PCCF Retreat 2008

1 weekend earlier than the one held last year, this year's PCCF Retreat was held in Gartmore, 20 miles out of Stirling from the 18th - 20th of April.

The house that we thought we were staying in. Hard luck.

So, as part of the organising committee, my team was scheduled to reach there at least 1 hour 30 minutes earlier than everyone else to set up and welcome the participants, put up decoration, prepare a sumptuous spread of supper and also be at our very best behaviour.

My foot.

Malaysian timing as usual, and the so called 'organising committee' car got there -


Late. Duh


So no welcome team,


no food and snacks,


no one to show you where your rooms are,


no one full stop.

But we still did arrive at the end of the day.

Night one started with a short worship session by our very talented 1st years. After it ended, we had the normal introductory talks by Roland, our head and after that everyone retired to their rooms for the night.

Wait.

Did I say everyone?

Oh, forgive me.

Basketball enthusiasts retired to the sports hall instead. A whole 3 hours of non stop basketball games til about 2 am differentiated the night owls from the early birds.

Of course, by 3 am we were all showered and in our pyjamas ready for a night cap of hot chocolate and poker.

Christian retreat ok. Poker chips are in the form of chocolate. And the loser walks all the way down the chilly corridors to the kitchen-in-the-corner to make hot drinks.

And that is where I went.

Forced into it.

Finally climbing into bed at 3.30 am (or was it 4 am?) without trying to make too much noise, I tossed and turned til the sun came up.

What's with me not being able to sleep the first night in some foreign place? It has been happening everytime I leave my comfortable nest in the shape of my heavenly bed in Edinburgh! It has never happened in the past! I must be getting old.

Or.

I can only sleep well in expensive, goose down filled pillows and mattresses of softest quality yet medically therapeutic to the back that is only found in 5 star hotels. Or my room.

So a cheap hostel and bunk beds does not suit me well.

At all.

Upon awakening and getting ready, we went off to the dining hall across the road (in that fine building you see up there) as the delightful smell of fried sausages and bacon wafted into the crisp morning air.

Following our noses and filled with happy thoughts of a large breakfast spread, we were led into a room and the first sight that greeted our eyes was:

Cereal.

Yay! Cereal even!

A quick look down the aisle and we saw Yoghurt! Fruit! Milk! Coffee... Tea...

Wait a minute.

Where are those lovely, lovely sausages ????

'Only for the people who book to stay in the fine building laahhh,' goes the organiser.

-_-

Yun Yi trying to look happy

The sacrfices us students-on-a-budget make.

Another session of worship and a long, long talk by Wee Leon, our guest speaker all the way from Leeds about post-modernism ensues soon after.

Fast forward to games.

Introductory game. We were all given a coloured balloon (I was bent on getting a red coloured one but my attempts of picking my colour from the bag was foiled big time) and no surprise there, our games group was of the coloured balloon.

Now, each group is supposed to have 8 people.

And my group had : -

SIX.

!"£%^*

Where all the people go? And no one wants to own up that yes, they DO belong to the yellow group.

WHY?!
THE REST OF US SO UNFUN IS IT? I AM VERY BORING ISIT???????

FINE.

The first challenge was to get all your group members stick the balloons they have on the wall.

Trying to generate static by rubbing the balloons on hair, clothes etc.

Which we won.

Would have won. If only the games master listened to us. They claimed that we had more balloons that we didn't stick up.

HOW NOT TO WIN??? 6 BALLOONS ONLY LEH! OBVIOUSLY ALL UP!

Never mind, we won in our hearts.

***

Lunch came and went. Food was so unmemorable that I have already forgotten what we had.

Worship and another talk by Wee Leon about... er.... something Very Important That You Can Definitely Apply in Life.

Fast forward to games again.

The next challenge was the Treasure Hunt.

Slips of paper where handed to us and we had to go to the spot and collect a clue. And finally piece together all the letters and make a word out of the anagram.

Who won?

Yellow group.

I know, thank you very much. (ok fine, we tied with was it Purple or Pink group but that is of relative unimportance.)

And then a roly poly of captain's ball/basketball and practices for the night's event of 'PCCF's Got Talent' happened next as we all get ready to battle it out centre stage.

We were to act out a scene from a chapter in the Bible - Acts 5:1-10.

" 1Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.

2With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.

3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?

4Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. 6Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

7About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"
"Yes," she said, "that is the price."

9Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."

10At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband."

So the very talented Yellow Group produced our child actress prodigy Miss Meryl Grace Lansing as Ananias and their coveted, red carpet worthy, queen of drama - moi - as Sapphira. The wise and stately Mr. Mark Ong starred as non other than Peter the apostle and the beautifully yet dangerously evil Miss Doris Winata fitted the role of Satan to the T. Lastly, our very sweet and equally as talented Miss Jacintha Gong and Miss Ivy Sim became the narrator and estate agent respectively.

Of course, being the oh-so-amazingly talented people that we are, we naturally had about what? 2 1/2 practices and ad libbed the rest of it on the real show itself.

Which won us best acting of the night.

Standing together as one while we listened to the comments from the judges.

Once again, I know, we were fab. Thanks very much.

A lot of other awards also okay -

Most Creative: -

This group did a puppet show with socks, a teddy bear, a duvet cover and lots of bananas.

Most Application of Things Learnt :-

" I think I had think and think and post modernism and I know and think think think...."

Good dialogue, crappy acting.

But excusey me, PCCF's got talent IS about acting and the fact that we bagged the Best Acting Award warrants us instant stardom and unrivalled X Factor status.

Of course, after the very entertaining performances by everyone, we headed outside into the cold to :-

Our lovely campfire.

Alex Da Ge and I went mad before we even reached the fire belting out Jay Chou songs in our very best voice.

Only to be taken over by the voices of everyone else singing Christian songs along to the guitar.

"Shout to the world all the earth let us sing, power and majesty praise to the King!! "

After about 1 hour, my friend, Yoch and I decided that this was too boring.

We needed Action.

And 'action' came in the form of dancing the Nightwalk.

* * *

A bit of background regarding the Nightwalk.
It is a partner dance that is usually danced at every campfire between Girl Guides/Rangers and Boy Scouts. It involves singing a few lines of songs and swapping of partners everytime the song ends.

This dance has provided me entertainment throughout my life and also saved my butt a couple of times.

For example, when I was on my camp trip to South Africa.
Every country had to come out with a performance during the campfire and representing Malaysia, me and my 2 other partners had no idea what to do.

What? Sing Chan Mali Chan?
Rasa Sayang?

Heck, no one will know the words!
And I believe we don't know the actions either. So we will probably end up looking very syiok sendiri when we perform it while everyone else smiles patronizingly on.

But then, the brainwave in the form of the Nightwalk came into my mind.

We were voted the best performance ever and everyone continued to dance the Nightwalk for the rest of the 5 days or so left of the 10 day camp.

* * *

And now, standing by the warm fire, happy thoughts of the Nightwalk came over me and I decided to share my idea with Yoch. Obviously she loved it and immediately wanted everyone to do it.
Only we weren't sure if PCCF was liberal enough to do a 'partner' dance. You know, boy touch girl, girl touch boy.

So we waited til most of the 'elders' left. And then spilled the idea.

Which of course was enormously welcomed and everyone had a good heck of a time.

Except those who left early because of too cold/too boring/too hot/too smoky/too potong stim.


Oh well, too bad, you missed out.

We finally stopped after the fire started smoking us out, and considering non of us really wanted to develop lung cancer, we left and ran straight back to the :-


Sports Hall.


Where Basketball and Captain Ball happened again.

Finally left the place at about 2 plus am and at this point, I was dropping with lethargy.
I can feel it seeping into my bones, my eyelids are falling shut, I can hardly sit up straight and the moment my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world.

Only to wake up again at 8am the next day to a similar breakfast of cereal with no sausages nor bacon.

After that came Sunday service with a fantastic worship session and a close up by Wee Leon regarding his topic of post modernism - how to be in this world but not of it.

Good speaker ok!

As always, all good things have gotta come to an end, so we cleaned up, packed up, bundled up and drove home.


That's the end of this year's PCCF Retreat and we once again look forward to next year's.

Sigh, I'll be an old bat by then.