Emerge Day 1: The Power of One

Pic from www.emerge.sg

4 days of Emerge! Although it's already all over, let me do it as my friend calls it: backblogging Haha. Emerge is a youth conference held by my church annually. It's a conference set on empower youths to go out there and strive for their dreams and to reach out for the glory of God! I think this year we've got about 1800 delegates from all over Asia.
What a great time! So let me recap..

1. Pastor preached about the power of one. He used the story of Shamgar; about how one man took down 600 Philstines one by one to deliver Israel. In short, there's really nothing we cannot do as one. If we have a dream from God, there's no one that can stop us from achieving it, for with God, we are the majority. There will always be people who will criticise, laugh, mock at us (The jeering spectators, I call them) when we want to do great things for God; in fact I got quite abit now, from family and friends, and sometimes those closest to us can hurt us the most. But our reward is in Heaven =)

2. Word power. =( Got 4th this year. Rooster crowed twice! Not 3 times! Ahhhhh.. ( For those who read the Bible, you'd know what I'm talking about). I thought that was the crucial question we got wrong. Ah well. Next year! I'll never stop till I win it! Cannot let the Indonesians win all the time! Two years in a row the Indos from NTU win already! Too much! Haha...
But well, we got 50 bucks Taka vouchers. Better than nothing lah.. Can do abit of shopping.

3. Fei-Er from F.I.R came down to join us for service. Seems that she was really touched by God in Taiwan. She wanted to perform for us, but management say must pay $$$. Too expensive! Haha...

4. Pastor preached on spiritual hunger from the story of Jacob. We can be the most flawed person in the world, but yet what God wants from us is not sinless perfection. He wants a heart after Him, and that's what matters to Him. As pastor put it, I will not let you go unless you bless me, I’d rather walk with a limp for the rest of my life and be strong with You on the inside, than appear strong on the outside.
Well, it was a great first night!

Woohoo!

Well, as always, it's been a while since I wrote again on this blog.

Been SUPER busy since the last blog so never really gotten down to writing. When school comes, i'll probably be more free. lol. How ironic.

But it's good la. It's good to live everyday being busy with the right things.. though of course rest and spending time with God is important, and that's where I have to work on.

But Praise God! Me, Charis and Gershon won 2nd for the Social Entrepreneurship competition for our church youth conference! No photos yet, waiting for them to put it up on the website.

But Elim Chew was one of the judges. V cool. Haha. I must say we SMU did the best presentation, haha as always, but good la, can tell these judges are not swayed by good presentations; they don't judge a team based on their presentation skills, they judge based on the feasibility of the business idea. Haha.

Elim said," SMU, I expect more from you guys since you guys have the Lien Foundation!" Haha, that was funny. But good la, the only reason why we didn't win, I believe, was because they checked us on our commitment to follow through on the business, and we've fell short. But it was like a presentation where we couldn't be shot down cos we have professional smokers on our team. Haha.

But 2nd is $700 bucks for the whole team! Haha yay. A little richer now. I didn't even know the prizes were so good until they were announcing the winners.

And truly it's a humbling experience for me as well. Gershon, fyi is the guy who organized the Citibank Case Challenge, one of the Cognitare people. His ppt slides are really top class, and his presentation skills.. Haha nothing to say also; he really knows how to hold his ground up there.

There's really still alot for me to learn in terms of presentation and holding yourself well on stage. But I thank God that I'm in the company of such people.

And Charis too. I never done a project with her before, but she's really good at presentation and taking questions as well. Haha. I have much to learn from the both of them.

But praise God, $233 per person.

And today went for Word power Semi-finals. I never felt so stressed before, so jing zhang... I think our group is really v competitive. The Bible trivia section especially is qiang3 da2 ti2 and MCQ. The thing is, the judge never finished the question even then we all whack the question already. One of the teams even had totally no chance to answer. Haha

At first was dominated by this NUS guy.. haha, then last part our team caught up by snatching all the last questions. Lemme give a few examples:

First question:
How old was Noah when the flood...
*NUS raises hands*

600.

I lifted up my hands like 0.1 seconds after him la. zzzz.

Second, I got nervous so:
What bird was given to the...

* I raise hand*

Haha. Couldn't answer question. And end up the NUS guy got it.

The question was supposed to be :
What bird was given to the Israelites in the wilderness when they left Egypt?

*NUS guy raises hands*
Quail.

zzz. Correct again.

Nm. Our team took revenge at last part.

" Who was the king who ate grass.."
Nebuchunazzer.

"In Acts 27, what island was Paul stranded?"
Malta.

"Who led the rebellion against Moses and was.."
Korah.

"Where did Aaron die?"
Mount Hor.

"Who was the Pharisee that came to Jesus to inquire.."
Nicodemus.

But xiong man.. especially the scripture memory.. Haha.. but think should be able to get into finals again. First prize laptop! Must win! =)

But to the other stuff about my life...
hmm think another day la.. too sleepy now.

Learning to appreciate Singapore

I just took 2 Nigerians around a little of Singapore, from MDIS to Clarke Quay to buy a camera and then to my place for cell group.

They really made me appreciate Singapre more. Haha.

They kept talking about how great Singapore was.

"The buildings are so fine!", they say. "In Nigeria you had to find a place to take a good picture of buildings, but in Singapore you can do it anywhere!"

Now that made me look at the sights I had been looking at all my life. Haha. It really did open up my eyes. Sometimes it's just that we have lived here for so long that we stop 'smelling the roses'.

"Singapore is such a small island and it has no resources, but yet it is already such a develped coountry! Nigeria has oil, gold and all that, but yet it is still developing..."

Now once again that made me think about the achievements of our forefathers. It's really a fear that they managed to do this.

Though it was only a 2 hour 'excursion' per se, but i think i learnt alot from them about my own country. Haha. And of course, theirs too.

Reply to Yixian's tag

Haha, alright, I decided to post to clarify cos the tag board won't do.

When I made that post before, I'm starting with the premise that all of us want good results.

Okay, so when we want good results, the natural thing to do is to study hard! I'm just saying that when we are concerned about our grades and then when suddenly we have to make a choice, to serve God or to serve our own agenda which is to study, we should choose God and trust Him.

And trusting God is to choosing to serve Him, because He has promised us in the Bible that if we put Him first in our lives, He will add all the things that we need to us. This includes our results. We trust that instead of serving ourselves during this time, we choose to be selfless and help out say, at the church where we are needed, that's when God will bless us. Not necessarily with better results, but it could be in other ways as well. Sometimes we can do all these and end up with bad results, but yet when that happens we still can be sure that He has a greater plan for us because, in the end getting your As don't make you a great person. In the end it's about how many lives you touch and change.

Oh, and I got A- for my most disliked module Company Law! Yay. God is really good. Though to me i was already prepared to get a B for AIS and B+ Company Law and get on with life, but really I'm even more honored that I can be testimony to His goodness. That when I gave my time to Him, He'll multiply the rest of the time I have in my hands.

To people who really think results make my day, for your info, I felt a little frustrated when things go wrong still. I felt irritated when I forgot to bring my bag out today. It didn't make a difference if I had my As or Bs for my exam. Your life doesn't change for the better because you get As for your exam. You will be who you are yesterday regardless of what grades you get. Your friends will stay your friends. Your bad habits will remain. The feelings you feel on a daily basis stays the same.

In short, life goes on. Haha.

I can attest to that. Common sense, but yet often people's behavior show otherwise.