Thursday, February 14, 2008

I want to be refine..

REFINER

These [trials] have come so that your faith—
of greater worth than gold,
which perishes even though refined by fire—
may be proved genuine and may result in praise.
1 Peter 1:7


FROM THE FATHER'S HEART
My child, if I never allowed your faith to be tested, and if I never turned up the heat, how would you experience My deliverance? Would you settle for a dull finish, or would you rather reflect My light? Hold My hand tightly. We’ll walk through the fire together.

A GRATEFUL RESPONSE
Who wants to go through the fire, Lord? Yet, even in the hottest flames, You are with me. Sometimes it hurts when the outside layers are burned away. And just when I think I can stand it no longer, I see gold, Lord. I praise You for what I am becoming in Jesus. Thank You for being my refiner.

SIMPLE TRUTH

Whatever comes my way has already passed God’s inspection.

Will you be my Valentine?

I like the artistic class I am taking.
Seriously made us reflect on our personal artistic autobiography.
Today, in class, we had to compose a song.I made a silly Valentine song with another of my classmate. My friend said the song seemed to be depicting what I am going through...I guess sooo...So here is a revise version of "My Bonnie" Lyrics inspiration: We were supposed to include the few candies which have words imprinted on them.

My lover boy, send me an email
My lover boy,said he missed me
My lover boy, asked if I love him
I said yes of course,I love you
Hug me and kiss me
When will I ever see you again?
Hug me and kiss me and
Only you be in my heart.


So i came back and sang eagerly my new composed song to my lover boy and on top of that I sent him two links: Praying through the deeper issues of lifeand How husband can inspire romance in the marriage which i thought were good.

These were my Valentine gifts for him.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

If you have realized.....

that i have not posted a lot of my pictures ..that's because our camera was down and it was time to get a new one. Well,trying to search for a new one because I really need one to take all the pictures of the classrooms which I have visited.Did I tell you the sweetest thing over this weekend was the children from MSC was so welcoming and loving to me even though I have not seen them from my last visit to the class? L ,my 5 year old who had slight physical delay came up to me and asked if I was sick. I was shocked that she knew and reckoned that the cooperating teacher has done a great job in keeping the kids in touch with me.She gave me a hug and said that she was sick and hoped that I was well. Then she went on and told me that she was sick but she still came to school. I was embarrassed. After a while, she came up to me and gave me another hug again, and said she wanted to invite me to her bday. I was so touched. Coz I had not seem this class for like one month and they still remember me!!!
Plus, A.,F.,and D. were really such sweet children, sharing their life with me.You know what, it is always interesting to talk to children coz u can never underestimate how much they have known at such a young age.One child said," I had no daddy but I had two mummies," . Another child said," We are not from the same father. She is my step sister. The third child said," I am Chinese even though my parents are Caucasions and American,"The fourth child said," I have a lot of play dates with my mother but I had very little with my dad. I only went to his house on weekends. i wish I had more time with him," It might struck you for a second if you are not prepared but when such statements came across, you must be quick to respond that all these differences are accepted in the classroom and that they would still be love and accepted by the teacher. That's the whole thing about accepting diversity is all about, accepting children of dfferent backgrounds, colors,social economic class, gender ,race and special needs and allowing them to feel integrated and be part of the classroom.They are all perfect in our eyes,When they told you such things, these information added to your pool of knowledge of finding ways of devising better instructional methods and designing curriculum taking into the context of their social cultural background.

With such a key important piece in mind, today's outreach in Patterson( a building across the local jail) with the Hispanic and African American kids made me want to read up more about them. I went for Hannah;s mission for the first day and I would be going on a regular basis to spend some time fellowshiping with them. Honestly, I am not sure of their family backgrounds but just culturally, i realized I have a bit of barrier initially of approaching them especially when I have known that they might be from low income families and I needed to be sensitive to it. But during the praise session, guess what, I told myself that I have to remove my" color lenss" and just be initiative and positive with them. They turned out to be such sweet children,seriously!! I pray god will use me to help children in anyway HE wants me to do,especially children with special needs and low income family. It just warmed my heart,knowing that their lives will have beautiful memories of having someone caring and loving them and impacting the way they see this world.

CNY 2008 : Year of the Mickey mouse

I realized I have grown to be so much dependent on him over the past few years that his absence do make such a huge difference to my life. As much as I am super busy with my schedule, there were times when I thought if it was nice to have him around.On friday, i can't believe I felt so accomplish by crossing out my checklist. After student teaching in the MSC,I went to Cathedral Parkway to do grocery shopping at West side and then went to the bank and did my check deposits.After which I went back to my room, did some reading,went to the gym in the midst of the heavy rain and had a great workout. I felt so great at the end of the day. I wondered when was the last time I had been so independent. I guess it was about 1.5 years ago before we were married. Working out was great for me especially I had not touch the gym for the last half a year .My new fitness schedule is out. I am going to sign out for pilates class,swim once a week and hit the gym once a week, all in all three times per week of exercise.

On top of that, a lot of baking and cooking with the fellow singaporeans. In fact, we just had our CNY celebration just now. It was fun. We did silly stuff competing to find positive stuff to say during "lao yu shen," ,ate Singaporean food and found someone who graduated from Harvard who was as passionate as me in ECCE.So we went on chatting hours and hours on early childhood eduation which made me felt so fired up.

And that explained why I am so awoke at this late hour typing this entry.There were so many things to give thanks for this week. Truely blessed to have such great support while he is gone and god revealing to me little encouragements in this period of uncertainty. Just a while ago, he threw me the verse from 1 thessolanian 1:3-10. I was encouraged by them that they kept their faith in times of trouble and rejoice in the holy spirit which inturn become an encouragement to others.I must start believing even more firmly that all these things will turn out to be good.