Leading Up to the Youth Summit : Aug-2018

When I first heard of the upcoming youth summit, I was a lil’ excited.. and a lil’ determined.. that all my 3 girls must participate in it by hook or by crook. From experience, I had thought it should not be too difficult, but that didn’t seem the case! Now that Qi and Xuan are older and have more activities of their own, time became a scarce resource.. and I had to get them to commit their precious resource, ie their time! Which may be a lil’ challenging..😅 Anyway, i started to pray for Qi, Xuan and En to have a most joyful and victorious youth summit experience!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

As I hear from faith buddies how they reached out to their district youths, and even their ex lion cubs to participate in the youth summit, I also wanted to do more and began to explore which youths in my life can I invite.. Faces of nieces and nephews began to pop up in my mind and in my prayers. As someone who has always been very passive in keeping in touch with relatives, I think they must have been a lil’ shocked to receive my WA messages!!😬 After a couple of attempts, I realized I wasn’t going to succeed. Hence I changed my approach and prayers — I began to pray that Qi and Xuan would be able to invite their friends to watch their performance instead. However that wasn’t easy too. I was soon informed by my ywd leader that my girls were not inviting anyone and our district has more tickets available for distribution! 😔 I continued with my prayers and even embarked on a 2-hours-a-day daimoku campaign! But the fact is, there was hardly 2 consecutive days which I managed to chant my 2-hourly daimoku.. Nonetheless, I plough on and continue my daily attempt towards my goal.

Time passed very quickly. And before long, July was over and August was whizzing away in front of my eyes too.

Much as I wanted it to be otherwise, Youth Summit really wasn’t My Youth Summit. Despite vested interest in having 3 daughters, as well as 3 other district youths as participants, it’s still not my youth summit. However bcoz SNCO has been tasked to take on a performance at a book launch at SMU one day after the youth summit, and I was one of the 4 performers for the flute quartet.. I was able to chant for focused and personal daimoku for the total victory of that youth summit weekend, including our performance at the book launch! In fact, after the flautists met for a rehearsal one week before performance, I was downright flustered and at a loss.. despite practising by myself, my skills were really not up to par and I may even spoil the show!!

At the eleventh hour, there really wasn’t much I could do but chant. Hence I set a personal target to chant 10 hours of daimoku that weekend, the absolute victory of the youth summit, as well as the absolute victory of our flute performance. Also for my youths’ joyous and victorious youth summit journey. And also that my girls would invite their friends to join the youth summit as spectators.❤️🙏🏼

Of course this wasn’t the first time I gave myself an impromptu daimoku target, but this was surely one of the very few times I actually challenged myself hard and achieved it!! I fought hard against the Zzz monster and won some lost some battles.. Ultimately, I accomplished my 10 hours!! ✌🏻✌🏻