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A week of testing, and in the end, victory
By Ern Sheong | April 5, 2009
This week was a crazy week. How I managed to sustain through it is purely by God’s grace and strength.
Started coughing for some reason on Tuesday night, and this grew to be a very bad cough and a mild fever by Thursday. By Friday I was “dying”. On Saturday I wanted to faint as I walked. The body was so weak and the coughing made my throat so painful.
Throw in the G-Live Freshmen skit run-through on Wednesday night (took up almost the entire night), a midterm on Thursday (the following) morning, hours of flyering under the sunny Californian sun for G-live on Sproul and Northside, and G-Live itself on Saturday (3 showings). And also throw in the very hurting fact that I left my Macbook in Dwinelle’s bathroom Wednesday at 10 am because I was careless and rushed off to class only to ask myself after discussion section, “Where in the world is my laptop?” Went back to the bathroom to find it GONE.
Today (well, yesterday i.e. Saturday) was the G-Live performance, and before the first show @ 11 am, my throat was so bad from all the coughing that I sorta lost my voice. But somehow I managed to pull the lines and my croaky voice somehow managed to add to the effect (I was a FOB (fresh-off-the-boat) dad, meaning a dad which speaks a very Chinese kind of English) And after the dancing and all that I was feeling so sick I just collapsed and slept on the floor after lunch. Second show @ 3 pm was not too bad, no lines and only dancing (we have two acting casts), but after the intense dancing my throat was burning (I think it was because of the singing while dancing and the battle cry of the last dance) and some intense migraine attacked my head. So painful. In the meantime I was pumping loads of Vitamin C into my body…
Then things began to change. Before the last show of the day @ 7 pm I checked my phone and got a voice message. A guy had found my laptop in Dwinelle and would like to arrange to give it back to me. I was shocked, since I already accepted the fact that I had lost my Macbook and resorted to using back my old Dell. I even managed to redo the CS project which was stored on the Macbook since I did not back up my data. But now I am getting the Macbook back. Speechless.
Then before the 7 pm show somehow I just got back my voice to a fuller extent. A mild headache was still there, but my condition improved drastically. That 7 pm show was powerful. We were all so pumped up about it being the last show, I think we nailed it in the last performance! It was so awesome! And so were the sophomores, juniors and seniors. Wonderful skits! We were all going crazy about how well it went! Not to mention the staff and technical crew who are not seen on stage (duh!) It wouldn’t have happened without you guys! They are an inspiration to me, pouring out so much.
To top it all up, despite not fully preparing for this midterm I want to thank God because for some reason or another I managed to score a 98% in my 100 point Math midterm on Thursday this week (2 points lost because I forgot a square root >.<) but I expected to lose much much more points. Praise God! I was so shocked when I got the results. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it but it made my day on Friday. Going to office hours to ask all kinds of questions for many prior weeks does help, I guess.
If there was such a thing as spiritual battle in the realm of the unseen I think this week was really it. G-Live was all about spreading the Gospel and for God’s glory, and in such endeavors Satan does all that he can to stop us from glorifying Him. But with His strength, we can be victorious. I did not fight this week alone. Many prayers sustained me. Conrad, my small group leader, took me out to dinner at a chinese restaurant on Thursday night (fried calamari and chicken, yummy!) after hearing about my laptop and the tough week I was going through. Sarah Chu was so happy that I am getting my laptop back as she had been praying about it and for me too. And also thanks to Kenneth for praying for my worsening health during the week. Thank you to all of you and others who prayed and helped me through this very difficult week.
ALL GLORY TO GOD!
Topics: Berkeley, God is Great | 2 Comments »
April 16th, 2009 at 12:24 am
kk… do you have a centralized UNIX-based file system like AFS… I almost took its blessings for granted that I could work anywhere and still get back the same file. Do you use VIM or eMACs?
April 16th, 2009 at 4:44 am
?!!!?