~May Your Light Shine :D~

Friday, August 03, 2007

Alrite, I know I said I’ll blog daily but this post is a lil late cuz I spent 2 hours talking on the phone with my family. My resolution for this sem is to call home/friends more often and spend more time with people.

Now that I have gotten the excuses out of the way, here is today’s (or is it yesterday’s) post:

Initially intended to blog about the first day in Sydney, but a phone call made me change my mind. I shall tell you about the last Sunday I spent there instead. What happened then really reminded me that when we things go out of control, God is still sovereign. His ways and thoughts and truly higher than ours…

It was my third Sunday in Sydney and having been to the city campus of Hillsongs the previous Sunday, we planned to visit the hills campus just to have a feel of it. We even reserved seats on the shuttle bus that leaves from the city.

BUT I should have known better. The train station where we were staying nearby was undergoing maintenance works that weekend (I never heard of such things for our MRT in SG, I guess we perform maintenance at hours where the trains do not operate). Anyway, we caught a bus that took twice as long as the train would have if it was running but we still should have at least 10mins leeway. Let us not forget how regular buses can be and this one arrived about 5mins behind schedule. “That’s ok, we can still make it on time.” I thought. Well, we missed the shuttle and there was absolutely no way we could reach the hills in time and without having to spend a bomb. (Could someone from Sydney please explain why the bus services are more costly than the train when the train travels faster and way more punctual? The logic behind this eludes me.)

For some reason, which I now credit to PMS, I was incredibly upset that we missed the shuttle. Toni and Suria shrugged it off as no big deal and that we could just go for one of the 6 services at the city campus. However the more unaffected they seemed about not getting to go to the hills campus (where the action is all at, or at least seems that way), the more upset I became.

It was 10am and we headed to one of the many Sunday markets in the city. I was definitely not a good person to hang out with then. I am a person who wears her heart on her sleeve, so it was really obvious that I wasn’t happy. I was fuming and terribly incensed that I was so angry about such a small matter. As I did not want to do/say anything I might regret later on, I was very quiet and tensed as opposed to my chatty, gregarious self. Poor Toni and Suria bore the brunt of my bad mood, a real sorry to them and thanks for bearing with me. Retail therapy did not work cuz nothing caught my eye and a really rude stall owner who shooed both me and Suria away really dampened my mood further.

Sydney’s CBD is an awful lot bigger than Adelaide’s and it was a pretty long walk from Darling Harbor to Central station to catch the shuttle to the city campus. When we reached Central, we saw the shuttle just whizzed by. However, unlike the hills shuttle, the city shuttle ran non-stop between services (we weren’t so sure then, so we decided to just sit at the bus stop and wait, hoping the bus will come back to pick us up).

At the bus stop, we just sat to rest and then this lady came by and asked if this was where you waited for the bus to Hillsongs. We replied yes and she sat down next to us. I peeked a second glance at her and I found her vaguely familiar, and I had to ask her if I have met her before. Her first reaction was one of shock for she did not recognize me. However, I had a nagging feeling that I met her in China and she was even more surprised when I mentioned that. It took a couple more questions for us to finally determine that we have met before, last December when I went to Jinghong with my family.

The thing that amazes both of us is that we only spoke briefly in China, not more than 5 mins and I could recognize her after all this time. Also, she does not normally attend Hillsongs but as she was at the conference, she met someone from the church and was told to meet him at any of the 6 services on Sunday. So on one hand there was me who did not intend to visit the city campus that Sunday in the first place and on the other was her, who could have gone to a different service time or taken an earlier shuttle (we ended up 15mins late for service and came in just in time to sing the last few lines of Chris Tomlin’s Amazing Grace, which really shook me especially when we sang ‘my chains are gone, I’ve been set free. My God, my Saviour has ransomed me’, for I truly felt the chains of frustration and anger just fall off my shoulders. The song absolutely rocks btw, but that’s for another post). Seriously, the only way to call this is coincidence, also known as divine appointment.

Why do I say so? After the service, we ended up talking and she shared with us about her work in China. She told us that she wanted a quiet Sunday and was not really enthusiastic about talking with me initially. But thankfully I persisted (sometimes I really do have a thick-skin, all thanks to my dad) and from there she felt the Holy Spirit nudging her to invite Suria and myself to join her in her work.

Just before we left Sydney, she told us that after our meeting, she felt that she had to come to Adelaide and speak to the both of us again and let us know more about her work. She will be arriving next Saturday, and thanks to Toni, she may be able to get our church’s support. She was the one who called a couple of hours ago.

It is really funny how I used to want to stay away from whatever my dad is doing, and how now I may end up working in the same area as him. It is as though God brings me one full circle and this way I know that I am there not because my dad cajoled me into doing so. Rather, it will be because God has called me there and I am willing to obey.

I have always wanted to work in developing countries and ever since I came to Adelaide, God has been stirring my heart to do His work. However, I have never been able to go on a mission trip before, neither do I have a specific country in mind. I spoke to my parents about this issue and I know my dad is really happy about me wanting to do this. The opportunist in me is making me want to jump at this chance to be out there in the mission field. I cannot think of a better way for the opportunity to be presented to me than in the form of a miracle re-encounter. Still, it is important for me to seek God in this matter and not make decisions based solely on my own judgments or in Chinese -自作主张. See, I’m practicing my Mandarin already!

Lydea blogged at 12:25 AM

May your light shine...
in the darkness...