It's now the 3rd lesson of Youth alpha revisited, why did Jesus die? Have to admit that the fellowship hall is not the best place to do Alpha. It's just too spacious. People won't pay attention and so on. That aside, have to say that its going well so far.
PLAN 09Yeah, we were supposed to share a testimony today about what we learned at plan 09 but we forgot, wooops. So while it is still fresh in my mind, I will spill out the feedback here:
Plan 09 was basically a missions conference to talk about missions, what it is, what we can do. It's all about missions. It was held in Melaka 20-23 September.
When I was asked to go, I had a certain mindset about what missions was. I read a couple of very exciting and inspiring missionary books and heard about missions from BAT (Brian Ashriel Tang).
From my point of view, missions was all about living a rough life and preaching the gospel to people or to contribute in distributing bibles, help build houses and stuff for orang asli. All those kinds of things.
I went to plan 09 not knowing that it was about missions so it was a shock for me. I thought it was all about a big plan or project for youths to go all out on changing Malaysian youths and communities or something.
There were lots of inspiring and shocking testimonies which challenged my faith when I heard them. It was also really reassuring as well of what a mighty God we have.
Then came all the key points in missions like how there are 800 000 000 people in China who have not heard the gospel and all other countries in the 10/40 window which "refer to those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator who has least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet" - Wikipedia~
And a easy prayer guide called THUMB which stands for the main people groups who have not heard the gospel or have limited access to it.
T-Tribal
H-Hindu
U-Unreligious
M-Muslim
B-Buddist
After hearing all these things my perception for missions really changed and I could start to see how we are all involved in this big and important movement. It's also challenging to go into missions because 80% who go into missions actually drop out so it is definitely not some easy thing in which everyone can just go in and do. Mission takes commitment and full faith in the Lord.
It also helped me to realize that God could be calling me for a certain country. Still need to confirm with lots of prayer, so I'm not sure which ministry I have a calling for...
There was also a MYPG (Malaysian Youth Prayer Gathering) night where we all gathered and prayed. It was probably the deepest prayer I have every prayed, it was all about praying for forgiveness for everything we have done. Not submitting to our authorities, our parents, our teachers. And all sorts of other things, we had to really kneel and pray. At that time I had a really bad cold or something, and the kneeling and bowing our heads was a great challenge for me. And I had a cold only on that night. It really shows how when people try to change themselves sincerely, all sorts of trouble come our way to stop us in every way, in the form of distractions, hindrances, mentality, any thing we can think of. In my case it was the bad cold. But still I endured till the end and at that end as I was walking back I really felt great. Like some sort of weight has been lifted off or something. It felt that I had a resistance against all temptaions that would come my way.
So all in all it was a great experience and , we ate chicken rice balls again hahaha.
See you next week!