2010 New Year Herald

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW CREATION; the old has gone, the new has come!"

(2 Cor 5:17)

Praise the Lord! Happy New Year all!

2009 was an awesome year, but 2010 is gonna be greater!

I believe God spoke to me that the areas of my life that I wanted to change in 2009 will change in 2010! This means all the bad habits and disappointments in 2009 are past, and I will have victories in 2010!

2 Areas I believe I will breakthrough:

1) Passion for God: the same or greater passion that I had when I was a young believer.

2) Faithfulness: Being faithful to God, faithful in the little things(like punctuality :X).

I guess that if I have these 2, the rest will follow - financial blessings, joy, ministry promotion, etc. Thank You Jesus!

Let's take a look back at some of the cool stuff in 2009:

Awesoments of 2009:

• "Boomz" and "Shingz" added to the Singaporean dictionary
• Left 4 Dead - Awesome Multiplayer shooter
• Fireflies - Best Song (In my biased opinion)
• Dark Knight - Best Movie (Again, in my biased opinion)
• Windows 7 - Best Windows OS (Now that ain't biased)
• Jay Chou - Best Chinese Celebrity alive! (This ain't biased either!)
• Most Retarded YouTube video:

MUST WATCH!

Achievements of 2009:

• 1st time being a cheerleading flyer!
• Read finished Harry Potter series!
• 3 Polar Bears in my room!
• Learnt cheng yao dance
• Learnt Sorry Sorry dance
• Attempted to cut Show Luo's hairstyle
• Listened to the radio (hey, that's a big achievement for a guy like me :P)
• Completed Call of Duty 4
• Drank about a bottle of Heineken
• Drank beer with Sprite
• Ate 5 meals a day for about 2 weeks
• 75 posts
• Kept a Blog alive for more than 3 weeks

Good and bad happened in 2009, but I'd rather let go off the bad and thank God for the good :)

So here's some things to thank God for...

1) Graduation! (12th March)

Wow! Time does not just fly - it soars with jet packs on! Thank God that my last year in NYP was a most fruitful one, as I worked with Bryan Yeo and Robin Chia, the Top and Second of the entire Digital Entertainment Technology cohort!

Graduation!

These 2 buddies are not only awesome in their work, but also fun, helpful, and great people to work with! We made the best Final Year Project evar! =3

So yeah, I ended up with exactly 3.5 GPA! Thank God its not 3.49 wahaha.

2) 20th Birthday! (10th April)

2009 marked the end of my teenage years(sadded). Anyway, the 10th of April was incidentally Good Friday, and our church had our Easter Celebration during my birthday! I had lots of fun celebrating my birthday together with W406! I remember we had lunch at some Chicken Rice stall near Raffles City (imagine that!).

Thanks, W406, for the new jacket!

After which, we went to Esplanade and did all sorts of random stuff. Took plenty of photos and did some cheerleading stunts wahaha.

But most of all, want to thank God for saving Sheryl, Melody and Zining! That was the best birthday present evar! Thank God that they brought Jolin later and she too got saved! XD

3) Faith Camp (June 2009)

My 1st ever Church camp! It was loads of fun, and the sessions of seeking God were awesome!

Indeed we are the next generation of leaders, to take the baton from pioneers! Thank God for this privilege!

4) Game Programmer Job (5th July)

This job was really God-given. My elder bro told me to pray for a job specifically, so I did.

I prayed for:

- Work as a Game Programmer

- Salary of 1.6k-1.8k

- Nice boss

- Get the job in 2 weeks

My workplace in Johor.

That's right, its my boss' house.

I sent out like 2 or 3 applications, 1 of which went to my previous lecturer at NYP, who had his own game company. Bryan Yeo, Robin Chia and I made the best game project for the module which my lecturer was teaching, so he was willing to hire me!!! Praise the Lord!

Screenshot of the game I worked on

So I got a job as a Game Programmer, had a monthly salary of 1.6k, a friendly boss whom was my lecturer - all these within 2 weeks. God indeed answers specific prayers! Thank you Jesus!

5) Revelation of the Word of God (August)

I was in one of my most down periods around this time, but thank God that Weiren shared about the Word of God! He said that if we live by the Word and believe it, nothing can shake our lives. Not trials, not testings, not temptations. Our lives will ALWAYS be fruitful, NEVER having a dry season.

¹ Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
³ He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

6) Callings: Armorbearer & Leadership (August)

During this season God began to reveal to me 2 great callings in my life:

a) Be Weiren's armorbearer.

This means to serve him faithfully, anticipate his needs, refresh his soul, protect him from enemies(critics or whatever), stand by him during tough times, honor him, and to help him fulfill his destiny.

At least that's what the Armorbearer book said.

b) Grow the connect group to 200. (O.O)"

Wow okay, I'm glad I posted this - it reminded me of my callings. God only gave me the vision to grow my connect group after the calling to serve Weiren. The saying that God will only give you your destiny after you help someone fulfill his destiny is true.

Looking at this 2 callings, there's only 1 thing I can say: I can't do it.

No wonder Pastor Kong says that the dreams God give you are so big that you cannot accomplish it without God.

7) God's grace in NS (September-December)

I just can't believe the amazing grace that God has given me during the whole course of my army! God answered my prayer for 9-5 vocation, so that I can serve him! Throughout these 3 months, I have been under good and lenient supervisors! (Or at least much better than I imagined NS supervisors to be)

8) Risk game with Weiren! (30th December)

Played Risk for the first time in years on the 2nd night of the Chalet! I never really liked Risk cause:
- it seemed like more of a luck game than strategy

- the game lasts for hours

Weiren revolutionarized that! He taught us how the play Risk properly with various strategies and tactics. After a trial game, all of us became very "jian"(cunningly sinister)!

It was a pretty exciting game, which enemies became allies and allies became enemies, which the weak overcame the strong, which lasted for 3.5 hours. XD

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Wowzer that was some long post! Thank God for an eventful 2009! However we've entered into a new decade, a new era of breakthrough!