70th Anniversary Dinner Celebration

Carmen blogging...

Hello everybody,

I know its been ages since I have posted anything on our blog here. Well, I've been busy with work and for the past 2 months busy with the preparations of our 70th Anniversary Celebration Dinner here in Penang and the 70th Anniversary Congress in Kuala Lumpur (which I will blog about later, if I have the time).

This post will be about the celebrations here in Penang. We were all busy practicing for our performances for the dinner. I danced in our SAY Fired Up! performance with the rest of the youths to the song 'Lord You Are Good'. I don't have any pictures of our dance or a proper video of it yet but when I get it I will post it. Look out for them. Thank you all the youths, Fiona, Alicia, Caleb, Steven, Matthias, Kenny and Scott for practicing hard. In the end our dance came out looking quite good. Thanks to God for such a talented bunch.

I also helped the Sonday S'cool children practice and prepare for their item. They sang 'Jin Jia Ho' in Malay, English and of course, Hokkien. They also sang 'Oh, How I Love You Jesus' with sign language done by the smaller ones. Thank you to all the Sonday S'cool teachers like Aunty Tan, Aunty Jenny, Aunty Maggie and Fiona for helping me with the children. They were quite a handful during practices even at practice a few hours before they were going to perform. Definitely thank you to all the Sonday S'cool children (hope I don't miss out any of them as I list them out), Dennis, Chien Shin, Emmanuel, Nicholas, Fernando, Jia Wei, Thomas, Jacky, William, See Chiean, Ah Chuen, David, Khye Lin, Chiu Peeng, Zher Yang, Joshua, Eng Chai, Raymond, Soon Kean and Fabian. Well, that's all 20 of them.

There were 2 other dances too. One was a taichi fan dance and a hip hop dance (Revolution). The taichi fan dance was cheoreographed by Kenny, one of the boys here in the home. The dance was performed by the boys from the Children's Home, David, Soon Teong, Soon Kean, William, Teik Hong and of course, Kenny and it was done well. This dance added a little Chinese culture thing into the dinner celebration. It's good. Everything was like so modern. The dance added a little spice into the evening. The hip hop dance was also performed by the other boys in the Home, Jack, Jihhan, Dennis and Hong Wei. They did their 'thang' which included 'breaking'. Well you know what I mean. Lol. Sadly, I too don't have any pictures of these 2 dances yet. I will get them soon.

Last but not least is the Perth Fortress Band all the way from Australia. They did an awesome job. We, as in our youth group stood up and gave them a standing ovation after they finished. We were just so grateful to them for coming to Penang and celebrating our 70th Anniversary with us. They worked so hard over the weekend giving performances on Saturday and Sunday and finally the dinner on Monday. They played so well that they made miss me playing the trombone in my former school band. Actually more of playing really good music with a band this size. There were 40 of them.

The band arrived early morning on Saturday at around 12am. They had a little workshop and performance session with St Xavier's School Band in the afternoon. That is Caleb's school, for your information. Then they joined us for dinner at the Home to meet the children. Sadly, I didn't meet them then because Angie was napping upstairs and I babysat her. After that, they performed at New World Park. The band also performed at Gurney Plaza on Sunday afternoon.

The band joined us for Sunday service. It was really fun singing with a big band in our corps. I don't think we will get that often here in Penang. Commissioner David and Grace Bringans and Captain Ian And Isobel Robinson were also here in Penang to celebrate with us. During the service, Commissioner David Bringans handed over brand new flags sewn in Myanmar (if I'm not mistaken) to my dad and mom; Penang Corps flag and Penang Children's Home respectively. 3 new soldiers were enrolled. Sally, one of the band members shared her testimony.


The Perth Fortress Band...
Solo cornet...
Allison, Edith and me leading praise and worship...
Commissioner David Bringans giving his speech...
Territorial Commander, Commissioner David Bringans...
Raymond reading a Bible verse in between the songs...
Sonday S'cool children singing 'Oh How I Love You'...

The band performing at Gurney Plaza...

The brand new flags...
Penang Corps flag...
Penang Children's Home flag...Tong Meng, William and Cheh Ho are sworn in...
With their Articles of War...
Tong Meng giving his testimony... William gave his too...

Eng Teik, Sally, Matthew and Steven... Eng Teik and Steven helped the band the most... They lug the band's instruments here and there for them...

Sending them off at the airport... Going to Kuala Lumpur...

Celebrations to be continued in Kuala Lumpur...