re:connect

time for me to reconnect to my blogging time :)
Man, it's been a while since i've blogged. and i've decided to drop the formal language and just type whatever comes to mind.

I guess i shall share about my TC serving experience. Honestly, it was great. We had our very first TC training back in october, i think. and when i got there, i had NO friends besides arthur and 2 guys from my church . it was so sad. but it was great to see so many young people working for God :) So arthur and i decided on our name to be FISH cause of jonah and all. it was good. WE honestly didnt do anything til like mid feburary. And then it got really hectic. There was schedules to fill, games to think of, banner and team gears to make, cheer ideas to brainstorm... so much work. I honestly didnt want to do all of it, and i actually started to think if i should've signed up for this during gr 12. I already had so much to do for school and church. It got pretty crazy. I pushed most of the things back until the last weekend. AFter our sleepover, on the saturday, i spent ALL day making the team gear, our little "arm bands". it was hard, man! the stupid fabric was hard to cut and i had to cut every single piece one by one. that's 4 letters per person, and we made 30 of these arm bands. so that's 120 letters that i had to cut... it took me a long long long time. and gluing it was hard too cause it was flimsy and sticky and gross. But hey, i got it done. and it looked okay :) wohoo! Let's just say that as i glued, i watched two whole movies. JUST FOR GLUING! wow.

Anyway, the actual TC days were amazing. at 8:45am, i told arthur "omgsh, TC is in 15 minutes" and we had our little panic moment. haha. But everything was going pretty well! our banner looked AWESOME, our team gear was done, our coaches were encouraging. The energy filled the room. IT was great :) Then we started meeting our team people in the sanctuary. I was kinda awkward, cause i didnt know if i was supposed to make conversation or not. so it was pretty "hey.. team fish? yay!" sorta thing. It was good. the worship was good, the drama was great. This year, everythign ran so smoothly. Our team was actually really good, no one was those cool kids that were "too cool to listen". EVeryone got along well, and i felt so good. I felt pretty prepared and everything was well. We didn't win our first game for rec. I think that's when i started to get a bit down. But hey, it's just a game, right? I think eventually i realized that winning's not e verything, and then i really got to understand WHY we're playing these games. We're not playing to win, we're playing to build teamwork and friendships. That strike me pretty hard. I think from then on i had a totally different way of looking at my team. Sure, we sucked at some games, but everyone had fun. :) And our cheer kinda sucked cause we only practised a few times and no one would memorize the words, but who cares? It doesn't matter. AT the end of the day, i was already sounding like a man. I was half dead. I went up to the altar call and helped with the coaching afterwards. I really enjoyed it because it was an all girls group and we were just sharing how to rededicate ourselves to God. I realized that y'know, everyone of us are going through the same thing. They were saying somthing bout how church seems to be more like a ritual than faith, and how everything's the same everyweek. And in the end, i think we really got down to WHY we go to church, and WHY we serve. It really depends on our hearts and our motives for serving. the coach also said that it's okay to doze off during sermons, cause we're all humans, but as long as you let God speak to your heart, that's all that matters. I think that's really important.
Where is your heart? Why do you need to connect with God? I really liked the bible study. "Apart from Me, you can do NOTHING." Y'know, in this world, there's so many ways for us to pretend and even lie to ourselves and serve with the wrong purpose. But apart from God, we will not bear fruit. It was a pretty hard passage to "teach", cause i'm still trying to grasp the whole idea of this and follow through.

I'm writing too much. I dont even know what my point of this blog is anymore. But yes, after the second day, i totally lost my voice. I try to speak, but i couldn't. It was pretty bad. But i learned to be quiet and listen. Listen to others, listen to God. I was asking God to help me get my voice back so much cause i couldn't stand being so quiet; having things to say but can't. IT was pretty difficult. But it's also important to understand that if you keep blabbling on and on, you will never listen. Learn to listen and absorb yourself in God. :) During worship on the last day, i was pretty much just standing there half the time, feeling everyone praising God's name. It was pretty awesome. God was at work in TC, and you could totally feel hearts pouring out to Him. It was quiet the sight. But let's pray that this "TC high" isn't just a high, but the start of many Christian lives.

I think the followup work will be hard. Cause yes, it is "werid" to jump around and sing praises to God in our fellowship when we only have liek 10 people. But does it really matter? Why are you jumping and screaming? Cause everyone else was? Or was your heart pointed to God and just wanted to sing of how GREAT he is? And now that we know we're dumb, ugly, stupid sheep, what's next? How do we live our lives to be RED LETTER Christians? I really like that. I think we shoudl start something, guys ;)

more to come later.

I think everyone should blog on their TC experience :) I know there's so much that you wanna share. or questions to ask. Feel free. It's easier to blog than to ask in real life, right? Or ask in real life, i like that too. :)Dont be afraid.

--a.