Monday, March 26, 2012

My Cerita

On the 23rd March 2012, the Catholic Undergraduate Society of Universiti Sains Malaysia (CUSUSM) held its 5th official Friday gathering. This event being the fifth of such for this Second Semester of the 2011/2012 academic year was handled by a team of first year undergraduates under the guidance of Miss Vera.

The theme which we had to revolve our gathering around was none other than “My Cerita”.

We discussed the underlying meaning of this theme over the several times we met and came to a conclusion that it offers whole different understandings to each individual and it would be next to impossible to capture and present the essence of this subjective matter in just one Friday gathering.

We therefore reflected upon the theme and according to what it means to each one of us, we decided to plan and execute items which we hoped will be able to convey messages which would in turn promote further reflections among those who were present.

The gathering was started at 1300 hours sharp with “Big Fish Small Fish”.

In contrary to the seafood dish it may seem to sound like in name, this was actually our ice-breaking activity to enable members to rid off all their perplexity and strains. This was a simple game actually which required concentration, proper pronunciation and a great deal of mixed-up hand actions. It wouldn’t be unfair to claim that we were actually replacing your stress with another one J

While that was going on, we were blessed with the presence of a postgraduate student from Bali, Indonesia.

Francis, who is pursuing his doctorate in Economics was then invited to introduce himself. We really were honoured by his presence and we hope to see more of him during our future activities.

A CUS trip to Bali perhaps, Joe?

XD We all have Eyta Tracy to thank for bringing him to our gathering. Thanks Eyta!

We then proceeded to a soulful Praise and Worship session conducted by our very own gifted Alyssa Ng. The opening song was “Hosanna”. Natra Joseph followed up with an opening prayer requesting for God’s divine presence to flood BT150 while our gathering is in progress.

The first item was a video entitled “Strangers”.

Strangers - Inspiritional Video from seluanpegak on Vimeo.

It depicts the life stories of various individuals who knew not that by some twists of circumstances that they are all actually linked in the spirit.

The power of sharing is illustrated here.

When one chooses to stand amidst the calamities of life and is courageous enough to bear witness to Christ, lives will be touched and changed for God speaks to us in mysterious ways. Also, a good deed can travel in resemblance to a chain reaction and it might eventually return to us. Therefore, we should always be wary of our thoughts, speech and actions as besides mirroring ourselves, we could also make or break possibilities created by our Creator.

Alyssa then presented a very informative slideshow regarding St. Joseph of Cupertino, the patron saint of aviation and education. It was obvious that we learnt a lot. About not covering the syllabus and hoping a spotted question would be asked, well..we don’t really recommend that. Faith does miracles, yes..but at the same time, we also need to do our part. So yeah, don’t try this at home..

Next, we had another video about a train, a father, a son and a random bunch of people.

A Father Sacrificed His Son from seluanpegak on Vimeo.

Quite a number of us have already watched this video before this screening but we hope you have gained benefits from it nonetheless. The sacrifice by the Father of one whom He loves most dear so that the salvation of us sinners can be attained.

Personally after watching this video, I felt that continue living in perverted ways is a shameful thing to do after the ultimate sacrifice made by Christ to pardon us. It’s a weird thing somehow that despite knowing all these, we are still guilty of a great deal of ill-conducts.

This goes to show that Satan still has a strong grip and we need to do something to reverse this. Why not this Easter? Why not now? J

When in doubt, always ask :

What Would Jesus Do?

(WWJD)

You’re sure to get back on track.

Alright everybody, it’s time for games! There isn’t any name for this game actually. Or perhaps there is but we just don’t know about it. Lol. Anyway, the members were divided into 3 groups and were made to sit in long rows with their respective leaders seated on the extreme right seats. The leaders were then invited in front and were allowed to look at the most random drawing in the world :P

Upon returning to their seats, they were then to whisper the contents of the drawing to the person seated next to him/her. This relaying of information goes on until the last member hears the message. Then comes the fun part. The last member has to produce a drawing based on whatever he has just been told and the masterpieces were then compared with the original. There was a short sharing then on the pros (hehe) and cons of gossiping.

As it was already nearing 1430 hours, we were unable to conduct our final item which was planned to be a group activity where groups will be given real challenging situations and they have to discuss what to do and how to act. The situations are as follows :

1. One night while driving, you were too sleepy and you drove past a traffic light junction when you should have stopped. Luckily enough, you escaped from anything untoward but unluckily enough, a policeman saw you and orders you to pull over.

He then approaches you car and indicates that he wants some “extra allowances”.

What would you do?

2. Your whole family are professionals. They have steady jobs with great incomes. Unlike them, you dislike everything that is related to studying. Instead, your passion is to play football. One day, you are offered a contract to play professional football. You know, however that your family is unsupportive of your ambitions.

What would you do?

3. You are a volunteer at a charitable organisation. Your organisation receives plenty of donations from the public. One day, you learn that the administrators of the organisation are using the donated items for their own personal needs. They then claim that they are not receiving enough help and make requests for further aid.

What would you do?

4. Your good friend just bought an iPhone 4S. You like the phone very much. One week later, he lost the phone while waiting for a bus in Komtar. A few days later, on the way back from church, you saw a man in that area selling second-hand phones. They must have been stolen ones. You recognised your friend’s iPhone.

What would you do?

5. You have a best friend whom you’ve known for more than 10 years. One day, you learn that he is secretly a drug dealer and he is highly-ranked in his syndicate. If charged, he could be hanged.

What would you do?

6. You are a parent of a teenage girl. One fine day, your 16 year-old daughter confesses to you that she is pregnant. It has been 3 months and the boy responsible for this has disappeared without a trace.

What would you do?

It took us ages to come up with the situations above and we hope you find it helpful to think about them. Hey, most things happen to us without us even wanting it to happen. So yeah, be prepared. Hehe.

Hint : WWJD?

Announcements were made by Alvin. Joe then presented us with great news – the profit figures of our breakfast sales the previous week. We then proceeded to the closing part of our gathering which was another round of Praise and Worship, this time conducted by Natra who led us through “Who Am I?”.

Jessica then said a beautiful closing prayer which concluded our gathering.

But wait, there’s something more I’ve forgotten to add.

GROUP HUG EVERYBODY!! XD

We would like very much to take this opportunity to express our sincerest appreciation and warmest gratitude to each one of you guys. Every little bit that you do means the world to us and we are glad to have been given this opportunity to conduct an event of this magnitude. It wasn’t easy since there were many other things going on around us (PharmNight and MCB preparations) but anyhow, things just worked out, we had awesome awesome meetings and Friday went smooth. We hope. XD


This report was prepared for the purpose of the CUS blog by :

Alyssa Ng

Jessica Olivia Francis

Natra Joseph

Joshua Anantham

Thank you and God bless you all!

2 comments:

Joshua Anantham said...

By Helen Lee (from our fb group)

hahaha~~ boleh la.. i read the whole thing already. and i wanna have some say. for the drawing game to teach us about not to gossip, apparently, my group did best and therefore we are the most eligible bunch to gossip :P

and about the challenging situations, my answers to it;
1. i think i will still be sleepy so i'll say 'please go ahead and saman me'. and i mean it even when i am awake. just that i might think twice if i am awake la..
2. ahh.. nostalgic. i will have to follow what the family wants me to do. i could probably negotiate with them to allow me some space for my passion too but going 100% into just football will send my parents with a heart attack to the hospital.
3. hhmm.. its tougher when the admin is the one doing it.. but i'll talk to them, try to understand what is making them do this, advice them the reason they join this is for charity. not for the money. and if all else fail, i'll quit. i can always find another organization and still do charity..
4. report the moron in to the police. tell my friend about it and let him decide what he wanna do.
5. whoa.. this is very tough. i'll be so torn in between valuing friendship or justice. i dont think i can come up with an answer to this.
6. i'll be shocked. might even cry, blame myself, ask God 'why this?', feel as if the whole world came crashing down, feel as if i dont know my (imaginary) daughter anymore.. but after all that, i will have to talk to her, ask her what is her plan and pound it through and through that this is a lesson she must remember for her whole life and never to do this again. then, ill put her in schools for young mothers and then through uni, let her decide if she wants to keep the child (much prefers this. it will teach her responsibility. but it also depends on hows the situation is like..) or send the baby away for adoption but NEVER abortion. put her through counseling, make sure she study well and continue on with life but just that she remembers what she did and will hopefully become a better person. oh, i'll report the guy in for statutory rape. might have considered to not report him in if he wants to be responsible for the baby and my (imaginary) daughter.

Maureen Joan Chua said...

Nice update. Applause to your group. :)

And i like all of Helen's answers. So i will copy her answers for every question hahah. :P