Hey people, it has been a really packed the past month… ministry, work, travelling, cell teaching, music teaching, business, etc. Praise God that despite my very active lifestyle, I have not fallen ill. We had a wonderful time last month, 8th of August, we travelled to Kuantan to celebrate Uncle James’ wedding then we had Ps Victor to speak in our church Sunday service.
Let’s begin with the Kuantan trip, one thing’s for sure that we all really had fun! We departed from Subang at about 7am, we were suppose to leave at 6am but due to some miscommunication, our dear friend Tan Sri (to be) Jeff Yeo thought we were suppose to leave later. Calvin and I drove, there were 9 of us that went. Poor Carol was the only girl that went because the others had prior engagement or couldn’t take leave that day. I had noisy group of people in my car… Carol, Nick, Donald and Jeff… but at the initial part of the journey, all of them slept till we reached Karak R&R stop. From there, the geng made stupid noise and cracked dumb jokes… so laughed our way until the next R&R stop at Termeloh at 8.40am where we had our breakfast.
After breakfast, we continued our journey laughing all the way to Kuantan. In the midst of the journay, Jeff, as usual, stated a very mind boggling, yet interesting thing. He said that the governing body of Subang is planning to fight traffic problems by implementing Speed Traps in the future. At first thought, we were all like “WHAT?!!”… to a regular person, it is totally stupid and impossible to fight traffic jams with speed traps.. but as we pondered on the process and technical functions of speed traps, we began to slowly dissect how the functions of speed traps, not the stereotype purpose of it, can actually do a lot for traffic easing. How? Go figure out yourself! Haha!
We arrived in Kuantan at about 10.15am, we met up with Uncle James and his wife-to-be, Sister Pat, at a very nice but pricey kopitiam called Kemaman Kopitiam. There we had another round of breakfast again! Eating Spree! The food and drinks were superb, better quality than the kopitiam places (Old Town, Old Taste, etc) places we get in KL/Subang Jaya. The place is owned by a Chinese man, but every single worker in the shop is Malay, all the recipes for the food were also very Malay. It was a good time there. We saw 4 sizes of traditional coffee making strainers hung on the wall. At first glance, it looked like old saggy-baggy white underwear, FOUR SIZES! So we were making fun of it la, one for great-grandpa, one for grandpa, one for dad and last one for son. Plus the bigger ones had brown stains on it… looks quite bad la.. HAHA!
After breakfast, we went to MS Garden Hotel, where the wedding was going to be held. There we checked in to the room and continued making more noise. Once again, poor Carol had to be stuck there with all the guys laughing and doing crazy stuff. But of course, I tried my best to take care of her whenever I could la.. Hehe… We ran through the ceremony dry run later that evening and it was really funny. Uncle James and Sister Pat kept make funny gestures during the dry run. The rest of us practically changed the entire deco of the ceremony hall. The hotel had great deco stuff but the arrangements were quite cincai. So we did some adjustments here and there and at the end, the couple was very happy with new setting.
After the dry run, we went back to the room and rested before heading out to the mall next door to have our very late lunch. The mall really reminded me so much of Summit USJ. So ate, bought some stuff for the wedding ceremony, then went back to the hotel to prepare for the wedding.
At about 6.15pm, the entire guest had arrived and the wedding ceremony began. The couple made their entry with rousing applause, mostly from us la cause the other people were all so old!
Calvin led worship while me and Raymond were on the guitars. Then Ps Ryan did the wedding vows, exchange of rings, communion and the unity candle. Before the ceremony ended, Ps Ryan invited the Kuantan pastor, Rev. Dr. Quah to pray a prayer of blessing for the newly weds. It was a very short but sweet wedding, I wouldn’t mind having such a short but so power-packed wedding myself next time. I dread long draggy weddings…ZZzzzZZZ…
We ended the ceremony at 7.15pm, then we guys went up to change into something more comfortable while Carol went to the dinner hall to prepare herself to emcee for the dinner. We proceeded with the dinner with Uncle James and Sister Pat making a grand entrance. Again, we were the ones cheering for them mostly. Carol took the stage and she did a fantastic job! She looked really good that night too… After the second dish, we guys took the stage to do a song presentation. Guess what song? Yup, you’ve guessed it! Our infamous Belaian Jiwa… for a wedding??! Well, Uncle James liked the song and it was the only Malay song Ps Ryan knew how to sing. I had the privilege to play the guitar for them with Raymond. I tell you, the singers were so emo when they sang… the picture speaks a thousand words…
After our presentation, we continued eating while listening to speeches from different ones. We had a good and ‘good’ time listening to different people go up to sing karaoke. Calvin also went up to sing, he did a really good job, karaoke kaki mah! While he was singing, my good friend Jamie went up to give him a flower. Don’t let Ern Suey know ok? ;P
We wrapped up the night with a group photo outside the hall. I took a lot of photos myself, but some I cannot upload la… for my own collection :)
We then proceeded back to the hotel room where we freshened up and changed. Uncle James and Aunty Pat later greeted us in the room, they were very happy with the whole ceremony and dinner. They couldn’t stop thanking us but honestly it was our pleasure and felt no obligation or pressure to do all that we did for them. We were very happy that everything went beyond what they expected. Praise God, it’s only through Him that we could’ve achieved this. After our long goodbyes, we packed up and left the hotel to go to a house Aunty Pat prepared for us to stay the night. We didn’t want to stay in the hotel because the room we had was just next to the newly weds… plus we didn’t bring our earplugs. We wanted to dump Carol at the hotel and all the guys to stay at the house where we can have our pre-bachelor party for Ps Ryan… but my conscience kicked in and Carol didn’t want to be left alone there also la.. darn…
Anyway, we arrived at the house shortly and unloaded our stuff. I accompanied Carol to her room downstairs just to keep watch because we found out that there were two other male occupants in the house, they looked like construction workers and were not very friendly. The guys took the other rooms upstairs. After I made sure that Carol had locked all her doors and windows, I went upstairs to join the guys. We were actually too tired to party. Jeffery went out to meet his dad and bought back some satay, which is actually no match to the Ampang satay, but all of us were too tired to eat. I fell asleep watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony repeat...
Next morning, we got up, washed up, packed our stuff and left for breakfast at a very famous nasi dagang stall. But too bad, we arrived too late and all the nasi dagang were sold out. Nevertheless, we ate the other goodies that they still had, nasi minyak, nasi kerabu, ayam goring, ayam merah, and etc… As usual, we stuffed ourselves la… After breakfast, we went off to Teluk Chempedak and walked around the beach. I could tell you the story, but I’ll just let the photos below do the job for me…
On the way back, again everyone slept in my car until we reached the Termeloh R&R stop. The highway to Kuantan and back was really bad, the roads were so uneven... My car was practically bouncing on the road! By the time I sent everyone home and got home myself, it was about 4.30pm. I had a short rest before leaving again for cell group at 8pm. We had a great time at cell and after that we had our Sunday morning worship practice at 9.30pm. Guess who I saw there? My good friend Phoon Pei Teng! Yess, she’s back! For holidays only la, but it was really good to see her again. After practice, Carol went home to rest while I took the others along with Pei Teng for supper. Good time of catching up with her and showing the others the pics I took in Kuantan… So that’s all for our Kuantan trip story.
The next morning, we were in church by 8.15am. We had a good time praying with the other leaders and worship team members. Ps Victor spoke for our service and it was a powerful time! He spoke a message about failures… that every lasting success must be molded through heaps of failure. God allows setbacks to come into even out strongest areas so that we can be prepared to handle great success. Take the life of Joseph, just read through it in Genesis 37, 39, 40, 41. This is the account of Joseph’s life from the time where he arrogantly boast about his dreams, to the time he faced persecutions and setbacks, and in the end all that was to prepare him to be the man that he was destined to be. A lesson worth learning… Failures are not the end… True success can only be obtained when we learn how to handle failures… And there’s only 1 way to learn how to handle failure… TO EXPEREINCE IT FIRST HAND!
PROJECT REPORT~! I have not done anything to my car lately besides repairing my aircond. Found this really good aircond shop in PJ State which does a fantastic job with a superb price. I am in the midst of planning for the next upgrade which will be the base of all other major upgrades that I will be investing in the near future… Will provide you guys with more information when the time comes and when cash is sufficient.
Harvest Generation’s Second Anniversary is coming up soon in September! We’ll be having our anniversary service on the 7th of September 2008, with a very special guest speaker, Rev T.T. Quah. If you guys can come join us, it would be a great pleasure to serve you that day. Please do buzz me if you’re coming as we would need a head count because we’re catering lunch! It’s on the house!
That’s all I have for you all today, it’s gonna be a very exciting month ahead! For my next entry, I will write about Ps Ryan and Brenda’s wedding ceremony at Holiday Villa, Subang Jaya @ 30th August 2008. Stay tuned ya! Till then, take care and God Bless!
