Hands, And The New Zealand Trip

The Cambodian mission team met today at the nursery room. Uncle Peter began to brief us regarding the schedule and the places that we will be going during our stay there. I guess there was a huge relief among the members in the team when we realised that the area that we were going was very far away from Thai-Cambodian border conflicts since we will be travelling around the central region of the country. However having said that, it would also mean that we would be too far away from Siem Reap and guess what, Angkor Wat's IN THAT REGION!!!

Darn it.

Haha what am I talking about? The main focus of this trip is to reach out to the youth over there and to bring Genuine Hope to their generation. Anyway, the mission team decided to prepare skits and games for the children and the youth during our visit to the three churches in Kampong Speu. I was part of the team preparing the skits, and our skit is titled "Hands". Now this is a skit that was last seen in Malan Road at the old SAJC campus a few years back, so when when we were told to prepare the skit, only Shirley Sim and I could roughly recall the fundamental actions and movement that were used in the skit. Haha suprising that a guy who was once called "Dory" due to his forgetfulness could actually remember something that took place long ago!

Lights, Camera and action time :)

The people involved in the skit were Wen Zheng, Jingying, Tedric, Shirley and myself with Brenda as the narrator of the skit. We had a blast of fun during the rehearsals, trying out all sorts of different ways to bring out the story of the skit! It was particulary funny to see Tedric trying to look as if he was in a lot of pain and suffering during his scenes since his facial expression were a mixture of pain and laughter, but you gotta give thumbs up to the guy, because he brings that sort of comical feeling to the skit instead making it seem so serious. Having said that, I heard that the cambodians like comedies, so I guess that's a plus point to the skit. We were having so much fun rehearsing that we completely forgot about the cambodian translator that was involved in the skit as well! All the time we have been taking ques from the narrating by Brenda that we forgot that her narrating will be followed by a cambodian translation!

Uh oh.

The team decided to rehearse this time with the inclusion of the Cambodian "translation" by Jeremy. For the first few attempts, all of us had the inclination to act our roles immediately after the English Narration and we tend to forget about the Cambodian translation part. Thankfully, after a few more attempts, we were doing a much better job at acting out our roles. I guess that was probably due to the fact that we were all serious about doing the skit properly and yet we could also have so much fun enjoying the whole process!

After the meeting was over, we had a quick lunch, and it was off to Cell Group. The guys, particulary Nat, had a really huge reaction when I was telling them about extending my service time to go New Zealand. "Jerome, you've got to be crazy to even be able to think about doing such a thing! I wouldn't mind subsidising your trip to go there some day, but you got to be really crazy thinking about extending for 1 FRIGGING month just to go NZ!" was one of the many comments( or should I really say criticism?) that I received from Nat. Is it really so bad a decision? I'm really thinking about it right now, and I'm supposed to give an answer to my superiors on wednesday. I mean, who know when I would have the next opportunity to go to a country filled with such beautiful sceneries? Maybe never, and that's why it's really bugging me because on one hand it's really an exciting opportunity to be able to go to that country and possibly have a unique experience over there, but yet on the other hand everyone is telling me not to go!

I really need a tie breaker on this issue, otherwise my mind's gonna go bonkers and EXPLODE!! Haha, somebody help me on this one.

It's gonna be Vincent's Baptism tomorrow! Kudos to you dude, I'm gonna be there tomorrow with the Cell Group in the afternoon to show my support for you :)