Saturday, December 28, 2013

Things

Things i have been up to as of late: 

- I finally got to watching Avatar, The Last Airbender and i'm pleased to announce that i've finally finished it.
- Uni Friends came over last monday to have a BBQ at my place. Fun and food was had. The cuties had even not-so-inconspicuously left gigantic letters of my name on my desk as a belated birthday present. haha.
- We had Korean BBQ at the twin's place that same week on the wednesday. Judith made this awesome carbonara and there were these deceptive cheese-filled frankfurt sausages which exploded and burnt me. There was even a pass-the-parcel kudos to judie (ahh. i always feel sorry for the twins for the fun we have at their expense) and kk exchanging. Always so fun catching up with the mount kiddos, shame we weren't all there tho.
- Sannie, ho, hei, wilson and I FINALLY got to playing badminton down at the sportslink. tbh, i'm not even sure why I even go. 20% of the time I spend warming up and then the rest is spent resting. haha. The time I justify as being spent exercising is really all in my head. oh well. lunch afterwards was great.
- All my girls from church left for Thailand last week too. Bel and I decided spontaneously to have cheesecake on her front lawn the day before she left. That was random.
- Aunt, uncle and their insanely cute 5 year-old daughter have been down from singapore for the past week too. She's got such a thick Singaporean accent half the time i'm not sure what she's even trying to say.

And now this is me being lazy:
Christmas, Boxing Day sales, FROZEN the movie (It is hilarious), Moar BBQs, Steamboat, Star Wars, Jam Sesh, Learning new songs on g-tar

Things I want to do: 
- get fit - probs not going to happen at this stage...
- movie night at my place now that we have a new TV
- bike ride
- read books

Anyways, i'm out
Yumcha tomorrow

Choo


Wednesday, December 11, 2013

SP Lorne // 2013 : #4 Meet the Team

These are the guys I went on project with; their motivations, lessons learnt and memories. 

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Boat.

On Sunday I had dinner on a boat. 
It was super fun. 

Monash StudentLife were having their annual celebratory night and this year they decided to have it on a boat. Even tho I don't go to Monash, I tagged along anyways because it was pretty much a MYC/Summer Project reunion.

Lady Cutler Melbourne Showboat 
It was really cute 2 floor vessel
The top was where we dined, underneath was a bar, lounge and dance floor.

Dinner
Dessert
&
Drinks

From the city to Williamstown and back. 

It was a really nice boat.


'it's so hot, got to air out my girlfriend's armpits'
When I wasn't eating, I pretty much spent the entire night thirdwheeling these guys.
What luck I have with couples.
Nah, they're so cute. haha. 


Ah. Love Bel.


and the 'city-centre' kids. 
They are such interesting people...



Food was really great and it was really encouraging listening to all the stories from students back from Summer Projects who went to Rye and Phillip Island. 

Still waiting for all the photobooth pictures to come out. 

Choo. 






SP Lorne 2013: #3 Billi & Sam

// D I N I N G 

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had set dining times.

Last year we had a specific food team which organised and set the menus for each meal time and each team was rotated on a cooking and cleaning roster.

This, year however due to the smaller team size we weren't able to have a dedicated food team. Instead we'd elicited the help of this amazing couple - Billi and Sam who also brought along their two cute-as kids on project. Eliza (4) and their baby girl. For days I was so awestruck by the fact that they had put their hands up to voluntarily plan and cook for 20 randoms they had never met - what's more is that they had never done anything like this before.



One thing they as a couple really impressed on me during the two weeks I was able to spend getting to know them was their trust in the Lord in all things and their consistent and seemingly tireless heart to care for and joy in serving others through an out-pour of love which could only have been borne from a love for God and a desire to share Christ with others.

and. so. many. times throughout project....

I remember passing though the kitchen to grab the first-aid kit on my way out to afternoon or night activities, as you peered around the corner, you could pretty much bet that either or both of them would be offering excess food to Nick (one of Robbo's temp workers) or be deep in conversation over drinks with yet another backpacker who had come in to stay for the next few days.

Occasionally when they weren't busy looking after their two beautiful girls they would come along to our droppo and got to know some of the schoolies that visited us.

One night, Billi had decided to tag along with us as we walked down the streets
Armed with one chuppa-chup, she just randomly walked up to a group of girls and excitedly yells out:

 'I'VE GOT 1 CHUPPA-CHUP LEFT TO GIVE OUT TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO ANSWER MY QUESTION!'.

The question she asked was: 
What is the think you value the most in your life right now? 

The girls paused as they thoughtfully preceded to answer the question.
The main recurring answers were mostly: Money, Jobs, Security, Family and Friends

One of the girls then suddenly flipped the question back onto Billi and in little more than the space of 5 minutes she was sharing why God was so important to her and role He played in influencing her and Sam's decision to move the entire family over to Mozambique.
yeah. i know. mozambique. 
I hadn't even had time to process everything that was happening and nek minit, she was exchanging shoes with one of the girls who couldn't get into the hotel because she was wearing thongs.

Who does that!
WHAT EVEN.
I was flabbergasted. (never thought I would ever get the chance to use this word)

This degree of sacrificial love for a complete stranger, reflective of the way Jesus loved randoms he came across played out in present-day reality was something I had never single-handedly witnessed before. It was ridiculous.

Sigh. And I have not even begun talking about Sam yet.
Such an amazing couple which in general are just awesome at life.

Had been such a blessing having them both on project.

On the last night, Jase and I wrote a song for them sung along to the tune of 'I'll Make a Man Out of You' from Mulan. Hopefully James will upload it and i'll be able to link it here later!

-

Edit 2:11am, 
Whoops, I just realised that this post was meant to be about the food we ate and instead I got a bit carried away raving about this amazingly Godly couple. 

The food was great tho - incase you were wondering.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

SPLorne // 2013 : #2 Living in lorne, teams & daily schedule

// T H E  L I V I N G  A R R A N G E M E N T S 

So most of you would know that over the course of the two weeks we stayed at a cute little backpackers lodge owned by a lovely old man called 'Robbo'.


In case you were interested in our living arrangements:
  • There was a communal kitchen and bathroom which we shared with other backpackers
  • Girls were spread across two rooms, (8) in the first room closest to the kitchen and (4) a separate room which opened up into the balcony.  
  • The bunkhouse was pretty much a multipurpose room used for storage, debriefing, seminars and meetings during the day and the boys slept there at night. 


// O U R  T E A M S  &  S C H E D U L E 

Each person was assigned to a different project team involved with running each aspect of project. Personally, I had been placed on the worship team along with 2 other amazing and talented student musos on project - James and Anna. It was as challenging as it was fun being on a team with these guys.


Sidenote: Jase, the guy in the chinos with the impressive facial hair is an actual muso. He's an amazing songwriter and bassist in an alternative rock band in the states called 'The August Exchange'. On their EP he sings a song he wrote called 'Behind my Clenched Teeth'.

link: Behind My Clenched Teeth

There were another 4 teams, and whilst I know all of the teams were of equal importance over project, secretly, I thought and still think worship team was the best. haha.

-
Days started off at about 10am with breakfast for most people, but people on the worship team would be up at about 9am to practice and prep for that day's set list. yay for waking up early.

Every day after breakfast we would do some worship followed by some quiet time before we recouped and debriefed from the previous days events.

Lunch would usually follow this at about 12:30

Activities after lunch were changeable depending on the day. Most of the time, we would have a seminar/ bible talk of some sort, whilst other days we could have 'mandatory community fun time' or team meetings.

At about 2:30 we would come together and have a short debrief run by the Afternoon Evange team before heading out to the beach.

We would then return for dinner which was at 6:30 - 7:30.

After dinner we would have either free time or another seminar before having our 20 minute debrief prior to setting up the 'droppo' at the neighboring Fig Tree Community Center for opening at 9:00pm

Our nights went into the early hours of the morning as the 'droppo' was open to schoolies until 1am. I think most nights after all the packing-up, showering and snacking it was about 2:30 before I was able to get some rest before the next day.

This was pretty much our day to day schedule more or less. It was pree intense and by the end of the 5-6th day, exhaustion began to kick in and we started having to keep each other accountable to make sure we were all getting enough sleep.



Saturday, December 7, 2013

SP Lorne // 2013 : #1 Olah!

Well. I'm back. 

Its seems like the past 4 weeks swept past like a whirlwind. Literally 48 hours after I had finished exams I was bundled into a car filled with people along with my guitar, sleepingbag, luggage and enough instant noodles to feed 20 midnight snackers for 2 weeks. 

Our destination: Lorne. 


First of all, I want to praise God for all the events of the past two weeks and to thank all the people who were part of the team back in Melbourne who supported me and kept the project team in prayers over this period of time. 

If you missed out on updates over the two weeks you can check out the links below: 

Supporters page:

Official social media hashtags: 
#slsslorne 
#slprojects 

Hopefully I will get a chance to talk about some of the revelations I had during my time in Lorne after i've had some time to process.

But until then, i'll just be doing posts about all the different aspects of project as they come to mind.

Its nice to be back.

Choo.