A day out visiting children's homes (7 Jan 09)

It started with us (Andre, Kenneth, Wil Sern, Jacky and me) having to meet in church to sort out the presents for the children. The girls' pile (sorted by WS and me) had 189 presents! Amazing, right? The boys' pile (sorted by K and J) had 178! Apparently, K was having a competition on who had the most presents. (Ahem, we know who wins...) Anyways, then we had to sort out to which home we should send it to. Like Shan's, Shammah and H.O.G (House of Grace, what are you thinking?). So we hauled big plastic bags into A's booth and off we were to drop them off. Firstly, we dropped the Shan's presents. Inside, there was only one kid because the rest were in school. We found out that the kids had to eat on floors as there weren't enough space for all to sit on proper tables and chairs. It was pretty sad really. The kids even had a board where they earned stars (if they're good) and dots (when they're naughty). We didn't stay long.

After that, we had lunch and went on to the next house... Shammah! There, we saw more children as they already returned from school. This couple (Steven and Wife) took it to their responsibility to take care of these children. Imagine, they dropped everything of comfort to help others. People, this is trully God's work in disguise. The kids over there were playing a simple game using the alphabet song. They passed round a sweet and the person to have it when the song end has to do a forfeit. We teens decided to join them in. All of us got a forfeit except J. The kids were sad to see us leaving and maybe in the future we plan to visit them again to spend time with them seeing that we have LOTS of free time.

Anyways, that was pretty much it. We had tea (cendol, passembur and ice kacang!) at New World Park and went back home. Today, I learnt that we should all be thankful of what we have and never complain as there are so many less fortunate out there. Next time, you want to complain about your parents, think of those that would do anything to get a parents' love. Or the next time you want to complain that the computer games are not intersting or you are bored, think about those who do not have anything to play with. We should stop wasting money on materialistic stuff. Look at those kids, they were happy with their lives without it. That day, I learnt so many life lessons and it was so worth it being there to share the joy with kids.