Indeed as 2 Cor 10:3-5 says For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

I started by praying for the nations alphabetically about a month ago. Currently, I have prayed for 21 countries, namely Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin and Bermuda. Thank God for allowing me to participate in this exciting role as an intercessor for the nations! It is very interesting to find out more about the nations in the world. There are some countries that I have not even heard of them! I pray that I would continue to have the heart for the world by praying for them until I reach the last country Zimbabwe by the end of next year, 2012.

Join me in this amazing journey as you allow God to use you to change things eternally in the nations and to see all tongues and tribes bow to Jesus.

I found this website http://www.operationworld.org/ which gives you the information of every nation in an alphabetical order so that you can pray specifically for them! Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you on the areas that we should intercede for them as well!

We woke up very early the day of our travel, at 3.3o am as our flight was at 6.10 am. However, when we reached the airport, we realised that the flight was delayed by 1 hour. After a trip of about 1 hour plus from Quito to Panama, we were told to proceed to the next connecting flight. However, when we reached the departing gate, we were informed that it was closed, and we couldn’t go onto the plane!  We were quite shocked by the turn of events. That totally changed our itinerary! Copa airline changed our flights from Panama to LA, and from LA to San Francisco. We were supposed to reach San Francisco at 5 pm in the evening on the same day, but due to the delay, we could only reach at around 10 am the next day. To compensate for this delay, the airline gave us 2 complimentary meals at the airport’s food court, and also a hotel stay at LA.

We went on a city tour around Panama city for a few hours to kill some time. There was nothing much to do in the city and it was pretty hot. Our tour guide cum driver (more driver than tour guide) was a tad bit grouchy and did not really explain much to us about the city. Thank God, there was one saving grace of the tour which was the visit to the Panama canal which is a 77 km ship canal in Paname which links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It is a key conduit for international maritime trade.

When we finally took the plane from Panama to arrive at LA, it was around 1 am in the morning and we were supposed to go to a hotel from the airport as advised by the Copa airline staff. Hovever, the shuttle to the airport didn’t arrive. In the end, we went to a hostel which was a bit strange. Ha, the lobby was decorated with “cobwebs” and Halloween looking stuff. Anyway, we slept for like 3 hours and then we were on our way to the airport again to catch our flight to San Francisco! Really tiring!

When we finally reached San Francisco, we were sure tired but also excited. We took a train (BART) to downtown San Francisco and walked to our hostel. Haha, Tim was dragging his luggage across the streets of San Francisco. There was a black lady dressed sloppily in her PJ and bedroom slippers with socks who approached us and said that she would show us the way. She brought us across several streets and then asked us for some money for the “service”, so we just gave her like 2 bucks. After a few more streets, we finally found our hostel, which was pretty decent and clean. We checked-in and then after that we went out to explore the city and to eat something.

We went to downtown chinatown and ate some dim sum. It was quite nice! After eating, we went to explore the city a bit and then went to do some shopping. The city is full of shops, with lots of starbucks (nearly one at every corner), lots of fashion stores, Macy’s, Victoria secret, Forever 21, Zara, Gap and so on… too many to count. We even found Coffee bean & Tea Leaf in San Francisco! Amazing! After shopping, we went to buy a fisherman wharf pass which allowed us to visit a few places of interest. For the first night, we went to visit a wax museum, and the famous sourdough museum at Boudin where it showed how to make the bread which has a sour tinge. It is quite interesting that the bread is made from mother dough was kept for 162 years! We went to eat clam chowder and some seafood at the fisherman’s wharf.

The next day, I was more refreshed after resting. We went on a duck tour which was very interesting. The tour guide cum driver was very animated and gave us a tour around San Francisco. We were even given a quacker to wear around our neck and our tour guide led us to quack along some music. It was very fun and interesting! Later in the day, we went to a cruise to see the Golden gate bridge and to tour around Alcantraz island where some of the worst criminals used to be housed. At night, we went to visit another museum with interesting exhibits at Ripley’s believe it or not. They featured things like the tallest man on earth, a woman who had no legs but was able to give birth to a baby. Incredible! We ended the day by going back to our hostel in a cable car! But this cable car is not in the air, but on the road. It is like a tram. The down town area is pretty hilly and it is quite amazing to see how the cable air goes up and down the steep roads!  We finished the day by enjoying Japanese food! Nice!

We went to another part of the city, in Mountain view near Palo Alto, somewhere near Steve Job’s house the subsequent days. We went there to attend a concert and also a worship conference by Paul Baloche. When we reached there, we had a pleasant surprise as we were told that we did not need to pay for the conference which was like $60 per person. After that, we asked the personal assistant of Paul Baloche and he told us that since we came from Ecuador, we have paid a lot already! Thank God for their hearts of blessing us!

We had a smashing time of learning and worshipping God at Paul Baloche’s worship concert and conference. On Friday, 7 Oct, we were allowed to join in their sound check before the concert and we were real up close and personal with Paul Baloche. He is really a humorous, sincere guy and I could see that he really love music and love worshipping God! God used him and his band powerfully to bring about His presence during the whole session!  I sensed the presence of God strongly during the morning session of the worship conference. It was great worshipping God and being touched by Him.

God spoke to me to surrender my life to Him during the conference and also through a verse that Paul Baloche shared in Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”. I was also reminded that God is sovereign through a sermon at the church on Sat after the worship conference. He is sovereign, meaning that he is in control of the situations in my life and he knows what is best for me. God is great!

I pray that God would help me to be a good praise and worship leader or keyboard player who is first a worshipper from Mon to Sat and to bring the presence of God to the people on Sunday whenever I lead or play any instrument during praise and worship sessions! Indeed, the heart of worship is Jesus himself, however the rest of it (the music, the skills, the songs etc are also very important, they are there to create a conducive environment for people to encounter God. What a privilege to be in the praise and worship ministry! I do not believe that I have much natural talents in music, however, I want to trust God that he would use me to minister to Him and to His people through me, whether I am singing, leading, playing guitar or keyboard! Help me O Lord to be diligent to improve on my skills and grant me your anointing to bring forth your presence during every praise and worship session that I am involved in! Thank God so much, Lord!

Thank God for this blessed trip and also for my Timothy and Phoebe who blessed me very much by being there with me for this trip! I couldn’t imagine myself having so much fun without them. Thank God for PR who is good at directions and helped us to navigate the streets of San Francisco! Thank God for Paul Baloche, his band and his assistant, Frank de Jong.

If you have read until the end of this article, congratulations…it is super long! Ha, I was in my long-winded mood. Please pray along with us that Tim and Phoebe would get back their luggage soon. It was delayed and there was no way of knowing its location for the time being. Pray that it would be recovered soon and they would not lose anything.

It was incredibly cheap, only USD$1.50!!! The reason was because we have a discount card and we have collected some points after the past few months. Thus, we could have one free ticket. The other two cost USD$2.25 each!

I should watch more movies here! Thank God for a relaxing night out! So blessed!J

http://hope-ecuador.org/

Thanks for the help of our brothers, Weizhu and Yue Ann in Singapore who helped to set up the website and to get it started! From there, we added different components and articles into it. It is now FULL of life, showing the church life and the brothers and sisters in Hope Quito, Ecuador!

Thanks to Katy, our young adults caregroup leader who also helped greatly to edit the Spanish and also to add on new articles, for e.g. the article on the SALT conference under Noticias y Eventos (News and Events). For my Singaporean brothers and sisters, if you want to read the articles, you can cut and paste them onto google translate to understand them. The translation may not be fully accurate but you should understand it more or less!

On Sunday, we publicised this website to the church and we asked for volunteers to join in this website ministry! We have good responses, one sister, another Karen came up to me to offer her services and others offered to send me more photos and testimonies to beef up the website! Let us look forward to more exciting news and to read about what God is doing in Hope Quito, Ecuador! All glory to God in heaven!

It brought me to think about the verse in the bible in Ecclesiastes 3:1

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Indeed, how true it is, that there is a time for everything. There is a season for every activity under heaven! I pray that God would help me to know His will for me in this season of my life in a clearer fashion! Help me to have the trust in you and to have the patience to see your plans for me unfold! Lord, I submit my life into your mighty hands! In Jesus name, I pray! Amen!

Some significant things that happened are as follows (haha, I think I like to write things down in lists, this structured part of me should be credited to my 6 years engineering background in NUS.)

• started work at Inlingua (first time teaching some big shots like Regional GM, HR manager of a multi-national companies)
• started playing the keyboard, lead praise and worship in church!
• started to know the people here, my caregroup (led by Katy)! They are warm and fun-loving people!
• went to Cotopaxi with my caregroup!
• helped to organise the SALT conference 2011 in Quito!
• went to Cuenca for a short trip with my team!
• Lalitha’s mother passed away, and we attended the funeral service, sang in one of the services with Katy!
• visited Ivana at the hospital who got into a automobile accident. Thank God she is ok!
• visited Lucy many times at the hospital
• saw 4 new believers in a single caregroup
• helped to cook for more than 100 people at Pan de vida, a social work organisation for 3 times so far
• managed to wake up for my morning classes so far (the classes are as early as 7 am in the morning! GOsh…)
• got my cellphone stolen within the first month here (really careless!)
• suffering from rashes since beginning of August (real ITCHY!!!)
• serving with my wonderful team (Shenteng and Peiru) I really have a lot to learn from them…
• …

I can’t think anymore! Oops, getting late! I should sleep…tomorrow I have a class at 7.30 am! God, help me to wake up!
Thank you Lord, In Jesus Name, I pray!

He then led us to brainstorm about the needs of the people and we thought of many ideas! Finally we voted and settled on the idea of the theme SUCCESSFUL LIVING to meet the needs of the people! Over the next two days, we discussed more in details on the vision and mission of this new direction, as well as the implementation of it. The whole journey was exciting and rewarded as we prayed and sought God’s guidance in it. In the end, we came out with a vision to help people to be successful (in the aspects of social, financial, professional, total well-being), through developing their ABC (affective, behavioural and cognitive) aspects. These could be done through a series of workshops, talks and even personal mentoring. We hope to bring forth the wisdom in the word of God through these sharing as well so that others could see the relevancy of God’s words in their lives! We plan to embark on this theme, Successful living, within our church meetings too so that everyone can benefit from it and see evident transformations in their lives! As we see real testimonies of people who have benefitted by the wisdom of the word of God, other people would naturally be attracted to join in as well!

I pray that Hope Chile would continue to be establised and built up, every member having the same DNA in their belief in the relevancy of the bible and that every scripture is useful and practical to be applied into all aspects of our lives so that we would see success as God desires it; every member is a pastor, being involved in serving the Lord to bring people to experience the Lord.

It made me understand that I am here not to just purely share with people the good news of the gospel (since almost everyone has heard of it), but to show them through my life-style (my speech, my love, my behaviour, my attitudes) how a relationship with God is relevant in our lives! Most people here are disllusioned by religion, and they go about their lives without involving God in their lives. I believe that they do not want to hear more, but to see for themselves, how a loving relationship with God is possible and the kind of blessings that will bring as they commit themselves to it. I pray that in the future, I would be able to lead my life in such as way as to draw people to know God. I want to believe with all my heart that as I apply the wisdom of the bible in my life and believe totally in God’s promises, I would see God blessing my life and helping me to achieve my fullest potential in Him, fulfilling His great purpose for my life! Lord, give me the wisdom to live my life to the best of my abilities according to your perfect plan!

Time has indeed passed so fast. I have nearly come to the end of my journey in Santiago, Chile. I have never expected to be able to spend two years and a half in this land but God made it happen and I am so filled with thanksgiving! There were so many obstacles in the beginning, like how do I get a job here to sustain my livelihood, how do I connect with the Chilean people if I cannot speak spanish, how do I share with people my faith in Jesus in a relevant way in this land, how do I work with a team that I have not known before I come here, how would I fare being so far away from home, etc etc? There were so many unknowns, yet as I looked back, I saw the faithful hand of God working through me and in me! I have come so far, I have obtained a permanent visa to stay in this land, I have gotten jobs and sustained myself financially thus far, I have acquired the spanish language adequately enough to converse with them, to share the word of God, to pray with them, I have learnt to accept the differences in my team and to work with them, I have time to connect with my friends and family in Singapore! 

God, I am grateful to you for what I have done.   I have learnt much from my stay in this land and from the people that God has put around me. From June onwards, I would be spending the next one year in Quito, continuing the journey in South America at another country. It would be a wonderful journey ahead! My heart is full of anticipation with the things that God would enable me to go through, the people that God would allow me to meet, to touch and be touched and of course the learnings that I would be gaining.