Sunny rain

Sunny rain is an instrumental piece by Yiruma that I used to listen to at Moody. I captured these photos yesterday afternoon after our weekly prayer meeting. The late afternoon sunlight that created a golden glitter effect combined with the raindrops on the office window was so beautiful. We had just finished praying for our dear missionaries and I renewed my commitment in God to learn to pray more in my daily life. As you grow older, you will see the world quite differently and there will be more and more people and things to pray for, but I also learn to rely on God's power more so prayer is the only way to go. :) 

'Surely God is my salvation;

    I will trust and not be afraid.The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defence;    he has become my salvation.’

Isaiah 12:2

      ^Random cute friends in the office. (for Sara)

Late autumn->early winter

Dear blog readers/family/friends,

I just finished blogging about the end of summer and I realised that it is also the end of autumn now, a changing of seasons again. Not only weather-wise, but also in terms of work and life.
In the past three months, I had been going out with the COCM Gospel Team (福音布道队) to do outreach in 18 different places in France, the Netherlands, and the UK. Even though I had experienced going on "short term missions" with the GT last year, God taught me new things this year and cultivated in me a bigger heart for missions and evangelism. He taught me a lot about humility, faith, unity in the body of Christ, and let me experience Him in an intimate way through the challenges that we faced on mission (and the hardships brothers and sisters around me had experienced--a faithful missionary sister who faced cancer, a childhood sister whose dad passed away, a dear brother who is part of our team facing illness...). God also let me see how it is Him who works and brings everything together for His glory in ways we can never think of.
Our theme song this year that we sing with joined hands every time is “活出爱” (living out God's love) and our motto is "one team, one spirit, all for Jesus!"

So yup, the last gospel team event ended this past Friday and we had our thanksgiving/sharing gathering on Saturday.
This week, it's time to prepare for the upcoming Isaiah Bible camps (3 consecutive ones for Mandarin, restaurant workers, and Cantonese groups). Music worship practice for Year-end gospel camps had started too. It is time to gear up for the last two months of the year!

In life, lately, I have been informed that three of my closest friends will be getting married sometime next year (exciting! but I have to think of how to attend their weddings). Also, Nick has finally been granted progress in his year-long job search: two interviews in a row since last week and by God's grace he will probably start working soon back in Hong Kong. I grappled a lot with God about what He wants me to do with my life next in these few months and I have learned more to wait on Him and become the person with the character that He wants me to have first, and to learn to worship Him instead of seeking self-worth in what I would do.

I have been listening to Kyuhyun's music a lot--his new album is basically my soundtrack for this autumn/winter season. I just realised a few days ago that it is appropriate to start listening to Christmas songs (which I sort of forgot because you don't hear Christmas music playing everywhere in the UK as you would in the US). I miss the warmth that comes with everything Christmas-season related in the US. But hey, in this bleak and grey place, the message of Hope that Christ brings can shine brighter (we're learning about the #hopeeffect in church lately i.e. having the living hope gives us joy...). So even though we won't have chestnuts roasting on an open fire or carols sung by a choir, we will have lots of Chinese families and students coming to hear about the Good News and how their lives can be changed by knowing and loving their Creator.

ps: Please pray for our upcoming camps and ministry. :)
pss: I am impressed that I managed to summarise the second half of my year into one post. ;P

Lancaster gospel team event

So, I have been going out with the cocm gospel team for 13 events already this autumn and I would like to share a bit of what going out with the team looks like each time. The day usually goes like this: morning group prayer and worship time before leaving COCM, car ride to the destination, passing out flyers, setting up equipments at the venue, prayer and worship time with local brothers and sisters from the fellowship/church, rehearsal time, dinner and conversation time with the students who come, the programme starts, conversation with the students who make the decision to accept Christ or are interested to know more about the faith, pack up, go home/to host homes.

not forgetting some selfie times in between

drama

sermon time

brunch at a missionary's house

Autumn days

Sometimes I make simple things too complicated, even writing a blog post, which is why I haven't been sharing much. I often try to blog only when I can craft a detailed post about my life lately but because life has been so full and busy, I never get to it because I want to wait till I have a proper time to do it. Anyway, I have slowly learned that this "ideal" is not going to happen so it's better for me to just share some snapshots from these autumn days before winter comes again (it is actually already coming since we just adjusted our clock one hour back for the winter time).

It has been another weekend of serving with the cocm gospel team outside of Milton Keynes so I get a day of rest today (Monday). Here are some autumn goodies we made at the centre.

homemade apple cider

What I've been up to

It has been three months since I came to live as a student volunteer at COCM (Chinese Overseas Christian Mission) and two months since the first outreach trip of this autumn so I just want to write a bit here and share about life here and what God has been teaching me.
Firstly, being a student volunteer here means living in a community with other student (actually we are all pending graduates who have just handed in our master's dissertations) volunteers (there are eight of us in total) and some other missionaries who also live in this building. Our daily tasks as volunteers include mainly cleaning, cooking, and other miscellaneous tasks that they assign us to do, to help with the upkeep of the missions centre. We get to have morning devotions together, eat together, pray together weekly and learn from a spiritual formation class. Life gets really busy here especially when there are camps and conferences being held here because we have to serve these campers and do lots of pre- and post-event cleaning.
Secondly, I am involved in the student outreach ministry team aka the COCM Gospel Team (one of the various ministry aspects of COCM). This means we go out to different university campuses in the UK (+France and Ireland) to hold 'gospel events' for Chinese students. Basically, Gordon and Maggie (two main missionaries who lead the teams) and around 10 student volunteers (who may be different people for each of the places we go, depending on their availability and place of living in the UK currently) set out to these places to have a themed outreach event for Chinese students who are willing to come. We would have dinner, music, games, a drama, sermon, conversation times with the Chinese students we meet and through the theme of the program (which is 'Renewing your heart' 从心开始 this year) share the good news of God's grace with them. It is eye-opening and heart-changing to meet these students, many of whom had never heard of the Gospel prior to coming to the UK, and see some of them responding to God's love, some being moved to think about the meaning of life while others not caring much. I learned a lot from the other team members in their examples of being prayerful, serving humbly, reaching out to strangers happily, and sharing their testimonies honestly. So far, we have been to more than ten places and we are halfway through.

Marseille: episode 2

A few more photos from last September when I went o Marseille with the COCM missions outreach team:

episode 1 here

September recap

Wk 1: Life in COCM

Sep 8-Attending the baptism service of four brothers and sisters in York!

Wk 2: France missions trip
Sep 12-16-Went with a team of eight people to do outreach for Chinese students in Montpellier, Marseille, and Nice. It was such a blessing to see the small but growing church in Southern France. It was quite amazing that we could do ministry there with the common language of Chinese even though we don't know French.

Wk 3:
Sep 17-20 Bible camp in COCM. Learned how to study the Bible inductively using 10 steps: noticing, interpreting and applying it to our lives. We studied the book of Esther. Met some new friends too.

Sep 21 Officially moved to Bristol but since my housing was not available till the next week, I stayed at a friend's house (thanks to her kind hospitality).

Wk 4: Orientation week and finding my way in this new place.
I went to a lot of church fellowships in my first week at Bristol and quickly learned that a MA in Musicology will be a challenging course because of my lack of knowledge in this field.
Sep 29-Finally moved into my new room/house. I have a Chinese housemate (Wen Wen, whom I already know from COCM), two American housemates (one of whom is my course mate), a Taiwanese housemate studying phd, a Thai housemate, and a Turkish/English housemate.

Christmas break recap

This Christmas break was a busy time for me because I not only had to be working on my essay that is 60% of my grade for the module I took this past semester, I also had a few mini trips planned. The first trip was a 3-day trip to Manchester city with 8 other Malaysian friends.
In Manchester, we visited the City Art gallery,

the Christmas market outside of Arndale Mall,
the Old Trafford Stadium, home of Manchester United football team,

   and a nice breakfast place called Koffee Pot on our last day there.

After a few days of staying home and working hard on the assignment, it's time to go spend Christmas in Darlington.

On the train to Darlington.

Good food, warmth of a home, and good company. It was a relaxing and restful time, just what I needed. On Christmas morning, we went to church and sang carols to celebrate the birth of our Saviour who came to earth to give us life eternal. Christmas dinner was a spread of goodies including lamb shank stew, mashed sweet potato and carrots, roast chicken, and our homemade mille crepes for dessert. After dinner we exchanged gifts and had fun seeing what each other got.

After Darlington was York before I headed to a 5-day year end camp for Chinese students in Europe.

The camp was a wonderful time of sharing, listening to others' life stories, witnessing God's amazing power in changing lives, getting to know new friends, re-learning spiritual truths and habits, learning how to be a servant, experiencing God's love, and being revived/prepared to start 2013 with joy and purpose.

"Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

1 Corinthians 1:7-9 

Have a great 2013 everyone!