Hi everyone, I'm Yuxian from Nissi Knights and I'm here to share about how God have changed my life.
I come from a family who places alot of importance on money. My parents would raise my 2 siblings and myself to do well in our studies, so that we can secure good jobs in the future. My family also believes in using "Spartan education", so I will receive a lot of caning and scolding whenever I didn't do well in tests and exams. Displaying negative emotions like sadness and anger are also now allowed in my family. So the more I cry the more I get caned. I would receive verbal insults like "I don't belong to my family", "that I was picked up from the trash/an accident" and my parents would tell me that they love my siblings more then me.
I wasn't in a good relationship with my family, my dad used to tell me what a failure I am, I don't talk to my brother and my mom and sister took control of most of my life. They would decide on every decisions of my life. They would disapprove any friends I make and they don't allow me to spend time with my friends, thus I must rush home everyday after school.
So to survive in this family, I learnt to be the quiet and obedient child. In the eyes of my family, I'm never good enough, a weakling, a fearful crybaby. Eventually, due to my over obedience, I also become a target to let my family vent their unhappiness.
Deep inside I begin to develop this hatred towards my family. I hate my mother's and sister's constant caning and control and I hate my father and brothers neglectance. During my secondary school years, I spend every night planning on how to murder my family, I spend endless nights crying myself to sleep. I became a very morbid, suicidal and grumpy person.
God created me to have an overpowering sense of imagination and creativity, I will imagine myself to be in my own fantasy land where I am the lead character and I take control. I eventually begin to let my imagination to take life. I begin to see 6 different imaginary friends, the first is an athelete who is smart, second is a playboy who is a glib talker, third a popular kid who is nice everyone, fourth an angry vulgar punk, fifth a gentle brotherly figure, lastly a man with a 6 years old mentality.
Each of them took a form of someone I wish to be. These friends have a few common triats, they love me despite I'm a nobody, they all are successful and they hate their family, they are godless people who hates god for bringing us to life to suffer. So these friends are customized to suit me and provide the love my family couldn't
These friends begin to take a life of their own and they became a major part in my life. I would converse with them, they would teach me math, cheer me on when I'm running 2.4km. I became obsessed with them. Slowly, I begin to pick up habits from these friends, I think like them and talk like them.
During Sundays, my family are all away from home and I'm alone. I would enjoy Sundays gorging myself with loads of food and imagine myself to dine with these friends. There are times where I eat 7 person's serving worth of food a day and eat even more when I feel depress. Some of them begin to advice me to run away ditching my family when I become successful. Some told me to murder my family to vent this anger and sadness. Some are there just to let me indulge in my own depression.
I was wasting my life away until I've meet God 3 years ago when my part time job friend brought me to Christ. Knowing God exposed to me a whole new different type of love. I begin to experience true love from my life group, for the first time in my life, I felt accepted. God revealed to me that deep inside, these "love and companionship" that my imaginary friends provide couldn't satisfy that love I'm looking for, its a love only God can provide. A love that forgives and doesn't harm me or others, a love that is pure.
Don't get me wrong, things never change instantly after I've receive Christ into my life. But God showed how to live my life correctly. He showed me the consequences of sin slowly and showed me that some of my habits are wrong and harmful. The changing process is slow. From a boy who have 0 sense of worth to a boy who now sees himself as a child of God.
God begin to teach me how to love and forgive my family. I learn to pray for them and God slowly answers my prayers. My relationship with my sister and mother is much better then previously. Recently, once a while, my mum would initiate light hearted conversations with me. Its might not seem like a big thing to you all, but my mum had never talk to me like this in my life before. Slowly, I begin to love my family now and praise God, I've never had a murderous intent for my family for the past 2-3 years.
Now that I've experience God's love, I tried to avoid my "imaginary friends" at home. But through one of pastor's sermon last year, God revealed to me that I need to expose my past to light. I've hide this secret past from my life group who loves me because I'm afriad to be looked at differently by my life group members. But everything changed when God gave me the courage one Saturday to consult pastor about my past and my eating disorder and He arranged a prayer session for me with a few leaders.
God revealed to me that my imaginary friends turn out to be just like my family. After the arrangement was made and just before the session, my imaginary friends turned against me. They begin to insult and threatened me that night. But after that night of prayer, God broke my chains away from these "friends", till now I've never sense their presence again. I begin to learn to kick away my habits of addiction of porn with the help of my life group members and I've learn to eat normal. Due to the heavy influence of these bad habits, the process of changing was really tough and I fell from time to time. But God never give me up. He never did. In fact, he have made greater plans for my life.
Due to my "over active" imagination, one of my biggest ambitions is to learn animation, but my parents always object me pursuing arts because they believe it wouldn't earn money. But God never let this dream die. During the sermon, "the day the sun stood still", I was given a piece of yellow paper to write my bold prayers. This is what I wrote down, "I want to start up the very first Christian animation studio in Singapore for God." 2 weeks later, I was told to make a video for Pastor's birthday, which eventually leads to me serving now in word aid and impact live. I am still amazed by how God turned my life around, my imagination and creativity was no longer used to bring myself harm but God used it for his purpose.
I believe that if we really trust our life to God. God will surely bless all of us for his great purpose :) Thank you.
Yuxian.
Hellos everybody, I’m jiehao and I’m here today to represent my Life Group Nissi Knights to give thanks to God and how He had used us to impact a widow and her 3 kids.
It all started when one of my LG member Jerrold read the Newpaper on the 21st May 2010. ( Gesture to the screen as the article is being flashed) Should I read through certain important parts of the article with them like 68k debt and stuffs? As Jerrold read all these, he was filled with compassion for them. And it was at this moment that God spoke to him, as Christians, we seemed to be always “hiding” in our comfort zone in Church and life group rather than going out to impact the world out there. Coupled in with the recent series of living an extraordinary life, Jerrold really felt challenged by God to do something extraordinary to love and meet the needs of this family. Although the life group really has no idea how to help this family or contact this family, we decided to just go ahead and do it!
And around the 2nd week of June, we finally got hold of the widow’s address and we visited her at her home in Ubi. The first visitation was discouraging because the widow and her kids were not at home when we visited them. After talking to the neighbours to find out more about the situation of the family, we decided to buy some food and leave them at the doorstep of the house. At that particular moment, some of us were quite discouraged because we didn’t get to play with the kids and to talk to the widow. However, a few of us went to visit again the next evening to see whether she’s at home a not. And this time round, the kids and their mother were at home! We were shocked and so excited at the same time as we finally have the opportunity to speak to them and reach out to them! BUT, we were faced with a BIG problem- LANGUAGE BARRIER. The widow can only converse in Bahasa Indonesia although she can understand simple English and mandarin. Using simple English, friendly hand gestures and a lot a lot a lot a lot of smile on our face, we told them that we are here to help them and we want to care for them and give the kids tuition and stuffs! The kids and the widow were quite receptive to us and we really felt encouraged by them.
After we went home that day, we quickly gathered children’s clothes from different life group members and also got an Indonesian Christian friend to visit with us the next week so that we can communicate better and know her needs more clearly. The subsequent visits were productive as we begin to set up duty roasters to visit the widow every Tues evening bringing small little goods like milk and whatnot to give her every week. Tuition was also being given to the kids by some of the LG members weekly.
However, we quickly realized that we are focusing too much on meeting the physical needs of the widow and neglecting her needs as an emotional being. ( Eg. Our normal routine of visitation is always bringing clothes, giving of small little food items, asking her about the application of her visa and stuffs) We realized that as we meet her physical needs(which is very impt for her situation) , we are not loving her enough as a person and showing God’s love and care for her. That’s where God being to change the way we look at this project as we seek ways to care for her and find out more about her interests and to treat her like our elder sister because she is only 30years old this year.
And that is also when she requested us not to call her auntie anymore but call her ‘kakak’-meaning elder sister in Bahasa Indonesia. We also begin to substitute the word WIDOW with kakak in our LG because we don’t want to always associate kakak with the label of widow but we want to love her and treat her as a person Jesus loves. More breakthroughs were to come as kakak begin to share with us her worries and concerns and also her likes and dislikes. And that is when we found out that she’s actually a Christian when she’s younger but something happened and she stopped going to church. It was at this time that we realized that our purpose of visiting kakak is not only meeting her physical needs and emotional needs, but most importantly, she needs the love of Jesus and only Jesus can meet and provide for all her needs.
At this point of time, we also begin to realize the difference between volunteers and us Christians is not the money, milk, tuition, kong guan biscuit that we gave, because all of us gave the same things. So what is the difference? The Difference is the love of God. We need to love them with the love God has given us and also tell them about the love that Jesus has for them. From then on, the Indonesian translator Stephen begin to bring Christian tracks for kakak and we also decided to pray for kakak everytime we visited her.
It’s not been easy for the LG for these past 2 and a half months as we travel all the way from cck and even from JB to Ubi, but as a LG, Many of us had changed from being inward looking to more outward looking as we served and visited kakak. We believed that it is more blessed to give and to receive and we really enjoy ourselves playing with the kids and travelling there. And like what Pastor Chris has said last week, we are city on a hill that cannot be hidden. As Christians, I believe that we should continue to shine God’s light in our city by impacting the lives that are around us. There might not be widows in every neighbourhood but I believe that there are a lot of our friends and relatives that also need the touch of love in their lives. Before I end, 15 August 2010 which is tml, 10am, kakak, edo, jenny and yao wei will be visiting the Indonesian service at the Indonesian translator’s church! Praise God! And let’s give God the glory as He is the God of love and the One who provided the translator, the wisdom and the love to take care of them for these past few months!
Kiat Hau.
