Watching Half A Football Match Of FIFA World Cup

Last Saturday, upon my return from the half-day mission trip, I was not in the mood to play bowling with Vince as suggested by him, much less in the evening. But I remembered there was going to be a football match of 2010 FIFA World Cup at 10pm and a few friends of mine had talked about watching the games together with the crowd. So it was my turn to persuade my blog friend to accompany me to watch the match somewhere at Cheng.

When both of us made up our mind to move to "Pinang Besar" restaurant, the first half of the match was already over. The tables and chairs there had been arranged in such a way that what the shop was selling was obviously football, not food. We still managed to get two available back seats facing the big screen at "Pinang Besar". In front of us were two more empty chairs which were soon occupied by a couple whose physical intimacy often disturbed my view.

During the 15-minute half-time break, Vince explained to me the football betting which had been a hot current issue in Malaysia.

I had never been crazy about this world's most popular sport. In fact, during the World Cup season in France in 1998, I who was then studying in the country had not even paid attention to it until I learned that the whole nation was ecstatically celebrating Les Bleus' victory.

In summer 2002, I had a small gang of Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean buddies who faithfully came to my studio in the afternoon when there was a match of FIFA World Cup. Why did they choose my place? Because I made all my guests feel at home by serving them drinks and snacks. After cheering two hours in front of the television, we sometimes went out cycling in the countryside and later cooked dinner together.

Back to Malaysia, not only I lost contact with most of the those friends, I also lost interest in the 2006 tournament especially because it was during the period when I was preoccupied by Dad's failing health.

This year, having played football with Calvary Care Home children did not make me a football fan. Not having Astro at home, I was content with TV1 and TV2 which selectively offered World Cup 2010 live broadcast. Even then, I hardly watched any match and had little idea of the current best players in the world.

Nevertheless, it was fun watching the 22 players chasing after a ball as well as observing the spectators' reaction to the team they were or not supporting. Vince who was hoping Argentina to win was rather quiet during the second half where the South Americans continued to attack aggressively in vain. I just enjoyed seeing the goal being hit three times by the German players who were excellent in their cooperation with one another. Every time, the score would be followed by cheers of overjoyed clients of the restaurant who jumped from their seats with their arms up and began to sing a victory song.

Germany eventually beat Argentina by 4-0. I neither felt happy nor grieved for any team. I simply drew a lesson from the match, like what I had learned in my leadership class, that team work is more important than personal glory, .

After the match, the 24-hour restaurant was the one which looked saddest with abandoned seats.

Mission Trip To Orang Asli Settlements II: Asahan

After Selandar, our vans followed Pastor Joseph Boon Chai's assistant Brother Johan who, on his motorbike, was leading us to Bukit Asahan. Previously, when I heard of Tangkak or Asahan, I thought of beef noodles, cloth shops or waterfalls. This time, I learned a new association--Temuan Orang Asli.

Bro Johan gave us a briefing in a hall

where Christian Orang Asli gathered for cell meetings.

Then he brought us to a nearby house to experience Orang Asli's lifestyle in the nature. He usually spent one hour in each house during his weekly visits.

That day, we only stayed less than twenty minutes and seemed to be more interested in monkeys and a squirrel than the people.

After the small tour, we returned to the hall

to worship the Lord together.

To me, it was a visit more than a mission trip. Not only we had not carried out any work for the community, we were served cakes and tea prepared by our hospitable brother in Christ.

I do not expect that these children will ever remember our presence in their settlement when they grow up.

However, we still can do something for them when we are back to our modern city life--at least to pray that God will never stop supplying wildboars in their forests.

Mission Trip To Orang Asli Settlements I: Selandar

Since I would be staying in Melaka last weekend, I finally made up my mind to join the mission trip to Orang Asli Settlements which had been postponed a few times by Calvary Life Assembly because of their busy schedule.

Saturday morning, when I drove into the church parking punctually at 9am, there was no sign of other cars. I was a bit worried that my fellow "missionaries" had already happily departed for Jasin since I had only confirmed my participation with Sarma and Kee Ming the previous Sunday. While I was thinking what to do in case I had been accidentally left out, I saw the couple entering the office. So I quickly caught up with them and learned that I was actually the first participant to "report duty".

After awhile, other young adults also arrived and seemed to be surprised by my presence. I guess they either considered me to be a lone ranger, which was true in some ways, or they assumed that I was only interested in mixing around with the Calvary Care Home (CCH) gang. I used to be acquainted with the young adults by emails and in person when I first attended their cell meetings two years ago. This time, I took this opportunity to have fellowship with them again.

We left with two vans. The drivers were Joseph L and CW who used to fetch Vietnamese to the church service with the same vehicles.

Our first destination was Selandar. We stopped in front of a well-furnished centre instead of a remote village house as we had imagined.

Pastor Joseph Boon Chai from Kampung Jus Church was having an English class with Orang Asli children. He used the direct method to introduce vocabulary by question-answer and asked the students to repeat individually while showing the object they were holding.

Most of the older children were paying full attention and actively participated in the lesson. One of the younger boys was sitting on the floor so motionlessly that he did not even turn his head one inch when we caressed his hair.

Later we noticed another boy who also hardly had any facial expression and realised that the two boys having the similar blurred look were probably from the same family!

After all the children presented orally, they were required to write down the sentences on a piece of paper. That was when we intervened to guide them.

Among all the young adult tutors, Charlie was definitely the youngest in heart.

While helping them to spell words, I also began to befriend several of them and leave my trademark trace--spider face.

The next activity was singing.

Some of the adults partnered with the children to accompany the song by gestures. Sarma who was yet to have a child with Kee Ming due to their theology studies was already full of motherly love.

After the children went to other rooms to do some exercise, Ps Joseph shared with us the situation of the Orang Asli in Melaka, Pahang, the difficulties his pastoral team faced, their prayer needs and their desire to have more committed workers to serve this community. After handing over a love gift to bless their ministry, Kee Ming led us to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who were living in this part of Melaka.

We were blessed with chicken rice for lunch. After my one-week weight losing programme, I was confident that I would not break the small wooden chair while sitting on it... Three girls who were not too shy to talk to me in Mandarin told me that they studied in a Chinese school.

After the meal, the boys could not wait for their food to digest and started to play football. Their field was filled with grass that was not mown like the one at CCH. Yet, they were having great fun kicking the ball to one another and chasing after it.

I was hoping that some international football stars would be born out of them when they suddenly turned the game into rugby! A boy who happened to be Ps Joseph's son was holding the ball and the rest rushed to him and piled their bodies one after another onto his. The poor thing who was lying upside down on the grass in tears almost suffocated and took at least ten minutes to recover from his trauma.

I kept playing with Ps Joseph's chubby daughter in a red dress when she was alone. Joseph of the young adults group, who usually saw me with the CCH children, teasingly asked me with a Chinese proverb if "I had found a new lover". Actually I was just attracted by her doll-like face and lovely curls.

Having such loving and caring parents,

she will always have a lot personal attention, unlike the CCH children.

It was time we moved to the second place.

May the Lord continue to send out labourers into His harvest ( Matthew 9:38) in Selandar.

Australian Boys Choir & Kelly Gang In St Peter's Church

I had planned to go back to my hometown last Friday and at first had not said "yes" to several activities which would be going on last weekend, until Piek See blessed me with a RM80 entrance ticket to the Australian Boys Choir and the Kelly Gang Charity Concert to reward my occasional humble service in the BOM and MLM classes.

So Friday evening, I drove to St Peter's church which was located in town. Majority of the people who had turned up at this fundraising event were graduates from mission schools. I also saw same familiar faces that I had known at Calvary Life Assembly, Agape Care Centre and my leadership class.

When the Australian boys came onto the stage, I recalled that this Oceanic country was getting multiracial as there were descendants of Asian immigrants among the those with blond hair and sharp nose.

The conductor Noel Ancell gave an explanation of the song before each performance. The boy sopranos presented both sacred songs and secular songs with their unchanged voices. They reminded me of my 11-year-old nephew Zer Yih. When he answers my phone, sometimes I take him for his 8-year-old sister Zer Nin.

The little choristers' "big brothers", the Kelly Gang, were mostly former senior members of the boys choir before they broke their voices. Personally, I preferred the more mature and technically skilled vocals by these boys of secondary-school age.

The Choir and the Gang also sang together to present wonderful chorales and Australian folk songs. In this Singapore/Malaysia tour, they specially performed the famous Indonesian hymn "Bengawan Solo" during the encore, after which the audience responded warmly with a standing ovation.

My ticket had allowed me to take a front seat. As a result, I could appreciate the live concert visually and acoustically from a near distance. It was much greater than listening to a CD with the same songs. And I was glad to have decided to stay back in Melaka as I would not get this kind of cultural exposure in a city like Batu Pahat.

The Externally Focused Life

During the EFC Leadership Summit 2010 last April, I bought the keynote speakers Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson's "The Externally Focused Life".

This title had attracted my attention more than their earlier published "The Externally Focused Church" and newly launched "The Externally Focused Quest" because I was eager to read how ordinary individuals like me are making a remarkable impact through their service.

Having put it aside for two months, I managed to finish reading it once this week before my semester break ends.

I especially liked the following excerpt from Chapter 1:
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"We have a story we are writing with our life choices, one moment at time. God desires for his story to intersect with our stories and for our stories to be changed--for us to realize that we are more than our past and our present circumstances. Between our first day and our final day, there is a much bigger story that wer are part of. More important, it's not only about us. Our lives can have a significant impact on someone else's story!

God wants people to discover his story, and God can use us to help others do exactly that. Think of Paul's words to the curious in Athens: "God who made the world...gives all men life and breath and everything else...he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:24-27). As God is involved in orchestrating people's lives--their jobs, their neighborhoods, their life situations--he desires to use us to tell his story so that others will seek and find him. We are an integral link to the connection God desires to have in others' lives.
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Sometimes our lives may look like insignificant cardboard puzzle pieces--not even a border piece or one with an obvious place to fit into. We might even think some of the puzzle pieces in our box belong in other boxes! We wonder what good our lives are--not much value, not much significance, nearly useless. But this is God's picture, his puzzle. He knows what he's doing. If the Bible is right, then God indicates that our parts of the puzzle are needed, valued, and planned for.

So who are we? What are our lives? That all depends. We can simply collect all that has been tossed into our beings. We can be defined by our successes and failures or limited by the unfortunate things that have happened to us. Or we can be a people who see our lives as ones to be used, enjoyed, and lived in such a way that God's story is being written through our stories--and our stories are impacting the stories of others."
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Rick Rusaw asked the reader a question in Chapter 3:
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"Have you ever been so focused on yourself or something in your life that you didn't even notice the other people all around you or in front of you--much less make an effort to help meet their needs? It's time for us to pay attention--to focus on others."
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I have made it a resolution to live an externally focused life in order to add life to my years rather than add years to my life on earth.

Batu Pahat: A Trip Down Memory Lane

The next day of the church camp, I drove back to Johor with VC. After two hours' journey, we arrived in my hometown.

Every time I crossed Batu Pahat Bridge on my way back from Melaka,

I recalled that Tuesday in 2006 when I had broken down in tears for Dad. This time, having a guest in my car, I was rather busy describing landmarks.

VC suggested that we went there the next day as an exercise.

During our stroll, I chose to drop by in front of my family's old house where I had grown up with my parents and five other siblings until the age of eighteen. The previous tenants had just moved out from this single terrace house which my family were still keeping for rent.

When I was small, once I slipped into this drain while squatting next to my brother Ah Yu.

Now the little girl turned adult no longer spat chewing gum onto uncovered sewers.

Opposite the house was the kindergarten where I had been first taught to sing English songs at five years old. The sole memory I have is that one day, Mum dressed me up so nicely that a boy in my class literally chased after me! As I tried to run away from him, I lost my balance, fell and cried. It took me years to recover from the negative thought that taking care of my appearance might cause me trouble with the opposite gender...

At the end of the road

was where my former primary school good friend had lived before she shifted to another residential area with her family. I used to enjoy lingering on at her house almost every afternoon after school and sometimes stayed back for dinner. That was definitely the first place where I had learned hospitality.

During the secondary school times, I often cycled to the bridge which was very near the old house

to admire Batu Pahat River.

The mountain bike that I had bought with my school holiday job salary was spoilt and sent to the recycle centre several years ago. For safety reasons, I did no return to the bridge on foot even though it was not far from my present house.

Under the big bridge, we came to this small one which was solid enough to support the weight of a man with a motorbike.

The other side of the bridge gave me the view from another angle of Batu Pahat Bridge

and Batu Pahat river.

There was a park which I had never visited previously.

Since my "bodyguard" was around, I was bold to climb onto abandoned construction machines further down at the river side.

The third day, we were going back to Melaka. Before our departure, I needed to sign a few documents in an office which was opposite my former secondary school. So I had a chance to see from far the building at the foot of a hill.

If I started to recount old stories of this school where I had spent six happiest years of my life in Batu Pahat, I doubt one whole day would be sufficient.

When we were on Muar Bridge, I knew I had to temporarily leave my Batu Pahat memories behind.

Thanks for your company, VC!