Christmas Day: Jesus@Church.Come

I can't believe it's all over! The moment we've all been waiting for.. The performance of 'The 12th Day of Christmas' is all over. .finished. kapish. gone.
After rehersing one last time during the Pastor's short message preaching time , I was frantically worried to death that everything will turn out a disaster cos the boys (yes, it's usually the BOYS!) forgot their lines completely! so I had to remind them time and time again and it was just minutes before they were going to be on stage! I wrapped them up also in bed linen so that they fit the fashion trends for walking on the streets of Nazareth. Stuck the angels wings on Jenny and Enoch (poor Enoch looked like a cute little fairy princess! and he did it too all in the name of Jesus =). Put tinsels around my 3 boys who were singing the song and giving the intros each story in the bible. I had to break my french breadsticks into five loaves of bread and as well wrap this cute doll baby into my towel to pretend he was baby Jesus..

Then finally the moment of truth came. We were going to go on. I said my little prayer 'God it's all in your hands now, pls remind them of their lines.. after all we only had literally 3 practices!!' .
So after 10mins, it was all over. The crowd cheered, the cameras went beserk , everyone on the stage looked relieved and extremely happy and as for me.. I was soooooo damn proud!! Proud of each and everyone of them.. that they didn't stuff anything major up at all. Everything was perfect. It was funny, but at the same time, serious and heart touching.

The main highlights of the performance were:

1) Andrew who was playing Jesus, had to quickly put cream on his face to the shape of a cross before he went on stage again to do the 'sixth day of Transfiguration'. Everyone laughed when I, the narrator said 'and Jesus' face shone like the sun.. ' and Andrew looked up with this face cream of a cross on his face! hahahahah!!Everyone laughed!

2) Judas the Iscariot who was played by Eric (Mel's cousin bro from Malaysia) was struggling so hard to pull the coins out of his pockets when I had already read out 'and Judas threw the money into the temple and left.. everyone laughed cos Eric could just not get the damn coins out and he just stood there still pulling the coins out from his pocket (as we actually used large gambling chips as the prop for the coins).

3) The five loaves of bread scene - when Andrew was struggling to hold all five in his hand and looked like he was going to drop them all...

4) The parable of the 10 virgins - when Jenny who was playing the foolish 5 virgins acted incredibly dumb and running around laughing stupidly on stage (just the way I taught her.. learned from the master herself!)

5) The Beattitudes - the 3 boys fantastic acting skills when Andrew (jesus) was reading out the beattitudes. Because Andrew read it out too fast, the boys were struggling to act each beattitudes out... it was such a cute sight!

All in all, I'm just soooo happy to see it come to pass and a very successful one too I must add. We're taking all the youths to watch Narnia (A story apparently about Jesus (the Lion) and Satan (Witch) in disguise as it's written by the famous Christian author himself C.S Lewis) next Thurs as a reward for all their efforts & Commitment for 2005! They so deserve it!

The main highlights of todays service:
1) Having Richard, Angela and baby Jazica visiting our church today after I invited them to come earlier this week. Talk about God's divine plan and timing. Basically how I met this couple was through a guy called Adrian. It all started back in Oct this year, when I went walking the streets of Singapore and got lost while taking the MRT. So I happened to bump into Adrian. We started to talk and he asked me if I was from the States. I replied 'no, I'm from Australia'. Before you know it, he asks me if I know the Paradise Valley church and straight away I knew this guy is a Christian cos PV church is also known as The Planet Shakers church which is where Guy Sebastian is from. So then our 10mins conversation steered towards which church do you go to etc. Then we exchanged business cards and before you know it, he tells me of his good friends , this couple who have just migrated to Australia. Adrian then asks whether or not I can help them settle in and find them a church for them etc as they don't know anyone in Aust. I told him of course! just pass my details to them. Sure enough when I returned from my trip to Malaysia/Singapore in mid OCT, I get a ring from Angela and we met up for lunch. Just the 4 of us. They then asked me how I know Adrian, was it through work? and I laughed and told them the story. They were so shocked!! Anyways, so after talking to them for an hour or so, I found out that Richard is actually a FU CHAO!! Now there are not many Fu Chaos in this world.. most of them are either Hakka, Hokkien or Cantonese.. but to my surprise, he said he's from Sibu. Now, the only ppl who are Fu Chaos are usually from either Sibu (East M'sia) or Sitiawan (my home town! West Malaysia). So I knew straight away he was Fu Chao after he said he's from Sibu. So I told him, you must come to my church, cos there are a lot of fu chaos there! So my invitation to them was back in Mid Oct and now 2months later, they have finally visited our church. Man they stayed till nearly 6pm (from 1:30pm start) talking to everyone in the church.. it was good that they had a great time meeting new friends too. The best thing is our church is a prophetic church whereby we use a lot of banners and colours which symbolises something signifcant in the bible (Eg. purple banner - robe of His Royal majesty etc) and we play the tambourines too.. a church of literally FREE worship. U can dance with your shoes off if you want. So yah, I decided to give a tambourine to Angela to make her feel at home.. and yet again to my surprise, she knows how to PLAY the tambourine!! So now, she's going to teach all the women of the church how to play it!! cos she knows a lot of the moves and the taps and the colours to use to decorate the tambourines and she used to lead in tambourine playing back home at her church in Singapore. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!! it's truely a God Divine Appointment. Ever since from the moment of how we met and how everything fitted in so nicely.. gosh how can I doubt that God's hand wasn't on it through all of this...

2) Ok, now for the 2nd big thing that happened to me today at church: Aunty Ruth who is our intercessor for the church and prophetic worshipper came up to me after the service to tell me a prophesy she had for me. She's had the strong word from God impressed on her heart for a mere 2wks now and finally today she found the opportunity to tell me esp since I'm always soooo busy running around the church. She said "Vicky, God has something very precious and special to give to you. His annointing on you will become even stronger. You must never forget to stay close to Him. Walk with Him. Seek His Heart. Don't lose Him as the centre of your life. There are a lot of things He has installed for you, but you must diligently seek Him and follow His path. He will increase His annointing over your spirit of worship because you are called to be a mighty worshipper of God. Remember, do not let worldly things disturb you. He sees your heart, your cries, your tears. He knows it all. Don't lose hope. Stay focused on Him and Him alone. You will become a mighty worship leader. Most importantly, do not think about leaving the church, I can sense that He wants you here to serve here and when you do that, His annointing over your worship leading will become even more stronger.

A lot of the things she said were spot on. Yes, I must admit this year, I have been more distracted than any other years in terms of seeking God. The main factors contributing to this was b/c of my work, travel commitments & LDR. It has been a tough and tiring year for me. I've come to a stage in my life where I am now looking beyond Melbourne as my potential home. The sparrow no longer wants to just stay put in her nest but wants to extend her territory to fly to other parts of the world.. wherever that may be.. I had thought of that time and time again this year. And today, finally Ruth prophesied over me; when in the past, she had typically skipped me every time we have a worship evaluation meeting after church. She would usually just prophesy over all the other ppl in the worship team and bypass me and I had always thought, I'm just not as annointed as the others... I'm just not called to be in the worship team.. I must belong in other ministry...There has been a lot of times I must say that I had thought about leaving the church after serving here for 14yrs of my life.. It's a big decision, but I know it's one that will inevitably happen as I take on another era of my life... but yeah, when aunty Ruth had said all that, I was blown away that all this time God never forgotten me.. that I was still very precious in His sight despite all these disturbances in my church life.. that He doesn't want me to leave.. not yet. Now that I think about it, this prophesy had just come in the nick of time cos tomorrow is my Annual Church planning meeting when all the leaders of the church congregate at the pastors house to redefine our leadership roles and plan for 2006. I was actually thinking of stepping down from being the Creative Arts Director and slowly take a step down from being the worship leader too to just a supporting role (as my transitioning plan to slowly leave the church).... Wow talk about a great timing!

What a memorable Christmas it has been... I am just speechless and blownaway! God is Good!