8 months

Dear Janice,

You're 8 months today. I used to look at an eight month old baby and thought how big, how responsive they are. I can't believe that my little beanie is now 8 months. This month you are really less of a baby, showing us your character, your adoration and your playfulness.
I brought you out today to meet daddy for lunch at Sunnybank, something rather rare for you on a regular week day. It brings me so much warmth to see you really excited to see daddy. You're going to be a daddy's girl because I can see how much your playfulness takes after daddy. I'm looking forward to you heading out with daddy for runs, soccer games and rolling on the grass.

You're generally very independent. You're able to sit and play all by yourself for sometimes up to an hour; sometimes you're contented by me just calling out your name from the kitchen. You're obvious in loving certain toys you have and many times I catch you fiddling with the little details of the toy. The funny thing is that you even press the button on your jungle zoo toy (A present that Gu gu and uncle Adam bought even before you were born) every now and then so that you can be entertained by the music while you play with other toys. You notice details well, like stitches on cushions and even imitated people who wriggles their fingers/waving hand gestures as they converse with mummy.

Sometimes you can be very sticky though. Especially in the evening. I can't leave you further than a metre away. You will cry out to me until I sit next to you as you play. This makes dinner preparation and evenings generally a stressful time for me because of the number of things that need to be done within that one hour, from preparing dinner for everybody, getting you fed, changed and wind down etc. I couldn't have gotten through without the help of daddy sometimes.

Funny things tickles you, like mom's coughing, daddy tossing your bowl, your friends crying. Its fun to make you chuckle because those chuckles are contagious and light up our lives. Our mobile phone memory is slowly depleting because we've been taking videos of your tickled moments so much this month. Many nights after you've fallen asleep, Daddy and I will be hiding in the blankets replaying the videos over and over, we'll never get tired of them.

You've been consistently sleeping through most nights and there were only a couple of occasions through the month that you woke up with a big lenghty hard to settle cry. Most times you've learnt to settle yourself by playing with your bed buddies Mindy, Monkey and Soph. There are times when we miss you so much that we want to grab you out of bed with us, but the consequences that could follow, we decided not to dabble :)

Thank you darling, you've brought so much to us. We look forward to waking up each day to your cheekiest grins (that always come with grinding of your teeth). Little munchkins, I love you more each day.

Love, Mummy

Unstoppable Christian Creed

I must first mention that this was quoted from Ps Shirley's Blog. After reading it again and again, I now believe that this should be every Christian's core values. Thus I am making it my cry as well! Take up your role as a responsible Christian and stop blaming others for your own deliberate faults and flaws!

My name is Kelvin

And I am unstoppable
I don’t flirt with or date the church

I’m not infatuated with the church

I have no illusion that the church is perfect

What I have is a commitment to love God’s church

Not just with words but with my hands and feet

I’ll neither point finger nor look further for the answer’s in the mirror

I believe God’s not dead; He’s building the church he died for

A living miracle of a bunch of imperfect people loving imperfect people

I believe God has called us to build this church without walls

My name is Kelvin

I am a living stone of God’s church

And together we are God's unstoppable Church!

Fear of men or fear of God?

Do I fear men more than I fear God? Have I done the things I am doing because it pleases men or because I know that it pleases God?

When I was prayed over today, the message that God spoke was about that fear that I have in my life, not being able to proceed on with God because of the fear that I have. I used to have such a 'we can do anything with Christ' attitude in the past as a student leader. But now as I have progressed into a different phase of life; married, working and being a Dad, I have that fear within me that the youths that I am ministering to might not be able to learn as much as they want to from me. And at times, that might have caused me to 'dilute' the message so that it might still be pleasing to the ears of people.
But in doing that, I am not helping them to grow spiritually; not helping them to set a higher standard in their Christian walk. I should have said things like 'Church conference will help you grow more if you would make that decision to come and allow God to speak to you' or 'You know this relationship is not something would be pleasing in the eyes of God right now, why do you still want to go ahead with it?' or 'Choose for yourselves this day who you want to serve; God or yourself.

I must remind myself that I hold the responsibility of raising a younger generation of Christ followers who would lead and rock this planet for Christ. And NO ONE is ever too young for God to touch and use!!!!! Please if you are reading this, remind me along the way if you feel that I have forgotten this fact.

There are plans and ideas of having life group nearer to IES, starting a youth service on Sunday and starting shepherding at 530am in the mornings. There is fear rising up within me as I even think about these ideas. Will it eventually happen? What will my leaders think, will my people follow me, will I give up half way? I am praying that these are ideas and inspired by God. And that I am responding because of my obedience towards God. May God give me the strength and perseverance to pray and seek His face until these all come to pass!

Multiplying Christ like people - Will God use me more in that area?

Yesterday was Day 1 of our Church conference 'EXPONENTIAL' Multiplying Christ like people. It was a good time where Ps Wilson was really reaffirming the hearts of the current mentors and also inspiring the future mentors to rise up as well.

It has been such a privilege to serve together with my core team, they have made serving God so much more fun and enjoyable. Today was the start of the guys coming together to develop both their spirit and physical man! It was so encouraging to see Jason, Wenyu, Josh and David meeting with myself to do a short run and 20 counts of star jumps at the Regatta Citycat Terminal. After waking ourselves up with the run, we went on to pray.

I really hope that this would last longer, just that some of the guys live a little further, thus it might be hard to do it on a daily basis, but at least on a weekly basis would be great as well!
In our prayer together, we prayed for:

• God to increase in us as we decrease.
• God to help us surrender our 'idols' in our lives
• God to help the guys in Judah 4 rise up even more to lead and serve the unit
• the upcoming IES July orientation that we'll see 2 groups of guys coming in. firstly guys that are not Christians but have hungry and ready heart to listen and accept the grace and forgiveness of God into their lives, secondly Christian guys whom God has built a strong foundations of convictions that will not weaver who are ready to serve God as His mouth piece together with us on IES.

And at the prayer, I also made a great discovery, that David is a really talented guitarist! He just started learning less than 1 year and he can already play songs like 'Hosanna'!! Praise God for raising up another guitarist!

After all that God has sparked off in the hearts of the males in the group, I really pray that the fire will continue to burn even stronger until the coming of Christ! Thanks guys!

Irresistable

Yes she is. But this is to remind me of God's irresistable presence. I'll blog about it soon. It's too hard to type on the mobile phone without having to end up with a cramped up thumb.

Toys taste good.

This is for you Aunty Estella! Thanks for the lovely dress.Pic taken on her dedication day.

Upgraded to a sippy cup

A week ago, I got called into the Childcare director's office. I thought I was bad when my parents were called to my principal's office when I was in Secondary school for bad results, what is this?Janice not even 1! Anyway, I was told that Janice takes way too long to finish her milk from the bottle. You see, she probably got my genes, I used to drive my mom nuts by taking forever for my meals (like 2-3 hrs for dinner). Janice used to be really good with bottles when she was a new born. But the washing, expressing and sterilizing of bottles was way too troublesome, especially when I was a 1st time mom, trying to juggle a new baby, housework and all the other jing jangs. So after stopping for a month, this little one decided that she wants the real stuff, and will not be compromised by drinking from rubber teats. So, when she had to go childcare, she had no other alternatives, but still with the refusal to suck, she would just chew and play with the teats and let the milk flow into her mouth bit by bit. This milk drinking process takes her more than an hour! So back at the director's office, she said I needed to do something about it. So what can I do? Try new alternatives and so I decided to pluck out all the non spill valves from sippy cups (sippy cups nowadays have built in non spill valves that are supposed to reduce mess, but they are so hard to drink from! Even I had problem sucking) and started giving Janice milk and water from them. I think it's working ok, she now takes 10mins, with some protest if she's taking milk. Milk to her is NOT supposed to cup out from cups/bottles etc. But prayerfully, she'll take in more and give the carers a better time. But first, sigh, supply needs to increase.

The King of Pop has Passed on....

Who would have taught that this day would come so suddenly and quickly. One would only imagine that someone that rich and famous would live till a much longer age due to their never ending wealth helping them to get all the medical assistance they can get to live to 250yrs old.

Michael Jackson was due for a come back concert tour in London on July 13 running until March 2010. The shows for his 50 London concerts were sold out within hours of sale! We can see that this man is still very much loved and worshipped by many people, well at least the British we can say. I won't be surprised if people from all over the world brought tickets just to see Michael once more on stage.

Many would quickly say that Michael had lived a colourful life, but some would also say that Michael in his success in his career led to his 'downfall' in life. So who is right and who is wrong? Only the man himself standing before the JUDGE would be able to account for an exciting and entertaining life.

Which leads me to think about my own life, is my life exciting? fruitful? desirable? meaningful?

Well, it will get more exciting along the way, I'd say! More of God, Less of me.....that I say is exciting, fruitful, desirable and meaningful!

Qld made History last night 24/06/09

Well, looks like the better team has claimed the title for the 1st time in the history of NRL 4 State of Origin titles in a row!
I must say that last night's game did stir up some emotions within the players. It was after those heated punches that the game started to take form. NSW's performance wasn't that bad. Just that the errors that they made were all within the 10 meters of the try line and the good old experienced team just capitalised on those opportunities.
So how will NSW treat the next and last match would somewhat determine how they are going to perform next year. Will it be a 5th title in a row or will the next NSW's team take it back?
But for now, let QLD celebrate!!!!!

Do we look alike?

Mother and daughter pic. Does janice look more like mummy or daddy?