not so good news....

we were all having lunch on the 'roof', not literally but the highest level of our main building because the dining tables and chairs in the courtyard were wet from the mean weather.

i was sitting by chris, having vegetable soup, and leftover food from german culture night. i looked over and saw caryl who was all red on her face. i was astonished. had she been crying? something wasnt right. she made a motion to me. she had something to tell me.

so we walked away from the hungry people. then she spilled the beans....
kristy josephine tymos, my sweet kristy had got into an accident. in her tears caryl told me the doctors are not sure if she is going to live due to the condition of her lungs. i asked her to repeat the name. yeah kristy, from my dts last year, she is in coma right now. according to the news, even if she made it through, she may not be able to walk again. that was what grieving caryl. kristy is only 19.

i couldnt finish my soup and i let chris had my last meat ball. i quickly cleaned my plate and bowl and headed for home. thoughts of kristy just occupied my mind. i was praying god, please dont let her die. but again, if she lives she will not be the same kristy. what would kristy feel? would she rather go be with jesus or stay and live differently?

i m not quite ready to accept the fact of losing kristy.

no.

Tayo's got a girlfriend!!!!

tayo is my best friend. maybe not the closest since i havent talked to him for 3 months or so. but he is definitely of the best quality. when i was living in lincoln nebraska, his name will be on the form where i fill 'in case of emergency, please contact' line. her name is oluwakemi olubodun. actually we just call her kemi and she is my really good friend too. oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhh! i m quite happy and just a little weird. i have known tayo for so long and this is the first time in 8 years he actually got a girlfriend while i m unattached. it has always been the other way round >P

i m going to give the man a call. itz about time.

neek, i like your blog very much lah...yeah like you said, just need some xtreme makeover.

its a whamsday

well..title doesnt mean anything. i m having a good day. also, today is the exact halfway on dts lecture phase. scary, eh? time just flew like that.

chinese lesson went quite well this afternoon. this has been the third lesson i conducted without using a single english word. i made them learn how to sing yue1 liang4 dai4 biao3 wo3 de xin1. they will be so loved when they go to the cultural exchange thing in china (in two months). whooohooooo!

we had a good lesson with bill payne this morning. bill is lecturing on the character of god this week. pop quiz guys... what is the first instant of sin in the garden of eden?

according to bill's theory, it was when adam started to believe a lie about god. he was convinced by satan that god was not telling the truth about the forbidden fruit. and of course throughout history, mankind believes a lot of things about god. whatever they believe determines their destiny...whatever they do reflects what they believe. and the product of that, is the world today.

truth according to bill, is the accurate perception of reality. reality is absolute. it doesnt adjust to what people believe. religion can be tailored. but god is who he says who he is.

here is my confession. i have an exaggerated sense of liking for philosophy...but i cant really express it in the same magnitude.

are you yawning yet?

here's another confession. neek, i like your blog...but i like mine a tad more. just because.... well, do you care?

hey holland. glad to hear your interview went well. i have been thinking seriously of getting facedown. i think it is worth owning a copy. seriously seriously.

guys, matt redman's album facedown rocks!

Amsterdam

i m dedicating this post to one of my favorite persons i met last year. i called the person amsterdam.

my clowning with chris on the talent/nontalent night was a hit. i didnt think i did great. i almost blew my cover because i was laughing so hard onstage. the reason i got away with it was that i had this whistle blowing..which was our 'communication' tool with each other. but chris was natural. he was da man.

that was friday night.

as i said, the weather was mean. it is still. we cancelled our beach bbq and went to a chinese place in kamtin to eat lunch. it was like giving them a preview of what a chinese meal is like when we go on outreach.

since all my flatmates were working on saturday for 'king and i'. i had the whole apartment for myself and i couched, read 'jesus i never knew', my favorite book, made and drank hot chocolate, listened to something i havent heard for a while..over and over, took a nap....zzzz.. i had a well deserved afternoon alone..something i will never have ever again.

that was saturday afternoon.

it was missions sunday at church. i was actually contemplating on doing FEET again. hmmm....i wonder if i m going to continue entertaining that thought. otherwise, it can be the next good conversational topic for me and hawkeye...i mean god.

that's today.

neek...thanks for your comments. so when are you inviting me to read your blog?

i sometimes wonder how many people are reading silently...or if anyone cares to read at all.

but i m a decent fan of myself, so i will continue to write and read myself.

harharhar

Cat and other things

i always have lots of things in my mind that i want to say here. but they never seem to materialize on the board. this is an ongoing frustration..well, one of the many, which i dont really bother to elaborate.

so, i will just type out loud...as usual.

yeah, about the cat i mentioned last week. it turned out that nancy, our base director was the one responsible for its unfortunate condition..who would have thought? on tuesday, some of the staff members were exaggerating that a cat had gotten underneath our volvo (donated)and how it sufferred a violent death when they saw blood and hair everywhere, in front of me to see how sick i could get. and they still were still talking about it the next day...and then brandon said, he didnt think the cat was dead because there just wasnt enough blood. caryl who was with us suddenly said she wondered if it was the cat that i saw on the bridge because she heard nancy talked about almost killing a cat the same day i saw it and i happened to saw the cat two houses away from where nancy lives, which is also the same apartment complex as the light house. so it all came together.

i thought it was interesting.

dean sherman has been great. i love his brutal honesty and most of all his cockiness. he is one of the speakers that doesnt say something just because everybody says so... he backed his teachings with sufficient evidence in the bible, the original meaning, context, and historical relevance blaaaa. i think the most important reason why i like him is because our thinking patterns and views about god and things in the world are very similar. this is my second year with dean.
i enjoyed him this year more than the last. and he is coming again in summer for our next dts.

dinner is calling. tonight we are celebrating indian culture night. tryfina is cooking some pretty good stuff.

later we are having our first talent/talentless night. i m doing something funny with chris, who was my co-participant in FEET last year and now my dts student.

tomorrow i m taking them (yups all 14 of them) to the beach and have some bbq, if the weather permits...it is forecasted to be around 10-13C tomorrow..something to frown about. but we were given a generous amount of money to spend on food...so maybe i will take them for some nice dim sum...hmmm

meanwhile the base will be populated with people from all over because of this event called 'the king and i', the only ministry we have for hong kong christians. 70 people signed up for this. i wonder if the leaders are glad that i m evacuating the dts so that it doenst get too crazy during lunch.

tamsin is going to be 19 tomorrow. it's her crown birthday.

Changes

hey boys and girls

i took neek's advice. i m allowing unregistered bloggers and anonymous to give comments. so feel free!

Happy Valentine's boys and girls

rahel from my dts last year just announced her wedding to her antoinne. the big day is this friday 18th. she is the first of our dts to tie the knot, as expected. congratulations to her!

the fireworks on chinese new year day 2. i went with the dts to the island at the place called wan chai to view the display. great spot, i should say. the show lasted for at least 30 mins and was just as spectacular as the one i saw at mount rushmore on july 4, 2001...i think. on the way back however, transportation turned out to be a nightmare. the showed ended at around 830ish...we were told to catch a bus at causeway bay (still on the island), that would directly take us back to the new territories that way we can avoid taking mtr to kowloon side where the worst case of crowding was. so we walked a few blocks to take the mtr..and when we got out of causeway bay area, we found out we had chosen the wrong exit, it took us 30 mins to find the right bus stop. and by the time we got back to the village, it was past 1030. the whole 2 hours of just trying to get home.

yesterday, after church, i went to wan chai to hunt for my bios clock battery whatever that is called (remember it died on me??). i accidentally bumped into a bus stop where i could take the same bus i took on thursday to come back to the village!! i felt so silly taking mtr to causeway bay (further into the island) to get out of the island and the fact that we took more than 2 hours to get home just because of the multiple transportation options available here in hong kong and we couldnt decide which to pick.

for others (actually just william) dean sherman is here. he is funnier than last year. this year, he started with S.R. first then spiritual warfare. the students are really enjoying him.

i miss you william. how have you been since the last we talked? now that i dont have my laptop, i havent been able to check your xanga, and everyone else's...sigh. anyway, if you are able, email me, ok? thanks, bro.

Cat

tamsin (my dts student from South Africa) and i were on the way to kam tin to get some groceries for the base when we saw this poor cat lying on a bridge, bleeding and was in obvious pain. i thought it was dead until we saw it blinked its eyes to us. tamsin's reaction was funny. she said, we cant just leave the poor thing there. she asked me if anyone on the base here who has a gun! then she left me on the bridge and ran back to the base to get 'HELP'.

so there was me, on the bridge, trying to console and pray for the cat at the same time directing the cars and buses so that they wouldnt hit the cat when they pass us by. so one by one the cars slowed down, making sure the cat and i were ok. i was so impressed how much they respected the cat because i was by its side. then, a really kind lady jumped out from a jaguar, came to us, and she held that helpless, ugly, filthy, and hurt cat. she and her husband took the cat away. i am eternally grateful and in relief.

the moral of the story for me....when i was on the bridge with the cat, i thought of me like that cat, helpless, dirty, insignificant and ready to die..it just take someone important (i.e. god)to be on my side. whenever the cars and buses came by, i saw the cat fear for its life but because i was right there, the vehicles were not able to harm it. that is how god is. he is always on my side protecting me, and he can do even more than what i can do for the cat. i see the enemy has to think twice before he lays his finger on me, or he simply just wont. just like he couldnt take away job's life because god didnt allow him.

this is chinese new year day 2. there's big firework show down on hong kong island. i changed my mind to go along with my dts students. it is my festival afterall and they really want me to be there with them.

i relinquish my rights to rest and i feel good about it.

staff meeting in 15 mins. i have to boot.

consolation required

i shocked my laptop. i have 4 options. 1. call DELL; 2. perform a surgery to reset the bios clock; 3. reboot bios from floppy; and 4. get a mac ibook. i have done none, except getting dell's phone number. my guess is, they are gonna ask me to do option 3....which means i have to get a bios floppy which i dont have, which means i have to wait for it to be sent to me if they would.

i was a little devastated. maybe more frustrations will come up later.

that was the reason i couldnt update my blog since the day after the last time i post. i cannot remember.

dts had a dashing week. p.s.l.d.r. is special to me. i analyzed myself from the point of fruits of strongholds and i recognize freedom from most of them. it is precious to see my babies (the students) in their vulnerability, getting touched by the holy spirit, embracing and enduring the struggles they need to work through, and yet receiving comfort and healing from him. i love this school. i love my babies.

it was an truly heightened emotional week for everyone.

the highlight of the weekend personally was my first heart to heart with caryl. finally i come to an understanding why she is the way she is. maybe i always have known, being a considerably sensitive person. i braved myself to tell her how it affected my communications and overall relationship with her...starting all the way from my dts. but again, not everything is about her because my personality contributed to the difficulty as well, big time! anyways, i ended up spending the whole 4 hours with her. we browsed through her cd collection (which looks pretty similar to mine), and i actually chose all songs and arranged them in order for her to do worship on tuesday. i love caryl.

some other random stuff....
anna jane is addicted to this america top model show which is on tv right now. so funny to see her fixing a dinner in between commercial breaks. i semi destroyed the chopping block just now while preparing dinner for myself and nicky...talking about nicky, i have a date with her. we are supposed to talk about the week and pray for each other...and she is waiting. so i will go to her NOW. i will write more about nicky later. she is so cool. i love nicky.

ps. huiwan, i m surprised you drop by. happy chinese new year to you. bless you!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

my first memory of the day was at 2 am. guess why?

i actually got so cold that i woke up from my sleep. i got down from my high tower (top bunk) and searched for the sleeping bag that belongs to anna jane because that is the only thing that kept me warm the last cold front. on the way back to high tower, my bedmate, pooh decided to jump off board. while he did that, he knocked nicky's alarm clock off under the bed. poor nicky...she got up and started to devise a plan to recover her clock. she couldnt. so, i got down from the high tower AGAIN to help her. we had to MOVE the bed to get her clock.

and the cold is consistent throughout the day.

just another day in paradise

the day went better than i expected.

doing worship together with caryl is growing on me. caryl is our magnificent dts director. i happen to be her rare but permanent fan. she is from omaha of all the places in the world and had attended UNL before. she was the final convincing reason i came to do dts in hong kong.

2pm...language learning; teacher....yours truly.
i was supposed to use the full 1.5 hrs. i reviewed the basic pin yin and taught them tones. i constructed a few important words like ni hao (hello) and mao (cat). i introduced pronouns and taught them cute phrases like wo xi huan ni (i like you) with all combinations of pronouns, singular and plural. and i thought i would use up the whole 1.5 hrs. BUT how wrong! in about half an hour, they all spoke like professionals. it is hard being a teacher. next week, i have to come up with something more interactive and fun. thatz a problem. i m not very funny coming to teaching. gosh.

what is going down here right now is the temperature. this morning i left the lighthouse around 745, i was fine wearing just two layers of long sleeve shirts. by 10, i was shivering with another layer of sweater. by dinner time, i was shivering in my winter coat. i think it's about time to pull out my long johns. and if i m really up to it, i might even knit myself a blanket.

while i m on that subject, i knitted a scarf for tryfina last saturday. anna jane's mom taught me how to knit the 'pearl' stitch. i have progressed. so that was my first pearly scarf. i feel pretty good about it. i taught tryfina and sarah moodie(another cool dts student) how to knit the plain stitch last night. today i saw tryfina wearing a ear warmer that she knitted for herself. can you see great discipleship going on here?

yeah, a nice blanket sounds good......the only problem is, i dont know if i can afford yarn. oh well, just another nice thought.