The turnout was also AWESOME! 24 pre-believers VS 21 Christians present! That shows the no. of friends we brought! :)
Here's some feedback I got directly from the guests and cell members themselves :)
Joshua's friend, Dion Tan commented ""Hey!! I think we met today. I'm one of Joshua's friends and well the Christmas chalet really left me with something to think about and well was just hoping by adding you, I might be invited to future events like this. So cheers! :)"
He also posted on fb the song lyrics of the song "How Many Kings"..."How many gods have poured out their hearts to romance a world that is torn all apart?"
Alicia was also blessed by this event...writing on my wall, she said "hey yo!! reali enjoyed all ur jokes n also the story u shared...after the busy uni life n holi packed w activities, ur story reminded me of what christmas means to me=D n my fren said u're v funny haha"
This chalet also gave a lil' boost to my evangelistic engine which was getting rusty. I still love the lost passionately but am a lil' stagnant...I still share the gospel to my friends occasionally but have lost quite a lot of fuel along the way.
This chalet allowed me to see that people are still hungry for love, fellowship and God. And I must say, only the church has that to offer...Only the Church has the real thing...the real definition of love, the purest form of fellowship and of course the only one true God.
As I saw how our friends immersed themselves into the friendly atmosphere of games, chatting, food and Christmas caroling, I saw how genuine fellowship can make people feel accepted, loved and open. When the caroling climaxed to worship and my sharing of the Christmas message, I could see how people, in spite of how intellectually staunch they are against Christianity, begin to open up as the seed of the gospel was sown in their hearts.
Through this event I learnt that only love can conquer a man's heart...Not intellectual apologetical arguments, not the flawless Christian doctrine, not the guarantee of eternal assurance after salvation can touch a person's heart...Only love, love agape that flows from God through us can break through the walls of hate, cynicism, prejudices, hedonism, nihilism and flood the heart of man to understand and believe in God's love.
In this chalet, I believe we all have exhibited that love. Thus, the awesome result! :) Hallelujah...Now, for the story proper...Haha.
Day 1...we arrived at the chalet. It was still kinda gloomy and a sense of ennui filled the air. Nevertheless, we got started with the decorations! :)
Sherry, Evangelin & Cheryl working on the Christmas tree...Check out the Christmas tree base man...a bucket full of water bottles...LOLS. When we're short of water, we know where to go look for it...under the Christmas tree! HAHA!
We were quite discouraged with the turnout actually...The first day we planned games at the beach and all...and the games requirement was a minimum of 10 people. But we only had 7! :( My friends that were supposed to come, didn't come. So did Alicia's friends.
To top that up, it rained! Rendering the beach games we planned obsolete. :( So while waiting for the rain to stop, we played Monopoly Deal! Standard ah! haha.
Once the rain stopped, we decided to play one of the beach games we planned outside our chalet at the BBQ area...haha.
We have to fill a poriferous 1.5litre bottle as full as possible within the stipulated time frame with small party cups. 2 people will be holding the bottle and pressing the holes to lessen the water leak rate while the 3rd person will be running to the bucket of water and scooping the water with the cup and running back to pour it into the 1.5 litre bottle. Haha.
Standard beach game la...But fun! :)
Here's my opponent's team...
Cheryl, Joshua & Anna :)
Alicia, Evangelin & Myself :)
You gotta check out Evan's face in the above picture man...Look at her "super excited, intense concentration" facial expression. HAHAHA!
Me & Alicia :)
Guitar chords on a bottle...HAHAHA!
Seriously, pressing all the holes on the bottle really takes skill. My fingers were aching after that man...Like holding guitar chords real hard on a guitar...LOLS!
After that finger aching, water leaking experience, we headed for dinner! :) We ate at the Basil Inn...It serves Thai food. The prices are cheap, like $5 for a plate of Thai Kway Teow and all...see the pictures later...And the food is good! :) So yup, Vivien's recommendation wasn't too bad...haha.
Waiting for the food's arrival...haha
Still waiting for the food to come...haha. Ok, it didn't take too long. Haha.
I ordered some spicy beef with rice. It was real good. The chili was really, really spicy. I was perspiring and savouring the food at the same time...HAHA! LOLS!
Elhannah's order: Thai Fried Kway Teow
This was really good too...But kinda oily la...haha. Check out my makansutra pose man...HAHA! Look like not? LOLS!
The food was so spicy that Alicia couldn't take it...she couldn't finish her food. HAHA! So guess who was the dustbin? You guessed right! ME! I don't believe in food wastage...HAHA! Ok, I believe in selective food wastage...If you throw away like disgusting veggies or some unwanted parts of some animal, I'm fine. LOLS!
After dinner was another round of Monopoly Deal! HAHA! We then decided to commence our prayer meeting.
We strategically put a prayer meeting on the night of the first day so that we can pray up and get fired up and get ready for the evangelistic event on the last day! :)
And yes, I'm the honourable prayer/worship leader...I'm the best there is...HAHAHA! Eh, jkjk! Forgive me, Lord. But telling the truth ain't sinning right? HAHAHA! Liao...LOLS!
We actually wanted to start, but I had my nature's call...HAHA! So we ended up playing ice-breaker first...We played the number game...The game where you have to say number the previous player showed and show another number on your right hand...Haha. This game works your left and right brain together at the same time. LOLS!
Playing halfway, I went to answer my call and Joel Qin arrived! Haha. Once I was done, we started our first praise song...and we kept digging deeper.
Yup, I wouldn't say that the session was super God-encountering but at least it calibrated all our compasses to have the same goal and to set our expectations and to reaffirm each other that we're all going to do this together for God and we'll see a great thing happen! :)
After that 2 hour session, it was already around 2am+. Everyone fell out and retreated to their bedrooms...except the 5 of us...HAHA!
What can 5 people do when there's Joel and his car in the wee hours of the morning?? L-FOUR-D!! HAHAHA! Joel drove Abigail, Anna, Aaron & myself to the Katong LAN shop for our early morning showdown. LOLS!
You can tell from Anna's eyes that it's already 2.30am++ HAHAHA! :D
I teamed with Anna against Abigail, Aaron & Joel. 2 V 3 lei! So unfair for Anna & I! But guess what?? We beat the odds & won all 3 rounds!! :D :D WHOO HOO!!
Anna was telling me how shiok it was to win. LOLS!!
By the time we ended our zombie slashing spree, it was 5am. Upon reaching the chalet, we all died instantly on our beds...Like the zombies we slashed in the games...HAHAHA!
Our reveille time was supposed to be 8am I think. But it became 10am for me. LOLS! Woke up took my breakfast...2 pieces of bread with chocolate peanut butter and started devotion. Had a lil' time of praise & worship before Sherry shared.
And after that, we played the "cross the minefield" game. Haha. We taped out 8x8 squares (I think) on the floor and each square represents an area where we will have to step. We don't know which tiles have mines so we gotta figure out by trial and error. Haha.
The thing about this game is that there are 2 blind people, 1 lame and 1 dumb person. The lame person has to hop on one leg...By right, the lame person has to be carried, but since it's all girls & I'm the only guy, I guessed they abolished that rule. HAHA!
Yup, off we went. The game lasted for a whole 2 hours!! HAHAHA! Due to my blindness mainly...HAHAHA! But we had loads of fun man...HAHA!
Look @ my guardian angel...Evangelin...standing there like some summoned escort...HAHAHA!
After the games, was just random playing of bomberman (on the square grids), monopoly deal and the touching up of the decor...haha.
The touching up of the decor included the pasting of our testimonies all over the walls and pasting balloons and the "Merry Xmas" words all over the walls.
And I think our idea of pasting our testimonies on the walls was really good. Cos during the meal time when people were chatting away and all...they'd also just randomly walk up and read the testimonies :) So great job guys!! :D
After the decor part...was the clean up part...Anna & Abi then had an awesomely disgusting idea of masking taping up all the dirt and hairs on the floor! Haha. I joined them in their magnanimous efforts and began taping up all the shit on the floor...haha.
Anna, Abigail & myself with our taped rubbish...HAHA!
Zoomed in view...HAIRS, HAIRS & MORE LONG HAIRS!!
That's what you get when you chalet with a bunch of girls...HAHAHA! To be more accurate, a bunch of aging women...HAHAHA!
The arrival of the first group of friends! :) Joshua's friends! :D Followed by the rest... :D
Me & Joshua + his friends...Dion is hiding behind Joshua... -.-" haha.
Leslie, Me & Han Hui :D Posing with the Christmas tree :) My NS (SISPEC ASLC) friends :D
Zhimin, Myself, Abigail, Evelyn & Amanda :) Anna's & Abigail's choir friends :D
After the food, was the games! We played taboo!! :D We all had massive loads of fun watching each other frantically blabbering descriptions of the word the team members had to guess...Hearing them shouting their guesses was also epically funny. HAHA!
Just when you thought Taboo was over, we played pictionary!! HAHA! Seeing them frenziedly scribbling lines & seeing how the team members were trying to make sense of what those combined lines mean was really funny! This game really discredits artistry. Haha! The time limit set would never result in good art...HAHAHA!
You can check out the pictures on my facebook...Snapped a lot of photos of our guests in action :) haha.
After like 1.5hours of games, we went on to caroling!! :) From here onwards, I entrusted my new $200 Jx-200 14megapixel camera and the responsibility of the photo-taking task to Elhannah...who did an awesome job! :) Haha.
Myself on the guitar & Abigail doing her solo intro for the song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" :D Two thumbs up for Abi's courageous intro!! :)
What's left of Anna's mum's awesome BROWNIE!!! :D
I ended the caroling session with the song "How Many Kings" by Downhere. That song left quite an impression I think. The lyrics of the song's awesome! Go check it out man! It'll touch your heart! :)
I did a lil' sharing on what Christmas actually means...I used the story "The King and the humble maiden" written by Soren Kierkgaard, a Christian philosopher. His story beautifully parallels the story of Jesus' coming down to Earth.
I ended with the song "Praise You" a worship song rightfully sung by Christians to thank God for sending His son down to die on the cross for our sins, as a replacement, a sacrifice to pay the price for our wrongdoing.
After the whole thing, we continued sharing the gospel on a individual basis. Xin Jin was sharing to her friend and Aaron Leong was out and about sharing to different groups of people. I was also moving around getting to know people and pushing the seed of the gospel deeper into their hearts :D
It was awesome!! :) You gotta talk to us to find out more man...Too awesome to be typed here...LOLS!
We then resumed our photo-taking spree...Haha.
Me & Johan :)
Me, Xin Jin & her friend Sok Yin :)
Amanda, Anna, Myself, Joshua & Abigail :)
After everyone left, we continued playing pictionary!! It's SOOOO FUNNN!! HAHA! :D Here's 3/4 of the late night pictionary gang... :D
Gabriel Foo, Cheryl Lew, Joshua Tan, Jonavan Lee & Ken Lok :D
I've come to a conclusion that late at night, you can't draw properly. Haha! Check out these few drawings man...
Abigail's depiction of hainanese chicken rice on the left...?!?!?! HAHAHA! I thought it was heart shape cake or a heart shape in a middle of a moon or something man!! LOLS!
Anna's depiction of fingerprints...We were wildly guessing "Henna!", "Manicure!", "Nail Polish!" and all...HAHAHA! LOLS! LOLS!!
Best picture award goes to Ken Lok!! What is this? This is his ultra rabak depiction of a DONKEY!! HAHAHAHA! LOLS!! Epic fail! HAHAHA!
Cutest drawing award goes to Evan! :) Haha. This is her depiction of a donkey...HAHA!
After pictionary we played on...we played asshole ti-tee (Big 2) for a few rounds and I peng san already...HAHA! I then fell out, bathed & tidur...haha.
What an awesome chalet man! I love chalets and especially this one...Most chalets are aimless, everyone goes there and stone and play card games and don't really get to know each other.
But through our awesome facilitation and running of the programme, we made everyone get to know each other better & also get to know Jesus and how quintessential He is to Christianity & Christmas :)
Yup, I hope another chalet like this will be planned again! :) Till next time guys! Great job! :) May God continue to use us so mightily!! :)
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