today i went to serve the world with some sji guys. they're an awesome bunch of people and certainly they served with joy and diligence!

essentially, the place we went to was dirty, was filthy, was black. our beneficiary is a marginalised guy who's suffering from a mental illness. due to him not turning off his tap and lights, he has no water, he has no electricity supply. his neighbours disliked him and thus tried to set his flat on fire by throwing something burning into his house. essentially, we came into a very depressing house, marred by this guy's reluctance to let go of things and move on and the many things he's been put through due to the intolerance and stigmatisation of society.

we had to clean his house, wow. he had a million things and we threw it all away. it was saddening to see him reluctantly bid his furniture goodbye. there were a million cockroach eggs but we only found 2 live cockroaches and one super fat lizard. we brushed the ceiling the flakes of old ceiling paint starting falling down. 12 years of dust accumulated is really really scary. his oil used for incense burning hardened and became lard. he had LDs and police batons, remnants of his past, memories of his dad, we all took it and cleared it for him so that he may move on.

i was hit strongly by the song "Solution", about how God becomes the Father to the fatherless. this guy's dad took care of him and the dad passed away 12 years ago. ever since, he was neglected and sorta abandoned, living an aimless, destitude life. this guy essentially is the dependent. he is the fatherless and needs God to love him through avenues like the church and God's children. i was also very blessed to understand how our parents are really gifts in our lives and that we're blessed with them. we can choose our friends, but we can't choose our family. i spent 1.5 hours talking and catching up with my dad. it's really refreshing to talk to him because we gave each other an opportunity to share our views, to understand each other more instead of just playing the role of father and son. God, thanks for growing my love for my dad. i wanna work hard so that i can bring my dad to come know You, i wanna see him in heaven with me.

back to the house, we had to paint the house and i learnt alot of lessons from it. firstly, painting over to make things look nice doesn't work. our ceiling had an old coat of paint which was flaking and falling apart. we tried to paint over but it just kept falling. i was reminded about our lives. it's no use trying to make our appearance look spiritual. it will end up falling apart because we're not changed from the inside out. and time was really of the essence, at 5pm i was screaming that we had 1 hour left because we had no electricity, we had no time. it was saddening to see how some of us were abit tired and went out for short breaks. because to me, there was so little time left for me to do the work and it was sad to see the rollers on the floor. essentially, we did what we could, we did our best and i gotta say, we did a great job for such a dirty house and that we're all noobs in painting!

today, i grew in feelings of injustice. i grew in feelings of indignance and compassion at the same time. God, thanks for using us, for using me while You become a Father to the fatherless.