Day 19 (Wednesday 5 March 2014) by Gillian

This morning's equipping session was quite intense, because we did 2 topics instead of 1, in order to finish it all before Shuen leaves. The first topic was Service, and the part that really stood out to me was the differences between self-righteous service and true service. Self-righteous service seeks recognition, the good feelings from doing tangible things for others, and ultimately serves others to serve itself. True service, on the other hand, does things seeking only God's approval, and serves because of God's call - not because the mood is right. It made me reflect quite a lot and made me realise how often the service I seek to do is really just self-righteous service. The second topic was on Confession, which was also very relevant to me. Too often, people feel the need to put up a front with church people - acting as if you're all holy and life is going great, creating pretentiousness among people which just becomes a barrier to the close, warm relationships God wants us to have in church. Though it was a heavy morning for my little brain, it was good. It gave me things to think and reflect about, and of course, I hope to bring these things I learn back home.

In the evening we went to Gethsemane as usual, and spent some time with the kids there. Shuen played takraw for the first time and mannnn she is SO good. Her serves were pretty accurate and she even hit the ball with her head once! Then said "That was pretty cool but I'm never doing it again" HAHA. She was the only girl playing and I think a lot of the kids were quite amazed because they'd never seen a female visitor play with them before (because takraw is kind of considered a boys' game). Impressive, Shuen. Impressive.

Karen got all excited when it was time for dinner because we were going to go for suki chang puak. Those of us who never went there before were quite confused about how excited she was but hey, if there's good food, we're game. Although at that time, I still had no idea what suki was. Everytime we eat out, I can't read the menu and would just go with whatever people order for me. No awful mishaps with that strategy so far. So if you're still wondering, suki is basically glass noodles with veggies and meat (fish/chicken/pork). Sounds mediocre but it's AMAAAAAZING. My stomach was so happy it got all ready to digest more food; so we had mango sticky rice and roti with condensed milk after that. SO GOOD. We do get such roti in Singapore as well but I never bothered trying it since I usually like it savoury but..I think that night opened the door to roti with all things sweet for me.

With happy stomachs, we headed back home to get some rest.