RE: Heroes in my life (Part 2)

After thinking long and hard about this post, I found myself wondering about what makes a hero?

Is it someone who saves lives, like in the movies?
Is it someone who you hold with utter respect?
Or is it someone who's just touched your life?

After google searching and finding many results on the hit new series, Heroes.

I found this definion off wikipedia:


"In many myths and folk tales, a hero is a man or woman (the latter often called a heroine), traditionally the protagonist of a story, legend or saga, who commonly possesses abilities or character far greater than that of a typical person, which enable him or her to perform some truly extraordinary, beneficial deed (a "heroic deed") for which he or she is famous. These powers are sometimes not only of the body but also of the mind. Heroes are typically opposed by villains."

And found how weird and strange some can interpret the same word but in so many different ways.


To me, a hero doesn't have to save lives or be the hero or legend of every story.
They don't have to possess extraordinary powers, to be a hero is to make a difference.

To me, that person is my Dad.
He is one of God's angel's who blessed my family with him and I am the luckiest girl in the world to have a Dad like him.

As this post could go on FOREVER, I thought I'd break it down into the typical "Who? What? Where? When? Why" as well as the guidelines for the bloggings haha.

My Dad is my hero because he has gone through so many things but still managed to

RE: Intro to my post on Week 2- Heroes in my life

Introduction to "Week 2: Heroes in my life"

Discussion guideline:
In the glamour indulgent world that we live in, we hold celebrities in high regard because of their good looks and talent. But harboring admiration of such traits alone do not provide for our own spiritual development.Often at times we forget about God’s own band of heroes, whom through his teachings have also changed the lives of others and the world we live in their own ways. Living a Christian life is never easy.

• Talk about one of God’s heroes and why he/she is considered a role model for you and for others.
• Showcase how learning from your Hero might help / has helped you lead a better Christian life

When first reading this new topic for week 2 I was in awe, just after I had written about Madonna and her Buddhism a post had come up on the "glamour indulgent world that we live in" and I have to say what a GREAT topic this is!

I think I must start off by telling how much respect I uphold for the Catholic parish and all other Catholic's for all the negative and postive publicity that has come up over the years in reflection of the Catholic religion and Jesus Christ himself.

In the year 2004, the book The Da Vinci Code was published and struck much controversy because of the fiction novel which claimed facts with even a fact page claiming:

• Jesus is not God; he was only a man.
• Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
• She is to be worshiped as a goddess.
• Jesus got her pregnant, and the two had a daughter.
• That daughter gave rise to a prominent family line that is still present in Europe today.
• The Bible was put together by a pagan Roman emperor.
• Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he was deified by the emperor Constantine.
• The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.
• In the original Gospels, Mary Magdalene rather than Peter was directed to establish the Church.
• There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships Mary Magdalene as a goddess and is trying to keep the truth alive.
• The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed. It often has committed murder to do so.
• The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

With thanks to- http://www.catholic.com/library/cracking_da_vinci_code.asp

Being a Catholic who did not read the book, I believe that this book was very hurtful and disrespectful to the Church and Catholics. It completely misinterprets the Church as a "murderous institution" and also implies that the Christian faith itself is "utterly false"

I felt this book was very harsh and I personally felt hurt after reading what the book claimed and am utterly sorry if it hurt anyone reading this.

In 2006, the movie of the Da Vinci Code hit cinema's worldwide but as a result was banned in several countries and I personally believe it should never have hit the cinema's and should have gone straight to a DVD or video for people interested to purchase the novel or video.

God Bless anyone who felt hurt, like I did, when reading this post, but I believe that my point should have come across strongly to pass on the respect that needs to be shown to all the parish and parishioners who had to deal with this. However, we all managed to pull through with it in the end and that is what is most important!

I shall begin the "Heroes of my Life" post in the next post.

God Bless,

Kayleigh x

RE:RE: Stella's Post on "Church Groups for You and Me"

After reading all the "blog entries", I was startled at how I could relate to Stella's blogpost regarding the "Church groups for you and me" but could also see some major differences between us.

I too felt rather awkward, when first starting my cathecism classes, and like Stella, only had my brother as a friend. Being in a class with children, it appeared that I was going to have to spread my wings and be brave throughout the whole "season" of attending Catchecism classes.

However, despite the young children whispering and pointing at the 6ft tall 15 year old, I managed to establish relationships. I managed to understand and deepen the reasons of doing the Catholic "confession" or understanding the story of Christ, but I also got a deeper relationship with my brother.

Being treated by Aunty Angela as her assistant, I felt that this was possibly the best experience with Christ.. EVER! It was truly life-changing and I wish to relive every moment!

As stated in the last post, I was only just recently baptised and unlike Stella, was not by choice but by what i felt was right. Some of you must be thinking, what's the difference there?

Well I basically felt that by being baptised by choice, you personally choose to be a catholic despite the rest of your family, for example, being Muslim. I, on the otherhand, had my Mother's side of the family being all Catholic but was still given the freedom (as I was old enough) to choose what religion I would want to be a part of.

At the time, it was the phase where Buddhism was the new craze, just like how Crocs had suddenly hit ALL stores and it didn't take long for Pasar Malam's to pick up on the craze either!
Madonna was a buddhist, Ashton Kutcher was a buddhist, Britney Spears was a Buddhist too!
It seemed Buddhism was taking over!

The conversion happened for Madonna on June 24th in 2004, from being Jewish to becoming a Buddhist. It all happened like this..

"After a car bomb when off right near Madonna, aka 'Esther' the Kabbalah singing fool and her now-converted husband Guy Ritchie, Director of such films as "Snatch", Madonna/Esther has announced a conversion to Buddhism and instead will be changing her name to Bai Ling."



Naturally, being naive you would have thought that I would have chosen to be Buddhist, however I continued to read the article and Madonna claimed to have said:

"No one seems to hate the Buddhists," said a shaken Madonna at a London press conference. "The Kabbalah thing has served me well for years but being part of the Jewish culture is not the safest thing, particularly in Europe."

I, personally, seem to think that this reason was a tad odd and I thought that it became more and more explict that I was to be a Catholic. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, and have no regrets.

The point of showing you this story is to explore how Hollywood could have an effect on youth's and their choices of faith, and while having nothing against being a Buddhist, I believe it just seems that there should be more of a reason to choosing to be Buddhist than just because, Madonna or Ashton are Buddhists.

This influences the importance of why we should all welcome youth's and form new and better groups to show the joys of the Lord.

It shows how important youth's can have their minds haggled with just because it is the trend at the moment. Despite being clever in my choices and researching all different types of religions before I chose, there are people out there who are easily influenced by Hollywood and would do anything to be the next Britney or Madonna, even if it means conversion.

Today, do you hear Madonna being called Bai-Ling? Didn't think so.

I think you did a GREAT job on your post Stella and I really look forward to reading the posts to come!


God Bless,
Kayleigh x

RE: Week 1- Church Groups for me and you

Week 1: Church groups for me and you
Discussion guideline:l Bloggers encouraged to share about the church groups they belong to.

• Bloggers could give a personal account on how being in a church group has helped in spiritual development


• Alternatively, bloggers may talk about groups of people in our church who do not have the privilege of having a church group catered for their needs e.g. Spiritual, Emotional, Physical etc.
  
• Bloggers may then propose how these people can benefit by having such a group catered to their needs.

After much thought, I am here writing my first post regarding "Church groups for you and me".
But first I must apologize to all who have waited for such a long time for this post to appear, my computer got a nasty virus and had to have the whole CPU re-configured. ANYWAY, the problem was suprisingly with Windows Media Player! Anyway, here goes nothing with my post...

RE: Church Groups for you and me

Last year, I moved from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur (where I had been residing for the past year). Living in Malaysia, there were no churches nearby but a lot of mosques, so it was difficult to do the routine of a Sunday 9am mass.

However, Singapore has been like a second home to me ever since I was a little baby. My Mom is Eurasian and the majority of her family lives here so we have always done the regular visit from wherever we were living to Singapore, naturally visiting the Church.

Finally, we had the opportunity to move here in 2005, and it was certain we would accept the offer. My family decided that due to our ancestorial roots in Singapore, it would be the ideal place to establish a relationship with a Parish.

Due to moving a lot, I had never had the opportunity of being baptised. My brother, aged 9 now, also had never had the opportunity and he was quite the opposite to your normal child, EAGER to become an official Catholic.

My Mom decided it was best to start Catechism classes as soon as possible as we didn't know how long we would be living in Singapore or if the next place we moved to would have a church with a history like the Risen Christ.

So now you are probably wondering, what’s the history behind Risen Christ?

My mom was born in Singapore, a long time ago, there were possibly even dinosaurs around in those days (hahaha!) However, she always knew that if she were to one day get married, she would definitely do it in Singapore. As it turns out, my Dad had also been raised in Singapore and after they had met, they were 100% certain the ceremony was to be held in Singapore in the church where my Great-Grandmother used to attend, Risen Christ Toa Payoh.

They were happily married in the Risen Christ of those days. Still in the same location, however the building was much different to what it looks like now. It was (supposedly) covered in bricks and definitely did not have any TVs inside. Anyways, when moving to Singapore my Mother was content when she heard in the announcements Catechism classes were to be starting up soon and to register down with secretariat. She enrolled me and my 9year old brother in the same class.

So there I was, a 15year old amongst 6-9year olds doing colouring and learning about the Lord in such a fun way. I was definitely not expecting any of the classes to be THIS much fun! (Thank you very much to my"teacher", Aunty Angela!)

On the 1st of October, I was to be baptised with my brother and about 10 other little children. I had never been so excited in my life, it felt as though I was being accepted into a new family, while still keeping my old one.

After being baptised, the whole of my Mother's side of the family came to my house to celebrate and there was even a suprise visit from my Grandmother from Perth, Australia. It was nice to see in a real situation, how much love there was for one another all celebrating the joining of Christ.

This was the first time I felt that I had gone from taking tiny steps of going to Church every Sunday to being part of the community and I strongly believe this was the start of my spiritual development.

Now that I have become part of the community, I believe that my little bit to help the community grow will really help. I think it's amazing how many groups and contributions have been made for and by the Risen Christ church and I only see things going up from there!

I must confess that I never saw myself heading in the direction of being baptised or becoming so spiritually involved within the parish, but it just shows how far Risen Christ has gone to bring in new members to the "family".

I think it is vital that groups continue to grow and be established, and this is one of the reasons I joined blogging in this mustardseed. I believe that the group of youth's are so amazing to have thought of a place where other youth's can talk about personal experiences and share the love of Christ.

God Bless,
Kayleigh x

The First Post

After passing many hours trying to set up an actual blog, I thought I would post my first ever blog post. Apologies if this all turns out in symbols like - ^#*!@( as that is all I have been seeing when trying to change layouts and posts. It's crazy how some people can do this so fast!

Many of my friends at school use blogs and I decided to see what all the craze was about, thus I decided to be a first-time "blogger" by expressing what I feel and entering a competition.

Blogging is open for the world to read about your beliefs and opinions and I believe that throughout posting you should have guidelines for yourself to decide on where to draw the line.

I think it is important to understand me before reading about my babblings (is that even a word?)-

• My name is Kayleigh and I turned 16 in March. I am a Pisces in case you were wondering.
• I am currently schooling in Tanglin Trust School in Year 11.
• Currently, it is my GCSE "O" Level Examinations and therefore I feel it is important that I draw the line between blogging and schoolwork. Sorry guys, but school is always the priority over this competition. I take 11 O Levels and I can't wait for them to be over on the 15th of June :o) YAY!
• I have one brother, Kyle, he is 9 years old and possibly the best brother anyone could wish for!
• I love to swim, competitively and for fun. It is my life. I swim 4 times a week with Southern Cross Dragons and those 2 hours a day never seem to be enough! I have represented the Alice Smith School of Kuala Lumpur and Tanglin Trust School of Singapore in the Federation of British International Schools South East Asia (FOBISSEA) in 2004,2005 and 2006. Unfortunately, being over the age of 15 I was not allowed to compete this year but instead have represented my club, SXD, in many competitions such as the Neptune League. As you can see, I am passionate about my swimming
• Going against the complete jock stereotype you have probably just created in your mind, I am also a complete geek. I love studying and I believe you must work hard to achieve your goals. Next year, I plan on taking 4 "A" levels of Chemistry, Biology, ICT (Information Computer Technology) and French. I wish to pursue a career in medicine and dream of becoming a paediatrician. I love discovering different languages and would one day like to be able to speak mandarin, the future language of the world. I also love pushing the limits when it comes to education and believe in doing anything to stand up for what I believe in. I love messing around with computers and editing although I am TERRIBLE at this "blogging". I have a piczo website and if I am not studying, swimming or eating, I will be playing around with my website.

So there you have it, Kayleigh in a nutshell.
Now, if you have bothered to read all that you will know that I have got O Levels at the moment and tomorrow is my Maths and Geography paper so I must go and revise :o)


God Bless,
Kayleigh, OUT!