Journey mercies

Last Monday I had an unexpected visitor who dropped by my side of the world on her way back from Canada to Malaysia.

And the best part about where I live is that it's super convenient to get to from Heathrow airport. When I picked her up from the tube station, we bumped into a friend of mine from church. He asked Lekha how she knew me, and we both looked at each other before we told him we knew each other from a long long long time ago.

She's my oldest friend from when we were 8 years old! The first time we were in the same class together was when we were in Standard 4. I still remember the first day in Standard 4, we had to choose sitting partners, and we were quite quick in choosing each other. And I still remember how we just couldn't stop talking the moment we sat down next to each other. And I of course remember how during the teacher-parent meeting that year, I felt my heart sink with horror when I heard my class teacher tell my mother I talk a lot in class, with this Indian girl, and felt my mother turn her head to look at me as I hung my head in shame!

Lekha couldn't remember getting into any trouble for talking too much, but we spent a great deal of time filling in on one another on the gossips about ex-school mates and squealing with laughter over random memories of school time, like how she used to irritate me with her mouthing the national anthem rather than singing it during assembly. It wasn't so much of her not singing it, but more that as she mouthed the words, her lips would make a slightly irritating smacking sound and that was what annoyed me.

It was so good talking with her, because we know each other in a time that no one else can be privy of, so the friendship is truly irreplaceable. Some time back, she emailed telling me her maid decided to go back to her hometown in Penang after living for more than a decade with her family, because she and her siblings had grown up and the family no longer needed her help. It was a random thing to email me about, but she felt slightly sad about her maid leaving and I was the only one who knew her maid and what she meant to her.

During the course of our conversation, we agreed that we were both very different people from when we were in high school, but we would always know each other as we were then, and for some reason, that felt good. That no matter how high or how far we may fly, we still have a common thread of history to share with one another.

Earlier this evening, I was in church for a church meeting, and the agenda was to talk about refurbishing the church to accommodate the growth in the congregation.

We had two architects who had experience in designing church buildings to help facilitate the discussion and meeting. It was interesting to see what kind of aspects that needed to be considered in developing a church building, and it was brilliant that the church leadership felt that the congregation should be part of the process. It made me feel ever more part of the heart of the church, accepted and valued.

We talked about what we felt the church building should be like, what kind of values it should embody and reflect. And I felt really glad to be part of a congregation that felt that it should reflect God-centredness, Word-centredness and community-centredness values. That the building should be practical and be a working-horse, yet aesthetically reflecting on God's beauty, but not portray pretentious affluence, because Jesus came for the lost, sick and the poor and no one should ever walk in through the church doors thinking they needed to dress better or be better just to be there.

We broke into smaller groups to discuss how the building should be like to reflect the needs of different functions of the church, ie the chapel where we worshipped God during services, the creche for minding children, the kitchen, the building accessibility, the communications (audio and visual) and outreach ministries. I found it particularly interesting to see who went to which discussion group, because it reflected their interest of service.

When I got back to my flat and thought about the meeting, I realised, the values we talked about the church embodying, the functions that it should be able to perform, the people that it should serve, was exactly what I wanted to reflect in my life. I was a little slow, but it then hit me that in talking about what the church building should be like, we were drawing parallels to what we should be like.

I thought it was a brilliant thing we did tonight.

"Shall we have a poker night?" asked the innocent Englishman.

"Yes!" the Chinese girl's eyes gleamed while a few others smiled innocently albeit a little nervously.

She chuckled inwardly to herself when the South Korean and French girls said they didn't know how to play while the second Englishman was the worst liar in town, and the first Englishman who proposed the game was fairly straight-laced as well. They didn't seem to be too much a match for a wily Chinese girl.

Well, she's Chinese. She should be wily. Chinese people are meant to be wily. Chinese people are natural gamblers. She learnt how to gamble play cards when she was a small kid thanks to shows like "God of the Gamblers". Darn it, she can't lose to those Westerners!


So after having a nice meal Martin cooked, he brought out his poker set. Long story short, I didn't bring shame to Chinese people. I won everyone's chips (no, we didn't gamble with money unfortunately, we were after all, Christians), we had really good laughs throughout the night, packed away the cards and chips and decided it was a pretty good night.

Some months back my colleagues were trying to convince me to join in on the poker games they had, but they were playing pretty high stakes, minimum of £20 for each round. Besides being a Christian and making sure I maintain a good testimony, declined politely. That and the fact that I only like to win. Losing and losing real money would make it a painful double whammy to me.

I also told them I didn't know how to play, just to avoid them from pressing me to join them if they thought I was the slightest bit interested.

But as they were preparing to set the poker game in the office after work, my colleagues were trying to learn the rules of the game, and one of them was struggling to remember which hand was better than the other.

Being just a little impatient with him, I told him from across the room, "No, straight flush is better than a flush and the royal flush is the best hand!"

When I realised that I was easily better than half of the people who were going to play, by virtue of knowing the rules of the game, I was nearly tempted to join them for a game or two if it weren't for something in church I had to rush to! So, well, thank God for being a Christian I guess!

On Sunday, after service, a few of us went to Kurt & Jill's for lunch. There were lots of random knick knacks they accumulated from their travels and gifts from friends across the world. I was surprised because all the knick knacks looked random and different, and yet the way Kurt & Jill used it, it created a very unique and artistic decor in their flat.

One of the verses I have held on to through all the difficult times has been Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

But it has taken me 10 years of my Christian life to discover how making this single verse as a bedrock verse I fall back on time and time again only shows the the selfish state of my heart. Because I want my life to be about me. That God does things for my good. That no matter what happens, I will have a happy ending.

Selfish, selfish, selfish. Is the creation more important than the Creator?

Psalm 31:3 should be my bedrock verse, "For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me and guide me."

We were not created for salvation. We are saved for His glorification.

Psalm 25:11, "For Your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great."

And yet, in His graciousness, He does work through all things for the good of those who love Him. In His mercies, those that choose to worship Him, He blesses. Despite the natural selfishness of my heart, in His sovereignty, He still pours His goodness.

My Italian flatmate has gone into a die-die-die-all-dust-and-dirt zone, and gave me a scary look when I dared step outside the entrance of the kitchen cum lounge. So when her baleful gaze settled on me though she tried to soften it with a forced smile, I held my hands up in surrender and quickly retreated back to my room to blog while waiting for her to finish cleaning.

Hehe... I like living with her and the other girls. It means the flat is always nice and clean. And there's peer pressure for me to keep my room clean too!

Speaking of peer pressure...

My weight is slowly but surely increasing! It does not help when your tall, skinny, male friends put peer pressure on you to eat as much as they do by emotionally manipulating you through statements like, "Don't be a mincer," or "None of that girly appetite now," or "I can't stand it when girls shy away from food."

Or that you only have one, yes, one slim female friend around which means there isn't any peer pressure from female friends to be thin. The only advantage I have is that when I put on weight, my weight is distributed across my body evenly, so my body doesn't accumulate fat in one area and then screams for everyone to see how fat I am.

But, truth be told, I'm actually not fat and not all that bothered about my voluptuous shape. I'm just not reflecting the image of beauty perpetrated by media, and not your average skinny Chinese chick and I'm pretty happy with that!

Anyway, think I'm going to head out for a jog right now. It's all about keeping fit, not thin!

This is officially the first Chinese New Year of my life that I have not celebrated. When I was studying in Newcastle, a bunch of us celebrated CNY with a big dinner with the Chinese Christian Fellowship, then a few of us girls went back to Li Yuan and Tricia's place and played mahjong!!

But they soon got tired telling me which tile represented which, because I can read the numerical characters from 1-4. Anything beyond the number 4, and I was lost. And they decided to write the numbers 1-9 on a piece of paper for me instead. However! There was also another girl who couldn't read Chinese, so both of us had our very own special piece of paper, and it was pretty funny, both of us kept looking at the paper intently as we played mahjong.

So anyway, long story short, CNY in Newcastle was pretty fun, since there was so many of us from the Chinese Christian Fellowship that were there.

But as I mentioned before, there are very few Chinese people who I know in London. So no celebration at all. But Alex, Anna (pronounced Anya) and I decided to go to Chinatown to see what the celebrations are like.

The weather the last few days has been absolutely beautiful as well!

I like this a lot. Even though promises and inspirational words are always uttered during political rallies and the downfall of leaders come from failure of understanding and managing the corruption of power, hope is a powerful thing.

Thought I should post this short clip up so that family and friends can have a very short feel about the folks I've been spending some time with.

This was taken in a dinner party at 52 last Saturday night. Just in case you're wondering at what people were wearing, the theme of the dinner party was to wear whatever you would like to wear but didn't have the opportunity to wear.

Some belated pictures of Christmas spent with my aunt's family. But the connection in my flat is too slow for me to be bothered putting up too many pictures