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