Bit of breaks

Last night at YAG Bible study discussion, we talked about Christians living 'by works' and 'by faith'. It really made me thought about how I lived my life. It should be more of I want to do it instead of how I should do it in terms of going to church, living life as Christians, etc. There's lots and I may have forgotten about what I wanted to say last night. These few days has been sunny but cold. I actually have something to blog about but I forgot about what I wanted to say the moment I sat in front of laptop. Maybe I should type it in the phone. Last week in church mass, Father talked about life has ups and downs. Of course Father did talked about the rest but I cannot remember what he said exactly. I can only remember some but I don't want to quote anything in case it wasn't what he said. =) Today in church mass, I saw Uncle Marvin and his family. I went to talk to them after mass finished. I was surprised to see them in church because they did mentioned that they normally go to 6pm mass on Saturday. Yea, just thought to say hi to them. Other than that, nothing much except studying and hanging out with friends as usual. Should I mention I got no appetite lately? Friends and I went to watch Narnia: Prince Caspian on Friday night. Movie was really good. I love it. =) I promise that I will post more interesting stuff when I am back in M'sia. Actually, it would be all about food so not sure if it will be interesting.

Stresssss…

These two photos are from making kaya for the International Food Fair in Term One. Forgive me for posting it so late. I was reading a friend's blog and she was talking about making Kaya and I remembered my photos. Wz commented that I seem to have grown so tall in the second photo. Hehehe...  =)

And for the previous posts on friendship, thanks for taking your time to leave comments. I really appreciate having comments and I do have more thoughts about it. =) I will post it up when I finished my lab test and assessment which is due on Monday. =)  I guess I have been worrying too much about assessment and assignments and test. Not to mention, even personal life. Things kept coming up when there is nothing much.

Define

I have been wondering about this for quite some time. How do you define betrayal on friendship?

I have the idea of a friend go behind another friend back to steal boyfriend. Or it could be doing something bad, as in something embarrassing and of bad rumours, not about bitching but I mean, rumours of you stealing a guy or something like that.

So what is your opinions?

Oops

I forgot to blog about the other page of the draft I wrote on friendship. So here goes.

• Friends should support each other. This doesn't mean that Friend A should ditch Friend B for Friend C. I mean, if Friend C did not do anything to Friend A, why should Friend A ditch Friend C.


• Listen to friends. LISTEN. It is best to listen to positive feedback and ignore if it is negative feedback.


• Friendships are very important and they are always by your side. So we should appreciate them. What happens if you got no friends at all?

From what I have said so far, I know it is hard to fulfill them so we should always forgive our friends if they did something wrong or bad. Who is perfect anyway? You are not, I am not, your friends are not.

What I mean

• sacrificial love

From 1 Samuel in the Bible, it is the friendship from Jonathan and David. Jonathan's dad tried to kill David and Jonathan was almost killed because he was protecting David from his father.
I was thinking, in this kind of world now, no one would do that kind of thing because it is not the norm. People would think you are crazy and start thinking if gay or lesbian. *shakes head* Such a world.
From my point of view, friendships nowadays are just friends hanging out and helping each other out. I bet there is no such thing as sacrificial love between friends. I mean, if I ask you to die for your friend or friends, would you want to do that?

On this, I still want to comment about what I wrote. A friend disagrees with what I said. Well, what I meant was that some people take their friend for granted, which is why I said friendships nowadays are just friends hanging out and helping each other. You can never know if this friend is truly your friend. What happens when he or she turns out to be different, as in not whom you used to know.

On friendship

I am going to summarize what I hear and learnt from friendship from church camp and reading relationship book on friendship. First of all, there is this model of friendship list.

• mutual commitment

I think this is common. Friends do commit to each other.

• sacrificial love

From 1 Samuel in the Bible, it is the friendship from Jonathan and David. Jonathan's dad tried to kill David and Jonathan was almost killed because he was protecting David from his father.
I was thinking, in this kind of world now, no one would do that kind of thing because it is not the norm. People would think you are crazy and start thinking if gay or lesbian. *shakes head* Such a world.
From my point of view, friendships nowadays are just friends hanging out and helping each other out. I bet there is no such thing as sacrificial love between friends. I mean, if I ask you to die for your friend or friends, would you want to do that?

• openness and honesty

Honesty is a hallmark of real friendship. Friends do not pretend about themselves or others do not desire or need to cover up their struggles or failings. -Nigel D. Polluck-
You do have to be open and honest to your friends. If you are not sure if you can trust the friends you are with, don't open too much. But be honest because they won't like you and you can lose their trust in you if you happen to lie or do something bad to them or even one of them.

• service

Service? What do you mean by that? Well, I think it is more like you do things for your friends. I do believe that. Now compare with what you usually do for your siblings or parents. I think it is similar.
There are ways to show your love for your family and friends. You help them out on things, eg buying things for them or just helping out on chores. Anyway, my point is that if you yell at your siblings or parents or disobey them, that doesn't mean you don't love your family or siblings. =)

• God - centreness


• interdependence

Friendship is not about making people dependent upon us or about us becoming dependent on other people.
True friendship can only develop and grow when we work together, trust each other, help each other and rely on each other.
With true friends pointing out your weakness or something bad, I don't think you should keep it at heart and decide that he or she is not a good friend. Instead, you should look at yourself first and try to undo your weakness. Yes, you are not perfect and your friends are not perfect but it would help to study yourself first before start blaming on friends. Not all friends give good advice but some particularly do. Some friends are there to listen to you and give you a long big hug when you are down.
I do admit that I don't like my friends to see me crying if there is anything so I tend to go away or be quiet if I see my friends crying. So don't take it to heart, thinking that your friends desert you when you need someone to talk while you're crying.

• willing to let go

Friendship is so important and sometimes there are things that we need to let go in order to let the friendship to last. 1 Samuel 20:42 shows that.

Am I being too straight-forward? Hmm.. this is just my point of view. I will let you have your opinions, I won't judge or be defensive. I am beginning to refer to Bible verses a lot. =)

This is from church camp talks and I summarized it up. Some may be the same from what I said above.

• Friends do point out your mistakes or your differences. But how do you feel from it? Embarrassed or anger? If embarrassed, would you rather strangers telling you those or your friends? If anger, study yourself first before you start blaming your friends. Humans aren't perfect so your friends are there to tell you your differences. Again, would you rather strangers telling you?

I think I prefer my friends to tell me. I rather them laughing at me than strangers or friends whom I don't normally talk to.

• Friends don't just give advices or comfort you, they go through each step with you. They are there to guide you so don't keep them away. Remember that some friends deal with their problems better than you.

YAG camp

After coming back from field trip, I had 2 hours to shower and got ready my luggage for the church camp. Talk about being busy. Actually I packed way before I went for field trip.

Anyway, the church camp was awesome. It was relaxing and there was a lot of photos taken. So, photos will be uploaded when I get them. There's this game, doctor and patient. Everyone is a patient and your doctor is anonymous. You're also a doctor to someone else. The doctors were  to look after patient, they can write notes or bring food for their patient. And doctors cannot reveal who they are. It was dinner time when I arrived. When I sat down for dinner, someone approached me from behind and gave me soup. You can imagine how surprised I was. Only then, Em told me about the game.

There were talks on family, friends, education and future/career. I wrote quite a bit of stuff on friends which I will put it in a different post. The others were alright but not a lot. Then, there were games and drama. Oh, my group won the best drama performed. =)



This is my group and Em was the leader. =)



I was already on the ground when photo was taken. I was just too fast. =P

Learnt

The first week of holidays really made me relax a lot. Besides the conference I went to, when I lie in bed at night, I thought about what I learnt. I shall list out what I learnt. I may not remember now but I will add in the list from time to time.

• You don't have to marry just to follow the traditions or because everyone is doing so. From the Bible, God says that if you meet somebody, it is not wrong for you to get married. However, he said that it is better to stay single. That way, you can focus on seeking God's Kingdom 100%.


• You learn to love from God. He shows His love through the Bible. Read Gen 1.

p/s : I went to Castle Hill yesterday. It was really fun and I will upload photos if I do get them before Wednesday. I will be going for a field trip and a church camp after that so I will be on hiatus after that. =)