Christmas Projekt 2007

From the 19th of December until yesterday the 25th, I was involved with a combined effort of church members to bring the gospel's version of Christmas to our community this year. We kicked start with hospital visits at General Hospital, followed by two visits to two different orphanages and next was getting involved with carolling in our neighhourhood. Mind you, my neighbourhood isn't a housing area, we carolled at the hawker centres and smack in the middle of the mamak stalls. Not to mention carolling in the middle of my apartment's swimming pool area so that all the people in my area could hear us singing and proclaiming the Saviour's name. We also lit candles and did a carolling walk around our area - Section 2 - and sang all the way as we made a journey from one end to another end. Moreover, we had Christmas Nites on the 23rd, 24th and 25th. We had Acapella singing, band performance, skit, song presentation and games that night. At the very end we ended with talking about the gospel and sharing it to our friends that we'd invited that night. Also throughout the week, there was sports - archery, basketball, bowling and badminton as well.

Of course there were a lot of behind the scenes preparations that we had to do prior our Christmas Projekt week. We baked thousands of cookies, literally thousands!!! We put the cookies into gold/silver gift bags. Inside the bags we placed the cookies, some wafers, a booklet of testimonies from our church on God's blessings and a card with Bible verses in Mandarin/English for our friends/community to read. Not to mention preparing our throats to sing and practising hard our guitar skills and acting skills. For me, I had to prepare a story on the birth of Jesus Christ in BAHASA... pengsan aku (I faint!) One of my friends had to wear a Santa suit for story telling at one of the orphanages. The acapella team had to swear off eating oily food, drinking cold water, eating ice cream etc etc for the sake of their performance! We sacrificed many things for this project. Not to mention weeks of fasting and prayer together before the actual week started...

In the midst of it, God sustained us with His strength and anointing. We would end each day during that week feeling tired but wake up the next day strong and ready for another day of activities. We prayed for the sick, we played with children, we prayed for the youth at the orphanages, we packed hundreds and hundreds of gift bags, we joined in sports and ended up with a bit bruises here and there... God still sustained us!

All glory be to Jesus Christ! I don't know yet the number of people who have made a decision to follow Jesus but I've heard testimonies of people getting healed in the hospitals, a gangster in the hospital confronted by conviction from God and cried, children full of hate and hurt who turned peaceful after a prayer... God, so many of Your workings are among us even as we set our hearts to minister! Thank You, Jesus! Christmas isn't about gifts, it's about telling the world about You! Please use us more in 2008, God.

Thank You, Jesus.