Starbucks Christmas drinks are here! :D :D :D

Yippee yay, I shall get my Starbucks Christmas drink fix soon (:

1 week to 1 presentation
2 weeks to 3 presentations
3 weeks to study break
4 weeks to finals
5 weeks to holidays & DBR
6 weeks to camp comm retreat
7 weeks to YF camp!
8 weeks to Christmas!
9 weeks to 2010!

WOW.

Gotta focus now, back to doing my readings. Learning to serve God in all aspects of my life, even in my attitude towards my studies (: 

Sweetly Broken - Jeremy Riddle

To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing

For on it my Savior both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just

At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

What a priceless gift, undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified

You’ve called me out of death
You’ve called me into life
And I was under Your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled

In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous Your redeeming love and
How great is Your faithfulness

Lord, please help me to fully surrender to You, and to give up the things that are not of You.

I don't want to be confused and irritated by voices of the world. I want to listen to Your Voice. Please help me.

A conversation with a friend today reminded me of how we often end up making silly mistakes when we're so clouded or distracted by things of the world. It's easy to want to follow the voices of the world, to go ahead with what seems most appealing. However, if these are the things constantly on our minds, how then are we to listen to the still, small voice from God? If we don't make an effort to spend quality with Him daily, reading His Word and praying, how then are we to know what He wants for us? 

Anyway, I had a wonderful Sunday today! :D Led our YD in the study on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which thankfully went pretty smoothly (: after that, we had our mini surprise teachers' day celebration for Moh Han and Corrine! Sam prepared a photo slideshow dedicated to them, as well as a special game - "Are You Smarter Than Your YD Girl"! Haha :D twas fun celebrating together! (:

After church, I walked out with Sheryl and Danielle to dabao nasi lemak for lunch. We all looked similar today since we were in our white skirts :P went back to the clubhouse to lunch together, while waiting for Ruth to come back with bubble tea (: had a mini-camwhoring session when she came back! 

BS with dearest mentee Sheryl was good :D  had good discussions and time of sharing (: yay Sheryl, I look forward to BS with you each Sunday too! 

Finally ended off the day with Jeann's farewell dinner at her place. We had like very random conversations, talking about various hilarious moments in life! I guess dinner was the way I like it - simple gathering with a group of friends, just catching up, reminiscing, talking about our lives (: I prefer such to big parties and huge gatherings.

Ah well, it's back to reality now, with assignments and all that need to be completed! It's already WEEK FOUR. Scary how time flies during the term =/

Luke 9:23

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Sometimes I look at my life, and I wonder in just what way God would be pleased with the way I'm living. I need to remind myself daily to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Him. To live a life worthy of the Lord.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of school life, I really thank God for friends who keep me sane and going (: thank God for Pris who just sent me a very encouraging verse!

Psalm 144:1 "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle."

Joy Williams - Do They See Jesus In Me

Is the face that I see in the mirror
The one I want others to see
Do I show in the way that I walk in my life
The love that youve given to me
My heart's desire is to be like you
In all that i do all that i am

Chorus:
Do they see Jesus in me
Do they recognize Your face
Do I communicate Your love
And Your grace
Do I reflect who You are
In the way I choose to be
Do they see Jesus, Jesus in me

Well it's amazing that You'd ever use me
But use me the way that You will
Help me to hold out a heart of compassion and grace
A heart that Your spirit fills
May I show forgiveness and mercy
The same way You've shown it to me

Well I wanna show all the world
That You are the reason I live and breathe
So You'll be the one that they see
When they see me

That phone call made me think again about many things which I've been thinking about. Things that have left me confused. In all honesty, I think I know the answers, and I think I know what I should do.

The question now is whether or not I'm gonna take that step to do what I should. Whether or not I have the courage to do it.

How does my life glorify God?

SUMMER cum laude - a term that my dear friend Shu Hua came up with, and which I can totally relate to (:

The last weekday of my summer was spent with lovely friends (: a little bit of shopping and Baptist Bookstore in the morning, GI Joe in the afternoon (totally lame and waste of my money! haha), getting caught in the rain and counting red/blue cars to kill time, shopping for pretty new laptop case, chilling at macs, authentic indian food, 'indian cultural night' with bollywood movies and fun with henna with 3 lovely girlfriends (: a long day once again, but a day well spent :D

Thank God!

I received my first email from a Prof today, and that Prof's none other than my CAT Prof -_-. I'm so not prepared for school, especially not for a class in Excel :( 

Oh well, reality hits. It's back to school now!

Thank you Lord for the wonderful summer that I've enjoyed (: for the time in Switzerland, the time spent with church friends at church camp and back home, YF retreat, catching up with friends, making new friends at social science & CF camp, chilling and doing random things, CAMBODIA, everything (: 

You are amazing, God (:

The holidays are ending soon :( Just a few more weeks and school's gonna start! I think it'll fly by even faster because i'll be in Cambodia for the next two weeks! Ah well.

I'm thankful for everything that's happened in summer (: it's been a VERY fulfilling one. :D
so cute, yet so shy (:

John 8:31 - 32

"So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” "

Today was a good day :) learnt a lot from CF shepherding training, and still learning a lot :)

After that was chillax with Joe! Then, dinner with the parents :) they decided to invite me instead of leaving me alone at home :D haha! Since I reached Vivo early, I window shopped a little bit and tried clothes on at Forever21. I showed Daddy a pink dress that I was eyeing, and he actually agreed to buy it for me! :D in the end, after being excited over the option of getting a new dress, I tried some others on, and got a blue one instead. Yay! :)

We bumped into many people at Vivo too! Like Elyssa and her family, and Uncle Bobby and Aunty Jerlyn! 

Yay, I love the holidays. I especially love this slack period, just meeting up with friends and freely planning what I want to do. Gotta enjoy this period before the busy times come again. :)

I feel blessed!

The past few days have been a blast, but now I'm falling sick :( I shall make a quick post, before I go to sleep! 

So my twentieth birthday turned out to be way more fun than I'd expected! I'm not usually the kind to organise birthday parties (I haven't had one since Primary Two!), so I thought this year was gonna be the same - meeting up and spending time with family and friends over lunch/dinner.
 
We had a family dinner on Sunday night, a combined Father's Day/birthday dinner at home. Although we were initially supposed to dine out, we decided to stay at home since we were all feeling kinda tired. It didn't matter much to me though, because meals with the family are great anyway, no matter where :) had chilli crab, yum yum!

At midnight, we cut the cake (strawberry oreo cheesecake! thanks parents :D) and my parents surprised me with a bag they bought for me from Harrods! I'd been eyeing it in London, and told my Dad about it, but didn't wanna get it since I felt bad for spending so much. Unknown to me, he actually went back to the gift shop to buy it for me secretly :) 






I met Nana, Ting and Mey for breakfast, and ate at Ambush, this pasta place at Taka basement. Haha, it was kinda weird cos we had PASTA for breakfast, which made Ting and I super full! Walked around a little after that to kill time, then met Vicki and Clean, who joined us for lunch at Sushi Teh.



Nana, Ting and I were just sitting down at our table, waiting for the other two to arrive, when they suddenly came in with a HUGE BUNCH OF TWENTY BALLOONS. My first thought was "Oh my gosh, BALLOONS!!!" then "How am I gonna carry all this home?!" and "This looks like National Day!" (cos the balloons were red, white and pink!). HAHA it was really funny though, cos I had to prevent the balloons from touching the heads of the customers behind me! Thanks dears for the surprise balloons, for successfully letting the whole world know that I'm 20 years old, and for making me look like a clown! Many random kids came up to me asking for balloons! I even made a little girl cry, because I couldn't give her a balloon :( (since the balloons were all tied together and were difficult to remove). Imagine how embarrassing it was for me to walk around town carrying my balloons, having to squeeze on trains and buses too! Thank God for a pretty empty train cabin which Amanda, Ruth and I could board together with my 20 balloons :) the bus ride to church was a bit tougher though, because Ruth and I were stuck somewhere near the back of the bus with all the balloons! 





Anyway, we reached church just in time for "camp comm meeting". Dear Ruth tried to make me go to the meeting room first, but silly me unknowingly made things a little tougher for her because I insisted on accompanying her to the resource library :P haha. Alright so meeting started at like 730pm I think? Vernon updated us on the theme, discussed some other issues about camp, which all sounded fine and relevant! (apparently it was a fake agenda, tsk tsk :P) Then, while we were going through our memory verses (Psalm 121!), Vernon suddenly got out of his seat, walked towards the door and turned off the lights. At that point, I was kinda confused, but still didn't suspect a thing. I even thought that he was gonna say something serious to the camp comm!

Then, all of a sudden, I heard people outside singing "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". Turned my head towards the door, and saw my brother holding a cake, with a huge group of churchies streaming behind him. I was REALLY, REALLY SURPRISED, and so embarrassed to the extent that I felt myself shiver a bit cos there was just too much attention on me. Haha. When they asked me to make a speech, all I could say was "Thank you guys. I'm very, very surprised!". I really was, and am extremely touched by the people who came down to celebrate my birthday with me :) Kudos to my brother, Amanda and Vernon who organised this, and contacted the people who came. Thank youuuu :D it was lovely spending my birthday with fellow brothers and sisters-in-Christ :)

( THE SURPRISE! )

I'll never forget this birthday! Thank you all for making it so much more than I'd expected it to be :)

Today was a fantastic day with dear AC girls too, who also took advantage of the fact that I was the birthday girl to embarrass me. Oh and before my birthday was another celebration with SYFC friends, who embarrassed me during lunch too!! HAHA why do I keep doing embarrassing stuff for my birthday! What lovely friends I have. I shall blog about both another time, since it's getting late and I really don't wanna fall sick!

Thank you God for the blessing of friends :)