December deeming

It's December.

It only really hit me when they were lighting the Advent candles at service just now. We are in the last month of the calendar year and in the first month of the Christian one. Christmas, the birth of Christ, is near.

Recalling the hustle and bustle of the past year, I struggle to recollect the year that has just past me by. I remembered mainly being busy with school work and vaguely stepping out of youth ministry leadership at the beginning of 2006.

It's that time of the year where the past 11 months seem like a blur to you, and where we start recollecting and look ahead to the new year ahead. Of course, there is Christmas and New Year.

At service just now, I was very happy to see Wee Shun and Julie, the missionary couple who just returned from their six-month sojurn to our church's mission base in northeastern Thailand. I was tremendously blessed by their company and fellowship when I was there in June this year on a mission trip myself.

But I sensed they did look a little disoriented at service just now. Maybe it's the post-missions "low" that I experienced even after only one-week in June. Maybe they just need time to settle into the Singapore groove again -- which isn't very forgiving if you are returning from a slower and not-so-worldly way of life.

But it's just uncanny at the service just now, the guest pastor, Canon Dr Graham Kings, visiting from St Mary's Islington Church in London, reminded us what we were doing about whatever God might have called you to before.

And I got reminded of Thailand, what happened and what I saw in my two separate trips up north in the summer, what I sensed, my aborted attempt at learning Thai and how I should find time to resume in the new year.

But most importantly, the thing about taking one year out when I am done with my third year in university and spend it in Thailand, where I could spend the first half of the year out doing Discipleship Training School in Chiang Mai and spend the next half in Korat, Bangkok or somewhere.

It was something that cropped up at GoFest Asia conference in June, but I have put it in the backburner over the last few months, when I got busy with the semester, with the newspaper and all. Guess now with the one-month break coming up, it's time to think and pray about it once more.

But first, I have got two more papers this Wednesday and Thursday -- Sociology of Religion and Ethnographic Analysis of Visual Media respectively. I cannot wait for Anntic that comes along in the week starting Dec 11 at Port Dickson.

I rreeaallly cannot wait for the semester to be finally over. I can so smell the sweet fragrance of freedom already.