please read previous entries to make sense of this one

Now, I’ll write more about the conversation with Laura and Uriah. Well, we talked about many things like what YWAM is all about and how missionary work is conducted and their experiences and lots more. Uriah also had a cool quote about conversion to share with me and I thought that it would be fun to start of with that quote.

We got into the topic of conversion and he said that a lot of times, people might get a little ahead of themselves when it came to the understanding of that word. He used a very interesting and relevant analogy to describe the idea of conversion though. He said he had just gotten an Ipod and he wanted to put his videos on the Ipod but he couldn’t because they weren’t the right kind of file. Anybody who’s done this before will know that this isn’t really a problem because all you need to do to make the file compatible with the Ipod is to CONVERT it. You see, when you convert somebody, all that you are doing is making him or her compatible with the Heavenly Ipod. And any file can be converted although some files are more difficult to convert than others. I think I could really expand on this analogy but I’ll save it for another time.

About the YWAM, it’s a non-denominational, non-profit organisation with a huge network. Apparently, the largest YWAM base is located in the Singaporean city of Perth. And there’s even one on the Singaporean heartland itself. (For those of you who don’t already know, Perth is an unofficial colony of Singapore but I think we’re in negotiations to make it official soon. And by Singaporean heartland, I mean Geylang. In all honesty, I can’t think of a better place in Singapore to have a mission, can you?)

Nobody in YWAM drives a fancy car or earns an elaborate salary. To me, that was a big selling point. I guess some of you might know what I’m getting at but if you don’t then let me tell you briefly. You see, when I just entered NUS I went for a camp conducted by Youth Challenge for a new club they wanted to set up in NUS called Club Exchange. That camp has the best group of participants I’ve ever encountered in all my experiences in camps. Everybody was leading and everybody was cooperating and it was just mondo impressive. The reason for that was because they said that the camp was a way of deciding whom to allow to join the club and stuff.

You see, Club Exchange was prestigious because you could really do a lot through it. You could represent Singapore for festivals in Barcelona or a mock UN Conference in New York and all that. Also, they had many Youth Expedition Programs to other countries that students could join. It all seemed good until you found out that they had a very dubious accounting system with the Youth Challenge members telling you that you had to sell CDs or something and only a small percentage of the money you earn goes to the trip. The fact that the founder of the Youth Challenge drove a nice, flashy sports car did not do much to boost your confidence in them much either. Down with Lammy! – Funnily enough, I just read that he’s under investigations or something. $13,000 a month for a charity organisation? What the what?


So that attracted me to YWAM. I could easily just go down and join the one in Singapore and not have to go to any other places and stuff. However, in all their good works and general coolness, there were turn-offs as well. The main turn-off was that I thought they felt it was Christianity or Hell. They were very old school about the whole thing. This was demonstrated when Uriah was telling me how impressed he was by St. Francis Xavier and how radical he was with like blowing up Buddhist statues in Korea or Japan or something. I guess this might be because he comes from a more religiously homogenous area the US. But I can’t believe in that because I’m Singaporean. (and mighty proud of it)

I believe in the Brother Mike form of conversion. As long as you fed Jesus when He was hungry, clothed Him when He was naked, befriended Him when He was in prison, then you were allowed into Heaven. Uriah quoted the Bible that He is the Way and that to get to the Father you must go through the Son. Good quotes but a very narrow understanding of them. I think that you could follow Jesus without knowing that you were following Him. I remember in SJI, we were told early on that we did not strive in SJI to make everybody a Catholic but we strive to make everybody better whatever they are. If you are Buddhist, at the end of 4 years, we hope that you become a better Buddhist. If you’re Muslim, then hopefully, you’d be a better Muslim. Didn’t always happen but we tried. But, it must be said that this might be an overreaction on my part. Maybe it was just that I read too much into things the way I usually do.

There was also the point that the Discipleship Training School costs about SGD$2000 over to enrol in but that wasn’t really a big turn-off. Nor was the fact that you had to stay away from home at their base for about 3 to 4 months. I mean I wouldn’t like it but if I had to do it I would.

Anyway, I came to the decision that I didn’t want to join YWAM. I was still going to learn all that I could learn from them by going for their Thursday meetings but when I got back I decided that I’d just go do what I feel I should do and that is to teach. So I will go back to Singapore and get my honours and then work on my PGDE for a year in NIE and then go to a neighbouring country that needs teachers for a year before coming back to Singapore to complete my bond.

As for what organisation I would go with, I figure that being Catholic, I could find many Catholic groups who do missionary work in the region. My first choice would of course be to go through the La Salle networks. I mean SJI was founded as a missionary school in a backwater little island after all. We all owe so much to those missionary brothers who arrived here all those years ago and maybe other countries need people like that too. Besides, the Christian Brothers have some schools in Myanmar and Northern Thailand and all. The really cool thing is that since I’ve decided to do this so early before I can actually leave, it gives me ample time to learn a new language. Considering it took me about 12 years to have an elementary grasp of Malay, I’ll need all the time I can get.



So to my parents who might be afraid that I’m going to break my bond, there’s no need to worry. In fact I think this might even sweeten the deal because it means that I’ll actually be able to gain a deeper understanding of the world and also it’ll give me more stories to tell. The coolest teachers always have the coolest stories to tell because they’ve done so much outside of academia. And you know what? I want to be the coolest teacher!