BENEFIT CONCERT!

I’m contemplating on whether to go home and catch Friends and Will & Grace or hang out with Chiz, Blessing and Audrey after work. Hmmm…
So many decisions to make. Life-changing ones. I’m at a loss on what I want to do. I need a change. And I feel that it’s imminent. I’m praying that this will be the year. Lord-willing, I would have decided on it by the end of this year. I’m excited and apprehensive at the same time. But no matter what I decide, I know that God will always be there for me. Reading “The Purpose-Driven Life” helps me to re-evaluate my life and my situation. Anyway, I ask you to keep me in your prayers.
I’m excited about the upcoming concert in July! IH have started rehearsing 2 weeks ago, and it’s coming along nicely. We need to be in prayer for this concert. This is to benefit the Subic Bay Children’s Home which is located in Olongapo City, Philippines. They have a huge need. And we’d like to be able to help. They’re doing great things for God’s kingdom and it would be awesome to see them continue with this ministry.

Here’s the info on the concert:

Benefit Concert for Subic Bay Children’s Home
Featuring IN HARMONY
with special guests
Papuri Singers
Saturday, July 17, 2004 @ 5:30p.m.
First Southern Baptist Church of Long Beach
5640 Orange Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90805

*Donations to benefit SBC Home will be collected during Offertory

Sponsored by: FSBM College and Career Ministries &
Olive Christian Church’s College and Career (a.k.a. “Amazon Women”)

Spread the word! Bring your youth & college and career groups.

If you have any questions regarding this concert and the ministry we’re raising funds for, you can e-mail me - singinachau@gmail.com or Babie - norlyn421@yahoo.com

Be in prayer for this.

Reunions and stuff about Ralph. LOL

Ralph asked me if I ever found my voice…No Ralph, it’s still ‘lost’. I need you to help me find it. LOL It’s incredible what you can do as far as worship is concerned when you can’t sing during praise and worship because you lost your voice. Last Saturday was a little more engaging spiritually than usual for me during praise and worship at the SYC Reunion. I wasn’t able to sing, but for some reason, it seemed like my worship was deeper than usual just by lifting up my hands and really giving it all to God as everyone else sang around me. Out of my frustration, I just cried out to God and opened up myself to Him. It was great.

Speaking of the SYC reunion, everyone seemed to have had a great time. One observation however was that it just went on a little too long. But then, it was just probably us 3 cranky ‘old’ ladies in the back (i.e. Tine, Babie and me) that thought it went on too long. Blame it on lack of sleep and a very long day beginning with a very, VERY early trip to Bakersfield for the FSBM Quarterly meeting that morning. We were there ’til about 2pm and got home roughly around 4:30pm, giving us about roughly an hour to rest and get ready to head over to Pasadena for the SYC reunion. Believe me, we were cranky by the end of the day! haha

One highlight during the SYC event for me was Marlon singing “I Can Only Imagine” while playing his guitar and Tubie playing the piano along with him. It was quite a poignant moment during the whole thing. I was blessed. It was simple yet moving.

I lost my voice!

Currently Watching: Flatliners
By Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt

I lost my voice!!! Argh! I’ve been coughing so much, it affected my vocal chords, now they’re shot! Ugh! It’s cool though, my voice is dark, deep and husky. hehe

Universal Studios!

Praise God for Bible study last night! Babie fasted for this one particular person and he actually came and sat in during our Bible study last night and even joined in on our discussion! It was great! You see, this person isn’t a believer and we’ve been praying for him to join Bible study and he did last night! God answered our prayers! Hopefully that will not be the first nor the last time he joins us! I think I will be fasting this time!

Last Tuesday was my cousin April’s birthday! 25th babee! Whoo-hoo! We had a great dinner at this Italian restaurant called Trastavere right next to the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood and Highland. Food was divine! Yummy stuff! It wasn’t too pricey which was great.

Went to Universal Studios with Audrey and Chiz today. That was fun! They have this promo right now where if you buy a general admission ticket, you get a one-year pass to the park! So, we can go back to the park whenever we want to this year! Pretty cool deal if I say so myself.

Well, my vacation is officially over and tomorrow I must get back to work. *sigh* Oh well.

Success! NOT LoL

Guess what I did last Sunday… I drank some Starbucks!!! Whoo-hoo! After abstaining from it for over 40 days, I finally had my Iced Grande Non-fat Mocha (a.k.a. Dirt Water). It tasted weird though. I’m not used to the taste anymore. Maybe it’s the way they made it.

Emotional healing.

I’m looking forward to our one-week vacation starting this Friday. I intend to make the most of my break. I’ve actually planned a couple of things already with my friends/co-workers. I’m really looking forward to going to Universal Studios next Thursday. I haven’t been there in a while, it should be lots of fun.

This Friday we’re having our ‘Seven Sayings’ service at our church (Olive Christian, woot-woot! hehe). Most of the FSBM churches will be there. Looking forward to seeing everyone again! Oh btw, last Saturday, FSBM had a basketball tournament at the Brea Community Centre, and the Long Beach FBF SOULJAS won! Hehe… I think credit should be given to where it’s due, and that’s to the Long Beach girls who cheered them on (oh, and of course Nate-dawg, our videographer…LOL If he hadn’t kept yelling “Conan, you’re so hot!” Conan wouldn’t have had a good game, ROFL)! Without us, the guys wouldn’t stand a chance, especially against the OC peeps (a.k.a. El Toro) and Dena peeps (a.k.a. Crossroads Christian Fellowship). j/p! LOL I think I made Ralph nervous when I kept yelling “HIDALGO!” during the game. LOL

Papuri’s rehearsal last night was very productive. I’m looking forward to singing the a cappella stuff that we learned. The arrangements are beautiful, I can’t wait to sing them. They’re a cappella arrangements of 2 well-known praise songs, “The Power of Your Love” and “Oh, The Glory of Your Presence”. We just need to fine-tune a couple of spots and then we should be okay. We’re actually preparing for a concert that we’re doing in L.A. on May 21st. We’re actually supporting this lady named Ledoria Johnson. She used to sing back-up for artists like Ray Charles and Tina Turner, I believe, back in the day. It’s her concert and she just asked us to sing a few songs during the show. It’s a Christian concert of course and it’s her way of ministering to “industry” people, which, I’m assuming, she will be inviting, and it’s also her way of introducing herself as a Christian artist. It should be an interesting time. To be honest, I don’t really know how I feel about this concert. I’m not really looking forward to it, I’m not really excited about it. I feel like I’m not really prepared for it. I don’t know why I feel this way. I know I shouldn’t be feeling this way, but I do. I just need to pray about it and ask God to change my heart and my attitude towards it. Forgive me Lord for feeling this way and for not even having the right attitude about it. It’s all for You Lord, that’s all I have to think about. We’re doing this to give You the glory.

Some emotional wounds just don’t heal as fast as you’d hope they would. I realized that last night. Although I’ve really gotten past the situation, have really gotten over it so-to-speak, some hurts just kind of linger, and sometimes we don’t even realize it. I pray that God would completely heal me from this. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t walk around like the ‘walking wounded’ and certainly the feelings are a memory now, but sometimes when things come up, whether it be in conversation or something else, and you get reminded of what you went through, it’s like a scab that gets picked and then the wound is exposed and it’s fresh all over again. But of course, wounds do heal completely. LOL I apologize if that’s a little too graphic of an illustration for you. But I think it’s a good way of describing it. I was told that I need closure. I think I had already achieved that. I just think that I’m still in the process of healing and by God’s grace, I am healing.

Funny...LOL

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.

Congratulations and thank you!

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Sure…right….LOL hehe

Rain…again!

Just when you think the weather’s going to get warmer, here comes the rain…AGAIN! LOL Really, I don’t mind the rain at all, as long as I do not have to go anywhere outside the four walls of our apartment. I was actually hoping that the sun would pay us a visit sometime during the day, and I seemed to notice that it did, sometime during the afternoon, but only for about a few minutes, then the rain-clouds covered it. *sigh* Oh well, a few more weeks of this wouldn’t kill me.

My DVD player has decided to check out on me. It is now officially unusable. I tried to watch my Return of the King DVD, but it won’t read my DVD, so I thought maybe the lens was dirty. So last night, I trekked on over to Best Buy (you gotta love Best Buy), to buy a DVD lens cleaner, in between ogling an external hard drive that I was dying to buy. A quick phone call to Nate made it a lot easier for me NOT to buy the hard drive, at least not after I had slept on it for a few days (well, I’ve decided not to buy it until next month, or whenever my budget will allow me to – or maybe never, we’ll see. LOL). Anyway, back to my DVD player… so I used the lens cleaner on it last night, and ran it a few times, but to no avail. When I got home tonight, I tried to use the lens cleaner again, but the DVD player won’t even open anymore, so I couldn’t put the cleaner disc in. I unplugged it, took a screw driver and opened the case up to see if something was out of place or if some wire got disconnected, but when I opened it up, everything seemed to be in place. So I placed the cover back on, plugged it back in, but when I tried to turn it on, it won’t!!! I don’t know what went wrong! Argh. So now, I am without a DVD player. Well, enough of my DVD woes. LOL

Work was incredibly hectic today. Phones were ringing left and right. I barely had time to breathe in between calls. Once I got off the phone with one call, I had to pick up the next one, and there were some that were also on hold for me. Wow. But that’s good for business though. More parents calling, enrolling their kids. It’s a very good thing.

Well, I’m beat. This week was has been quite exhausting. The stress is manifesting itself physically, I’m feeling aches and pains. But God has been giving me the strength that I need to get through each day. Please pray that I don’t get sick.

Apologetics, anyone?

I can’t believe we’ve actually finished everything that we needed to do for today here at work. Tomorrow’s gonna be a hectic day. We’re having assessment tests for the students, so it’s going to be very busy and there are going to be a lot students.

Tonight, I’m going to head over to FBF’s Bible study in Long Beach. It should be a good one, they’re doing an Apologetics series and tonight is their 2nd night doing the series. Should be very interesting, it’s always good to find out ways to defend your faith.

I still can’t believe I’m teaching guitar! It’s totally tripping me out! LOL

What I've been up to.

Watching the premier of the American-version of Coupling and I can’t help but cringe. For the most part, it’s about the same as the Brit-version, it’s just that the Jeff character ain’t working for me. I’m so used to seeing the Jeff character as Welsh, that this American one just isn’t as funny. And besides the British Jeff isn’t just goofy, and weird, he’s gorgeous as well, unlike the American Jeff, which adds to the appeal. If this series picks up, the only upside would be that I will be able to see all 4 series without having to subscribe to BBC America. I’ll just have to imagine that the characters are the British facsimiles, that’s all.

Anyway, today I found out that they’re going to have me teach beginning guitar on a regular-basis at work. I just think it’s absolutely hilarious. Me, teach guitar? LOL I would’ve never imagined I would do that. I could handle being a voice teacher, it’s something that I’m fairly confident in doing, but the whole guitar thing, I’m not as confident, although it’s quite exciting.

I just saw the opening sequence of the season premiere episode of E.R. and man, they are starting this one out with a BANG!

I’m going to go to Biola tomorrow to give Charisse a tour of the place. She’s hoping to transfer to B.U. next Fall and I told her that I would show her the ins-and-outs of the place. We’re going to go to Chapel tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to that since I haven’t gone to B.U.’s Chapel in so long. That’s one of the things I miss most about being at Biola. The whole chapel experience is something that I would always fondly remember because it definitely got me prepared to face a whole day of classes and just the everyday pressures of being a college student. It definitely keeps us focused on what’s most important, and that is Jesus Christ. that everything that we do and we’re about to do is all for Him and give Him the glory.

Listening lately to a lot of singer-songwriters has definitely inspired me to get back into songwriting. I went through a time in my life not too long ago where I started writing songs, but because of schoolwork and such, I put it in the backburner for a while. Last night, I was just compelled to pen a tune. The creative juices started flowing. Thoughts and feelings just started pouring out of me and onto my journal, and this melody just kept running through my head over and over, I had to sing it into my handheld recorder. I was able to write one whole song last night, and wrote down a couple of more incomplete ones for which I’m still working on the melody and the chord progressions. I’m very excited. I’ve been praying and asking God to help me use the experiences that I’ve had, both good ones and bad, to write some songs. I would love to be able to write songs that speak about God’s greatness, goodness, His majesty, His mercy, grace and forgiveness. The hope that He gives and the fact that He’s just. Basically, a song that will give God the glory. I want to make Him known through the songs that He’ll inspire me to write.

It just completely saddens me how people can be so sneaky and deceitful. Especially people who say that they have committed to making a change in how they live their lives. It’s like they take one step forward, but then take 2 steps back. There really isn’t much progress happening at all. They can’t seem to let go of their old ways, and it just keeps pulling them down. I can’t see what’s in the heart, but usually what’s going on in the heart manifests itself on the outside. The way you act, the way you speak, the way you live your life. And they just seem to not make the effort to turn away from the old ways and completely abandon it, even though they know that it’s pulling them down. It’s like a dog on a leash that tied around a pole. No matter how hard the dog tries to run away, he just keeps getting yanked back, because he’s tied up to the pole. Unless that leash is released, the dog can’t go anywhere. Anyway, it’s hard to watch them live their lives that way, and knowing that you can’t really do anything about it. All you can really do is pray and believe God will change them, hopefully without them having to learn a very hard lesson, Lord-willing. But sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.