Mio Plan and Sermon Today

Dear All

Today being Mother's Day, Bert decided to get me a new handphone. I've never had a new one for years as I am not tech-savvy and would stick to 1 phone so as not to have to learn how to use a new one. I then saw the samsung soul U900 and though it pretty "cheap" since my current phone's buttons were finally giving way.

Then, itchy finger me, I went to internet to check about mio plan and asked if the shop can combine all as the cost is about the same with $5 savings to what we are currently getting individually. Then, guess what? After signing up for mio plan today, I went into internet to use their website calculator check to see how much we are saving....and the verdict? We need to pay more (Mio plan of $110 vices $66 of our current bill.."top-up with $40 to enjoy mio plan") with mio plan to get what we are currently enjoying!!!! Shocking that singtel DARE to say that, right? Anyway, no point crying over spilt milk. On the bright side, I'll get a phone upgrade with $100 discount at the 18th month of our 30 month contract. Meantime, am wondering how to get my 1-month MP3 music pack which comes with this latest 2nd day launched handphone. Not bad yah, from an old-bie to a new-bie literally overnight.

On the serious story about today's sermon by Fr John Bosco....1st the lighter side to the story.

Once there was this old lady who was trying to get her son to get up from bed to go to church. The son didn't want to budge and gave her 2 reasons why he didn't want to go to church. Reason 1: They don't like him. Reason 2: He doesn't like them either. His mum sighed, looked heaven-ward and asked God, how could He give her such a son. So she gave him 2 reasons for him to go to church. Reason 1: He is already 50 years old. Reason 2: He is the parish priest!

Lesson to be learned: Since this is Pentencost Sunday, the priest is like the early disciples, afraid to go out to face the people. The old lady is like Mother Mary, coaxing them to go forth. The disciples were "old" as they have been with Jesus for some time and were no longer "infants".

2nd story: The squirrel and the owl
One day, a squirrel asked the wise old owl how much does a snowflake weigh. The wise old owl said "next to nothing". The squirrel then told the owl that last winter, it was on its branch watching the snow fall, and decided to count the number of snowflakes accumulating on it's branch. It told the owl, "When I got to 1,999,999 the next snowflake that fell broke the branch I was on and I couldn't count anymore. So you are telling me that a snowflake weigh next to nothing???"

The story arose because lots of people say what can they do to witness for Christ? We are only 1 person and whatever we do cannot amount to much. The story shows us that what we do everyday may not seem much, but accumulatively, at the end of our life journey, it will amount to something substantial. Tiffany didn't understand the "parable", and was "mocking" at the squirrel being silly to count the snowflakes. So I gave her the example of her studies. If she does a little work like 3 pages of exercises everyday, after 3 months, it would accumulate to a lot of work done. She would have completed at least 2 of those assessment books from popular just for 1 subject alone. (BTW, that's what Felicia did in P1, so she actually completed 2 books of chinese, 2 books of English and about 2 books of maths. So she did pretty well in her SA last year.) I was amazed as I usually throw out lots of imcomplete books of Tiffany's. So I showed Tiffany that if it can work for her sis, so can it for her. And the best part is, it wouldn't take her too much effort on her part. So she immediately got the point of the sermon.

Pretty nice "parables". No wonder Jesus spoke in parables. It really gets the attention of the congregation and truly delivers its message, simply and the retention rate is at least 70%!! How every teacher and public speaker would LOVE that kind of retention rate, ya??

Love Theresa