Before, During & After

I must say, my holidays only truly started on Mon(3th) after the children camp ended on Sunday. Boy was it great to feel aimless and go abt doing whatever i like {well, not much really anyway}. That aside, i was too tired from the weeks of minimum sleep and sort of slept whenever i could during both the day and night the entire week. The rain was a plus factor to just stay @ home to recharge and be prepared for the retreat during the week end.

God is good all the time, met up for some morning tennis with Thomas, Barnabas & Wenzheng on thurs. Though it rained for most of the morning and early afternoon, we still managed to have a fun time with some light drizzle thats all. My 1st form of exercise for weeks, body was aching a bit on friday, haha.
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Friday morning itself was quite interesting, almost everyone from cell who was there asked me how come i was late. Here's my reasoning, if registration was from 8am to 915am, i decided to come only @ 9am to catch as much sleep as i could, hehehe. Oh well, thanks everyone for asking! After a short time of worship and prayer, we departed in our camp/retreat grps to our various venues for the Blessing 1000 outreach.

My grp consisting of Shu Hui, Jayne, Wee Lee, Mattathias and myself headed to Raffles place. Unique to go to a CBD area on a week day since i hardly ever did that. We split up into grps and tried to give out the booklet(forgot wat it's called), though since we were there in the late morning, the bulk of the office ppl were working and the people whom we eventually tried to reach out to dont really understand english. Ever regret not learning enough Chinese? It was an interesting and eye opener experience, last time i did this was ah.... let me count my fingers, ah yes, 7 yrs ago. LOL !

Came back to DCB by train and wat a coincidence, managed to meet up with LF and Suz grp which was coming back from Orchard. Lunch was Nasi Lemak, oh boy, 2nd egg of the day for me alrdy since breakfast was inclusive of egg. Departed shortly for our respective venues and LF, MW and me was in the same car as Andy. Finally remembered wat the Hotel was called, Hangout ! Nice place i must say to chill and relax for the next 2 days.

Our Hotel Room, simple and nice !

After a short time set aside to settle down, we had like 1hr + to do watever we want till icebreaker time. Wooo, they have a lounge here with TV, Internet and coffee and tea and pool table. This budget hotel at least does have some sort of facilities.

Sitting down most of time is good for the body, haha. We played 2 simple games. One was to find out certain ppl with certain items/places they have been to, etc. The other was mind intensive, tested our brain juices to the max! LOL, lots of ppl really forgot everything abt nursery stuff alrdy, hehehe. Time flies & we headed down to Bukit Timah for dinner. Almost the entire retreat headed there for dinner. Food was as usual good from this place. Funny thing was, they gave us $10 each for 3 meals(dinner, lunch, dinner) and we alrdy almost spent finished the money in 1 meal. Gua gua gua.

The 1st nite combine sermon session was by Joyce Chow. Her teaching was engaging and managed to keep ppl on their toes and help them remember the impt things of being a witness for Christ. Some pointers would be Soul-winning, Preach ONLY Jesus and Return to God on his terms.

We split into 2 grps, 1 headed back to the hotel, the other went to Adam Rd for supper. Retreat sure is a retreat, almost everyone was in bed by midnite when we came back. Of course, since there's a comp @ the hotel, i didnt sleep that early but sure feels weird from previous yrs where ppl would gather @ nite and chit-chat a bit.

Breakfast which some call combat ration? I wont mind this everyday in the army, wooo.

Woke up early for breakfast as they had to spilt us up due to the lack of seats. YA taste of food quite different from ppl our age. What seems good to us isnt up to their standard, so they headed out for breakfast instead while we enjoyed good food here @ the hotel. U decide yourself from the pic whether its gd or not.{Not included in the pic are other food items like cerals, fruit cocktail, orange juice}

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Day session was taught by Pastor's friend of being a witness in the workplace.

> The real church is make up of ppl like U and I

> Work/Labour is a worship onto the Lord

> Prayer is impt for your friend salvation

> To be rdy in season and out of season

> Make use of activities like Oikos

Rojak(grp name)

Aftenoon games for the retreat was to eat even more food! We played the popular game Shi Zhi Lu Kou. Each grp had 7 different places to go to eat and compete to see who finished 1st. Everyone was relaxed, no competition mood and took our time since we were given like 4.5 hrs to play, haha. Food was great, some dishes we have tried b4, others for the 1st time. God held the weather for us, drizzle a bit but other than that, cooling weather to be walking ard in. Almost everyone finished quite early and some of us took an afternoon nap, woooo, what a life !

STAR Attraction

Woke up refreshed and headed to the HK cafe @ Bukit Timah for dinner. Nice food i must safe. We made the right choices ppl!

Combine S.A. sermon session was by Rev joshua.

> Taken from Col 1: 15-20. Recurring word was ALL.

> John 1: 1-4. God was the word

> Luke 1: 26-28. God chooses who he wants, dont be fearful when He comes calling.

I like Dim sum

Headed to Gerlang for supper, so many ppl (saturday i guess) and the traffic was bad. Took quite a while to find a lot but the food was worth travelling down for. Sat in a Volvo and experienced GForce! God really was with us, we travelled a bit too fast and the trafiic police was riding beside us! Thankfully, nothing happen though we suspect since our vehicle was a Msia plate license, we managed to get off with it. Came back to the hotel and went to the nearby paradiz centre with Kelvin, Dongwen & LF for some pool till 2am, ops !

Sunday le! Breakfast was gd once again. We packed up and returned out keys. Time flies and it was the last session b4 we ended retreat 07. We split up into guys and gals grp. Eric led the guys side, Wee Lee the ladies side. Both grp had a great day of learning. (Will type out for the guys side and mail the campers soon)

Retreat was officially over ! Headed to PS for lunch with Diana, Linfeng, Marcus, Mattathias, Suzanne, Xinyi & afterwhich went home to do some laundry(raining, wonder how are they ever going to dry) and catch a nap, b4 rushing down back to DCB for Barnabas's confrimation.

Confrimation service, grats Barnabas

Clifton, Ruth and Noel came back to church in the evening and joined us for dinner and gave us a ride to the camp side. We got lost a bit but eventually managed to find the exact location. This yr the last nite quite different, no more performance! Still, the entertainment was great and everyone had a gd laugh from the various games and speeches.

Mr Zheng having fun

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Age really is catching up! They even had a lao lang bunk where ya, most of the ppl sleeping there were among the oldest campers. And on top of that, most of the ppl in this bunk did sleep pretty early but i guess, 3 days of energy zapping activities will tired anyone out very fast. Chatted with some of the guys in the dark with only a lightstick as a light source. Feels like those camps where ppl would be in the dark with only a candle and tell one another ghost stories. Of course, we didnt do that but talked abt everything that was under the sun !

4am liao, and most ppl KO lo. Went down to chit-chat and play some card games with whoever is still up. Went back to catch a nap @ 6am & slept like 1 hr + i think. Anyway, camp was also officially over and ya, till some ppl post the events during the camp, the retreat ppl wont really know much, haha.

New Cell grp shirt? Haha

Headed to Clementi for lunch with Chris, Elena, Guorong, Linfeng & Nicodemus and did some early Xmas shopping! By late afternoon, i went back home to sleep, & on the train, kept falling as i stood, too tired alrdy, hehehe. Time to spend yet another week trying to catch up on some sleep.

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An awesome wk end spending time learning abt God word, interacting with ppl of different backgrounds and just chilling out together. Wat a Bz and event packed Dec for most of us to come! Till then, hope everyone learnt something from the camp/retreat and apply them in your walk.