Thursday, March 20, 2008

Maundy Thursday

On a Christian calendar, this is a holy week. Some churches have services every day. However, in Grace Methodist Church, we will celebrate Maundy Thursday (The Last Supper), Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Maundy Thursday is the Thursday of Holy Week (the Thursday before Easter). It was the day on which Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples, sharing a meal with them which we call the Last Supper.
In those days it was usual for a servant to wash the guests' feet on arrival. On this occasion there was no servant present and none of the disciples volunteered to do the menial task. Instead, Jesus got up and washed his disciples' feet, giving them an object lesson in humility and service.
In GMC, we celebrate the occasion with the Holy Communion.

The liturgist was our brother James Wong. This was his second time as liturgist. The first time was during the funeral service of our late brother Jan van Regteren.

This week is rather interesting. Timothy has to volunteer babysitting two tortoises from his class over the long weekend. They are rather cute. The two brothers carry them everywhere and also overfed them. Tonight they almost end up sleeping in bed with the tortoises.





Jonathan was invited by Dr. Kong to attend a Toastmaster Youth Leadership Camp in YMCA Camp Resort in Sibu. The invitation came on Wednesday morning and he has to travel during the evening. I hope he enjoyed it. I called up Dr. Kong and he told us that Jon has no problem mixing with the group.
The events from 20-23 March 2008 seems to be quite packed with activities – Speech preparation and delivery skill, First aids Guide, Talent time show, Jungle trekking (supervised by HHH), Games, Motivational talk, etc.

1 comment:

Kong said...

First of all, I am not a Dr. I am just a plain pharmacist. It's embarrassing when you & Eric call me that.

As for the camp, we had 228 students this year from Sibu, Sarikei, Kanowit, Kapit, Kuching, Bintulu and your Jonathan from Miri. We all have our hands full because there are so few of us facilitators and there are so many of them campers. Including your highly motivated Jonathan who only had a few hours of notice to know about the camp, pack his bags and take an overnight bus alone and travel 450-km to Sibu.

After the hectic afternoon jungle trekking on the 2nd day, Jonathan was so tired that he falls asleep in his bunk bed from 7 pm till 11 pm. Subsequently, he missed my entire Impromptu Speech Workshop and competition. He was looking forward to participate in the competition but because he missed that, he entered the next day’s prepared speech competition instead. And because he missed the given topic of the speech competition, he went off-topic and didn’t get any prizes. Pity but I admire his positive attitude.

Overall, I find Jonathan possesses the self motivation drive to self improve himself. Even though he didn’t know anyone in the camp, he has no problem blending in indicating good social skills, eager to take charge indicating leadership potential, and is not afraid of going on stage to compete. These are exactly the type of student we organized these camps for: youngster willing to learn communication and SERVICE leadership skills. It’s our way of giving back to our community and investing in our community’s future because of the service leadership issue.