Fellowship of Evangelical Students (FES)

On Saturday 21st Sept 2013, FES Sarawak celebrated their 10th anniversary at FBC, Kuching.  FES started in the Peninsula in 1962 but it came to Sarawak only in 2002.  The General Secretary shared that earlier on it was not condusive to come but by 2002 many colleges and unversity had mushroomed in Sarawak, and working with Scripture Union, FES came to Sarawak.

Today there are about 750 higher learning institutions in Malaysia.  FES are in 80 of them nationwide.  The challenge is manpower to reach these universities.  FES is in need of Christians to serve in reaching out to the students.  From their experience they found this Christian foundation while students are in colleges most effective.  Many students who came through FES in varsities remain committed Christians through out their lives.

Sarawak has only 3 full time workers and they could only reach 20 institutions.  There are alot more ground to cover.  Our church elders Dr.Tiong and Dr. Chung are the Sarawak committe members, and they are in the forefront of students work here.

The 10th anniversary was well attended by all the top committee members from Peninsula and locally.  There were about 400 people attending and our churh sanctiary was full.  The evening programs included worship singing and some skips from the stidents from Miri, Bintulu, Sibu and Kuching.

Our church helped by providing the venue as well as the manpower to serve foods to the students and visitors.

All in all a very succesful evening.  Praise the Lord!

FES - slideshows

Visit To Hell

 http://christianitymalaysia.com/wp/trip-hell-crusade-philip-mantofa/
There have been many testimonies of hell and the Bible also talks about it and it is really real.  People who are atheists have also experience going to hell.  The testimony of Pastor Philip Mantofa which he shared with FGA, Kuala Lumpur recently is very powerful and at the same time very scary.  You can read the details at the link above.

Julius Suubi at Blessed Church

http://christianitymalaysia.com/wp/prayer-school-ps-julius-suubi/
Pastor Julius Suubi is from Kenya although he is an Ugandan.  His church is called Highway of Holiness International Ministry based in Kenya.  This is not the first time he is in Kuching, he came here last year.  His last visit made an impact in Kuching especially in his prayer ministry.  His main teaching is about prayers and how all Christians can connect with God with prayers.  This time round, he emphasized on corporate prayers for our country.  This year is significant for Malaysia because it is the year of Jubilee.

Pastor G T Lim of Blessed Church led worship which ushered people to experience the presence of God during the service.  Pastor Lim is an experienced worship leader/recording artist and performer so the people really got into the worship "mode" during the service.

Pastor Julius taught about prayers and he refered to verses in the Bible to support his teaching. (Read more details in the link above written by professional journalist ).

After his sharing and teaching he led the congregation into praying in tongues. This must have lasted more than half and hour.  During this prayer I could feel in presence of the Lord.  The atmosphere was really charged with fervent prayers by those presence.

It was a wonderful and blessed prayer service.  Prayers in corporate setting is also important to the church beside personal prayers.  According to Pastor Julius these prayers have tremendous power.

Thank Pastor Julius Suubi for coming here to help us. Thank Pastor G T Lim for allowing this service to be held in his church.

Julius Suubi at Blessed Church - slideshows

Pilgrimage to Holyland 8 - Prayers

Prayer is very important to us Christians because it is like blood in our bodies.  How can we survive if we do not have blood in us?  Therefore, one of the aims of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land was pray and worship.  Infact, during our visit to the Holy land everyday we prayed.  In the morning before we start our journey, we prayed in the bus.  Everyday at the end of the day we shared a devotion in the hotel we stayed.  Each pilgrim was assigned a day to lead the devotion and pray.  During this time, we also shared our experiences and what God had taught us during our visits for that day.

Answered Prayers

I remebered clearly the answer to one of our brothers who was baptiz
ed in the river Jordan.  He was scared of cold weather.  Therefore everyday he prayed that when he gets baptize in river Jordan, the weather will be warm. He was supposed to be baptized on a cold day, but thanks to God it was postponed by the tour guide.  On the day he was baptized, it was the hottest day we experienced while in Israel!  In fact it was unbearably hot around 40 degrees centigrade!  Hallelujah!  God answered his prayers!

Every holy places we went people were praying and some prayed very fervently.  I took a picture of a man wearing a usual cap instead of the skull cap praying very fervently devoting all his prayers to God on the Western Wall in Jerusalem. (See this picture on this page).  Many of us were praying with all our hearts during our visits to various sites.

God commanded us to pray unceasingly, 1 Thessolonians 5:17.  Of course there are many verses about prayers.  The challenge to us is to pray unceasingly everyday.

Call To Prayer on the Allah Issue

 http://www.necf.org.my/newsmaster.cfm?&menuid=43&action=view&retrieveid=1517
Tommorow 22nd Aug 2013 is an important date for all Christians in Malaysia.  It is very important to East Malaysians Christians because the majority of Christians in the two states of Sarawak and Sabah use Bahasa Malaysia
( Malay language ) in their Bibles and also their worship.

The Malaysian government is appealing against the court decision earlier to allow the Catholic Herald to use the word "Allah" to mean "God" in their publications.  The government maintained that only the Muslims have exclusive rights to use "Allah" to mean God and no other religion in Malaysia has the right to use this word to refer to their "Gods".  Despite historical and theological evidence against the logic of Malayisan Muslims, they insisted that they have the exclusive rights to the word "Allah".

All Christians in Malaysia do not agree that the word "Allah" is eclusive to the Muslims because this word predate Islam, and have been in used in the Malay Peninsula before the creation of Malaysia.  It has not been an issue for decades untill recently.  Banning the use of this word will have a great impact to East Malaysian Christians because more than 80% of the Christians use Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) Bible and also worship in this language. This Bible contains the word "Allah" to mean "God".

On 22nd Aug 2013, between 9 to 12 noon the court of Appeal will be deciding on this case, and all Christians are urged to pray and fast during this period when the court will be in session.  We pray for God to grant us favours, and to enable Malaysian Christians to worship freely and to use the word "Allah" in our Bahasa Malaysia Bible without any hindrance from the authority.  We pray against parties trying to take away the rights of Malaysian Christians rightfully granted in the Federal Constitution.

Man may has his ways but it is God ways that prevail.  Hallelujah!

Proverb 19:21

"Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand" (ESV)

FBC Church Camp 2013

On 9th Aug to 10th Aug our church had our annual church camp at Damai Puri, a seaside resort about 35 KM from Kuching.  On the morning of 9th Aug 2013, all partcipants gathered at our chruch building to start the event.  From our church many of us participated in a treasure hunt going from Kuching to Damai beach where the hotel is located.  On the way we had to stop in various spots to locate what we were suppose to locate as instructed in the rules of the treasure hunt.  Thank God that the weather was fine and there was no rain. On the way there we passed by Pasir Panjang beach resort which is very beautiful.  Many of our members have not been there before, so that was an adventure for us.  Most participants reached the hotel around 1 pm.

By 1.30 pm our first seminar started.  This year we had Bro. Bernard Chan from Sinapore.  He is into family mentoring and discipleship training.  Our camp main theme was "Discipleship" so his talks were appropriate. The first session lasted until 4.00pm.  At 4.30pm four members of our church were baptised in the hotel pool.  Bro.Neslon, his wife Sis. Hwei Choo, Bro. Andy, and Sis. Nancy were baptised in the pool witnessed by members of our church. Bro. Nelson and Sis Hwei Choo attended Senior Alpha last year.  Thank God for their salvation!

We had our dinner just outside the resort.  There is a commercial building just outside the hotel where we had our dinner.  This place is also near to the beach, and its surrounding was very pleasant.

The the evening we had another session starting from 7.30pm to 10pm.  By then many were exhausted, but some fellowshiped till the early morning.

The following day our last session started at 10am and ended at 12 noon. 

the message from Bro Bernard was encouraging especially the subject of community in a church and how we can foster closer relationships with one another in our church.  Praise God for a fruitful church champ!  Hallelujah!  Praise God!

FBC Church Camp 2013 - slideshows

Pilgrimage to the Holyland 7 - Garden Tomb

During our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, our group visited two Biblical sites which were supposely the location of Jesus' burial after His Crucifixtion.  Many of us were puzzled because on that day we visited the Holy Sepuchre in the morning and in the afternoon we visited the Garden Tomb.  Later when we listened to the tourist guide at the Garden Tomb explaining than we understood the stories to these two sites.

Traditionally the Protestants identify with the Garden Tomb as the place where Jesus was crucified because this place resembled the description in the Bible. Hebrew 13:12 says, "¹² And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood".  This location has always been outside the City Gate.  Also near to the tomb is an outcrop of a hill that resembles a skull.

On the other hand, many believed that the Holy Sepulchre is the real location of Jesus' Crucifixtion and burial as it was also outside the City Gate during the time of Jesus.  This location has been taken as the real site since the time of Constantine.

Nevertheless, like the tour guide explained whichever is the real site is not important, the important aspect is that the crucified Christ resurrected for the dead after dying for three days. It is also left to the pilgrims to decide which is the right one.  

At the Garden Tomb it was not crowded and believers can sit and pray to our Lord Jesus, and spend quite time with Him.

A video of our group at the Garden Tomb.