A Malaysian New Years

I think this was the most humbling New Years I have ever had!  Everyone wrote two lists on a piece of paper and turned it in.  The first list was Thanksgivings of 2010 and the second list was blessings for 2011.  I cannot even tell you how many of those 2010 Thanksgiving lists mentioned Gary and me by name.  We have been so blessed to come to this country and get to know the amazing people at the Wangsa Maju church.  They are a Godly people, a loving people, and some of the most welcoming people I have ever met in my entire life.  I remember the first Sunday I walked into the church building.  Each and every one of them came up to me and already knew my name.  Man, do they do their homework!!  It is a small congregation, so word does spread a little quicker, but seriously, when have you ever walked into a church and everyone knows you by name the very first time??  Well, I have experienced it and let me tell you, it is AMAZING!!  I was supposed to go around and visit other churches when I first got here and decide which one I wanted to work with, but Wangsa "had me at hello!"  I cannot even express how blessed we have been to be here!  I just want to give a big SHOUT OUT to Douglas, Sharon, Zachary, Victor, Pearly, Jun Ai, Jun Ning, Chee Hoe, Matthew, Gideon, Chris, Lai Heng, Elizabeth, Austin, Gan, Christie, Hua Fung, KC, Irene, Steven, Eileen, Dexter, Isaac, Kok Pern, Samuel, Yin Che, Pamela, Brenda, and all of the students and young adults that we have met through Care Group and Cell Group you have truly made our 2010 a blessing from God!!!

Gary was a cook at the party.  He was in charge of making some ribs!!  The ladies did spoil him by buying the ribs and making the sauce, so all he had to do was grill them.  We got a chef hat from the Sheraton for him to wear and he says someone got a picture of it, but I haven't seen the picture, so sorry I can't share that with you.  I did have to work, so I showed up just in time to eat...not too shabby!!  Then we had our singspration, devo, and reading of thanksgivings and blessings.

It is so amazing to spend the ending of a year with Christians!

We also celebrated the January birthdays!!!  This was mine and Matthew's second celebration!!

Eileen (2nd), Matthew (3rd), Gan (7th I think), and me (8th).

We also played some games.  We split up into 4 groups and had to answer trivia questions.  The different categories were: Geography (which ended up being flags), History, Politics, Cartoons, Bible Knowledge, and church people.  There might have been more, but that's all I can remember.  I don't think that Chee Hoe thought we would have liked this game as much as we did because when he asked how long we wanted to play everyone said, "Until we go through all the answers!"  It was soooo fun!  The category that was the most liked was "church people."  What they had done was taken a snapshot of church people and zoomed in on a certain feature like an eye, lips, ear, forehead, etc. and you had to guess who it was.  It may sound easy, but when you think about it they are all Chinese (besides Gary, Sharon, and me) with dark hair, about the same color skin, and zoomed in like that is a lot more difficult than you think.  Several of the times the people who were actually in the picture didn't even know it was them!  There ended up being a tie between team 2 and team 4 so they played another game for the tie-breaker.  This game could be very neat if you are sure that everyone on the team has heard of the song.  What you do is one person listens to the song and then tells the next person the type of song (church song, rock, pop, r&b, etc.) and then they act out the song.  That person then turns to the next person, who had their back facing them and taps them on the shoulder and shows them the actions, and so on down the line (kind of like telephone with actions).  Then the last person has to sing the song.  We used only church songs, but still the teams didn't quite figure it out.  It was fun and I would love to try that one again!!

Last but not least, we watched the fireworks!!!  We went up to the 4th floor of KC's apartment (we had it at his place because he lives very close to KLCC) and I was just not satisfied.  I knew we could get higher where we wouldn't have all of those buildings blocking the towers so much, so Samuel and I went on a hunt for a better spot.  We went to the 21st floor and found a dead end UNTIL Samuel opened the door to the stairs and we trecked up to the 25th floor.  Went out on an electrical roof and found a set of windy stairs.  There were already a few people up there (that we didn't know).  We called down to let people know what we had found and a few people joined us.  It was awesome!!  We could see the crowds of people down at KLCC and we were like eye level with the fireworks!!  I have never seen anything like it!!  Once it hit midnight, even a little before, there were fireworks going off all around us.  We mainly focused on the ones at KLCC, but if you just did a 360 you could see them in every direction!! 

The shadows are us!!

Of course we couldn't leave without a little YAM SING...

Happy New Year!!!  I hope your celebration was one to remember!!

Cheers Yam Sing,