The clock has flicked past 12am again.  A little hungry but I should not put anymore things into this engine that I had refined pretty well over the 1/2 a year of running and strict diet.

Was looking through my friend list and realised that there were many friends whom I have not been in touch for many years.  Some of them, despite my attempt to be in touch with them via cyberspace, had fallen to deaf ears.  I guess I have to move on since these people are not responding.  This brings my memories back to those years in church where I was so involved in ministries, even called to help a classmate in school who saw things of the other world that require a spiritual intervention.

Those were the days.  Things started crumbling when I was forced by those leaders to attend church camps which were strongly objected by my parents.  I know how resistant they were towards Christ and I had a hard time getting my way.  No doubt I was "approved", I could only attend "day camps" and left for home when the evening came.  However, just after the 1st day, I fell pretty ill and could no longer attend the other days of activities.  Was this all planned by God that I should not even attend this camp at all?

I still remember that fateful afternoon in 1997 where Esther wanted to meet me in church alone.  My gut feeling told me something was amiss, hence I got Songjie to come along with me.  During those student days, we were fully reliant on parents' pocket money and when we told the leader, Esther Lee, that we didn't want to attend the church camp due to financial constraints, instead of words of concern and constructive solutions, Songjie and I were spiked by her questioning us back "no money to attend church camp but got money to buy handphones?"  After several reasonings with her, and she still insisted for us to attend, she finally got her leader, Janice, who is a full time ministry worker, to come in and bombard us further with her thesis and things definitely didn't look very pleasant.  Their point was still to force this down our throats and to end the conversation, Esther said in a very proud tone, "Janice and I have found buyers for your handphones".

That was a major setback that I asked myself, is this what church life is about, forcing people to attend church camps, events and all?

I had my school project to work along with a few of my classmates, and due to the constant ranting and pressure from Esther to attend endless church activities, I had to even cut my timing and go for these events.  That costed me the friendship with one of the group members which Esther definitely doesn't know.  All she cared was about populating her cellgroups to show how great a cell leader she was.


No doubt it has been 14 years, but the unpleasantness of those occurrences remained in my mind.  After some catch-ups with Songjie sometime back, I learnt that Esther is nowhere to be seen in church.  Looks like she has either left church, or due to some actions, been expelled by the ministry.

After this incident, my overview observation from those church people I've mingled with only showed me one thing they have in mind; asking me to be greatly involved in church events but also from a few talks I realised that some of them are what I would describe as, shallow.  Just some general knowledge about who is this person or that but they have no idea.  Aside church, ministry and the sort, none of them seem concerned about me being myself.

That was the reason I decided to leave church, and for good.

I still hold on to the pillars which I keep my faith in God strong that I live by.  That is all that suffices.