DaNg

My Group -Sharon, Nathan, Peter, Scott, myself, Jing Siew and Hannah

I have not been in the mood to blog lately coz I do not know what to blog about or where to start as so many things have been happening lately. But, I bet you that once I get started, I might even end up with two pages worth of stuff.

First things first, I have a chest infection but do not fear, it is not contagious. Actually, I am much better now ever since I drug myself with AMOXYCILLIN TRIHYDRATE (better known as antibiotics) which was of course prescribe by the doctor. I am in no way of self drugging myself with such medicine unless I know what I am taking but even then NO except for Paracetomal/Panadol.

Today marks the second day of my practical at Northland Kindergarten although it was shorter than the first as the teachers had a meeting to attend to. Everything has been going well so far. I am able to (nearly) memorize the names of the children from the morning session; around 30ish of them which means that I only have 30ish more children to go from the afternoon session. Some of the children at Kindy, I had previous met and known from previous placements while others were from church. Having these familiar faces around makes me feel at ease compared to when I was on my first few placements. I guess it is also the fact that I am now in second year, having had three placements before. Working as a part time reliever at Preschool and Nursery has also contributed towards my confidence in working both with the children and adults (teachers and parents). However, I am still in the working progress of attaining the skill in communicating with the children's parents. Although, I try my best to communicate with most of the parents while on placement, some of them have this look which says “I am not in the mood to talk now or ever talk with you” while others make the attempt or approaching and initiating a conversation with me. Despite that, I am thankful for the latter. My associate teacher and the other two teachers at Kindy have been very nice to me unlike what I had heard from someone who had done a placement there. I am once again thankful to God for being gracious to me in this.

Other than that, for the past one week, I have been at SLC (Student Leadership Conference) which was organized by TSCF (Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship) which is what ICF (International Christian Fellowship) is under. At conference, I was thoroughly equipped and challenge in reading the gospel (and not just merely reading the word but meditating and memorizing the word as well as applying the word into my life), praying, sharing the gospel to strangers and having discussions with people (other students from the various campuses around NZ) about the gospel (we were studying the book of 2 Timothy) for that whole week at conference.

The challenge of speaking to strangers was a little intimidating for me at first. We were all divided into groups and had to go out to two different malls, Coastlands and Porirua to speak, listen and share the gospel. My group was the only one that went to Coastlands as it was pretty small compared to Porirua. To be honest, I did not know what to expect from this field trip. I was pretty nervous as to how people I approach would react towards my randomness. Despite that, I spoke to three different ladies. The first lady happen to be a Christian and she knew someone who was helping out at the conference so she knew what I was doing there. She encourage me to do continue what I was doing and said that I had a pretty good start with her...Phew. The other two ladies I spoke to were very nice and friendly. However, I was unable to share the gospel with them as much as I would have love to due to the minimal time I had with either. Nevertheless, this training was mainly to encourage us to listen to the stranger's story. The things that I have learnt from this was that it is important to listen to people rather than gain what you intentions were in initiating a conversation with a stranger, time can be precious, some people are more open, nicer and friendlier than others, team work is vital (I love my team, they were the best!!!).

Apart from that, I had the privilege of speaking to the leaders of the other Christian clubs from the different campuses. We talked about things such as how they run their programs, meetings and camps to cater for the students on their campuses. It was an interesting to hear such passion and enthusiasm in their voices.

Overall, I had a really great time at SLC and I am already looking forward to next years.