Yunnan China MIssion Trip

hi to all of you in YF.... it has been 2 weeks since i last see you guys in action, miss you all very much... keep thinking how was YF when i was in China.. finally im back and just to share with you a bit of my journey....

we took off from KLIA on 27th morning and reach Kun Ming around noon, then we went to visit the Cultural village in Kun Ming where they display, show and explain the culture and building and life of the 56 minority tribes in Yun nan. the place was very beautiful and an eye opener for me. since we are going to meet some minority tribe people is good to know a little bit about their culture. the next day we visited a shelter home which took in abandon children or street kids in Kun Ming.. we sing song with them, acted a drama for them (prodigal son story) play games with them, share & chit chat and pray with them. the testimony of the person in charge of this centre Sister Mary really touched our hearts as we see how she surrender and obey God's calling and direction and experience God's blessing. after the centre we travel for 2 hours to visit a tourist attraction in Jiu Xiang. it was a very beautiful natural cave, the difficult part was that we have to walk for nearly 2 hours.

thats all for now the next post will be about our 3 days in the primary school in Li Ming....

Committee Retreat and NSCFL Camp 09

Most of the committee members for next year (2010) went for the committee retreat on the 21st and 22nd of November, 2009. The retreat was held at a place called Cactus Inn Resort, and it is a nice place. The retreat was fruitful as well as fun.

The NSCFL Camp 09 was held from the 23rd to the 28th of November, 2009 in STM, Seremban. 8 people from our YF went. They are Derrick, Joanna, Amanda, Jerrel, Regine, Caleen, Yun Yee, and Fiona. Campers met new friends and had a great time. Most importantly, the campers learned more about God. There was also a session of fasting and solitude, a time when campers got to be still and listen to God's voice. All in all, the campers were taught to walk with God.

There are some photos in Amanda's blog, and more photos on Facebook :)

YFers, continue to walk with God!!!

29th November, " Bible Quiz"

Hi everyone.As Sern Wang is on a mission trip in China, I took it on to myself to update this blog. Hope you do not mind, Sern Wang. Anyway, I'm just going to update on the 29th of Nov programme which was,"Bible Quiz".

This week, YF started at 4.10pm, with a short welcome and opening prayer, where we thanked our Heavenly Father for blessing the committee retreat, Vacation Bible School (VBS) as well as National School Christian Fellowship Leader's Camp.After that, Jason Ng led in a time of worship, followed by offering.

After that, the Bible Quiz began. The Bible Quiz was based on the book of Genesis.You Shen divided the youths into three groups. The first game we played was a version of "True or False", where members of each group took turns to answer the questions that were asked. Most of the youths were able to answer the questions correctly, Praise the Lord. The competition was close but in the end, Group 3 prevailed narrowly.

The second game was something like Pictionary, where a member from each team was to draw the given situation on the white board and the rest of the group mates were supposed to answer. The youths enjoyed themselves very much, trying to figure out which situation from Genesis were their friends drawing.

YF ended quite early, at 5.10pm. You Shen then asked the youths to rehearse for the upcoming YF Christmas carolling. The youths managed to rehearse five songs, before going home.

All For Love, Love For All

In His service,
-Jonathan So-
Vice Secretary,
Youth Fellowship,
Gereja Grace Batu Pahat.

8 November 2009 - Sharing by Rev. John Tan

When i was a youth myself maybe around 14 years or so i heard an amazing testimony of a pastor who had been greatly transform by the love and power of God. This pastor is none other than Pas. John Tan. after more than 10 years i could still remember his sharing and testimony. Thank God for this opportunity again to invite him back to Batu Pahat to share with the youth his life experience and testify to the greatness of God and the love of Jesus Christ in his journey from a gangster and criminal to becoming a faithful servant of God. We are also very happy that FGA church and Berean AOG church youth can join us together in this wonderful youth gathering. Rev. John Tan also brough his 2 sons to present a few songs with their amazing voices... (singing Jay Chou song some more)... many youths has been touch by Rev, John's life story knowing how God save his life from death penalty and giving him the mission to minister to those who are involved in gangsterism, drugs, prison & Aids (his whole life story is so long that is impossible to be weritten here, go ask those who have join the program...) Rev. John also encourage us to offer ourselves to God and serve Him faithfully and remain pure and holy for Him. We really appreciate Rev. John for taking time to be with us and we continue to pray that God will use Him mightily to help those in need.

What's the difference?

1 Nov 2009... hmm im late for this post, was occupied doing the christmas devotional prayer calendar for our church Christmas Gospel Rally. well this week YF program started with an ice-breaker lead by Edrick, we are suppose to find a partner and talk to each other for a few mins to know our partner a bit more. then we are to sit back to back and answer few question about our partner. well i believe it did help us know some things that our friends in YF... Uncle Peter was our speaker today and he share with us about the beliefs and history of some major religion in our country. its interesting and beneficial to know some information and facts about other religion as we are living in a multi-religion society, and everyday we come across people with different faith..... but most importantly uncle Peter also share how Christianity is unique and true where salvation is given not because of any human effort or works but by the grace of God who took the initiative to come to seek and save that which was lost.... Praise the Lord. And so coincidently it was uncle Peter's birthday that day so we sang a birthday song for him together at the end of the fellowship.

Bible Discovery : Purity

This week bible discovery was on 2 Timothy 2:22
"Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart."
we had good discussion when we break into the defferent groups according to our age. questions like "what do you think is purity?", "how pure do you think you are?", "how do you relate purity & happiness?" and etc are really heart challenging to many. the main lessons that we learn was how to stay pure in a 4 step purity plan...
1. Flee away from evil desire (it mean run away not to challenge it or debate with it...)
2. Stay close to what is right (like God, God's word, ...)
3. Pursue Faith & Love
4. Stay with Godly company (friends who also want to be pure)
so let us encourage one another to stay pure and dare to be different in this very confused & chaotic world.

Movie Day - "The Room"

Many people ask me before YF is this a horror movie? because it sounds like one and the picture of the movie also seems like it.... i think because there is another horror movie a few years ago with the title "panic room" so maybe people mistook it as that... well of course is not a horror movie (because i dont watch horror movie one). "the room" is actually a HK Christian production movie that talks about a social worker (called Amanda, everyone turn to our amanda) who have help many people battle depression and suicide but was having depression herself.... she was very troubled because she faced with many many sad things and tears in her life, she was asking the telephone counselor before she jump off the building "how can one smile when there is so much tears in life".... well at the end she didnt jump because the counselor share with her her own story and how she can smile even when there is tears in life is because God is our hope and strength and purpose.... He is always with us no matter is sad times or happy times.... the God who created us and gave us life love us very much.....
i pray that this message of hope and love will be our strength when we are weak, and that we can pass it on to others who are feeling weak as well...

When sadness and failure attack...

Last sunday we talk about sadness and failure in our lives... we have a sadness survey to see what event will cause youths to be sad. if im can remember correctly a few things that cause youth to be very sad are: messed up a presentation, dad loses his job, best friend betrayal etc. and the things that don't really bother them are like school being close down, don't get invited to friends party, vacation cancelled... etc. (dont know they express the truth or not...) but it was fun.
there are many things that we could be sad about or even crush our lives. 2 examples from the newspaper was shown that in 2 different case 2 19 year old youth commited suicide because of relationship problem. how then can we as youth manage all these sadness in our lives? for this i think in the Bible Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 have something to say: (you can go read the verses...) these are a few thoughts shared at the meetings

• of course we will feel sad at times because we are human and in the verses King Soloman also mention that there are different times & seasons in life. a time to weep and a time to laugh...
• but we need to avoid being too sad for too long. people get too sad because they think that it is unfair and they are the only one getting it and life is just full of tears and pain. at time of pain they forgot those time of happiness. Ecclesiastes reminds us that all these pain and tears are natural and part of our life on earth, it is not specifically targeting you but everyone will have thier times of sadness. and it also remind us that there are times of joy and laughter too
• these verses in Ecclesiastes also reminf us that htere are many things in life that we cannot control. therefore we should not be so hard upon ourselves or others but rather live the best that we can and leave the rest in God's hand.
• another reason why we are so sad is beccause we let the small things in life filled up our life and become so big. we fail to see the big picture of life that God has given us. we fail to see eternity or the purpose in the long run.
• lastly it will be a waste of time if we continue to stay and dwell in the sad things and miss out on the good things that are coming our way. if we choose to allow or determine ourselves to be sad (which some people do) then we will miss out on the joyful seasons. "a time to mourn and a time to laugh"

hmm maybe we will leave the failure part for another post.... till then.... (sorry forgot to take some picture again this week)

Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration

Last Saturday night youth fellowship organized a mid-autumn festival with a pot luck dinner. we started at 7.45pm with welcome and worship. Joshua lead in worship with his acoustic guitar accompanied by Matthew on his electirc G. we were in the open multi-purpose hall enjoying the natural cool weather. then we proceed to have our dinner with so many choices of food. each one brought something to share, there were fried mee siam, fried rice, tuna cookies, pizzas, tea leaf egg, jelly, watermelon....etc and of course moon cake. after 40 mins of eating we started to have our games time lead by Gabriel. it was a series of 2 games where youths were divided into 5 groups. 1st game they have to light up as many lantern as they can in 3 min as a group then with those lantern that they have they have to walk to Evonne's house to find some nano nano sweets and return. because of time factor we cut off a game, and we share about how people pray to the Moon during this festival but for us Christians we worship and pray not to the created things like moon, sun and nature but to the Creator of all these things. and this God that created all the heavens and the earth love and care for us so much that He send Jesus Christ to us to connect us back to Him. we ended the nite by celebrating our president Gabriel's birthday and prayer.

Manga Mutiny!!!

Hey guys the 3rd volumn of Manga is out is called "Manga Mutiny". this volumn is based on the stories in Genesis. i have 3 copies with me (got it from SU last week) anyone interested to buy just come and see me. RM10/book.

combine youth gathering!

we had a combine youth gathering of FGA, AOG and GGBP youth last sunday and together with SU team from PJ conducting a 3G seminar on the topic "to date or not to date?" i didn't do a counting but at least 80-90 youth attended, Praise God. i notice many of the youths were happy meeting some of their school friends from another church in the gathering. i believe the youths had a great learning time as they were again reminded of the purpose of courtship and to "kiss the dating game goodbye". we hope we can continue to have such gathering in the future (more often) and strengthen the unity of the churches here in Batu Pahat starting with the youths, so that we can really reflect the glory and love of God in this town as the body of Christ.

Badminton Session...

Yesterday morning about (Gabriel, Jayn, Joanne, Zi Xin, Sean, Kit, Mandy, Wee Ting, Huan & bro, Koh, Jason, Jacelyn, Aloysius, James, Ah War, Jerrel, Wen Qi, Derrick, Chen Wei, Hui Yee, Jing Yee, Yun Yee, Da Wang & SW) 25 of us went to SS Badminton court for 2 hours of badminton playing. we booked 3 courts only (3 out of 4) so we have to share and rotate in playing. we had a good time playing, sweating & laughing. our voices filled the whole hall (as usual) Hope we can continue to have sporting events like this maybe with the help of Uncla Cheng Hoe we can even organized badminton learning session in future.

20 Sept 2009 Bible Discovery

Last sunday we had a Bible study on Matthew 7:24-29 about the wise man and the foolish man each building his house on the rock and sand respectively. well before we go into our groups to discuss some question we play with some "lego", each team is suppose to build the highest tower with the given lego in 10min that could withstand the shooting from other teams with rubber band..... as usual some always play out of the rules when it comes to competition. we did had some nice and firm and tall towers at the end. This parable that Jesus use teach us that....
House = Life
Storm = Trials, challenges, troubles, temptation in life
Wise man = Those who hear God's word and do it
Foolish man = those who hear God's word but did not do it
Rock foundation = strong & stable
Sand foundation = weak & shaky

Therefore we must build our life on the foundation of God's word by obeying and following it not just hearing and knowing it. we will be like hypocrite if we say we know the word of God but does not put it into practice. we may seem like a strong Christian with all the knowledge about the Bible but our real strength and faith in God will show when trials and temptation comes our way, will we fall or will we stand? So let's be a real, strong and wise follower of Christ by doing what he command us to.

Looking forward to your posting...

Hi there this blog belongs to all YF members. So if you are interested to post in this blog (we strongly encourage you to do so) please email to the YF mail at yfggbp@gmail.com to request for the user name and password for your blogging.... looking forward for your posting.... let us share our experience, our life in YF with everyone.

Welcome to Youth Fellowship GGBP

Hi hi to all of you, I'm glad you reach this blog. well since this is the first post of the blog maybe we will give some intro to our community here in Batu Pahat....

We are a Christian youth group organized by Gereja Grace Batu Pahat that seeks to live out the Kingdom of God as a reality among the youths in Batu Pahat.

Our Vision

Falling in Love with Jesus

Our Mission

Expose youth to Jesus through our friendship.

Help youth Experience the gospel of Christ through our program.

Equip followers of Christ with truth that will change their lives.

Help youth Express their love for God through service.

Our Goal

To make disciples of Jesus Christ among the youth in Batu Pahat so that they will make disciples in the world.

This is indeed a big vision, an exciting dream, a cool adventure..... and we are all part of this story of God here in Batu Pahat. come join us in this journey for the search all the greatest love you will ever know.