Summary

 

Our mission closing event was held on Dec 18 where we had a total of 19 persons attending the event held at St Anne’s Church and 30 other locations joining through Zoom link from Singapore, multiple communities in Battambang, as well as from UK, USA and Australia. 

 

We started with a thanksgiving mass presided by Fr Jovita to celebrate the success of our mission and was well complemented by heartfelt testimonies, and contributions of many videos and photos. It was truly a very heart-warming day. Fr Jovita’s homily on St Joseph gave us much inspiration and insights to think about. We had an enthusiastic and appreciative audience, and the event concluded with affirming and encouraging words from Fr Bongbong and his observation that to Love is to be present, to provide and to protect.

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Jeremiah 17:7-8 says “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

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Message from Melvin

 

To all of you who have made this year’s mission possible and successful, I’d like to say a big thank you! No words can truly express the true extent of your efforts and my heartfelt gratitude. And so, I hope these few humble words will suffice.

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Firstly, On behalf of the ACTS community, we want to thank Fr Jo for taking time off his very busy schedule to celebrate mass today and very importantly too for his spiritual guidance that is often enjoyable, inspirational and encouraging.  

 

We thank too, Fr Bongbong, Fr Manoj, Sister TM and all Fathers and Sisters in Battambang, and Zenn for your prayers and very encouraging support together with our Cambodia brothers and sisters. Your enthusiasm, words of affirmation and smiles means very very much to us. It is what keeps us encouraged and motivated especially when things are difficult

 

On behalf of Nic and myself as mission leaders, we want to also extend our very heartfelt gratitude to the FR champions, Chad, Natalie, Beata, Siew Choo, Maureen, Matt, and your teams, Shung, Keith, Nic and the media and video team all of whom have worked tirelessly and sacrificed a lot of your time over these last couple of months for this mission and for today’s event. Your sacrifice and your teamwork were crucial in helping to raise over $67K and to spread the word of stewardship and solidarity. 

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At this point, I would also like to acknowledge Cynthia, Veronica and the kinder team, and Jess who have also been very busy preparing and conducting training classes for kinder teachers in BB over the past many months.

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From myself, I’d like to sincerely thank Kenneth, Lynette, Daphenie and especially Nic and Maureen for your creativity, patience and zeal to co-lead and navigate through the periods of difficulties and very importantly too, to make things happen through your tireless and passionate efforts in so many ways. It will be hard for everyone to totally know the struggles that each of you had to undergo, and I thank the Lord for His spirit in you.

 

We also thank Han Vi, Sopha, Siew Choo, Beata, Noi, Sreychen, Sophuth and Jacqueline for generously sharing their experiences of the mission with us, as well as the video messages, dances and songs from Cambodia. We are sharing these messages and clips in the following mission sharing and testimonies page.

 

Last but not least, we would like to thank everyone who contributed to the making of the closing videos, especially those who had contributed their photos and videos in each of the stewardship projects, the soloists, choir and everyone who sang our theme song, and to the creative force of Valerie, Michael and Briceton who put these videos together.

 

Finally, allow me to sincerely apologise for videos that we were not able to show at the close or had to trim because of time constraints. We thank you for your contributions, and all videos and reflections have been uploaded in this website for viewing at your own time. We also apologise that you may not have seen the videos in its fully glory due to the technical difficulties faced at the venue and over Zoom, but we have shared them here in the hope that you can enjoy them at your leisure.