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.