Family Day

Last year, after attending two foundational courses at Calvary Life Assembly (CLA), I submitted my application form to be a Calvarite. Having been in this church on and off for four years, I finally felt myself at home there and turned up on the CLA Family Day for the first time. Ps Rebekah asked me to help in the children ministry. So I spent the whole morning pumping balloons and twisting them into various forms.

This year, apart from arranging VC as an invited artist to draw caricatures, I was not given a specific task from either Ps Rebekah or my cell leader. So on 1st May, I drove to CLA at 9am to see in what I could participate.

Two huge balloon rooms were being rented specially for this event to serve as children's playground. I wished I were twenty-five years younger to be qualified to jump everywhere inside.

I noticed a line of people in front of two desks. I asked a girl and found out that early birds were rewarded. So I also queued up, registered my name and was given a small plastic bag of sponsored items.

Even though most of the snacks and objects inside the bag were obviously meant for children, I was as excited as when I had received goodies on the Children's Day during my primary school years.

It was a rare occasion where everybody was dressed casually. Even Ps James was in shorts!

When all the stalls were almost ready, he gathered all of us towards him and gave an opening speech. Then we prayed together to thank God for blessing us with a nice weather.

Our Cheng cell was selling fried noodles. As my leader told me there were enough helpers to handle the sale during the first hours,

I walked around to visit other stalls. Two boys were disguised in clowns to animate the carnival!

Not only all the games were free,

each player would get a stamp on a score card to gain some points after each game.

The top scorers would win a hamper.

No wonder the game stalls were never lack of participants.

All the cells had their own stalls. Other ministries were also selling special dishes.

The most famous stall promoter of the BM ministry

was a little monkey which was also a new member of Ps Albert's family. An adoption licence was hanging on the pillar in case anybody questioned about the legal right.

People bought all kinds of food and beverage with coupons and started eating at the canteen.

I met Jagan and we sat outside the multi-purpose hall. After some time, people entered the hall as there was a health talk on obesity by Dr Richard. I was quite interested in the topic since I had put on weight after the Chinese New Year. Not Jagan. So I still remained seated to chat with her.

As I had not digested my early breakfast, I was not eyeing any food, except for the beef noodles that I was planning to have for lunch later. At 11.30am, I was still not hungry. But the popular Vietnamese speciality would be sold out very soon. Only three bowls were left on the table. So I quickly got myself one at RM5

and enjoyed every mouthful of the hot and spicy soup noodles.

Later, while I was licking an ice-cream for dessert next to Phebe, she said to me, "If you had listened to the health talk just now, you wouldn't be eating this."

I knew. That was why later, I still happily helped VC to finish his bowl of cendol and bought four more Vietnamese fried spring rolls for our snacks...