Hard and Heart Work

Written by Toh Jern Ling
Edited by Charis Chen
2 April 2017                      

Welcome to today's chapter meeting!

We started off with Speaker Charis leading us with an icebreaker which was a similar to "Simon Says". We were separated into two groups and had to choose a Student Leader to head our team by coming up with a few sets of routines of four actions each, and teaching them to us. After that, each team shared their action routines.

Photo by Ranen Chan

Show-off time!!!!

  Photo by Ranen Chan

Team 1

  Photo by Ranen Chan

Team 2

From the icebreaker, we learned about the core value of innovation and community.

Next up was devotion time led by our Chapter Chair, Speaker Jern Yoong, who shared with us from the Beatitudes the verse, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." He asked us many thought-provoking questions and concluded by challenging us to think pure thoughts.

The word from our Chapter Sponsor, Coach Joseph was next. He started off by thanking the speakers for their HARD and HEART work in preparing for the tournament, and the encouraging and motivating coaches who burned the midnight oil just to give us pep-talks, edit our scripts and for just being there for us Speakers before, during, and after the tournament! Coach Joseph also congratulated Speakers Jern Yoong and Charis for taking up the challenge of accepting the invitation to the United States to participate in the International Tournament!

After thanking and congratulating, he reminded us about the ICC mission, which is, "A global community empowering next generation Christians to influence today's culture." He then shared that as communicators for Christ, we need to learn to speak and state our stands and convictions well enough to make the audience want to know more by asking questions. He then shared an acronym for giving impactful answers to the audiences who may have questions:

P -   Principles
O
E
M -  Metaphors
S

Due to the lack of time, Coach Joseph chose to share only the 'P' and 'M' types of answers for this week. The first letter, P, stands for Principles. A helpful guide for is to base the stand of our answers on principles, rather than dogmatic dos and don'ts. M stands for Metaphors. When the answers seem abstract, one can use a metaphor to illustrate a point. He shared with us about his own experiences using metaphors while conducting training seminars.   

  Photo by Ranen Chan

With the 'P' and 'M' letters, we were fired up to prepare to be ready to give effective and impactful answers to the questions that people might throw at us. Thank you, Coach Joseph! 

Breakout sessions followed- the YCCs and YSGs.

While the YCCers had their fun time learning, the YSGers did summaries of what our CAP speeches were about so that the coaches could ask questions based on our speeches. After our summaries, we broke off into small groups with different coaches who discussed and probed us with questions which people in other communities might have after listening to our speeches.

  Photo by Ranen Chan

Right after that, we had our first Cultural Storytelling Duo, presented by my brother and me. Our story was "Chu Ju's House" The topic was about favoring sons over daughters. We definitely made the audience laugh heartily!!

  Photo by Ranen Chan

Chu Ju! Go at once for the midwife!

  Photo by Ranen Chan

You will have nothing done with the baby girl?

  Photo by Ranen Chan

Talk of another child is foo-vishness!

With that, thank you so much for reading this and till next time, farewell! Adios!