Passion comes with a price

and it's quite heavy too.

Many people view passionate people as those who shout the loudest woohoo! jump around and are very extroverted, talkative, etc..

i believe passionate people are those who put action to their words. meaning, invest their TIME, MONEY, EFFORT, ENERGY and various other sacrifices to achieve what they believe, not just woohoo about it, they will take INITIATIVE to move no matter what people say and think.

It's cool to be passionate for God by jumping, shouting and praising Him. now what are you doing about your belief? Faith without actions is dead.

I'm passionate for God. And I desire to show it through my life. It may be a lonely walk ahead...

From Bukits to Guas

Bukit Tabur Trip

Is crazy dangerous. Imagine 3 hours going through a dusun, up a hill, rock climbing up and down real rocks without a harness, instructors, any form of surveilance, safety features or communication with any ground personal cuz there's none, markers or guidelines on where to go, no real trail which means getting lost and seriously injured is highly possible and there has been a couple of serious injuries and deaths there. And halfway through the trail it RAINED! which means slippery rocks! i like! Good training for one of my dream goal to conquer mount KK!

It wasn't so fun for some of us who went though; a lady fractured her foot; and some of the team had to wait up the hill for the whole day for a rescue team to arrive; and she had to go for surgery; some of the team only came back home at midnight - intense! Rachel, Chien Aun, Jenna, where are we going to next? ;)

Gua Tempurung

2nd time there with relatives from germany, sis and bro-in-law, chien aun and sis and benji. Fun fun fun as usual - crawling and wadding through water in the cave, sitting in pitch blackness for a while, sliding down, going through a hole, and more crawling and wadding through water, while enjoying the beauty of the cave. AND to top it off we had pork ribs wan tan mee for lunch @ Bidur. yum!

CF Christmas party

Party. Food. BBQ. ice breaker. carols. gift exchange. need i mention anything else? hehe. oh and next time we have a bbq, more people better be involved in the whole set-up and CLEAN-UP process. sigh. and bbq parties are expensive (oh gosh i'm beginning to sound like peter :p)

Peter's farewell cum pot bless night

similar to above except the bbq bit, carols and gift exchange; bye peter remember to buy some relient k cds for me when you're in US :p and yes. keep in touch yo!

ok there were many more random dinners and stuff but let's leave those for another time.

New years resolution:

1. Mantain my clean room :D

2. Work out at the rock climbing gym more often (thanks to my new rock climbing shoes!)

3. Finish reading the bible in a year

4. Pump up or at least mantain my grades in uni

5. Focus on serving in CF and making a difference in this last year in monash

Some random after-graduate dreams:

1. Learn spanish (gave up on chinese :p) language and also how to make spanish food!

2. Record personal written songs

3. Climb mount KK

4. Bungee jump, sky diving, para-gliding.......

5. Back to Youth with a Mission and missions work in Sabah for a year

Holiday Happenings

Since after exam:

Road trip to Penang

That was pretty crazy. 35 people. 1 bus. 3 days 2 nights. Ate, ate and.. ate.. I must say that the food in Penang this time round was not that great, to me at least.. It was just food.. that taste the same in KL, or even better in KL *don't shoot me Penang people* hehe. We also visited Fort Cornwallis (or something like that), had bbq marshmallows and chilling out at the beach, shopping, water polo, and lots of travelling on the bus. It was a good end to the year, especially to catch up with some people who have or would be leaving Malaysia, fellowshipping, mafia-ing, random joke telling, cards, worshipping at the beach n swimming pool :) Gotta do this more often! *kudos to Danny Wang who organised this amazing trip!

National School's Christian Fellowship Leadership Camp

Another crazy camp. 140 campers. 20 officers. I was one of the officer volunteers. Led icebreakers, games, a prayer session, helped at special night and led a small group. I love games and organising games but for 140 campers, is quite intense! Thank God for ideas such as the tank game (from maps) and team fortress (from mcf camp) and random push-the-potato-with-your-nose games! And of course, BUTTBALL! which for some reason everybody seemed to love. It was a great camp, lots of things learnt - about God's will, spiritual disciplines, heroes of the faith and cf-related skills (such as problem solving and programme planning). Special night was great and the campers acted really funny! the night ended with the court case in which us officers took the campers to 'court' for being 'naughty' and demanded they be sent to bed earlier after framing them up (for everything! being late, idolatory, violence, etc). It was won hands down of course (due to our totally unbiased judge and jury which was the camp commandent and the officers haha!) but of course we had to let the kids sleep late..

Sarah's Wedding

My sisters wedding was quite surreal. I knew she was going to get married early in the year but if never really got into my system, not until the rehearsals at least.. when I began to watch her and everybody else practice walking down the isles with the music.. and it REALLY only clicked on the wedding day itself, more in the wedding dinner, when all the speeches were made, it was like. wow. WOW. my sister is getting married.. *sigh*.. (but in a happy aww kinda way). I performed the song 'We will dance' by Steven Curtis Chapman and threw in a little chorus of my own at the wedding ceremony with mark. It went well, according to everybody, but I knew my guitar wasn't working, because I hadn't turned the GAIN up. thank God mark's guitar saved the day. He asked me later on, "so japheth, what have you GAINED from this?" swt. I also realised that weddings are really costly.. everything really. counting the ang pow's during dinner was stressful, and it's just only enough to cover the dinner cost! now, all those dresses... flowers.... decorations... gifts.... shoes.... well i'm not complaining, got myself my first ever suit! woohoo! Everybody's asking, "so when's your turn?" I smile and say, "well, the first step is to find a girlfriend :p"

Personal Retreat

It was good to just take a break from it all after all that. To set a time to relax, seek God's face, review and reflect on how my year has been and what I've learnt from it. No better place than Glory Place, Mantin; to just sit by the waterfall, memorise some scripture, write a song, do some readings and journalling... was with Peter and Li wen for this one; quite fun those two :) gonna miss hanging out with peter once he leaves to the U.S

CF

CF would be taking most of my time and responsibility from now on - plannings, iron'ing out details, portfolios, job descriptions and managing human resources; thank God for the CF'ers! So many willing ones, to serve, to be a part of God's plan for Monash CF next year! To an awesome year ahead! let's start with a Christmas Party! and committee retreat!

Work work

Gonna help out at the kindergarten again; Madeleine Kindergarten, for Jan and Feb. Should be interesting :) I need to get those nuts and bolts in my head active.. Can't afford to idle around too much lol. I need to clean my rooooommm..... gahhh.....

Through God's grace and strength
Japheth Chew