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hello.

It's been a while - I do want to move and I have set up a site but I have been so overwhelmed (largely in a good way) since moving to the UK. Yes I am in the UK!

I don't know. I think for all that's happened, I really don't have anything to complain about. School's been good, save for the math lecturer that goes too quickly and the stats lecturer that goes too slowly. I've really been enjoying myself and the intellectual challenge that comes with it. I think I'm slightly behind work, but that'll change, I guess. 

People have been good too, but tiring. I love meeting new people - but deciding sorta who to invest in, to have coffee dates with and to put in the effort into establishing real good friendships has been tiring. Finding a church (!!) has been tiring too. I miss the feeling of loving people and growing with them and giving anything to love them and serve them and just be there for them. I know I'll find that group here, and am already starting to feel that way with certain groups of people, but I really want to find a church that puts Jesus in the centre (actually puts it, not just says it), and I can grow in and love with.

Soon, soon slow. 

God has sent me here, but more than that He has gone before me and He has called it good. Amen. 

We are more than conquerors - and in the NLT, it says that we have overwhelming victory through Christ who loved us. Man, that's amazing. That's really really amazing. I don't even man. But amen. 

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I haven't been here in a long time, and I doubt I'll be here for much longer - I'll be moving, as I somehow like to do with every new season.

The past month and a bit has not been the easiest. I've been challenged in, I dare not say most, but definitely uncomfortable ways, having my identity shake-shake-shaken, beliefs challenged, but character moulded and refined. 

But I have made so many new friends, and my heart holds so much anticipation, and with anticipation, some hesitation as well. It has been more than comforting to know my future is good - and I have such security in that; and the sole reason for this security is because I have a great saviour, who loves me with such a fervent furious love.

It is amazing to know I'm not going to the away alone, but not just that I have great company, not just in the UK but in Bath as well. To know a cosy group of kingdom brothers and sisters will be flying right along with me is amazing. To think that God prepared this far in advance for each of us to bless each other is so so mindblowing. :') 

It is this that has been carrying me through: 

Faith Under Pressure

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

James 1:2-4 (msg)  

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God has been so faithful, and I'm just so so super amazed.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is a lot on my mind. In particular, there are 3 things I really want settled in the immediate, and 1 before the end of August (pretty much). But in the midst of all this, God has been so faithful.

I got up to share my testimony in front of the JC cluster yesterday, not knowing why on earth I was doing what I was doing. But I'm glad I took that step of faith. It's incredible, because when I started out I would never have expected to have made such an amazing group of kingdom friends we all call family. It was a long process of growing and struggling, but it's good to know there's only victory on the other side. 

There was someone there yesterday in particular and that was really quite amazing, just to see how God is working.

Keep on keeping on. 

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Looking at the way I've lived my life in the past 5 months, and the choices I've made, I think I've learnt a lot about my character. 

It's good that I'll be catching a 3 week break at the end of it all, before I say that a new season in my life has officially begun - some things are so arbitrary, really. 

--

With so many things drawing to a close - north b (in which my time was spectacular), just a month and a half left of work, there are so many things just starting - getting a visa, the new varsity cg, moving to university  hopefully getting a license.

I think it just dawned on me that I am fortunate enough to still be in my youth. In fact, be in the very beginning of my youth. It's incredibly easy to get jaded, but I want to rinse this indifference off me and live intentionally. 

I have been given a life I can use beyond myself, beyond focusing on the necessary. I want to use it wisely. 

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So it's been a bizarre, draining couple of days -

So I shot a question up to God:

"Why am I feeling to drained when your spirit is supposed continually refresh me?"

And within a second, He told me this:
"Because you took your eyes off Me"

And then I immediately drifted off into sleep.

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For as long as I can remember, I always thought when I sung the phrase "I am yours", it was display of my commitment to Jesus. Like, hey! Look at me, I'm totally giving my life to Him.

But today, for the first time, in the midst of my weariness and muddled mind, I realise it's got nothing to do with me at all.

It is with great privilege I can declare these three words out. Because He came down from the heavens to call me His. That is why I can say I am Yours. It is a affirmation in the identity and inheritance I have in Christ. It is the reassurance I have when anything tries to topple me. Because I am yours, nothing can come in between us, and there is nothing except victory waiting for me at the end of it all.

It's been the toughest couple of weeks I've gone through in a while. But y'know what, in my weakness, his power is made perfect.

Amen.

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I was writing a post while I was at TCC today but I forgot to save it (I was on my phone), so now it's gone.

I suppose it happens.

It was about a couple sitting on my immediate left, a strange combination of a Caucasian man complaining about Singaporean nuances (which make us Singaporean, really) and a Chinese lady with a less than accurate English accent, although to be fair, she was trying a best. He had a magazine, sorta like the finance version of The Economist, and she had a Chinese novel, which for the life of me I could not comprehend.

And I wondered how strange the human life is, how infinitely beautiful and complex our stories are, and how the mystery of it all is such an essential ingredient.

I'll never know how and why I meet the people I do, but I will always be grateful for exploring a little bit more - inch by inch - of this incredible planet we've been given for a home.

We were shrouded by haze for the past week, and when the sun finally came out again on Saturday, it wasn't the sun that you saw, but everything that the sun lit up. The sky, blue in its best hue, the clouds, in its best contrast of white. And I stood up in wide open awe for the next 5 minutes.

We've got this strange funny thing called souls. It causes life to happen. It makes you incredibly mad and sad but delirious at the same time.

And it was fearfully and wonderfully made.

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This life is not about how much you love Him. 

It's about how much He loves you. 

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I got a couple of texts this week asking me how I was - "how are you?" 

Now that's a strange question - because I honestly don't know. If you'd ask me what I've been up to, I'd be able to easily answer that, albeit with a long message. If you asked me whose I am, I could answer that too. 

But how am I? 

Steering away from the typical "why fine, thank you" - I honestly do not know. I sorta feel suspended in this time that is almost all yours. You know where you'll be in a couple of months - getting on with your life basically, and these few months has been a good time to stand still and really soak it all in. So I s'ppose that's what I've been trying to do. Soak it all in. 

I realise I really miss writing essays. I absolutely love writing essays (on subjects of interest, of course). It starts from choosing the font and formatting of the essay, and the physical touch to typing on the keyboard and watching words appear automatically on the crystal clear screen. The intellectual curiosity it stimulates as well - the gathering and processing of knowledge, physically flipping through the glossy pages of too-thick-for-its-own-good textbooks, and forming a coherent argument after countless drafts, to finally holding the hard copy, watching the black ink transform the white sheets of paper into an medium of knowledge.

I think I realise this every Sunday my pastor is in town, but I am infinitely blessed to come from the church I come from, to receive the revelation and the truth that will set me free every. single. week. There's nothing that can beat that. 

I used to write a lot better. 

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Things I've been enjoying lately:

1. Having my pastor back!

2. Listening to really good sermons, not just by my pastor but plenty around the world

3. Drinking (and tasting) good coffee

4. Planning my next trip and how I'm going to get there

5. Reading good writing.

On points 2, 3 and 5:

2 - I really recommend you listen to the Walk This Way series by Pastor Jude of The City Church (Judah Smith's), and The Expectation Gap by Steven Furtick of Elevation Church. Both these churches are incredible and their pastors are incredibly incredble. 

3 - Nylon Coffee Roasters has some of the best coffee I've tasted in my entire life. Working where I work has really exposed me to this new industry which has been catching on so quickly, as well as the workings of a business. I will forever be grateful spending to have spent 5 months here. 

5 - I'm not necessarily referring to books, because I have recently read a lot of marvellously written blog posts. Not in the language they use, but what they reveal. 

I honestly cannot wait to take a step back and indulge in nothingness for about two weeks. Because that's all the break I am going to get.