As yet untitled...

How can I stand before You Lord
When I am a sinner,
In need of Your mercy
In need of Your saving grace?
Draw me nearer to You
In the warmth of Your embrace
Surrounded by Your abounding love
I will be one with You again

Under the banner of Your love I stand
And I’m so humbled and amazed
That for me You sent Your Son to die
So now I’m saved just by Your grace
As Your amazing love compels my heart
Jesus this is what I pray
May I die to self, and live for You
Who died and rose again.

Now I can stand before You Lord.
Though I am a sinner,
You poured out Your mercy
You poured out Your saving grace.
Now I can be near You
Feel the warmth of Your embrace
Surrounded by Your abounding love
I am at one with You again

The preceeding is the FOC theme song, which unfortunately is lacking a proper appellation apart from "VCFFOC 2005 Theme Song", despite the best efforts of several people including the lyricist... "Love Compels" may have worked prior to yesterday's talent night, but after the sheer cheesy and corny pummelling that that phrase took last night at the hands of the ten groups during the talent night, not any more... =P (my personal favourite - Liebe: "bad breath repels, love compels..." [that has Deborah's name written all over it...]) Any suggestions from anyone?

But anyways, yes, FOC is finally all said and done, and the comm has said its long goodbye to the campers as well as to each other... After months of preparing, months of meetings, months of calling and contacting, months of thinking and troubleshooting, it's now officially "OVER!!!" (BCE people kindly indulge me)

Gosh, if i were to list all my thoughts, experiences, prayers, anxieties, thanksgivings et cetera regarding FOC i would just go on and on like the duracell bunny to no end, so i shall instead just, in my present sleep-deprived state, attempt to mention all that i can recollect at the moment...

Firstly, all thanks and praise has to go to our wonderful God, who definitely answered prayers in a way that was immesurably more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). I am constantly amazed at His great faithfulness to us even when we often fail to reciprocate... Looking back at the camp, and seeing the comm's prayer scroll (which i haven't really had a chance to look at in depth since it's unvailing...), i think He deserves nothing less than our eternal gratefulness, for His tremendous provision in terms of campers (especially the freshmen) as well as in other areas, for keeping us safe and sound, for the fine weather, for the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and for so much more... He has truly poured His favour out on us, who are so undeserving of any of this... A humbling experience, to say the least...

After months of working closely together, and especially after the past five days of living together under the same roof (Ian's house + Temasek Hall), i think i will miss seeing them around that much. It has certainly been such a blessing in my life to know each and everyone of them, and i thank God for leading me to take that step of faith and join the comm in the first place early this year, for the returns, in so many levels, have been extremely satisfying, one of them of course being getting to know all the dear members of the comm better, even during the camp itself. If any of you are reading this, my sincerest thanks.

Seeing so many freshmen join the camp, especially after the whole mail run affair, was extremely encouraging, and as i told the campers, all of them, be they freshies or seniors, are most certainly all concrete example's of God's answering of prayer. If there's one regret that i will have after this camp, it is this, that i didn't have the chance to get to even get to know a large proportion of the freshies, due to inevitable comm duties, in fact, i didn't even get to spend much time with my group, and hardly ever got to talk to them... Being quite unskilled in the art of talking to new people only made matters worse. Despite this, however, i do believe in faith that i'll be seeing much more of a lot of them in the years to come in VCF ;-) Also, that being said, i still got to meet many new people, and get to know many CFers who i had already been acquainted with much better too...

I also thank God for His message spoken through Reverend Malcolm Tan. I got many new insights into 2 Corinthians 3-5, despite having read it several times previously... I also believe that it was a message that challenged both the freshies and the seniors to live their lives for Christ. Praise be to God!

And of course there are all the other little events that happened, like celebrating Alicia's, Min Zhi's and Shawn's July birthdays the night before the camp with spaghetti, salad, and an uneaten cake, sleeping on a hard surface (floor/desktop) for four nights straight yet still feeling rather refreshed in the morning, discovering that as intriguing a beverage as corn juice (uber gross!!!) existed, learning (or more accurately, relearning) that you need to press Fn + F10 three times in order to get your laptop image on the projector (and subsequently having my 'ghost' image wallpaper constantly projected on the wall for all the camp to see), hearing the most strange lines in the poem assignment to the groups at my station during the starlit treasure hunt (once again from Liebe: "I love you Rita, you are my cheetah/cinta, i will play the guitar, for you my senorita"), deciding on a whim to run (for the first time since i cleared leave in April 2004) back to Temasek Hall from the field after games, inspired by the need to get in better physical shape for ippt, completing the distance, with much panting and perspiration, in 9 minutes 14 seconds, and wishing i had planned more for the final skit to prevent the gut-wrenchingly corny (albeit in a positive way, of course) experience that was the groups' skits...

Yupyup there are just so many things... FOC has really been a wonderful experience. Thank You Lord for leading me to be a part of it.