over the bridges and the rivers, our butts hurts with evry single bump. seriously, the roads were so rocky. well i had to take photos while the sabahans were playing some sort of number fingers game. they played it so many times thru out the whole trip but i still dun get it. haha. well we travelled for a good 20 minutes, i think, where we reached the church, SIB Manggin.
its quite a cute church. one main door in the middle and one door on the side. again, we were greeted by the pengerusi or the pastor (i can’t remember). then he led us to our house to stay. just a tiny slope down from the church. the place was completely wat u wud have to pay if u went to a resort offering the same type of accomadation. one small room to sleep and the kitchen was directly at the other end of the living room. there were coconuts there 2. the toilet was a little shack outside of the house. the walls were made of zinc, one hole in the middle of the roof, four planks to make a hole on the ground, and thats it. thats the toilet. can’t complain since it wasn’t dirty. believe me, if i say a toilet is dirty, it is dirty. all this is thanks to 5 years of training in my school. u wudnt want to go to my school toilet. even this toilet in the interior beats my school flat. anyways, just another slope down is the river.
ahh….the river…. it was so relaxing. the water is so clear u can even see the rocks and sand at the bottom. i tell u, penang has lost this. where else can we find this untapped source?
and so we went to the church to do our rehersal. same thing as the last time so i wont say much abt it. after our rehersal we went back to the house to get our stuff needed for bathing. some kids were there and they agreed to follow us after striking friendship with us. at the river, all four of us were going “ahh! rocks! cold water!” while the kids just hopped from one rock to another. amazing. the guys took the upper stream while the girls went further down. we changed into our sarong and thats where i got my nickname from a little girl, “Si Mata Kecil”. izzit true? oh and becoz she could’nt really say li mei, she decieded to call me “mee” or “mee goreng”. funny.
after bathing in the clear, cool, clean, cold, and did i mention clear? water, we went up to get ready for ministry. the girls got to use the small room first then the guys. ah… so refreshing…. and we left for the church.
same thing. greet the ppl. talk to the kids. and then they pulled me to the back of the church to show me their dance for christmas last year. and they din’t even have a torchlight! they just went up to the stage, grabbed the tamborines there, went to the back, and sent a representative to get me! wow! the boldness man. no wonder Jesus said faith of a child. not being scared at all when u know u have protection. but then i had to cut short their performance halfway coz service started d.
service went as it is. we did the blinded drama and testimonies as usual. then bernice’s group, which is the group i’m in, did children ministry. we sent the kids off to our humble house to begin.
this was how we did it. bernice started off with a simple prayer, followed by nat doing games. he did follow the leader or ikut pengetua. i just kept the kids in the small room to hide em knowing who’s the leader. then it was worship. i was in charge and with bernice playing the guitar, we did 2 songs, anak monyet and bahasa cintaMu. since it was kinda my first or second time worship leading (if u wanna count the time in rkc where the switchbox exploded which btw bernice, i still think it was God telling me something), i didn’t really did a good job. then kevin took over and he did Bible storytelling. Bible story was abt the three friends of Daniel who did not bow down to the statue King Nebucanazaar made. he did a good job and the kids really liked it. and so it was time for craft. bernice, the most artful one with her hands, handled it 2. our craft was a paper fire, stuck on with a lidi stick. all the kids had to do was colour the fire and write the memory verse on it. we kept looking out to the church and realised that the adults were finishing so we hurried the kids up. bernice went into overdrive and taped all the stickers and scotch tape so fast i wonder whether her eyes went still anot. we finally gave the sweets to the kids and sent them off to their waiting parents outside the house. they thanked us, we thanked them. and we went back to the church to meet up with the others.
when we got back it was about empty. but there were still some ppl there so we just hung around and talked to them. suddeny bernice called for her team to come for a debrief. and so the verdict was… we cud be better. games was a bit too long, worship was super long, but overall it was ok. then we realised, we didn’t close in prayer! so we just said we have to buck up next time and we miggled around with the ppl. ps tom took out his laptop and showed the ppl our SYM video. after more talking, we left for home…..
well at least a place to relax and freely talk in english. u see, in this mission trip, when around the ppl there we must speak only bm so being able to speack english freely is a very big bonus. so we had our debrief, ate our noodles and the food that the ibu ibu there cooked for us, ps tom went for a midnight dip in the river with some of the guys, and we all went to bed.
the next morning, i woke up 1 hour earlier coz i really needed to use the toilet. and since ps tom said going to the toilet requires a partner, i thanked God that bernice also woke up. coming out of the room was kinda hard becoz teh guys were all sleeping everywhere on the floor in the living room. wats worse? kevin was sleeping directly in front of the door. somehow we managed to get out of the house. i went to the shack and bernice was my lookout buddy (thanks girl!) then it was time for every1 to get up.
we all went to the river again to freshen up and then we went back to the house for devotion. after that we all relaxed until 12 noon. the sabahans were all confirming the ppl coming for their graduation while the rest tried to sleep in the more and more hot house. u can sweat while lying down. but it was good coz we get to sweat all the toxics out of our body.
remember the coconuts? yeah ps said we can only open them at 12 noon. and thats what we did then. we were all so thirsty that we all told nat to quickly open them. since there was 12 of us, nat had to open 12. man did those coconuts have water. super alot man. there are more stories abt the coconuts but since i’m not too sure abt them i’m not gonna write abt it.
and so we packed up and went to the church to wait for our transport. we were told that our transport wud arrive around…i forgot ;p so while waiting, the kids gave some notes to some of us and we prayed for the church and went to do our stuff. while some of them played with the guitar, some just talked and played with the kids. pretty soon it ended up with everyone sleeping while yi lin taught the kids how to dance while playing the tamborine and me showing the other kids the photos that we took at our previous location while uploading them into ps tom’s laptop. at around 3.30pm, our transport arrived.
we all lined up outside the church, and one by one ps tom arranged our bags in the van while we said our final goodbyes to the kids. one of them kept saying,” janganlah pergi…” but we had to, as much as we din’t like to. after everything was set, we all went off to kampung number 3.

yes it's me
9:52 AM