Two years ago, I played the piano for the Prophetic Gathering. Last year, I helped out with the recording. This year, I finally had some prophetic words spoken over me. Woohoo! Steph also came along to support me.
Posted by: sammerz | 11 October, 2007
Prophetic Gathering
Posted by: sammerz | 06 October, 2007
Guys and Dolls
One of Steph’s colleagues, Dave Woods, was involved in an amateur theatre production of Guys and Dolls. Tonight’s show was held in the Karralyka Theatre in Ringwood. It was great! Before the show Steph came over for dinner where Elisha and I made our version of Oyster Mornay, Salmon with Hollandaise Sauce and Pesto Spaghetti. I got the Salmon right this time… I kinda overcooked it a little at Ben’s house last week! Oops!
Posted by: sammerz | 04 October, 2007
Auntie Clara’s 50th
Today we celebrated the half-century milestone of Steph’s Mum, Auntie Clara. Auntie and Steph’s youngest brother, Justin, arrived in Melbourne just a little over a month ago. To celebrate we dined, for the 3rd time this year, at the Shira Nui Japanese Restaurant. Steph’s little cousin Cecilia also joined us.
Posted in Celebrations, Family, Food, Photos
Posted by: sammerz | 29 September, 2007
Phantom of the Opera
AFL Grand Final: Geelong Cats vs. Port Adelaide Power. Not exactly interested – although I hoped Geelong would be the victors… a Victorian team for once! About 20 of us were in the city for a different reason: to see The Phantom of the Opera. In a nutshell – it was SUPERB! Only having seen snippets from the 2004 movie production of it, the theatre was just astronomically more outstanding. We had lunch at J-Café beforehand.
Following the opera, I checked the footy scores on my phone: Geelong were decimating Port with a 100+ point margin. No need to guess who won! Anyway, glad that my afternoon was better spent being with Steph and also to see one of the greatest musicals around. No idea how Andrew Lloyd Webber could come up with the score for this. The lead role, Phantom, was performed by Anthony Warlow. He was the original actor for this role in the Australian production and he was simply mind-blowing, with his huge vocal range. Marina Prior was the first actress for the role of Christine in the original Australian Tour quite a number of years back, but today it was played by Ana Marina.
Posted by: sammerz | 25 September, 2007
Mid-Autumn Festival
Today is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival where the Chinese get together for dinner and also it’s the time they eat mooncakes. The Tongs had a celebratory dinner at Gold Leaf Restaurant (which used to be Shark Fin Restaurant) on Burwood Highway.
Posted by: sammerz | 22 September, 2007
Kelly and Anthony’s Wedding
It was the perfect day for a wedding. Blue skies, no clouds! Anthony Rae and Kelly Raisin were married this afternoon. Funnily, Steph knew the groom (from her Commerce course at Monash), and I knew the bride (from SFC at Melbourne). It was such a cute wedding, and I know that Kelly can’t stand still (haha – she was super excited)… which gave the procession a much more relaxed feel. Congratulations and all the best to the both of them!
Posted in Celebrations, Friends
Posted by: sammerz | 16 September, 2007
Oxygen Camp
Just came back from camp over the weekend. Boy, was it a busy week!
- Wednesday: Encounter
- Thursday: Life Group Leaders Summit
- Friday – Sunday: Oxygen Camp!
…that was more than the week’s social activities being church-related! There was going to be an Epic/Oxygen meeting scheduled for 4pm-6pm on Sunday as well, but that was cancelled. I guess it was scheduled before the date of the camp was settled.
The theme for the camp this year was Mind, Heart and Soul. Fittingly, we had three guest speakers for each topic. Tim Goh spoke on the Mind, Helen Molyneux spoke on Heart and Corey Turner spoke on Soul. Tim preached his token message about The Power of an Idea. I’ve come to realise each preacher has their token message. This was the 3rd time I’ve heard Tim preach – and the 3rd time it was about this topic. But somehow the latter half of his message was different, each time relevant to the event. “Wholeheartedly” was the keyword from Helen’s message – that we ought to be intentional about everything we do. And when we do it, we have to put our whole heart behind it. Corey’s message was about “Living in the Supernatural Naturally” – learning how to be in tune and in constant communication with the Holy Spirit. Steph received a word from Corey when he spoke at one of our Encounter meetings. She had the chance to ask Corey what he meant by “Apostolic Anointing”. Although he couldn’t remember the context, he gave some good pointers as to what it means:
Apostolic Anointing
- Ability/capacity to pioneer new works
- Ability to create vision
- Ability to ground people in truth – new “baby Christians” – establishing/laying foundation
- Disciple people
- A sending-out ability:
- Personally going on missions/trips
- Sending people out to do things, e.g. plant churches
- An example may be an owner of an IT company, sending out skilled employees.
- Expansion into other countries – an international theme upon your life.
- Some good books to read:
- “The Apostolic Anointing” – Rick Joyner
- “Apostles and Prophets” – Peter Wagner
- “Moving in the Apostolic” – John Eckhardt [highly recommended]
- “Day of the Saints” – Bill Hammond
A memorable thing was when Dan was speaking at the final session this morning… I managed to stay on the keyboards for a solid 2 hours, tinkling away. Jason Home’s 2-day-old digital piano was pretty awesome… known for his amazing talent to play almost anything animated to reflect the speaker’s words, he gave a quick high applause when I tinkled a Chinese tune when Dan mentioned Asians! 2 hours – most of it in D major – reminded me of camp 3 years ago when I pretty much did the same thing. Haha… was getting a little tired in the end and began to “weight transfer” from one leg to the other. =P
Oh and yes – today SGS is 9 months!! We had a quiet dinner on the way back from camp – we were super tired!
Posted in Celebrations, Events, Growing, Trips
Posted by: sammerz | 04 September, 2007
Random Date
Since we came back from China and HK, Stephberry and I haven’t gone out for a date! Wow – it’s already a month! So I took her to Café La, a restaurant tucked away on the 35th floor of the Sofitel Hotel. With a pleasant view of the Melbourne night lights, Steph and I had a fantastic meal – a dozen oysters, Atlantic salmon, lamb cutlets and a crème brulee to finish. We somehow developed an unspoken rule when it came to dining together:
a.) we would share everything,
b.) when it came to the mains, we’d order two different dishes and, finally,
c.) when we reached halfway through our mains, we’d switch plates!
It was a random date, and a long-awaited one! Tomorrow I will be flying to Perth for a business trip over 3 days, so the quality time tonight with Stephberry was especially important!
Posted by: sammerz | 25 August, 2007
Rushed Day
Today was such a rush! Eggz and I went shopping for some last-minute groceries, before I dropped him off at Steph’s place. Along the way I briefed him on how to prepare some of the meal. I dropped by Jesscy and Gloria’s Life Group to share about my China trip. That was pretty much the crux of their meeting – as it was mostly worship and admin stuff. Shortly after, I returned to Steph’s place and continued with the cooking. The sharing night began at 6pm, and by then we were serving Grandma Querzoli’s Chicken Nuggets as appetisers. (That’s my half-Italian half-Malaysian cousin’s grandma who taught me some recipes.) Two pots of lamb stew and a pot of tomato beef (my experimental dish) were served with Steph’s Spicy Corn Couscous. Adele, Joan, James, Steph and I shared about our China missions trip and had some power-point and video presentations to accompany. The ~20 guests enjoyed the evening and most expressed a deep interest to go on a missions trip sometime soon. The evening finished with some Peach and Strawberries Parfait and Joan’s Rice Pudding. Plenty of food, and plenty of left overs! We cleaned up as best and as fast as we could, because Steph’s Mum and youngest brother were flying in tomorrow morning!
Posted by: sammerz | 19 August, 2007
Miss Marple’s
After church Eggz, Steph and I went to Miss Marples in the Dandenongs to have lunch. As we arrived and the hostess took our names down, we found that there was a half-hour wait before a table was available. I did something sneaky just before: I asked Eggz to quickly rush in front of this group of Asians to get the booking first. Dodgy, huh? During the wait, we walked around the area. We bought some sweets at a candy shop and walked through an alleyway leading to a small courtyard surrounded by antique shops. There was an open fire there where we toasted some marshmallows.
SGS 
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