You, yes YOU, are invited to our church retreat aka chalet! If you have Facebook, click this link to go straight to our event. If not, here's all the info:
Date: 13 to 16 March 2009 (Friday to Monday) Location: Aloha Changi, Fairy Point Chalet 4 (see map for details) Check-in: 3pm (Friday) Check-out: 10.30am (Monday) Contact: Frank @ 90307981
Facilities: Double-storey chalet with 6 fully air-conditioned bedrooms, BBQ pit and fully equipped kitchen, TV, Games table, etc.
Main objectives of this camp: - Get to make more friends - And then, have a fun time together!
Theme: Candle In The Dark
Itinerary includes: - Lots of free time - Singing songs - Social games - Morning Taiji - Nature walk - Movie night - Interaction - Cycling - Talks - Naps - BBQ - etc!
Just like my birthday, Valentines Day is just another typical day. But it definitely wasn't a typical day at church. The youth did have a mini valentine celebration by giving out chocolates to everyone. The girls also thought of an idea where everyone would take a few blank paper hearts and then they will write a short letter to anyone they want to. In the end our big notice board on the wall ran out of space. So we had to paste all the hearts on our glass wall! Danielle, our newest youth, got the most hearts.
Church service yesterday morning was per normal. But in the afternoon this time we went visiting! We made about 25 of the boxes below. Have sold about 8 of them. And we gave about 10 away while doing the vistations. We visited mostly old church members and visitors who have come to our church before. Had quite a number of people to visit so we split into 2 groups. I hope we can make pineapple tarts again! Its really quite a good business lol. Only downside is that it will take 2 full Sundays to make both the pineapple paste and the actual tarts.
And at night we went for badminton! I think this time I kinda booked too many courts. We had 4 courts for the first hour and 6 courts for the second hour. End up in the second hour we were only using 5 courts, and a bit of the 6th. Lol. Some were playing double. Most of us got to play almost non-stop instead of waiting for our turn. About 25 people turned up this time.
A few Thomson Church members came to join us, including the usual Linus and Hong Qi.
At 9.55pm the alert sounded for us that it was almost time to go. Lights started to turn off. So we packed up and left.
Our next official Chuan Hoe program will be our church retreat from 13 to 16 March at Changi. ^^
On Saturday morning at church we had a group of singers from Australia. 3 of them are siblings. My pastor at the very last minute knew that they were coming to Singapore. So he invited them to our church for special music.
Johnathan, Sarah & Melissa. Their mom's a Malaysian and dad's a German. Hence the surname Otto.
Video of them singing at our church. Nice eh? They've even made their own CDs.
And in the afternoon we began our usual activites. After lunch a few of the girls had their bible study. Then after that they joined us older youth for our weekly Bible study. We went through Genesis chapters 5 to 8 that day. Really gain many new insights about the beginning of the Bible. After Bible study we went to let out all our energy by singing. Haha. Just very casual singing. I'm not sure why or how we started singing quite a while ago. I think it started by Hydon and Olivine singing and playing the piano respectively. Then slowly I joined in, then followed by the rest of the youth, then the adults joined in. And now we're singing hymns and praises like every Sabbath afternoon.
And this is Jerome emo-ing away for who knows what reason while we're singing. Ok he claims he wasn't =P
We had dinner at church and a few of us cooked different dishes. I fried the puffs. As you can see a few of the puffs below are burnt haha.
At night, we went to night safari! This is an activity which has been planned for months already. And finally its here. Initially we only planned it to be a only-youth outing. But slowly we were thinking, why not invite the adults too, since some of them haven't even been there before and some of them for a very long time. In the end Tiffany's family turned up too. The more the merrier.
I didn't take many photos as the only bright places in the night safari were the eateries. At the animal closures the lights were very dim. My camera ain't that powerful. The creatures of the night show was really good! Although the owl showed attitude and decided to fly to some tree away from the audience, other cute cuddly animals made up for it.
The night safari was so dark that the only animal I could capture clearly with my digicam was this porcupine below.
For the rest of the night safari trail, quite a number of the animals are either sleeping or hiding somewhere in their enclosures, away from sight. So we didn't see much action at all. But there were some very cute otters who kept whining away to us wanting food haha. Yeah I shall stop talking about the night safari here as its already 1am and I have camp tomorrow!
On Sunday today we went to church again at around 9am. This time to make pineapple tarts! We're making some to give friends, buy for ourselves, and to old church members who haven't come to church for a long time. About 12 of us turned up. Did from 8am all the way until like 5pm+! There was enough of us to form a factory chain.
Pineapple paste.
Look at these dough cuttings below made by me.
More and more tarts...
Used egg yoke to "tarnish" the surface of the tarts. So they would have a very nice golden brown surface when out from the oven.
Just out from the oven... So warm, so fragant, SO YUMMY TO EAT!!!!
*drools*
The last step was to pack all the cooled pineapple tarts into the boxes. And this coming Saturday, visitation starts!
For this week's Bible study, we will be reading Genesis chapters 5 to 8. We will then have the discussion at church this coming Saturday afternoon (10 January). Please raise questions if you have any.
Questions for discussion 1) Read Gen.4:17-18 and 5:18, 25. Are the same persons being referred to in both chapters? 2) Look at the dimensions of the ark which Noah built. How large was the ark in modern measurements? 3) How many years had it been from the time of Creation to the time God called Noah to build the ark? 4) Why did God wish to destroy man from the face of the earth? What does this tell us about the situation of the world in the time of Noah? 5) Why were more 'clean' animals taken into the ark than 'unclean' animals? What can we learn from this distinction? 6) What is the significance of Noah's offering to God after coming out of the ark? Is there anything we can learn from it? 7) Why do you think Paul referred to Noah as being one of the great fathers of faith?
Everyone arrived at Orielle's home at about 7pm. We were gonna have the countdown celebration there. About 20 church members showed up. The delicious dinner started shortly after.
After dinner we played quite a number of games. 1. Guess The Person - where we each have to write down 10 famous names on 10 different pieces of paper. We then put all the papers into 1 box. From there, 3 teams will take turns to describe the person in Round 1. In Round 2, the teams will only have to say 1 word about the person. And in Round 3, the teams will act that person out! Haha. It was super funny.
2. R-O-C-K Rock - where a person will start clapping, the others follow, then that person will say a theme, for example "MRT stations". Then the next person will have to continue naming MRT stations and everyone continues until someone is unable think of any. Lol.
3. The clapping game - one person would go into the room. The group chooses the leader. The leader will start doing hand actions and the others follow. The person comes out and will have to guess who the leader is.
4. UNO (from what you can see in the photo below)
5. Heart attack! - everyone starts with 4 playing cards. We must keep picking a card, put on the floor, then everyone passes it to the next player at the same time. Once a player has all 4 cards of the same kind, he will then shout "heart attack" and place his hand on the floor. Everyone else will have to place one of their hands on his hand. Then he will use his other hand to slam the last hand on top.
5 MINUTES TO COUNTDOWN!
4.... 3.... 2.... 1....
Jerome sleeping!
All of us left around 2am. Thanks Auntie Phyllisity (Orielle's mum) for opening up your house for us!
We are having a little celebration at Uncle Oliver Lim's home this coming Wednesday evening. We're going to have dinner, games, and finally the count down to the new year!
Number who have confirmed: 16 Estimated number of turn-ups: 20+
Chuan Hoe Church Retreat at Aloha Changi is confirmed! The chalet has been booked. Let me know if you're interested to come!
Date: 13 to 16 March 2009 (Friday to Monday) Location: Aloha Changi, Fairy Point Chalet 4 Check-in: 3pm to 7.30pm Check-out: 8.30am to 10.30am The double-storey chalet is fully furbished with living room set with
·TV and games table;
·dining room;
·6 air-conditioned bedrooms,
·beds (1 queen-sized and 11 single-sized), wardrobe, dresser, bedside table and wall fan;
