Last night, Zeling messaged me to ask me to help him out with a skit today, which was supposed to be part of the lesson. I have no idea why he asked me, because the first people that come to mind when I think about skits will be Mao and Ben. They’re good! I’m hopeless when it comes to things like these, but I ended up helping him anyway. Why? I don’t know either.

At 9.45 this morning, we were supposed to head down to the basement to practice. I happened to meet Zeling at the lift, and he told me that he brought a prop. I can’t remember what exactly it was that he said, but something sounded suspicious. When we got down to the basement, he then proceeded to pull out a knife from his bag. EH! It was a pretty big one too. Imagine if he got stopped for a security check at the train station! If the security guard finds the knife in his bag… that would be bad! Anyway, Jireh got the honours of getting to hold the knife throughout the skit. As a loanshark. (It’s kind of weird putting him and loanshark together, heh.)

For some reason, the weekend seems to have passed really quickly. I wouldn’t mind having another day to rest at home!

Today was En Yi and his sister’s (En Ning) last day with us in church. They’re going to leave for Canada this week, and even though I’m not close to them, I just have this feeling that I’ll sort of miss them. More so for En Yi, because I taught him in sunday school last year. He was one of those quiet ones in class, but very cooperative and nice to have around. Is this how teachers feel when they see their students leave or graduate? In any case, I hope that they’ll settle well in their new environment, and perhaps we’ll meet again someday.

Having taught sunday school for one and a half years, I feel that my students have a special place in my heart. It makes me happy when I see them growing in God’s words. When I see them willing to participate in class and being cooperative. Especially this year’s class. I think this sec one batch is quite different from the previous ones, and I’m really glad to see them participating and contributing. Even though they can get rowdy at times and they do get distracted easily. It’s such a blessing to be able to teach them this year.

I don’t know why, but my burden so far has been with the youths. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that my days in the youth fellowship were some the happiest and most memorable ones I’ve had to far. To be able to meet a group of people, get to know them and serve together with them… even though we had to manage our studies (especially during the O and A level years), I was really happy while working together. I’ve learnt and gained a lot during those years, and I just hope that the younger ones will be able to have this sort of experience too. 6 years, when you look back, is really really short, and once gone, you can never have this period of your life back again. I know, that at least for now, this is where I’d like to serve, and as long as I’m given an opportunity to, I’ll gladly do it. It’s so much a part of my life that I think I’ll feel empty if I’m not teaching.

You know, someone once said that being a teacher isn’t all that great. No matter how much you care for your students, one day they’ll leave, and you’ll never know if you’ll see them again. You’re just left behind with those memories of them. (Ok, that was from Hachikuro.) “Are teachers like school ghosts who can’t even graduate?” I wonder.

On friday night I was feeling pretty stressed. Partly because of the amount of school work that has been piling up, and partly because I had to teach sunday school today. Having been teaching for slightly more than a year, I don’t feel as nervous having to explain things to the students as before, but there are times when I look at the topic to be taught for the week and I panic because I have no idea how am I going to bring the message across to the students. Especially when they’re only 12/13, so there are things that you have to simplify a little so that they can understand. Today’s lesson was one of those. The lesson was supposed to be taken from Romans 9, and frankly speaking, Romans is one book which I find difficult to fully understand and explain. It took me a few rounds of reading before I understood the gist of the passage and the aim of the lesson, and even after that, I really had no idea where to start from and how to explain things to the students. But praise God, the lesson went ok even though it wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped.

There are times when I feel a bit down after taking a sunday school lesson because the students don’t appear as though they fully understand what I was trying to explain. Whether they actually did or not, I really am not too sure. But today I was reminded that I shouldn’t be dejected just because I don’t see any results. Perhaps it may take years, or tens of people to explain a certain passage or concept to them before they somewhat understand it. But if every one give up because they don’t see any results of what they’re doing, then what will happen? It’s all in God’s plan. :)

Whenever I face tough situations like these, I am reminded that my abilities and knowledge are so little. That I just can’t do so many things on my own. It is because of God working though me that I am still here today, doing the things that I do. Like that Mrs Tham once told us, Christian stands for “without CHRIST, I Am Nothing”. How true.

PS: Girls I’ll reply your emails soon!

Yesterday’s communications tutorial was about interviews, and I think I’m really not very good at it. I just wanted to laugh throughout the whole thing! Perhaps it because we were interviewing our peers, and I know that it’s just a mock interview sort of thing. In any case, the interview questions weren’t easy to tackle! I’ve never gone for a really formal interview before, and I wonder how that will be like…

We seem to get randomly grouped pretty often in communications class. I’m not strongly against that of course, but given a choice, I will always choose to work with people I know. Even until now it takes me a while before I get used to working in a group with people I don’t know. I feel very self-conscious when I first work together with new people, and I always wonder if something I said sounds very silly. And because of that sometimes I end up not speaking up often. But after a while I feel a lot more comfortable, like with the people in the group I did the case study with. I should really learn to become more comfortable around people I don’t know that well, because there will be a lot more occasions where I have to work with them.

I’m teaching during sunday school again tomorrow, and both of my partners have abandoned me are not around. It’s the second time (first time being last year) where none of my partners around and I have to take the lesson alone. Hopefully everything goes fine, and the guys won’t be too rowdy. I’m glad that my class isn’t one of the very quiet ones, because I’m already a quiet person myself. I don’t want to be the only one talking throughout the whole hour! It’s nice that they’re asking questions as well, even though some of these aren’t easy to answer. Must go and look through the lesson plan for tomorrow again later.

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