Friday, April 17, 2009

Cradle Catholic Talent Pool

Gosh! It has been four days since I could get time to sit in front of the laptop and blog. In fact, I got to write fast as I will be going somewhere again. That's the story of my life, especially since becoming Mrs Patrick Archibald. I'll leave it at that for now.
For this post I just wanted to share with you the recent cradle Catholic talent I discovered in Kuching. Well, his name is Nomiday Dajie (pic). A little Iban warrior in size, but a powerhouse of a person.
I first met Nomiday in St Joseph Cathedral sometime last year. That time he was assigned by my Kuching wealth advisor who is from the SIB church, to take good care of me. She asked him to make sure I felt at home during mass in Kuching - typical East Malaysian hospitality.
From the start, I could feel that Nomiday is a young man full of potential. Fast forward to the future - today he is not only my friend, he is also my new wealth advisor, but most importantly another fellow cradle Catholic.
However, today, I discovered a new talent of his - his song writing skills. If you are a youth around college or university age you may have attended the Freedom event last year, of which, Nomiday or Miday, as we call him was part of the organising team.
During that event - some of his original worship songs were sung. Way to go Miday. I'm sure you make our Lord very very proud. I heard they even sold some CDs of those songs to raise funds.
His other talents are photography and making unique and attractive flyers for his campus ministry.
Actually, I'm no stranger to East Malaysian Catholic talent since my Choice days. Through God's grace, I've learnt beautiful action songs from the Kuching team of my time. I'll definitely never forget The Road Of Our Lives, I'll Be There For You, Carry Your Candle, The Jubilee Song and others.... such fond memories indeed.
In fact, I'm quite sure even the KL Choice was using the Road of Our Lives action song during my time and many Choice weekends after that. Thanks to Felix, Linda, Sarah, Mervin and team. Wonder whether the recent KL Choice weekend did it? (if you are reading Autumn?)
Anyway, last night I met Michael Hii and his team of Faith Formators from St Peter's Church, Padungan. Here is another bunch of eager beaver Catholics, comprising both the cradle and convert species respectively.
Their commitment to serve the children and youth of their parish is indeed commendable. In fact, Michael was one of the first people who started corresponding with me after I set up this blog. He said he wanted to network cos' he wanted as many resources as possible.
Whenever, he visits Australia (and other countries) he would buy whatever Catholic books and videos that are not available in Kuching.
Sad to say I could not offer very much in terms of resources, except maybe Martin Jalleh's contact details. Unfortunately, I found out from Michael's email just now that Mr Jalleh is fully booked for the year. Now, Martin, (with his adorable sad clown eyes) is indeed another great example of Catholic talent.
During the course of the night I instead learnt so much from the St Peter's group, bringing home with me the creative booklets they made to aid their faith formation activities. This is after they fed me up, nice and well - God provides through His people indeed.
Within that group - I can see that Michael's talent is in gathering his people for their Sunday school type ministry, which they emphasised that they prefered to call Faith Formation. The other visible talent within the group is Timothy Voon, the avid photographer. Actually I would have loved to include our group photo but I have not received it yet. Tim, hope you get the hint, *wink, wink*
Btw, God is a great networker. That is why I feel the world is getting smaller by the day. In the midst of our great feasting of pork leg, midin, oh chian, steam fish and other delicious delicacies, I found out that Tim actually knows my choir mate from St Thomas More parish - Gerald Lau aka the Bun Boy.
When they found out that I'm from Subang Jaya, one of them - Faith Au Nyet Joong then revealed that she is a school mate and good friend of Cynthia (Read) Foo.
That's when the It's a Small World After All tune started playing in my mind, pretty much like a Twitlight Zone moment too.

Anyway, we had a great time feasting together - a great Malaysian hobby.

It's getting really late now, and I got to go home and sleep. So before I end, I wish all of you a blessed Divine Mercy Sunday.

If you remember my earlier post on Good Friday, you would know that the Novena for this great Feast day started the day Jesus died to save us.

May His Mercy Be Upon Us All.... (Now where is my Chaplet???)


4 comments:

  1. Hazel, happy to meet you in Kuching. Indeed it is a small world, through mutual friends, we felt like meeting old friends!

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  2. hi hazel. road of our lives is performed at every CHOICE weekend. thanks to carol jacobson for teaching me the steps again as i have forgotten most of it from my CHOICE weekend and had to re-learned it to present to the participants :-)

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  3. hey hazel. actually i burnt a cd for michael already, hope my mom did her part by passing the cd to him.

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  4. Read about getting the books, it is hard indeed to find great books such as from Scott Hahn etc here in Malaysia. I have to order it from Amazon.com instead! I wish I know where to get those good books and set up my own shop selling those books in Kuching. If any of you ever know, please inform me. Thanks. William.

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