Welcome To Church Party!

A few weeks ago, Hillsong Church had an event called "Welcome to Church Party". Well, it was basically a party for newcomers to church and also College. So on a cold winters night, I walked to church at 7:15pm to attend this party. At the entrance we had to register and give our names and info, you know the basic stuff. Being a Malaysian, I arrived 30 minutes after the party has started, so by the time I got there the foyer was already packed.

Good thing there was still food. Hehe, I kinda went for the food because I haven't had dinner yet la. Anyway there were some college students helping out to carry trays around and serve people food. It was just some finger food like pies and spring rolls. They had some desserts also like some fruit tarts and chocolate tarts. So fattening...

After filling our stomachs, me and some friends went home around 9:30pm. It was a fun night that ended early. I'm a good girl, I go home and sleep early. Hehe, my parents read my blog so I must blog carefully. Lolz~



You can see how packed it was inside by the length of the coffee line. Yeap, it's long and the Aussies love their coffee.



They set the foyer up like a small party kinda thing, so we had our own Hillsong live band jazzing up the place. They used the resource centre as the stage. Haha.




This is the drummer again, Gabriel Kelly. If you've seen my previous post of "Elevate", you would have seen him in one of the pictures.





This is our Senior Pastor (I think la..) Joel A'Bell. He was standing on the juice bar and giving some announcements. He was introducing and thanking some of the Hillsong staff and all. After he was done, we watched some powerpoint about Hillsong church.



This was the powerpoint they put up. It just kinda summarized all the different areas of church like City Care, Sisterhood, Powerhouse, etc..



We were sitting on the cold tile floor watching the powerpoint.

Everyday as I walk home, I pass through this tiny water fountain. But tonight, the Brazilians wanted to take some pictures. So these are my small bunch of friends. The 2 girls beside me are the Brazilians Natalie and Karin. The 3 guys behind are Florian, Sung, and Moritz. Florian and Moritz are the Germans and Sung is Korean.

A New Passion..

One sunday morning, I found myself lazing on my bed and flipping through a cook book. Haha, unbelievable man that I'm reading cook books when I'm free. I read through one recipe and thought to myself," Hmm, looks pretty easy, so should be okay wan la.." So I went to Coles and bought my ingredients and went home. Hehe...

First time cooking a new dish and following recipe from a cook book somemore. Really exciting la!! Quickly made my way home and started preparing the ingredients like those cooking shows. I chopped some onions, and green capsicum/green pepper and put all into separate bowls. Haha really like cooking show. I also opened a can of pineapples and cut some pork into bite-sizes. So far can anyone guess what dish am I making?

*20 minutes passed*

I can smell the aroma of fried pork (big hint for those guessing) in the air. I pour some "secret" sauce on the pork together with the pineapple, green capsicum, & onion. Haha so obvious what dish I'm making.. Anyway now is the time to reveal the secret dish!!

Taddaaaaaaaa...........................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Curtains draw back*

It is SWEET & SOUR PORK!!!!!!!!!!! ~ding ding ding~

Hehe.. Not bad for first time la okay?? Enjoy the pictures.. They're lookin' good...

Wanna see my cooking??

Hihi!! I know you all sure very shocked that I can cook something edible la. Haha, I am surprised myself also. For the past one month I've been here, I had managed to cook dinner and still am alive and well. So I guess the food is fine. Haha. Here are some photos of the dinner we made for Uncle Stephen and Aunty Heidi when they came over to our place. When I come back to Malaysia in December, who wants to try my cooking??

Taddaa~!! Looks good rite?? Let me tell u what was on the menu. On both sides there are salads made of lettuce, corn, carrots, & tomatoes (so healthy you know.. I make wan!!) From the left, there is minced pork with toufu (yummy.. :p I make wan!!) the chicken in the middle is bought from Coles, the chicken on the top (made by my sis) is potatoes with chicken in soy sauce and lastly the beef & broccoli (I make wan!!)

Chefs posing with the nice, hot and steamy food. Jealous le!!

Closer view on the goodies.. The corn is super sweet because I added butter and salt.. Hehe so pro le..

Our guests are very happy~!! Both thumbs up!

Hillsong Elevate!!

Last Thursday, the Worship & Creative Arts (WACA) students were required to attend this night conference thingy. It's called "Elevate" and it was held at the Hills Campus. So, after a tiring day of classes, we had to go for Elevate and pay 5 Aussie dollars for the 45 minute bus ride to Hills. Honestly, Elevate was really fun!! Hoho, Joel Houston, Reuben Morgan, and JD were there, but Marty Sampson was not.


Anyway, the main purpose of Elevate was to briefly tell us the direction of where the church was heading to. "Us" includes the worship leaders, musicians, and WACA students. Elevate started of with this short gameshow thingy called "Hillsong Singing Bee!! Can you finish the line??" Haha, I know it sounds kinda lame but it was so fun.

The contestants sitting on 2 separate tables.

It's quite an easy game is you are familiar with a wide range of Hillsong songs. Back to the game, they will play you a short clip of a Hillsong song and you gotta continue singing it. You get 10 points if you get the lyrics and melody right. Pretty simple, yet entertaining. Maybe we could have a V2 Singing Bee or something.

After the fun games and all, we had a good time of worship. The worship went on and on for about 2 hours! Super geng and they had to kinda cancel the things they wanted to tell us because we were out of time. Joel Houston came on stage and told us that they'll try to simplify what they wanted to say in an email and send it us. But the Holy Spirit really took of control of that worship and 2 hours only felt like 1 hour. It was really fun, but on the way back home on the bus, most of the people were asleep and like going to sleep already. Hehe, so that kinda sums up my eventful day at Hillsong College. Any questions? Just drop it at the chatbox.

Here are some pictures of my friends, Hills Campus, and Elevate.

Students waiting for the bus outside college

Sneaha from India (left) and Antonio from Italy (right) Natalie from Brazil (Behind)

Me, Sneaha, Antonio, Natalie, and Hannah also from Brazil

Natalie, Desiree, and Me. This is outside the Hills Campus. It's so much bigger than the City campus and check out the huge "Jesus Hope for Humanity."

The Welcome desk. You see this desk when you come in through the doors.

The huge resource centre behind the welcome desk. So nice and shiny le..

Semangat people making popcorn for people like us.

Nice girl posing for me with the popcorn. The popcorn add salt wan le, not very tasty.. Miss GSC popcorn..

My friends (from left to right) Sean from Malaysia, Flo and Moritz (pronounced Mo hertz) from Germany.

JD!!

Gabriel Kelly, cool drummer. He led worship from the drums once.

Joel Houston.

Youth Camp 2008!!!

Hello all!! I'm sorry that I haven't been updating my blog. Assessments are just around the corner.. Goodie..

Anyway, I'm really excited about the youth camp this year, even though I'm not going. Just want to encourage everyone to go to camp expecting extraordinary things from God. Maybe the Holy Spirit might even appear like He did in Acts on the Day of Pentecost! Won't that be great?! It could happen.. Haha..

But, the main reason of this post is just to ask all those people who are reading my blog for a favor.. Well, for those who know me since the time I was born, I have only missed a youth camp once and this is the second time!! The disappointment I am feeling is deep enough to scar me.. for life.. *Ahem* You guys know I'm just exaggerating.. So for those who are so fortunate to be going for camp, please take pictures for me so when I look at the photos, I feel as if I am there. I can imagine myself in Peace Haven with you guys worshipping God and just doing silly things, like posing and cam-whoring. Lolz.. But please don't leave a chair unoccupied for me, just like how my wonderful Cheras Cell did for me after I left. It just doesn't look so good you know, imaging me sitting there.

Lastly, if you guys have any request for me to blog about anything in Sydney (Australia) just leave a message in the chatbox and I will try to fulfill your requests. Have a nice time at camp, people!! Enjoy it while you can..

Sunday Night Live!

Outside Hillsong


The Main Auditorium, Worship time


Sunday Night Live is the name of a service at Hillsong Church at 4:30pm and 6:30pm. I happened to attend the 4:30pm service and it was so awesome (sounds Aussie right?) that I have to blog about it. This service was purposely catered for the "Seekers" or Non-Christians that were attending that Sunday afternoon. The event started with worship that was lead by Brooke Fraser, who is quite well known here in Hillsong.

The picture I took of Brooke

The Wikipedia picture of her

After the worship, the platform was set up with some props to make it look like a study room with a brown leather couch, a table, and a table lamp. The youth pastor then took his seat on the leather couch and proceeded to start his sermon in narrative form. While the Pastor was reading from a book, the overhead screens flashed out the definition of the word "Echo", and that was the main theme of the sermon. Other than the pastor and props on stage, there was also a huge canvas on stage that was partially painted blue as the base color of the painting.

As the pastor continued preaching from the leather seat, a lady emerged from the backstage and started working on the painting. All the crowds attention were directing back and forth from the pastor to the painter as the sermon moved on and the canvas evolved into a painting. The sermon, revolving around "Echoes", was started off with the reading of Genesis and how creation came about. The whole point of the sermon was how creation, from humans to the tiny cells in our bodies, all echo the greatness and power of our Creator. To further elaborate "Echoes", a small snippet of the movie "August Rush" was played on the screens, showing this boy who could listen to all the different sounds that echoed from all the things around him (watch the movie "August Rush" it's great!). After the snippet was over, I realized that the painting was almost completed and it was a piece of abstract art (art that symbolizes something). Turning towards the painting, the Pastor rose from his seat to admire the beautiful painting, and started to praise the painting and idolize it. He explained that sometimes we are so caught up by the beauty and perfection of the painting that we forget the Painter, helping us understand that we often get caught up with some good-looking actor that we don't realize that the actor is just a creation of our mighty Creator, and we should give our Creator the praise and not the creation.

Lastly, they set up this studio microphone (the expensive ones that can pick up on aircon sounds) and rolled out this board between the Pastor and the mic. The pastor started to shout across the stage, but the mic didn't pick up on his voice because of the obstruction. But as he drew nearer to the mic and moved away the board, the mic picked up on his voice and echoed clearly across the room. In conclusion, as we move closer to God (the mic), we are able to echo him better and louder to the people around us.

The End!! I hope that wasn't too long and hard to understand.

Welcome to Sydney!

Before we managed to move into our apartment, because of the lack of beds and furniture, we were staying at Uncle Steven's house. He and Aunty Heidi were very kind, generous, and hospitable to us for the 5 days we camped at their place. I just wanted to post up some pictures of the silly and fun things we did at their house and share with you viewers the joy we had staying there. Hah! I will speak no further because pictures can speak so much better than words can, depending on your imagination & creativity.

This is the first breakfast we had in Sydney. We had "dim sum" but here the Aussies call it "yum cha" which is kinda weird. LOL!

Sobs, KL "dim sum" is better. I miss KL food!! Nasi Lemak!!

Our pretty Lydia was there too.

Our first dinner at Uncle Steven's house. The food reminded me of home. T-T anyway, Aunty Heidi can cook. If I stayed there longer, I would definitely put on weight.

And surprise surprise! Joel Tan can cook!! He fried some eggs, which turned out edible. *clap clap*

After dinner, we played around for awhile. We decided to cut out a life-size picture of the Iphone and model it, which made me notice I'm quite photogenic. Hohohoho..

Apple should hire me to advertise the Iphone. Haha, we used bluetag to stick the picture on Uncle Steven's phone!

Testing out the sensitivity of the Iphone's touchscreen. LOL!

Looks kinda real huh?!

Look I made some new friends. They come in the morning and wake you up to feed them. It was really cool! Rocking.. (location: Uncle Steven's house balcony)

Sher this pic is for you. I saw the shop when we were in the car. Haha. Sue them for using your name.

Our car ride came to a stop at Ikea, Sydney. We had lunch there before we got to work.

Those napkins were handy and they protect white shirts from getting ketchup stains. I strongly recommend them.

End of the day, these are all the stuff we bought from Ikea. Women can really shop. Fyi, all 3 carts are ours.

Check out the expensive durians. One is 3.79 AUD which comes up to about RM 12 for one. What a joke man! Stuff here is that expensive people!

Our Malaysian D-24 is more expensive. Check it out, 7.99 AUD = RM 24 (per durian) Cut-throat man.

Special guest at Uncle Steven's house, Christopher!! See how much weight he lost. About 12kg I think. We're feeding the birds, for those who can't tell.

We city people first time trying these "kampung" things. Hehe...

*that's my hand*