas to be an emotionally and physically STRENGTHENING event. And by all accounts, this is IMPOSSIBLE… but I believe that this is the way God wants us to live, by drawing strength from Him, that in our weakness, He is made strong.

PS:

This pic was taken after our t-shirt spray painting. T-shirt spray painting?? It was inspired by the series "So you think you can dance" and was carried out in attempts to instill unity within our CF and also we can look cool during christmas without having to make up so much.

well, as u can see quite plainly, continue to "uphold" me in prayer…. hahaha… yeah, i know… lame.

From left to right: Stephanie, Ian, Jack (our creative man who will be sitting for his histology and anatomy exam in Jan… poor dude), Me, Vino (our all-rounder guy who is good in everything and thus is involved in EVERYTHING and has been my support… well, not only in this pic), Jacy and Justin.

Birthday bash is over… enter le book bash!

I’ve been making every possible excuse to stay away from le books but I guess the time hath cometh when all excuses fail and le panic approacheth.

Well, except to blog… haha…

Just thot i’d sit and blog a bit before the plunge.

I had a "sorta vision" the other day. Very strange. I was praying for a friend and I saw Peter attempting to walk on water towards Jesus. I immediately thot it was for the friend I was praying for and told her so. That was about 1 month ago. Today I saw it again. Almost immediately after that, I thot of an incident that happened more than a month back and then a whole flood of thots poured in…. all with one common theme- You were just not meant to be a leader. It was as if somebody was telling me in my head that everything I did as the president of the CF went wrong and therefore God must not be with me.

Yesterday I read this forwarded email about this guy who was shipwrecked alone on an uninhabited island. In his desperation to stay alive, he prayed that God would save him and then proceeded to building a hut with all that he could salvage. The next day, after leaving the hut to check out the island, he came back to find out that his hut was on fire and he had lost everything. He then questioned God and cried and fell asleep in his tears. He woke the next day to the sound of a ship. Upon questioning the captain, he found out that the burning hut had sent up a smoke signal and thus attracting the ship.

The moral of the story is pretty clear but I just could not see the "ship" in my life. So in this story, the guy spent a day in tears to see the bigger picture. I’ve had so many huts on fire for the past 4 years, I began to wonder whether there was ever going to be a ship to rescue me…. whether there was a bigger picture.

I began to pray that God would show me a glimpse of that ship, that He would show Himself to me as I walk on water in the midst of the storm. And then a thought appeared, "look beneath you".

I was like "wat?!".

Then it dawned on me that it is AGAINST the laws of nature to walk on water.(I think it has something to do with me having a higher density than water) Something or Someone has to be beneath me supporting me. hahaha.

The will of God

The will of God will never take you,
where the grace of God cannot keep you,
where the arms of God cannot support you,
where the riches of God cannot supply your need,
where the power of God cannot endow you

the will of God will never take you,
where the spirit of God cannot work through you,
where the wisdom of God cannot teach you,
where the army of God cannot protect you,
where the hands of God cannot mould you

the will of God never take you,
where the love of God cannot enfold you,
where the mercies of God cannot sustain you,
where the peace of God cannot calm your fears,
where the authority of God cannot overrule for you.

the will of God will never take you,
where the comfort of God cannot dry your tears, where the word of God cannot feed you,
where the miracles of God cannot be done for you,
where the omnipresence of God cannot find you.

Conclusion: He has been there all the time. All is in His hands…. me included… you included.

And like a very wise friend shared with me before I left for Russia last summer, there’s nothing like being in the will of God.

Our first concert! Spring concert 2007. Theme: One Way.

Everybody has been waiting in anticipation for this concert but i feared it, knowing that anything can go wrong when we organise such things. And indeed, few days before the concert, things started to fall apart. The person lending out the drum set told us that due to some circumstances, he couldn’t lend us the drum set. The director of the hall refused to fix up half of the stage because he said there was going to be an outdoor concert the next day. The 240 tickets we printed had mysteriously disappeared (SOLD OUT!). In addition to that, our playing and singing kinda sucked.

But these problems were somehow solvable. And I had a dreadful premonition that the worst was yet to come.

Then the day came and I woke with this bad bad feeling for the day. I rolled out of bed a little earlier to practice guitar and pray. Then we all met up in Daniel and Hari’s room to pray together. During the prayer meet, we got calls from the van that we ordered to collect the drum set saying that he was already downstairs and would wait for us. David said that the van would surely charge us extra for the waiting though we ordered the van for later. And btw, we are really short on cash.

So we prayed and prayed and prayed.

After that, Daniel, Ian, David and I climbed into the van (after Putra bargained with the guy about the price) and we were on the way to get the drum set. On the way, there was a really bad accident with a guy lying on the side of the road covered with his own blood-soaked jacket. His car was smashed up so badly that you could hardly tell what colour is was. When we finally got there, we found out that the guy who was lending us the drums was still 20mins away. In order to appease our much annoyed driver, we ended paying an extra 100 rubles than agreed under the condition that he would show up later to pick us up at our hostel.

Anyway, we did finally get the drum set into the van and made our way to church. We also found out that we had to fork out an extra 300 rubles for the drum set. But we were just relieved when we got to church safe and set up the drums. After that, David, Ian and I had a quick lunch and went back to our hostel to get the remaining team together and wait for the van which never arrived. The driver fled with our extra 100 rubles and we had to pay 400 rubles for 2 taxis to transport ourselves and our equipment to church while some of the others had to take the bus.

But we got to church. A bit late and disgruntled but together and excited about the night.

We tested our equipment and began our last practice only to be interrupted by Pastor telling us that one of the leaders in our church had suddenly passed away of a suspected heart attack and that he and Kathy couldn’t be there to share and have the altar-call.

That was it!

I just stood there stunned while Daniel pulled me aside to put something together in Pastor Dave and Kathy’s absence. I knew somebody else had to share, somebody else had to say something or this would be just another concert. I knew somebody had to take charge…. but I just could not pull myself together because of the news. The guy who passed away was Sergei Leushkin. He wasn’t just a guy in the church but he had been one of the very few men in church I really looked up to and respected. He was a big guy with a big heart. I had only gotten to know him and his wife a few months back in the leaders’ meetings and it’s very difficult not to love him because of his humility and his simple love for Jesus.

I guess many of us were affected but I was just not strong enough to put up a face so I left the hall to cry. I then realised that God gives us beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning and peace for despair through Jesus Christ, our hope.

So that’s how I found myself in front of 150 people sharing about death with hope, crying with hope and saying goodbye with hope… that hope being Jesus Christ. In hopes that one person may find that Hope. That indeed through death, Life comes.

Well, all in all, I can’t say we were the most professional band on stage… hahaa… but i guess we did ok spiritually.

I know I’ve been raving a lot about the weaknesses and troubles faced by the CF here but the truth is, God is doing something here. Here are some statistics:

Our first meeting consisted of a gathering of 16 people. The next was 19, then 22 and this week we had a grand total of 28 people. We didn’t even have enough chairs in the room. I personally didn’t think that we’d outgrow the room so quickly because last year we had an average attendance of 15 people.

We had 64 people come the camp this year when we only had half that number last year.

Our next upcoming event is a worship concert happening on the 30th of April. We’ve just got our posters printed out and just looking at em’ makes my palms sweaty. I’m excited at the same time very afraid. I feel I haven’t even had time to adjust to 16 people attending the CF and now 28 people and a concert. The fact that my exams are coming up together with the fact that I haven’t sat down to study anything but the Bible in a really really really long while is not very comforting either.

So, for those who have been praying for us; thank you and praise the Lord, it’s working but please continue to pray for us as God continues to expand our borders.

The other day, Pastor Dave was sharing in a leaders’ meeting about praying God’s kingdom come. Jesus taught us to pray that and implies two things;

1. The God’s kingdom is not here now.

2. We are asking for war against the current ruling kingdom in order to displace it.

I’ve always wondered why we should pray for God’s kingdom to come. Seemed pretty redundant to me. And when i learnt that I should pray it, i never understood the gravity of the prayer.

Flashback:

6th of April, 16:01, I was sitting in the dean’s office with my handphone in my hands. My phone had been buzzing non-stop the whole afternoon. Sometimes i’d pick it up if i felt that the news being conveyed from the other end was worth hearing, other times i’d just cancel the call knowing i didn’t have the heart to tell the person on the other side that we may not be able to go for the camp everybody has been anticipating for weeks.

16:02, my palms were so sweaty, I couldn’t even hold that piece of paper the dean’s secretary and I had sat down and so tediously compiled earlier, an hour peppered by her exasperated sighs and glares and me desperately calling everybody for personal information. Half my mind was trying to calculate the amount of money and effort wasted if we could not get permission from the dean’s office to go for the camp. The other half was cursing the fact that life in Russia is always so complicated.

16:03, the dean’s assistant called me in explaining that the rector was snowed in with work, it being Friday also. He told me that I should just go home and he would call me if there was any news. But I knew that there was a chance that he would not grant us a permission and so I asked about that possibility. The dean’s assistant glanced away and said he thought that everything would be alrite.

16:10, I’m making my way back to the hostel. I hadn’t packed or finished half of what I wanted to prepare for the camp. I felt I didn’t have the courage or faith to pack. I had been praying the whole 3 hours I’d been in the dean’s office and the whole hour I took to get there but I had felt no peace.

Then it dawn on me, the gravity of praying God’s kingdom come. It is declaring war! I decided that I would just go back and pack knowing that God would make a way.

16.39, I stepped into the hostel and was greeted by a russian language teacher telling me I had a call from the dean’s assistant. I put the phone to my ear and to my joy heard that everything was in order and we were all set to go.

15.15, I’m on a bus filled with hyperactive young adults with my carelessly packed bags on my lap on the way to camp!

Conclusion: Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection is the reason why we can pray God’s kingdom come. Though the powers of darkness rule the world now, we fight war and claim victory over it through Him who claimed victory over death itself.

Was just elected president of the CF last saturday. Part of me has so many hopes and dreams with regards to the future of the CF. The other part of me is paralysed with fear knowing that part of the job description is to accept people’s criticism… and oh, I’m so afraid I won’t be able to stand up under it. Today I received a forwarded sms in class saying that i am manipulating my friend into doing things according to my liking. As it dawned on me who had originally sent the msg, I looked up to see that very person standing before me waving. I forced a smile and walked away pretending to be busy with my handphone when the truth was, i couldn’t look at that person’s eyes. I just couldn’t believe a person whom I called friend would think that way about me and pretend that nothing was wrong. I spent the rest of the day in class putting up a face and as I made my way back home on the bus, I remembered my mum telling me that the worst things people can say about you are usually not even remotely close to who you really are and the bad things you have done. I believe that. I believe that the foundation of serving God should be the realisation of who you truly are and who you have become in Christ. After that, the reason for serving no longer is the praise of men but praise for God.

Anyway, JPA is sending over some people to evaluate the dental faculty here (my course is not recognised by the M’sian government for those who don’t know) which I guess it’s a good thing cos it means that something is actually being done about the recognition issue. They will be here tomorrow and it’s going to be a pretty big thing I guess cos the whole day today I have been receiving calls and reminders from teachers, the hostel commandant and even the dean’s office. Kinda nervous just thinking about it actually. But I guess, all is in God’s hands.

Today was the last day of my ENT cycle. Throughout the whole cycle, I’ve always felt that my teacher expected more from me. My correct answers didn’t seem to impress her as much as my groupmates’ correct answers. But today as I was leaving the class, she quietly told me I did very well in class. That made me feel alot better about the day. Alot alot better.

This evening, I received a call from Kathy (pastor’s wife) saying that she wants to record another song with my playing the piano. I felt so honoured but she turned it around and said that everybody loved the first one we recorded together and she really loves the way I play. I’m really excited about this new song and also to hear my playing on a recording (I think the sound effects and stuff make it sound sooo much better than it really is.. haha). Anyway, there’s another thing to look forward to.

Also, today I managed to confirm almost everybody elected into the CF committee, even those whom I thought will not want to serve in the core seemed to have a change of heart. I think God is working a good work among us in the core committee.

I feel really blessed today. I had a great dinner of home-made sushi with the GREAT company (2 of the very few people that I love most in this place) and I have tomorrow off. I guess when you honour God inspite of your circumstances (in reference to my first paragraph), God honours you and blesses you.

God is good.

Had a very difficult time with a patient yesterday. I finished a simple filling in about 15 mins but he kept insisting that there was something wrong with it. I thought it was pretty textbook but because I have an unwritten policy that the patient is always right, I did it again…. and again… and again… and again. I spent about 2 hours trying to please him. Finally I did something my teachers shouldn’t know about and he finally ok-ed the result of it (still rather reluctantly). By that time, my filling material (which costs a bomb to replace) was almost depleted, my self-confidence was somewhere in the deepest depths of the seas and I was so tired that when i finally got home, I fell asleep face-down. And despite all of that, I insisted on paying for the treatment, which was no skin off my teeth (ha-ha) but the look on his face as he left was skin off everywhere there is suppose to be skin.

Well, I guess this is all part of being a student. Nobody has confidence in you, not even yourself and at the end of the day, after doing everybody else but yourself a favour, you are still a student with yet a long way to go.

BUT, you are one step closer to the finish line and what you learn at the end of the day, is invaluable to your profession.

My daddy loves to fly in an aeroplane. And somehow he was able to instill this love for flying in all his children and as a result, I love to fly. I especially love it when there is turbulence. I love the adrenaline rush at that very moment of free-fall and your intestines are displaced and your palms become sweaty and your heart skips a beat and at that very moment, there’s nothing beneath you.
I once read of an old lady who looked out the window of the airplane she was flying in during a really bad storm and saw the shape of a hand holding up the plane which she declared to be Jesus holding the plane. I don’t know to what extent this story is true, nor do I know whether u can actually see anything under the plane when looking at the window. But one thing I do know, is that at that moment of free-fall, i know there is nothing holding me up but the hand of God. It is at that moment in time that i know that every breath i breathe in is given by my Maker. It is at that moment in time that i know that no matter how much I try to steer my life, He determines my course.
In my life, there have been many trials (especially of late). And there have been many times when I’ve questioned God over these countless, seemingly endless string of trials but as I think back on them, I realise that it is at that moment of “free-fall” that I realise I have nothing but Jesus holding me up. And there’s nothing like the thrill of knowing that God is upholding you in all circumstances especially during times of trial.

I’m in Greece!!!… can’t believe it actually. it’s slowly sinking into me. had so many problems coming here, you wouldn’t believe.

Firstly, i had to finish my exams which was a huge task because the dental surgery exam was a killer, then the dean’s office had some problems releasing my visa because my faculty insisted that i finish my winter practicals because i leave, which was impossible seeing i had on 2 days before i left and i had 2 weeks worth of practicals to finish, and oh yeah, our flight tickets to greece got cancelled because there was some problem with my friend’s credit card and then our train tickets to moscow were written for a day later and with which we would not have been able to make our flight to greece from moscow, then at the immigration counter, they didn’t want to let my through because my migration card said I landed in another airport (which i did because i took another airline from Malaysia in the summer).

whew!

There were lots of other petty problems that i won’t even bother to mention but conclusion…. i had a hard time getting here.

In the plane i was thinking about it. Yesterday, we attended an international church in moscow. Awesome awesome church. Anyway, the pastor preached on Lordship… making God the Lord of our lives. I’ve been struggling with this issue because it seems to me everytime i surrender things to God, everything goes wrong (like the trip to greece). But i learnt yesterday that surrendering everything to God includes surrending the decision, the results of that decision and the following decisions to God also.

Then I thought of Paul. Coming to Greece is like tracing some of his footsteps (would go further but then finances are limited.. hehe). I thought of how he surrendered everything to God even to point of his pending death, he still praised God. Even in his life, he had so many problems with authorities but he still ran the race.

How did he do that?

He knew his position in Christ.

He knew where he was going.

He knew that he couldn’t have it any other way but God’s way.

I want to live like that. Not to question the circumstances but praising God in the storm. To run the race with my eyes fix on Him who is the Author and Finisher of my faith.

This greece trip is more than a journey that crosses continents but it is a journey of faith… so is my life here on this earth.