Wacky testimony and nice uncles and aunties

I think I've played guitar on my church's worship team three times in the past month, and I'm not even officially on the worship team! Always replacing some missing guitarist I guess... not that I'm complaining, just commenting! I just played this morning and it was pretty fun coz' we had to play a bunch of pretty fast songs and I think my right arm was about to fall off after the third one from strumming at a rate of 1 million strums per minute or something like that. I guess it makes up for my lack of exercise during the past few weeks! It almost felt like being at a Hillsong conference during worship what with all the musicians blaring out music that sounds more like rock songs than Christian praise songs. Whoever has the notion being a Christian is boring would probably have a heart attack if they were at that service this morning. Kekeke! Anyway, after all the jumping up and down following by the more mellowed down worship time, we all sat down to listen to a super long testimony by a Chinese married couple. The wife was talking in Mandarin while the husband translated into English, so with the actual testimony taking up about the time of a normal sermon and the translation to boot, the whole thing took up probably double the time of a normal sermon. And yeah, I admit, I got kinda annoyed and restless towards the end coz' I felt the lady was telling us a lot of unnecessary details and sometimes repeating herself. Yes yes, I know that was a sucky attitude, so I won't make excuses for myself... *Carol kicks herself* :P Anywayz, I could probably sum up her story in a few short concise sentences: Years ago, she had a spiritual encounter with Guan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy) who promised her whatever she wanted as long as she sold her soul to her....but if the woman ever betrayed her, Guan Yin would take her soul to hell (very merciful indeed). So the woman said ok, and becomes a quick success...having three resturants with great food, being able to cure people's diseases so much that patients would line up at her door and such. Along the way, she gets married to the man who was now standing next to her and translating her story, and has a few kids. Her second son dies, but the rest grow up and she sends them to a Methodist school. The kids of course learn about Christianity in this school, where the pastor tells them that their mother has been worshipping the devil in the form of Guan Yin. So her kids tell her what he said and the woman gets angry and confronts the pastors, who responds to her anger by simply saying that God loves her. Then the kids begin to fast for two weeks to pray for their mum on the advice of their cell group leader... and once she finds out they are praying for her to stop worshipping this Guan Yin, she gets pissed again and confronts the cell leader who also simply says that God loves her. Later on, something else happens (I forget the details) which also pisses her off and she confronts a church lady who does the same thing telling her that God loves her. And so the woman is thinking all these Christians are nuts for saying the same simply thing every time even though she was out to fight with them and even challenged them to pit their Jesus against her Guan Yin, who's made her able to cure diseases. She was thinking that Jesus could never be a powerful as Guan Yin. But later on, her husband gets a condition where half his body is paralysed, and even though she tries to heal him, she can't. But her kids got their pastor and other church members to pary for him and soon he was cured. Of course, she was still skeptical, and even the husband still didn't believe in Jesus after that. But it got her thinking that maybe it was true. One day, she meets Guan Yin again, who for reason tells her to get a cup of blood from her third child (read: sacrifice her child. VERY merciful indeed) within three days or else she'll lose her powers and be taken to hell. But after thinking about it, the woman doesn't do it, so Guan Yin comes back three days later, gets into a fit and promptly drags the woman's soul to hell, where she sees a lot of pretty nasty things happening to the poor peeps in there. Then she remembers Jesus and calls out to him to save her, and voila, she finds herself back in her body... saved from the clutches of hell!!!! And so it goes that she and her husband finally does believe, becomes a Christian and is now going around the world sharing their testimony to people. And then she goes on to describes the types of punishments she saw going on in hell, but that's a graphic story that I won't go into. So that's the gist of their life story.....which I guess I didn't really summarized in a few short sentences. Haha!
To be honest, I do think her story sounds nuts. Most people who heard it would probably think that lady needs to pay a nice long visit to Tanjung Rambutan. And among all the crazy, amazing testimonies I've ever heard, this one has to take the prize for outlandishness. But these people apparently have gone sacrificed good jobs to go around the world sharing their story, and definitely risking their reputation as sane people by telling such a story, particularly if non-Christians (and ESPECIALLY Buddhists) hear about it. Why on earth would they do all that if it wasn't true? And nutty as it sounds, her story does make sense to me. Devil can take on any form he wants, including Guan Yin or any other idol of any other religion. I'm betting a good number of my Buddhist friends reading this would right now want to beat me up and you're perfectly justified for feeling as such. But that's a long explanation for this belief I won't get into here, but I'd be happy to try and field questions or get beaten up later if you wish. :P If you ask me, the most amazing thing about that whole testimony is not the whole appearance of Guan Yin, or healing of her paralysed hubby or even her little visit to hell.... but the Christians who didn't even try to argue that woman down when she was so mad at them. All they said was simple "God loves you!". And that was enough to make her so completely dumbfounded enough to finally believe there had to be something with this whole Jesus thing. Haha, well I know that if I weren't a Christian, I'd probably be a 100 times more irritable and annoyed with the world than I am now..... I've learn a lot about being patient from since I was younger, but probably not enough to have reacted as calmly as those folks. Oh well, maybe give myself a couple more decades when I'm older and hopefully wiser. :P
Anyway, got a little blessing today when I bumped into one of my church uncle's at a coffee shop after my taekwondo class today when I was hanging out with some of my other taekwondo friends. He had ordered some take away 'tai chau' stuff, and I ordered something for my dinner at the same stall too. He was really nice and we chatted for a while before I went back to hang with my friends and he waited for his food to be ready. Later on, after he left and my food was ready and I wanted to pay, I found out that he was so kind to pay for my food! Aw shucks, this is why I love hanging around church folks. :P And I don't even know what that uncle's name is! Argh, Carol...must...get...to know... names....of more.... church....uncles and aunties!!!! I just suck at remembering names....but anyway, it was really nice of him. Haiyoh, all you non-church goers should come to CBC with me sometime and meet the folks there. All vely nice wan! See, last night Aunty Mary and Uncle Simon made a nice big dinner for the youths and today another uncle pay for my dinner even though he didn't have too! Haha! *shameless advertising on my blog...*
Anywayz, I've got to get round to doing some uni work now. Good night!