'Top student you know, my teachers they were all shocked, "How can this boy score 100?" I was top student, you know!'
The MINDS security guard isn't an ordinary security guard. He told Agnes and I, as we signed into MINDSville, that he had been a sort of child intellectual prodigy, scoring full marks and even skipping secondary one because his mind was on par with those a year his senior. He had the blueprints of his future all carefully planned in his mind - after secondary school and junior college and he would go to England to study architecture.
However, his dream couldn't be realised because his father, a drunkard, spent all his money on alcohol.
I could hear the bitterness in the security guard's voice when he said "I told my father, I said to him "you are a fool" '
Because he was a fool, and now his son is watching the world go by and thinking of what he could-have-been.
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After that, we went into the hall to set up and meet the children. I was paired with a lovely gentle girl called jia ying who reminded me so much of the gentle girl in Vietnam (2013). Her favourite animal is a dog and her favourite colour is purple. She goes to church 'to pray...to God' and she doesn't like snakes. Probably the best bit of our tie with her was when we read through the 'Where's Wally?' book with her.
"Lolly!!! Where are you Lolly?" She would exclaim.
"I find Lolly!" - a curious mix of tenses because she had found Wally and yet always there was another page of jumbled characters with that red and white bespectacled enigma hiding somewhere.
After she had finished the book, she proudly announced to her helper that 'I find Lolly!' this time a final, intended past tense. She also carefully instructed the next girl who was using the book to find wally by 'looking for red'.
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Lunch was with Agnes, Kiyoko and Jon, because I think part of the MINDSville visit, aside from serving the children, was to bond the YAs together through meaningful service. So Kiyoko, Jon, Agnes and I ruminated over why God creates people who are blind and intellectually disabled over lunch. We couldn't think of a comprehensive answer, just certain answers for certain cases, which I suppose is the only true answer since every person differs.
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Raj, Nathan and I discussed what it meant to truly DIE to this life and if we kept sinning if it meant we weren't truly dead in our sins and therefore we weren't/aren't saved. I still maintain that Christianity is about intention and not perfection. Salvation cannot be a process wherein we are cleansed forever on earth because earth is ultimately sinful. And so we shall and will sin. Again and again. But that does not mean we are not truly saved because there is no place God's love cannot reach us, and no way we cannot attain his forgiveness and eternal life if we so seek it through Christ. Death, I suppose, is a struggle (do not go gentle into that good night) that Christ strengthens us to achieve. And through that struggle of dying to this life and it's sin we rely on God's strength and form a personal relationship with him and a deep attraction for him that means we will keep coming back when we fail, and therefore we will be saved. I think.
Also discussed vegetarianism and discovered Mustafa sells nuts cheaply (CHARGE!!!!!)
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On the train with Grace, she told us about a friend who was sending her texts constantly deprecating and pitying himself. Honestly I feel rather annoyed at people who constantly talk about how degraded they are and yet make no effort to improve it, or complain about what a burden they are and yet do not help others willingly, or say they are desperate and yet decline help from concerned others.
I suppose my human patience causes me to fail to truly care for these people. But God's love is higher than their sighs and deeper than their groans.
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In the Cafe, I had the pleasant surprise of Switt ann Shak coming to visit on top of Nathan and Grace being there! Norman said his 'gay-dar' pinged when he saw Shak although i think it may be faulty. I did front for the first time.
I met the kitchen staff - Andrew, who held open the door for me and helped me arrange the cakes, and asked me what my name was and struggled to pronounce it, and struggled to say miri too and now calls me mary, Presley - Andrew's darker doppelganger, Travis - the main pastry chef, Jason - the biggest joker in the kitchen
Jason "This (spaghetti) is for B6. It is extra spicy."
Me "Very spicy?"
Jason " Yeah, like extra extra hot, like you"
I rolled my eyes and laughed. I love work!
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