After our Christmas weekend, I went to Pulau Ubin after so many years with David, Lee, Say Ann and my family. It was a great time to wind down after all the hardwork the many weeks before. Also cleaned up my study room to make space for May Ann who’s starting Primary 1 next year . Later had a chance to sit down to listen to a CD I bought from a coffee shop owner in Chieng Mai early this year. He who used to be full time musician but then decided to settle down and lead a slower and more virtuous life. The CD burned on the CDR doesn't have a proper cover. I don’t even remember his name, but I have a photo of him and his artwork he did on the sleeve of the CD.



Because the songs are sung in Thai, I didn’t understand the words of the songs but having spoken to the man, met his family and our kids played and shared ice-cream with his, I thoroughly enjoyed the music and the music connected to me and meant something regardless of the short encounter we had.



A lot of what we do in Children Church is not understood. Sometimes we may not even communicate as clearly as we want to. As we work on those things, we have to know that if the children knows us and have a relationship with us, the work that we do, things that we say will have a special meaning. Christmas is not about a programme, it is about the special relationship God created us to have with the children in our ministry. God did not call us just to do a great programme for children but to disciple them and influence towards serving Christ and I don’t know any other way to disciple other than to talk to them, to know them and to show them what God has shown us. The best gift we can give them is our TIME. We believe God will do a good work in them as we are faithful in the ministry.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you to all the volunteers and helpers for making Christmas happen. We never believe that kids should have anything less, we give our best in the programming too. What a wonderful Christmas it was with so many kids turning up that we had to scramble to find more gifts to give to the children. In the end everything fell into place and the seeds have been sowed.

We hope and prayed that these children who were so eager to know & receive Christ, will come back next week for more. The last verse of our theme song, Sincat sings " ... so don't be a chicken, come on sail with me ! " ... and we hope the children will sail their life journey with us and with God too.

posted by Hiew Hong Teck  # 10:28 AM Thursday, December 29, 2005