Jen Lee's week 19 (23-29jun 2010)

Hey folks....
my day today (tue 29 jun) will probably be my main focus for the update of this past week, because it had many twists and turns...

first of all I was supposed to meet a friend for brunch in Brisbane city but he cancelled just as i was going to take the bus to the city...he had torn his bicep (OUCH!) playing soccer the day before and really had to see a doctor...poor guy, think he may have gotten World Cup fever :) really hope he gets well soon.

then, I was to meet with the general manager of corp communication for Rowland, a leading Australian corp communication consultancy because she had contacted the School of Journalism and Communication (SJC) at UQ about hiring a student on a contract basis to do research. the SJC head had contacted my lecturer for the media and communications research course i took and my name was given for follow-up.

I was quite honoured to be recommended and I hoped to be able to get some research work experience from this. But as it turned out, the GM was looking for someone to do inferential statistics, her exact words were "I want a stats nut". I'm definitely not one...in fact, I don't even understand the Wikipedia entry for inferential statistics (i searched it as I was writing this update)...so that didn't quite pan out either.

thirdly, I was going to go iceskating with some friends. I had checked the online schedule but somehow I read it wrongly. Instead of starting at 3pm, it ENDED at 3pm. my friend and I got there at 3pm :( the worse was yet to come...
as I looked for my phone to quickly call my other friends who were on their way, wanting to tell them not to come, I realised that my phone, along with the paper bag in which i had bought a magazine and a card, were MISSING!!

I remembered checking my phone at 2.49pm on the bus, but by the time i had alighted and walked to the rink at 3pm, my bag was no longer with me :[
My friend (cate, my colleague from the massage place) and I backtracked but couldn't find it...her phone happened to be out of credit, but I thank God for generous strangers at the bus stop who lent me their phone. one of them suggested that I send an sms to my phone, giving the phone number of my friend who was with me, so that whoever found the phone would know who to contact.

I also called the bus company and they said they would need me to call back the next day as they had to wait for the bus to return to depot at the end of the day. I called my phone and it was still ringing, so I took it as a sign that it had not been taken by someone who planned to keep it as they would usually switch off the phone in that case.

so far, my day was not going so well...

The last appointment of the day was 7pm prayer meeting with my lifegroup...and although I had a slight headache, probably from all the running around and the phone incident, I am so glad I went for it. Because I was reminded that I may have lost my phone, but I will never lose God's love and He will be by my side to sort out whatever needs sorting out if my phone doesn't get returned.

The song we sang, Emmanuel, which is one of God's names, and it means "God with us", was so appropriate :) At the end of the prayer meeting, my lifegrp bros and sisters prayed for me about the phone, and I really felt peace about the situation...letting it go and choosing not to fret.

After prayer, we spent quite some time playing worship songs on the keyboard, and me on the guitar...again, this helped me not to keep thinking about my phone.

When I got home at 10-plus, I switched on my computer and was messaging the couple of friends who were supposed to skate with me...suddenly i realised there was a Facebook message from my friend Cate! GOOD NEWS! My phone had been found :))))
She got a call from the bus company and I was to call them tomorrow morning at 10am to arrange how to get my phone back.

Praise the Lord, I am so thankful! Not only because my phone has been found, but also that I learnt a lesson that i can choose to be at peace and to let God be in control over something that is important to me. After all, He is always in control because He is the Sovereign Lord, but often we forget that :)

I know last week I said I will be more careful with my stuff, since i lost that pair of sunglasses at Tangalooma...this time I will really be extra extra careful. I will never put my phone in a separate bag in future, i wil always either have it in my pocket or in my main bag.

so...my day of ups and downs has ended well...

just one more thanksgiving and a few prayer requests before I end this update:

- thanksgiving: my colleague Cathy came to church service (most of it, she had to leave early) on Sunday and Cate came for lifegroup bbq after that. It is prayer answered from last week's update so thank u to those who prayed :) Cathy said she had a good time and she is open to come again. Cate met two sisters who are from China, so they shared with her in Mandarin about their faith. One of them said: "The earlier you come to know Jesus, the sooner blessing enters your life". She's interested in gifts of the Holy Spirit because she saw some of my lifegrp members praying in tongues for one sister who was not well. Please continue to pray for them to know the love of Jesus :)

Also please pray for a friend I made during campus outreach - her name is Priyanka and she's from India - who is interested to come for lifegroup on Friday. Please pray that nothing will crop up and that she will have a blessed time :)

- final prayer request: my housemate has moved out so please pray that we can get a new tenant as soon as possible and that we will be able to get along well together.

Ok, that's all from me this week. I will be leaving for my sydney+melbourne trip this sunday afternoon 4-24th jul. I am not sure how much internet access I will have. If you don't hear from me next tuesday, I wil write when I get back :)
oh yes, one more prayer request: please pray that I will be refreshed and renewed as I spend time dwelling in God's presence during this holiday. there will be about 9 days at the end when I will be travelling alone.

Also, at Hillsong Conference (5-9th jul), I want what God wants for me...I think it's to encounter Him in a new way that will transform me from the inside out, but I am open to anything else He has in mind :)

Oh yes, prayers for safety and journey mercy will be most appreciated too :)
And I promise to do my very very best not to lose anything!

:)

Take care and God bless,
Jen Lee

Jen Lee's week 18

Hey everyone...

Hope this email finds you well...

I just got news about the mother of a church friend who had memory loss due to a brain tumour...
They are considering radiotherapy and they hope it will work and that damage will be reversable.

my heart goes out to my friend and her family. Pls pray that the treatment will be effective.

This makes me think of how important it is to cherish our loved ones as well as our health.

so I will keep this update real short so you have a bit more time to spend with your loved ones or to give thanks for the blessings in your life.

As what I learnt from watching Shrek Forever After last Saturday, we often don't appreciate what we have until it is lost, but we don't have to keep making that mistake.

1. Work is going well. boss likes my work i guess because he has been scheduling me to work 4-5 days a week. last week i was supposed to work wed-sat but i didn't read the roster correctly and on wed I was happily on my way to Gold Coast with my fren who was visiting from Singapore when my boss called and asked how come I was not at work :[ he was gracious enough to let me continue with my plans. I bought some chocolates as a peace offering to him and my colleagues who worked that day.

today my planning development lecturer was one of my customers! it was interesting. I thought it would be very awkward but actually it was okay. He is a human being after all, who deserves to be pampered :) he was happy with the foot massage I gave him, yay :)

I have been getting to know my colleagues better. In particular, two of them called Cate and Cathy. I watched Shrek with Cate and I am often bantering with Cathy. I've invited them to church/lifegroup - they are quite open, please pray they will come one day :)

2. I've received my grades for another two courses. got a distinction for communication and social change, thank God for favourable marking of my second essay which I definitely know I rushed through due to poor time management.
and for my communication research class, my lecturer was happy with my research report and gave me a high distinction :) she suggested that i submit my research for publication in a journal. that would be super cool. Really thank God for blessing me with good grades!

3. My housemate is moving out because she wants to live nearer to school. Will miss her. Also concerned about her spiritual walk because she is having a difficult time with putting God in the centre of her life. We spoke about having a revelation of the cross, how that encounter is vital to someone being willing to surrender his/her life to Jesus. She said she will pray to have this. Please pray that she will choose to lay down her life at the feet of the One who laid down His everything for her.

ok, that's it from me. Happy Belated Father's Day to those who are fathers. Thank God for you!

Love,
jen lee

Jen Lee's week 17

Hey everyone...

tangalooma was amazing...just got back from the island resort...i looked out over the lovely blue ocean so much (see picture) that I think i got my eyes a little sun-burnt :P

so it's going to be a short update cuz I need to rest my peepers...but really want to thank those who prayed for good weather, my friend Pearly and I, really soaked up the sun over the past two days. We also had great fun feeding the wild dolphins, the ones we fed were Echo and Nari, two males who are survivors in their own right. Echo survived being orphaned at 8 months (usually baby dolphins stay with their mothers until they are 3) and Nari survived a horrific shark attack. When Pearly bought a photo of her feeding the dolphins, the shop assistant suddenly took out some photo prints of scenery in Tangalooma and said we could have them for free! What a nice surprise :)

1. Even when we are on vacation, God is still hard at work! He set up a meeting between Pearly and an ex-colleague of hers with whom she had lost touch after the latter left Singapore. It was amazing that we decided to walk to our hotel room yesterday morning at the exact time that Pearly's friend had checked out. Otherwise, they would have missed each other as the friend was leaving the island already. Pearly was able to have dinner with her friend tonight and to talk about spiritual matters as the friend is a believer but not part of a local church. Instead, she gets regular visits from a Jehovah Witness follower. As it turns out, her friend lives very near me, so I recommended the Chinese church that I attended once in February - although I couldn't understand much during the service, their sincere love for God was evident.
Please pray that Pearly's friend will check it out or other churches and eventually find herself as part of a Bible-believing, Christ-centred community.


2. I lost my $45 polarised sunglasses on the island though :( I realised it was missing right before I boarded the ferry to come back to Brisbane but the restaurant where I last had it on did not have it, neither did reception...I left my contact with them in case someone turns my shades in. Please pray that they get returned or if the person who took them really needed a pair of shades, that my shades would be a blessing to him/her but that he/she will one day realise that they should not keep things that are not theirs :)


3. My testimony on Sunday went well - praise the Lord :) it almost didn't go well because I had eaten fish and chips before service - Fried stuff + exuberant singing during praise & worship = loss of voice! I drank a lot of water, ate a sweet, asked Pearly to pray for me and in the end, it was fine. I did sound a bit hoarse, but i didn't cough/choke or have to drink water while sharing. My friends who knew how my voice normally sounds later told me that they thought the sound system was to blame - haha. But I really thank God that He helped me to make the point of how important it is to be part of a local church. Later on, over Facebook, someone in my lifegroup said that the message was a timely one for him :)


4. Prayer request for a friend who is finding the Christian life too demanding. She finds it hard to put God first when she has a lot of questions about her faith. She's also in the midst of making an important decision that has bearing upon her relationship with her boyfriend. I can't share much out of respect for their privacy, but please pray that she will truly seek the truth with all her heart, mind, soul and strength - because I believe that God will be found by her and that she will be changed from the inside out when she encounters God.


5. Oh and one final thanksgiving - last week for work, I received my first tip of $10! It's not a big amount, but considering that it was a treatment of 20 mins neck and shoulder massage that costs $25, to give $10 is quite a lot! praise God :) also, this was my last customer of the day, and I had done a 2-hour massage earlier so I was pretty tired. truly Thank God for His empowerment :)

I'm going to be busy for the rest of the week - working three days in a row - Thu, Fri and Sat. Thu it's 9am-9pm and I'm helping a friend with research paper editing after work. then on Fri, I will be playing guitar for lifegroup worship because the other musicians are all facing exams. Please pray for me to have God's supernatural strength!

Thank you :)

'til next week,
love,
jen lee

Jen Lee's week 16

Dear folks,

as i write this update, i'm having a BIG BIG grin on my face...ear to ear as they say :)

it's because I handed in my last assignment today and I'm DONE for the semester!

Praise the Lord!

and THANK YOU to you too for reading my updates and making this a meaningful exercise for me :)

read on for how the week has been...

1. Playing guitar for lifegroup worship last Fri went pretty well. in fact it went so well that my guitar pick broke :P now it looks like a rainbow-coloured fish head that says Pick Jesus (see attached pick-ture :) haha) Was able to remember most of the chords - thank God :)

For this coming sunday I've been asked to share tesimony during church service (each week they have someone share on the pulpit for 5 mins) about what it means to become a member of a local church.

Even though I don't have any current plans to stay on in Australia, but becoming a member of the church through a process of learning what the church believes in etc has been very helpful. God desires that we seek to bless the place where He has placed us, so to bless systematically through ministry roles in church requires membership because the leaders want to make sure we're on the same page as we serve.
Please pray for me to know what to share and that it will accomplish God's purposes.


2. On Sunday I found out that the person I had prayed for in church two weeks ago actually accepted Christ around that time! I had written about her in my update for week 14 and if you had read it and prayed for her, know that you have played a role in helping someone open her heart to Jesus :)

What a wonderful privilege to be able to partner with God in salvation, amen? Please pray as we follow up with her and help to build up her spiritual walk with God.


3. I've had a couple of online conversations with friends in singapore this past week. Because of their life circumstances, they feel that God is just having a grand laugh at them as He throws them "born-loser kind of deals". For one of them, I felt I needed to b a listening ear rather than try to say a lot as she comes from a Christian background.

The other friend does not, and we had a more in-depth conversation about how God does not stand apart from our suffering. Suffering is due to man's rebellion towards God, but Jesus came to provide a way out and He can redeem the negative experiences of our lives. After our conversations, I wrote a little to both friends. I hope there will be further conversations...e.g. the second friend does not understand why Jesus' death takes care of the penalty of sin. I'm pondering how to explain that. Please pray for wisdom for me.

Also pray that through the Holy Spirit, they will encounter the reality of God's love, as shown in the life and crucifixion of Jesus. And just as Jesus rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death, we too can have victory no matter what our circumstances. This was what my pastor talked about at the churchwide prayer meeting that I just attended.


4. My last assignment required some stats analysis that was quite intimidating at first, but thank God for my lecturer who was around in school when my coursemates and I were (almost) tearing out hair out trying to figure out Pearson, Spearman and Kendall tau correlation coefficients. She came in and told us how to simplify our analysis and it was a lifesaver.

I completed my research report mon night, it was over 20 pages long and the amazing thing was that I was able to get feedback from 3 people on Mon night itself so I could improve my draft and hand in on tue morning. Really thankful for their help as well as the help of those who participated in my survey. If anyone wants to read the report (entitled "Internet perceptions of mental illness and the stigma towards the mentally ill") just let me know :)

Want to end with happy news about another course - in one of my updates (week 13) I shared about handing in one of my assignments at 4.59pm when it was due at 5pm. That assignment was probably the hardest I had to do this semester, 200+ pages to read and I had a tough time getting my brain around what I needed to do. That's why it ended taking up so long and as I rushed it, I really was not sure of how it would turn out.

Well, I got my grade back on Sunday - i got 47/50 :) and after taking in the grade for my first assignment for this class, my overall grade is a high distinction - woohoo!! really praise God

so that's all from me this week folks...it's been 4 months since I left Singapore...once again, just want to thank God for taking care of me all this while...He is so faithful... also, I know that I've been blessed by your prayers, so thank you too!

In-Christ,
jen lee

p.s. I've a friend visitng from Singapore this fri and we're going to an island resort where we get to feed wild dolphins next mon. Please pray for good weather and a great time enjoying the ocean! Thank you!

Jen Lee's week 15

hi folks,

I'm down to my last assignment - my research paper for journalism and communication research methods class. It's due next tue, so please continue to pray for me and a BIG THANK YOU to those who helped in my survey because I got 63 respondents, which is really good (the lecturer said the minimum is 30 and i know of people who have difficulty getting enough respondents, so I'm really grateful that I don't have that problem:) Plus, my boss told me that I don't have to work this week because he has enough manpower, so I've more time. Please pray that I will make full use of my time to do my best for the paper (it's worth 60% of my grade).

a few highlights and prayer points from the past week:

1. Party on saturday went well - thank God! 27 people came from 11 countries, mostly because the people in my course are of different nationalities. I was touched that they made the time to come because we're in the midst of assignments!
I sang the song Live For You - I had written it some years back and felt it was appropriate to honour Jesus as He is my best friend and He enables me to make friends. I am very thankful for the community that He has placed me in, my church lifegroup, my housemates, my coursemates...u can see pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=544591952&k=52AYP655WT6G6BDAPE22PRTWT6BAXX2DRTFR&oid=1448465259090
and the video of my song here: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=544591952&k=52AYP655WT6G6BDAPE22PRTWT6BAXX2DRTGY&oid=411139002616
Please pray that I will continue to have meaningful relationships with people, not through my own ability, but through the love and strength of God.

2. On sunday I brought Philips to church, as mentioned in my last email, he is the boyfriend of my colleague at the massage place. Found out that he used to pastor a church in New Zealand. He's working out some issues in his life, particularly in the area of relationship. I'm so glad that he came for service - the chairperson shared a verse, John 14:27 which also happens to be on Philips' MSN status. He responded to altar call and when I prayed for him after that, he shed some tears.

It's so clear to me now that God's hand arranged for me to meet Philips. We had met at this party in my boss' house, which i didn't know of until the day of the party itself, when i happened to go to my work place to turn in a form that I had forgotten to pass to my boss. When Philips asked me which days I work, I happen to mention that I may change so that I can play guitar for my church group and that's how we talked about church service and I invited him and he came!

God's love never fails to amaze me. I introduced Philips to a brother from morning service (which caters for a more mature congregation of working adults and families) and he intends to go for service again :) Please pray that he will keep going and that he would continue to journey back to God's side.

3. I myself went for altar call and the person who prayed for me said she saw a picture of an apple when she was coming towards me. She said God wanted me to know that I was the apple of His eye and that He enjoys time with me. It really spoke to me because I had gone out for prayer because I wanted my outreach to people to come from a place of intimacy with Jesus. To never get too busy to spend time with Him. The sister who prayed for me said my fellowship with God is what constitutes the sweetness and goodness of my life, which will naturally be a blessing to others. I've decided to fast breakfast and spend the time with God - please pray for a deepening in my love and devotion for Jesus as I do this. It's also preparation for the Hillsong worship conference that I will be attending next month.

4. After service on sunday, my church had a ministry fair, where people get to know of the different ministries where they can serve. There were many that I was interested in, but after praying, I chose choir (which will sing only on special occasions, a few times a year), intercessory prayer (praying during service once a month, with training once a month), and editorial support for Hope Brisbane's Unidus building project. The last one is an area where I hope to use my journalist skills and also to grow in learning what it's like to be involved in actually constructing something that takes millions of dollars. I believe it will stretch my faith. Please pray for good time management and that I will serve God by His Spirit's empowerment - as Zechariah 4:6 says: Not by might nor power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.

5. Finally, a thanksgiving that I don't have to work this week :) yes, although I don't get to earn extra income, it is a blessing because I will be playing for lifegroup worship on friday - i did not know that the schedule was out so I was not aware of it until today. My plan had been to ask my boss for different work days when I have to play guitar as I didn't want my hands to be too tired, but as I didn't know i was supposed to play, I would have had a hard time on Friday. But God has arranged it so that my boss offered to give me time off for my assignment, without me even needing to ask. God worked it all out for me, He's so good. Next time I will look out for when the worship schedule is out and maybe by then, my muscles would be strong enough :) Please pray that I will be able to memorise the chords for the songs this Friday, it makes it easier to flow in true worship when I'm not overly focused on looking at pieces of paper :)

Okie doke, that's all folks... as always, thanks for reading and praying!

In-Christ,
jen lee