my wall!

what wall? no, not my fb wall. i mean the wall that i think i put up quite successfully sometimes. i think i've really been growing in God this summer and i feel like i've been finding joy in more and more things than i have before and those moments are so great for me! I'm trying very hard to serve in humility and to strengthen the people around me. but sometimes i think that i have these times of just... frustration. i feel displeased with myself.. and this is when i start to get vague =P

well there's always softball and i think i struggle more with this than i let on. i wanna do the best for God and to build up a team that glorifies Him and not OUR TEAM. lets just say we DO somehow WIN the championship what will that bring us but joy that may only last til the end of summer but God is forever and eternal. we should always do things that show that HE is great not us. and i wish i could say to God that i am doing all i can do to help this team but somehow i always feel lk i could do more. and then there's trying to encourage friends in their faith as well as their troubles and you know i wish i could help them and be there for them and ENCOURAGE ENCOURAGE ENCOURAGE but sometimes i just don't know what to say. and sometimes i even question if i'm doing the right thing becuase it just doesn't seem to be GOOD, people seem to be unhappy but i thought i was doing this because it was the best thing to do. and there's def a lot more things i don't tell people but i think about a lot.

but one thing that God has been teaching me this summer that it's not just UP TO ME and what i can do. it's what GOD IS DOING and CAN DO (which is ANYTHING!)through us and IN us/other people. God is just...AMAZING :D and i feel lk sometimes we beat ourselves up over a lot of things that we've done that we regret or turned out not as we wanted but this song i heard at Wildfire really reminded me that sometimes we are so caught up in all these regrets that we have or what we did and we forget WHAT JESUS HAS ALREADY DONE. because of Jesus we can be forgiven of our past sins! this is the song :)

lyrics include:
you are more than the choices that you've made
you are more than the sum of your past mistakes
you are more than the problems you create, you've been remade

cause this is not about what you've done
but what's been done for you
this is not about where you've been
but where your brokenness brings you to

anyways was just doing some thinking =P and wanted to blog bout it. and was very happy to see some ccf people/friends at wildfire and ate DELICIOUS WINGS with them at hollywood at pmall ^^

summmawr!

i may have told some people but i was going to go on a STM to china to teach english in the summer but in the end that got cancelled and i was ... quite disappointed because i really wanted to serve God in China because i felt like i had a passion for that. but i trusted that God would use me in another way and surely he closed that door but he will open a new one for me elsewhere :) and SURELY HE DID!

i think God is teaching me a lot this summer just through preparing for devos i'm learning so many of the lessons myself that i'm sharing with others. through trying to be a good governor to my softball team i'm learning a lot about what it means to put Jesus first. and trying to be a big sister as well to "kids" younger than me really pushes me to develop my own relationship with God so i can be a good example to them. and God has blessed me with so many opportunities to learn more about Him, about how to serve and i really really hope that i take everything i can away from this summer and not lose it in university.

i feel like i should mention one of the most affecting events that happened to me in China since i feel like i shared nothing about my China trip on my blog. i signed up for a sea turtle conservation/mandarin learning program because the missions trip got cancelled. when i got there i found out the "leader" of the program was an atheist and he believed strongly in science, conspiracies and power hungry people being evil and part of that meant people who claim to be Christians. he was also very well researched. when he found out that i was a Christian and that i believed in God he got pretty... heated up i guess becuase he was so shocked because he believed that i was "smarter than that"... i have really never ever been faced with such criticism for my belief but i tried to be loving towards him and i agreed with some things that he said about people being abusive with power but i tried to get the point across that the bad actions of people should not reflect on who God was. i only got to talk to him twice about Christianity i guess though he dominated the conversation mostly with conspiracy theories and stuff.... but one thing i tried to challenge him about was "what is love?" because i think science might give you some answer about... molecules or chemical reactions but if anyone has felt love... it is definitely more powerful than just that. :) and i also got to share my faith with anotehr "leader" of the program. he was a lot more respectful but his belief was that nothing should be done in life unless it goes towards benefitting a purpose and for him his purpose was helping the sea turtles and he said that social events are pointless unless it's for a purpose so it made me think if he was just.. being my friend for the sake of the turtles... and not really because he cares about me? well anyway i got to share my purpose in life and about my faith and what i believed in and i think... i did a bad job =( but it's not about always about what how good we did it but just that we did it. and hopefully the spirit will work in their hearts :) so in the end God gave me an opportunity to serve in China anyways. GOD IS AMAZINGGG

burdens

idunno how to start but my spirits are so low right now. as in i feel very distraught... it's been great getting to see a brother in Christ again esp after asia and uni and tonight he finally opened up a bit more. before i only got to see the surface of his pain... and i felt really heartbroken >_< because i felt that i could not help him carry his burden because the encouragement that i gave him, was i think something that he dind't really want to hear or i could not be sympathetic to him and maybe he thought that i was lecturing him or judging him...

ahhhh well anyways it's not always about what i can do for him because somethings just have to be healed and taken care of by God.. blah i wish there was more i could do for him...

but this has been an interesting weekend.... and i just feel like i want to rest in God's presence for all eternity nowwww because things have been difficult but i know it's no good to just run ...

back in toronto!

i have been reaaally lazy with the blogging recently >__< there's just so much stuff that has happened and i feel too tired to type it all out or .. prob just lazy. and it's also 1 am now and i feel so tiredddd T_T i remmeber the times when i couldn't even sleep at 1 am haha but i def learnt a loooot from my trip in asia and now i'm back and not ready for the softball season! skills-wise anyway :) but i hope i can help lead the team well and really be a big sister to all the young kids on my team. relatively young anyway haha so i feel so old!

anyway haven't really done much... wathced despicable me! it was quite funny haha but i don't think it was as good as UP! i expect toy story 3 to be better than despicable me cause i think it was just mostly humour and not much else cause it had a predictable story line/wasn't that deep lol and a lot of the funny moments were in the trailer >_< but it's still cuuuute!

and now i have a tummy ache =( so i'm going to sleeep