God's Clay Retreat 2007!!! (10-11 Dec 2007)

This year small grp retreat was awesome as before! Maybe the BEST YET in terms of spirit led sessions... I can say for sure that GOD REALLY WAS WITH US the last couple of days!

Although this time is a slightly smaller grp. I felt it was just nice for the sharing and discussing and bonding.
THIS RETREAT cld be the TURNING point for GOD's CLAY for the year to come!

Started of at WEST COAST PARK... (1030am) (DAY 1)

(we started of the retreat by praying outside this hut...and it actually started to rain as we prayed...and during the prayer time... we just prayed in FAITH that the rain wld stop.. AND IMMEDIATELY the RAIN just stop as we stood at the open air! IT WAS REALLY AMAZING I tell you! Its STOP so suddenly! and right after that we had a really nice time of worship with feli and mel leading. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER from our last 2 retreats we are fortunate to have a keyboard with us this time! So it really did helped in the atmosphere for worship!)

ACTIVITIES by the park!

(thats feli........................................vyan and Aj)



(for the first time in my life i manage to climb to the top of such an obstacle! ALL my life i was afraid of climbing so high as i actually have a fear of heights....after that tried the mini obstacle course)

Ate lunch at macs.... rhwn headed to praisehaven!

In BUS to praisehaven!


ARRIVAL! abt 1 plus pm....

(back to the same place as combined-ministry retreat a couple weeks back)

(vyan took a snooze while waiting for our rooms to check in)

THE HORROR!!!!!

(we FOUND STRANGE PIECES OF MEAT in our refrigerator! till now we dunno if they are HUMAN parts! heh! =P)

THE LIVING ROOM!
We booked 2 very nice apartments..for abt 14 of us.... 12 stayed over....

See what we did to change this area........

(from this........................we added all the mattresses from both apartments and pile them up here)

(And soon enuff we got a decent common comfy area we added all the blankets and pillows!..
This was our HANG OUT area for this retreat!)

HAPPENINGS in the afternoon...(3-6pm)

(mel taking a photo of feli..... cherie and her DUCK!)

THE START OF BETTER THINGS TO COMEEEE..... (5 pm onwards)
The planning comm and rising leaders of God's clay, ellen,mel,justin,moonie,englee and me then headed to a room and we decided to have a time of prayer,worship, and discussion before we go ahead with the sessions at night. AND WOW... i tell you... GOD PRESENCE WAS SO REAL TO ALL OF US IN THAT COLD AIR-CON ROOM! As mel played the keyboard in the back ground... the ATMOSPHERE was ALL THERE... and the prayer session we had in THAT ROOM WAS REALLY SPIRIT LED! AND GOD REVEALED TO US ALL as we prayed! and we all had the same common insights in the end... GOD told us all to just SURRENDER the whole retreat to his hand and we sldnt be so caught up cracking our brains on how to get a good proposal for our grp for the year to come. The presence of GOD was so strong i didnt want to leave that room!

(THE ROOM where GOD was leading the leaders of God's clay as we prayed and worship!)

AT NIGHT!....
Headed for dinnner at rail mall at this noodle place....

(the night view of Salvation Army PRAISEHAVEN)

Back to the apartments... 8 plus pm..

(moonie and soe just when crazy and HIGH!...and they started jumping on the mattresses!)

(the COSY hang out area.... MISS THIS PLACE NOW!)

(we pasted the worship lyrics at the wall.... WORSHIP at night was awesome! Mel led really well and the presence of GOD was here in the room again!)

After worship...we broke into grps of 2-3 and prayed in different parts of the apartment...
vyan,josh and me prayed in the kitchen...and WOW...AGAIN... it was a very sprit led prayer session..as we prayed for our small grp... WE ALL BELIEVED by FAITH that TODAY... was the time of REVIVAL for our small grp... and we all knew 2007 was the hardest year for us yet and many of us fell away from God and got caught up with many worldly issues...but we know that God is always faithful and this time of trials is meant to build our grp! And a verse hit me as we prayed...

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14

12 years has passed........

Thats what happen...as we decided to change plans of discussion to sharing instead to catch up what we have missed out from each other for the past year in 2007...and with 12 of us here...we manage find out many deep details of one another, the good times and hard times from each of us. It was a very heartfelt sharing session that our grp has never done ever since the last retreat...and after abt 2 hrs 12 years has passed....

we also surprised Eng lee with an appreciation acard and gift to thank him for the many things he done for us the past yr.

BIRTHDAY BASH for the july to december babies...

(had this really cool cake!)

We decided to sleep early after some games as we postponed the discussion to the next day... after some games of polar bear,bridge and some other grp games... by 2pm i actually knocked out unknowingly... and SUDDENLY woke up at 5.30am to see vyan,rachel and soe still awake having someee deep interesting talk! DANG i miss everything! Anyway stayed up with them till abt 6 tish when justin woke up too... and we slept soon after...

BREAKFAST time!!!!! 8.45am (Day 2)

(Some of the girls made breakfast for us! It was pretty good!)

SERIOUS DISCUSSION TIME!

SOMEHOW... i was quite surprise this time morning..we were ALL WIDE AWAKE still.. its the FIRST Retreat out of the last 3 that we were wide awake in the morning... as this time the discussion abt our grp future became really OPENED and we shared many personal issues right from our hearts. And we really hope for the best of everyone of God's Clay as many wont here to have a say. But i believed that God led us in this time, and it was a very FRUITFUL and PURPOSEFUL time as we shared and came out with proposals and plans for 2008! IT WAS GOOD!... and we hope that for the year to come... LOVE will pour among each and everyone in God's Clay and that we will all COMMIT and PRIORITIZE small grp meetings.

Through the discussion... i kinda felt i was more into staying on to help my very own small grp instead of taking a sec 1 grp the next yr..... will still continue to pray abt it....

(we were doing this complicated accountability list...so that everyone is accountable to one another)


(vyan and my feet!)

CRAZY HAPPENINGS before we check out.... abt 12 noon...

(The girls TAO-POK each other lor!)

(everyoneeee was HIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

IM IN LOVE WITH GOD'S CLAY!!!!!


(back row- Jem,cherie,mel,moonie,soe,rachel..front row-ellen,ben,vyan and englee)
(feli,Aj,justin,josh and steph who came for this retreat but left the day before or earlier)

-Ben Lau

FLASHBACK! A post i written in the old blog (26 September 2006)

The God's clay we are today has change dramtically over the years ever since 4 yrs ago when it was first form when we were sec 2 in 2003 when YM first started. We undergo lots of changes each yrs... a change in YSGLs every yr! grp members leaving and new ones coming in... Our first ever YSGL was Ee Lin and joel the aysgl... it was the first time we all gathered together when the new system YM was form after the change from the old sunday school system. The grp members that were from the pioneer God's Clay that is still here today are Vyan, Reuben, Felicia, Ellen, Rachel and me. And i tink thats all! The rest change grp or left... and disappear never seen again... the grp was really "QUIET" at first... i was the most quiet one i tink!!! Felicia or Rachel then started to invite some mgs girls along to our grp, i tink thats when cherie came in.

Following yr... 2004... Ee lin change grp, and Joel joined with our new Ysgl Jerrod, and Mark the new aysgl... It was a big change for us... But i got to say... Jerrod done a good job taking us that year... Joel had to leave half way to study overseas in Australia, so Mark was the only Aysgl then... During this period even more mgs girls came... Stephanie, Huimin aka moonie, melanie, laura and soe-na den all started to join God's Clay, It was the MGS "revolution"!Haha! And the guys were just vyan,reuben and me with abt 10 other girls! Ellen then brought Jem in...and in the later part of the yr... a sec 3 grp merge with us...this was when the grp got very big! and started to get NOISY! to be honest we actually felt intruded by the sec 3 at first. Sorry justin,joshua! ... there were a huge number of guys and only one girl ... most of them left after awhile..only the 2 justin, joshua, Aj stayed on till today... charles also joined us that year.

2005! Its like the curse othe dark arts teacher in Harry potter!!! Our YSGL had to change AGAIN!!!! Every year we got a new leader just like in harry potter where the dark arts teacher somehow had to change every yr too... This time Jerrod left for overseas and Chin Ee took over us... during this year the change in God's clay developed further... i invited TW in... and somehow open up abit more thanks to tw... but still VERY QUIET!!!! Got to thank vyan for introducing the GC grp study during the o level period! Our grp somehow got closer a bit more..and thats when i actually first started talking to charles! We grew closer as a grp ever since we had our first God's Clay retreat introduced by chin ee!
From the retreat! We got even closer and i rmb the "POLAR BEAR" nite we played thru out the nite! We had discussions abt the problems in our grp and shared the vision for our grp for the following yr... we all open up in our grps during the discussion and shared openly... we tried to overcome those problems and somehow manage to solve it after the retreat... following the retreat was the YM CAMP 2005! Our grp met up during the camp in breaks and spend the finale nite together also! thats how much our grp has grown since 2003... we den started to have more grp outings in 2006... and our grp grew even larger with new members in 2006...benjamin tan, jia zhi, laura sisters, joshua lam joined us followed by some temporary members like sandra,ziyan and randy.... during one of the outings i remembered the "circle of trust" came abt from a pool day outing! hahha! had a fun time during those periods...
chin ee made ellen and me the new aysgl after mark had to go army and left us later.... to be honest i was very reluctant to be an aysgl at first... i wanted to tell chin ee that i didn't want to be one! but as time passes...i'm glad i took up this responsibility... well recently... the usual yearly curse to God's clay came again.. chin ee had to leave overseas for New York to further her studies in PHD... it was a sad period to see her leave after the many things she has done for us... well now Englee our new YSGL has taken over us... and we hope to see our grp grow closer and futher in the Lord with the guidance of Englee!

My dream is to see wesley YM see REVIVAL and every youth to have the PASSION and FIRE for God! And i can see that in our grp!!!
I will like to end of with a BIG thanks to God's Clay! for being my fellow small grp mates! U are the best grp i cld have!!! God Bless u all!!!:D

your.. Aysgl Benjamin Lau aka bendy, father ben signing out!

(:

Dear God's Clay,

I'm glad that many issues that have been festering and becoming more putrid over the past year have finally been brought out into the open and discussed. (: Thank God for our retreat.

Anyway, I just thought i'll get the ball rolling on this hitero abandoned (once again) blog and start by sharing my experience during YM Camp. (:
I was very blessed to have Moonie as my fellow group leader during camp because we were able to complement each other very well.

Personally, after being for 2 previous YM camps, i didnt really know what to expect this time round. Plus, as a group leader, in a sense i was attending camp in a different capacity. God really showed Himself to me in this camp, in a different way from the previous camps. I think that He was preparing me for this camp even from my first camp in 2005.

I don't see the need to bore everyone with a detailed account of the entire camp, so i'll just cut to the chase. I'm 18 this year, and i'm pretty much among the older youths in YM. During the sermon, what one of the pastors said really spoke to me. I feel that God is calling me to take one a greater role in YM. This will probably come as a surprise to some of you guys but i've prayed about it and come sunday, i'll probably be talking to matthew lai about it. originally, i was apprehensive and i personally felt that i wasn't ready, but during one of the leader's prayer mettings, when matthew appealed to us for aysgl's, what sandy said really made sense to me. she said that if you keep thinking that you're not ready, but the time you think you're ready, it will be too late. just let God mould you and use you for His purpose. (:

i'm too tired and i can't really articulate my thoughts properly. i just hope this sort of makes sense to you guys. (:

see you all on sunday!

God Bless.
Soe-na