Youth Retreat

Thank God for His grace and mercy for sustianing me throughout this week. It was tiring alright. haha. Well there were CT on mon, tues and wed. Slacked the whole of thurs and YOUTH RETREAT on fri. Thank God for youth retreat, it has been very enriching, fulfilling and very fun. Reached church around 4.30 and slacked in media room, well i did read a few pages of my book before jolynn came and disturbed me. Gathered at 6plus and had pizza for dinner, it was definitely not enough. Called for more pizza but as i waited, i felt full...oh well, its a way to cut down. haha. Then there was movie titled 'End of the Spear'. It was a very touching true story, yet it was made to God's glory. All praise to Him. 5 missionaries went to find a tribe called Waodani. When they found the Waodanis and hoping to spread the Good News to them, one of the tribesman that made direct contact with the 5 missionaries lied and the whole tribe speared the missionaries. Even though they were armed, they didn't retaliate. It really showed to me how they wanted the waodanis to be saved. Unfortuately, they could succeed in the mission and ended up losing their lives for it. Well, it was God's will for them to die. But their death was not in vain, the missionaries wives and few others decided to take on the mission that their husbands could not achieve. What really spoke to me most was the scene when, micayani brought steve back to the death-site of his father. Micayani also confessed that he was the one who killed his father. The scene where Steve had the spear in his hands, pointing straight at micayani's chest and micayani shouted, 'kill me'. I could see steve's anger shown all over his face, as well as his body language. His dad's murderer offered to let steve kill him, Steve could just spear him striaght away. Yet it took alot of courage and by God's loving grace, steve forgave micayani for what he did and they became very good friends. It really spoke to me how forgiveness is so easy to say, yet its very hard to do in action. If a person backstabbed you, you might say that you forgive him, but action speaks louder than words. Your actions will be able to tell if you really have forgiven him. Only by God's mercy and strength are we able to forgive the person totally for what he did. I guess it is a great challange for me and maybe to all of you the meaning of whats real forgiveness. I pray that God will use these movie to speak to more people and that God will help me to forgive people entirely for what they did. Celebrated jaime's birthday and wash up and bedtime.
Had breakfast at Teban market and waited in church as it was raining heavily. During Yf, i watched another cartoon/documentary. It was about William Tyndale. He was a great scholar that majored in many languages yet he gave all those up to do God's work. In his case was translating the Bible into English. By the way, at that time translating the Bible into English was a crime and the punishment was burning. I'm really encouraged by his desire to do God's work, even if it meant that he was a wanted man by the king. God saw him through translating half of the Bible into English. However, he was caught and he sacrifice his life to translate the Bible so that common people can understand. I now see why pastor has always been saying, "being a christian is never easy". Both shows that i watched really spoke to me that christians sometimes have to sacrifice their lives to do God's work.
Haha..its a long long long blog today huh..Well i just wanted to share my thoughts with you. All these people doing God's work were glorifying Him, which is the most important, even to lose their lives. Thank God for these 2 shows. I really learnt alot from it..God willing, there'll be another youth retreat? haha.
Pray for josiah, alicia, kenya team, shelia, gwyneth, david, uncle albert, keith, joel and joseph. Pray also for those having exams jaime, rachel and yvonne(end of the month). Pray also for those travelling-issac(japan/next week), abi(US). Pray for the missionaries.

"Be strong in the Lord and be of good courage"