Young Christians

How I wish that there is such a thing as Express Bible Course, get to know the big picture of the bible in a week or less. After getting to know the people in the newly formed bible study group on Friday, I see the need of such a course (although it’s impossible I think).

There’s a person in the group who said that he’s a new christian, he’s being christian for less than a year, he wants to learn more abt the bible and God, so he comes to bible study. However he also told us that this is his last session with the prospect of moving to spore to get a job. Doh! How can we teach him bible properly in less than 7 months? Given the background of the people in the group (couple of very young christians), maybe it’s better to focus on how to read the bible for themselves and what does it mean to live as christians..

The series on the Doctrine of God that we are supposed to do are quite difficult in themselves, hey trinity is never an easy concept to explain let alone to be understood..

On the other side, I think if they “DO” get to grow in the end, and God wills they will grow, I should be very happy. I reckon, in a group with young christians is very encouraging because you’d be able to see the changes in their understanding and their lives (but it doesn’t guaranteed to happen) more clearly than being in the bible study with mature christians. Why is this ya? Does the rate of growth diminish after a certain period of time being a christian, I wonder..

This week, the business of life

I don’t know why some people enjoy being busy ie in such away that when they got home, they’ll have to do something (like studying for instance).
There are three major things that affecting my daily life at the moment.: work, ministry and study. Study is in my opinion the least important of the three, yet because I love the study so much (or maybe I just ca
ot be satisfied with pass grade), study takes my energy and time away from ministry. I have dropped COMP9031, will try to do it next session, when the lecturer has figured out what Internet Programming really is 🙂
Studying computing is draining because it takes understanding not memorizing, the time spent on programming is also quite significant, I usually have to have a continous thinking time (say 3-4 hours undisturbed) to solve a programming assignment, 2 slots of 2 hours won’t do as good for me. But continous thinking time is a luxury that I ca
ot afford at the moment (well not this week anyway) so yeah.. Urgh, I love programming, but how I wish I have smarter brain that will cut the thinking time in half.
Unexpected things like my mom’s coming are adding to this week’s frustation. Tomorrow I also start taking care of a bible study group, I hope all will go well. But yeah more things to think about.
On more positive note, I am happy with the job, I have alloted a fixed time for it every day, and it doesn’t go beyond the time allocated for it.
Things that have been neglected this week: wedding prep, job hunting.

Learning about XPath

I am someone who learns by example. I’m currently looking for tools to test/to visualise Xpath query. I suppose I can read Xpath specification, of which I do try to read, but yeah, I guess it’s simpler if just see the examples. nnUpdate: Urgh, after 2-3 hours (with watching Australian Idol+skithouse) I was able to complete the tutorial on XPath, I also managed to download and use XMLSpy to check my answer. There are few other free tols that I downloaded, but I couldn’t run them. I wonder whether there is something similar to XMLSpy in Linux (XMLSpy is a free for limited time). Now that the tute is done, I can (try to) concentrated on the assignment. I have to brush up my C.. sigh.. leaving the comfort of Java..