Nepal Mission

I will be soon heading off to Nepal for my mission trip. I will be there from Oct 28-Nov 10. So, I will be missing my dear wife for almost 2 weeks. This is would be my itinerary:

Wed (Oct 28) Arrival

Fri (Oct 30) Sara Children Home (Ps. Tej) = 33 childen

Sat (Oct 31) Ministry at Manohar Church (Kul) = 10am to 3pm (abt 80-90 members)

(I will be doing the session on the Basic Christianity with them)

Sun (Nov 1) ---same---

Mon (Nov 2) Devotion with children (about 190 to 230 children) = 7-8am

Tue (Nov 3) Visiting Naggakot

Wed (Nov 4) Departure for Nepalgunj

Thu (Nov5) Leadership Seminar = 8am – 5pm = about 50 leaders

( I will be doing the session using the gospel of Mark)

Fri (Nov 6) Nothing yet

Sat (Nov 7) Prem’s Church Baptism Picnic

Sun (Nov 8) Arrival at Kathmandu

Mon (Nov 9) Free

Tue (Nov 10) Departure for S’pore

Do pray for me so that I can speak clearly through His word and be an encourager to them in their Christian faith so that it will become stronger. I will be going there with a team consists of 4 persons. One is Jiang (translator), Lawrence (my friend), and 2 ladies.

STM Community Life

Sem 2 ends not long ago. I was so busy and I didn't have time to write any reflection on it. After the semester ends, I had to prepare things for my practical church before I moved to another church, SMACC (www.smacc.info) for my year end practical. After rested 2-3 days, I went straight to SMACC. Anyway, one important lesson I have learnt in STM during this 2nd Semester, 2009 is to live as a Christian in a community. In this Community, I have learnt to serve through loving the people. Throughout the time since last year, I have realised it was not easy and my love for them were really being tested.

Lecturers: In many ways, being more competent than me, they have always challenged me to be ready to be a competent full time pastor. Unfortunately, I realised some of them just talked only ...they are good academically, not really that pastorally(not being patience by walking alongside with the students). On the other hand, some are really pastoral but not academically competent (do not update their information on their disciplines- they still use the 1990s materials for their lecture). Some even preached and don't practice what they preached. Sometimes, their preachings are bad model eg. Generally, most of them are busy and difficult to spend times with us or to nurture us personally. I pity those students in Chinese department where they have to bear the incompetencies of the lecturers who were neither pastoral nor academic. Well comparing to the Westerners, perhaps, at least Malaysian lecturers would try to be friends with us and are more compassionate towards us. These are the mixture of the characteristics of the lecturers there that make me as a student, need to be patient with and be challenged to pray for.

Chinese students: Most of them speak Chinese and I find it difficult to mix with them due to language barrier. In some ways, they have their own certain style of thinking or culture where they sometimes, impose us to follow. At one stage, a Chinese student mad at me for not fulfilling my duties in the canteen. Because of my language barrier, I created misunderstandings and caused unnecessarily ill feelings.

English students: Some are slow thinkers and some are real genius. Somehow, it's rarely to see the genius ones would mix with those who are slow. They got their own circle of friends. Well, at least I know one who tries to mix with everyone and try to serve everyone as best as he can...(tatz admirable and humbling). Anyway, during the course of living together, somehow we would rub each other that cause unnecessary ill feelings again due to different personalities, expectations. Well, at least, I relate a little bit better than the Chinese students.

Caterer: This is the most challenging one for me. It has been challenging for me ...to love bad food. Coming from a home where good food is a must, swallowing the food here is not easy. Challenging the caterer even harder. Need lots of patience and courage....to makan the food there.

Administrators and Librarian: So far, they are the niciest person there and have no problems with. As long as I work according to their terms, they are generally happy with me.

Being patience and bearing with one another imperfections are the lesson I have learnt in STM. Living in a Community, it is not easy - one requires lots of listening, lots of bearing each other imperfections and lots of serving. I guess this is what church in progress is all about!

Dead Sea Scroll Singapore

I'm off to Singapore from Aug 28-30, that is starting from tomorrow! This is partly because me and my wife are going there for Dead Sea Scroll exhibition. On top of that, we will be catching up with some old friends. Hope it's going to be a blessed fun.

My Thesis - Part 2

Just manage to find a few images of enemies in the Psalms of Lament. I found there are very few. The images are as follow:

1) Lion - Ps. 7, 10,17,22,35,57,58

2) Dogs - Ps. 22, 59

3) Bulls - Ps. 22, 50

4) Pursuers - Ps 7, 35

5) Bloodthirsty man - Ps.5, 26,59

6) Adversaries - Ps. 17,27

Given these findings, this leaves me a few options of the possible narrower topics for my thesis:

1) Examine the image of "lions" as enemies in the Psalms of Lament - Since there are a no. of lament Psalmist like to use "lions" as their imagery of enemies, I think this would be a good option to think about.

2) Examine the images of lion, bulls, dogs as enemies in Ps.22 - In that particular psalm, they are 3 images were used to describe the Psalmists enemies. Perhaps this is another good option as I only need to focus on one passage rather than a few passages.

It looks like there are only 2 narrower topics I can think of for my thesis. Meanwhile, I think I probably need to research further how the Psalmists use each images of enemies in the lament psalms and perhaps, there could be more narrower topics I can consider. I hope I can finalise by end of this week so that by my reading week I can start my thesis.

My Thesis - Part 1

I have been browsing through in identifying the enemies in lament Psalms which is my thesis for my MDiv program. After making a rough chart over it, I find that the enemies are not as clearly spelt out by the lament psalms. There were images and general characteristics that described them but they are not specific enough. So, it leaves me a more hard work to guess who the enemies are. I wish I could finish this first step so that I can narrow down my topic on my thesis. Nevertheless, I have roughly thought a few possible narrower topics for my thesis:

1) Investigate the use of "How long" on the enemies in lament psalms.

2) Identifying enemies in the lament Psalms of David of book 1 from the Historical narrative.

3) Examine the images used of enemies in the lament Psalms of David Bk.1

4) Theology of enemies in the lament Psalms of David.

STM: 30th anniversary 2009

Today, STM held its 30th anniversary to commemorate their development since its inception. Unfortunately, as for me, I felt rather disappointed with the events apart from my bishop's message on pusuing godliness as the focus of our training and the cultural presentations during the dinner. The speeches and the testimonies were rather a concern to me. Testimonies were filled with what STM had done for them and speeches were filled with ambitious of promoting the expansion of STM infrastructure in future. It is seen as STM is the gospel answer to the Christian ministry to our local church. The STM culture, the spiritual formation formula in STM, the curriculums and the lecturers are the foundation to their local ministry. There was hardly mentioned about "Christ" or even "gospel" or even "the Word" that transformed their lives through STM. In fact, I have learnt that it was the "spiritual formation" that they experienced in STM that shaped their lives. This tells me about the product that STM produced after 30 years. There was nothing to do with "Christ" or even "His word". Yet, STM still claim their tradition of evangelicalism. I'm concerned, as being an evangelical, God's word and Christ centeredness through His Spirit are the ones that shape our Christian faith. There was nothing on that being the focus. It was more about the theological college and its education that shaped their Christian formation. This is not surprising, as I look at the curriculum that I am going through, is filled with "rojak" rather than His word being depended confidently to shape our Christian lives. Hmm...perhaps pietism movement sounds like the focus of STM rather than evangelicalism.

Reflecting on this, I realise I find myself not enough time for the most important task that is, to think biblically. My time of studying is taken up by more urgent needs - knowing about Malaysian politics, Malaysian Church History and practical skills in pastoral ministry (homiletics). With juggling the urgent demands, I hardly had time to reflect biblically with depth. Thus, I'm quite worried about myself that I may not know His word enough that I'm ill equipped to train my future fellow Christians to be word centered or Christ centered. Even today, when I argued with my fellow Christians, I find myself not able to explain exegetically from the bible to defend my argument.

The future of STM is at stake. I'm not sure whether STM will be evangelical anymore. Today, my OT lecturer shared to me about his frustrations in trusting human. He then shared that whether you stand on the liberal side or evangelical side, this is one form of trusting human. I wonder which part of evangelicalism that he's not agreeing about or perhaps it was just his experiences of trusting the wrong person that bring evangelicalism an issue. Honestly, how I wish I have the money and I could go to Moore theological college for my theological studies. Although many said it is a conservative college, their approach at least is trying their best to be faithful to the Word. Looking at all the graduates from Moore, their knowledge on God's word and practising them are undoubtly competent. Hai..well as for now, just be content what I have, perhaps may try to challenge the STM to think further to improve their training.

Marching Jericho wall 700 times!

I have felt really sad for the past few days. I jave been wondering: Will God call us to march 700 times around Jericho on the 7th day instead of 7 times. Will He do that to us ? ?? Is that really lack of faith on us ?? :( :(