Recently I came across a website service which claims to pay you for the time you spend on surfing.

Well, I thought why not give it a try, since it was free, and all I need to do is to be active in surfing, I will be paid. So after filling up the registration form and submitted, I was given access to the site almost immediately.

How it works?  Actually you need to login to the website each time you want to surf to be paid.  Then you also need to use the search engine, which is using Yahoo Search.  No problem with me.  I can do a search on Yahoo, and if I can't find what I need, I can still go to google.  So I started.

After 5 mins, the system will stop unless you remain active in surfing.  So to remain active, you need to do some more searches.

It does not pay a lot, but little by little you can accumulate much.

If you are interested to give it a try, please go to :

http://interadmedia.com/index.php?ref=18421

Tag: get paid, surfing

Prayer of Elijah

1 King 18:37 "Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."

At the time of Ahab, Elijah faced persecution because of his message.  When he gathered the people of Israel and challenged them with the question, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.", the people said nothing.  They were either too confused, or they were just too hardened in their heart that they refused to make a choice. 

How often we are like the Israelites.  We refused to make a stand.  We were so complacent with our situation. 

It came to the point where Elijah had to proposed a challenge, a test of who is the real God.  He proposed to prepare two bulls, one for the prophets of Baal, and another for himself.  They will to cut the bull into pieces and place on top of wood, without setting fire to it.  The challenge will be tocall on the name of their god and the god answers by fire, he is God.

Of course we know that Baal did not answer his prophets.  So when it came to Elijah's turn to offer the bull, he told the people to pour water onto the offering and on the wood, until the water ran down from around the altar and even filled the trench he had dug around the altar.

Then with faith, he prayed, "Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."

The result, " Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench."  God answered his prayer.  God performed the impossible.

The scripture tells us," ³⁹ When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD -he is God! The LORD -he is God!"

This is when the people spoke up and dclare with their hearts that Jehovah is God!.  There is a revival!

Let Elijah's prayer be our prayer today, that the Lord will work in our life, so that people when they see us, will be able to conclude with conviction that the Lord is God, and turn their heart back to God again.  Let us be willing to stand up for God in the midst of a sinful, crooked world.

I came across an interesting resource site for apologetics.  It is called Acts 17 Apologetics, founded by Nabeel Qureshi (a former Ahmadi Muslim) and David Wood (a former atheist).

The mission of Acts 17 Apologetics Ministries is to glorify God by defending the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the ground up.

It provides some very good resources if you are considering to reach the M community.  Check it out at:

www.acts17.net/

My Church, Matheteuo Christian Church, had set aside 3rd January 2010 to hold an ordination and dedication service.  On that day, the church ordained the 3 founders of the Church to be Elders. These 3 founders are Koh Kok Yan, Anthony Ho, and myself, David Kou.  Many friends came to witness this ordination.

Please pray for us that we will be faithful in fulfilling our responsibility, especially in teaching and preaching.

Below are the video recording of the Ordination process.

Last night, after returning home from my discipleship training session with the mainland chinese, I took out my laptop and turn it on to check my email.  To my surprise, my LCD screen was RED. I suspected something went wrong with the laptop.  It can still boot up into Windows XP.  But soon it confirmed my suspicion.  All seems to run well except that the colour of the screen display was messed up.  Like before, the black was turned to RED, and the white was turned to CYAN.  This was the first time I encounter this problem.

I believed it was some thing wrong with either the LCD screen or the graphic card, and also it could be some loose cable connection. So I tried give the laptop a light knock, hopefully to knock it back to senses, but it doesn't work (obviously）.

So I tried to take the laptop apart to try ensuring the cable was properly connected. After figuring out how to take it apart, and giving all visible cables a push at connection points, I restart the laptop again, hopefully it will resolve the issue.  But to my disappointment, the display remained the same.

So finally, I do what I should have done the very first thing.  I turned to google and do a search for "Laptop screen turns RED".  I am surprised that this seems to be an issue faced by many people.  The first website I went to had the same problem and had went through the same process I just did.  Then according to the author of the blog, he did the last thing he can do. He shut the laptop down, unplugged all power, and let it cool off, and the second day, it went back to normal again.  He suspected that it was the overheating of the laptop that resulted in the weird behave of the display, though he was not sure if that solution would work for everyone.

Well, after having tried all that I can, I decided to take his advice and give it a try.  I shut down my laptop, unplugged everything, left the laptop on my desk to cool off, and went to sleep.

So this morning, I went to reconnect the power to the laptop. I turned it on and waited in great anticipation.  Gazing intensely at the LCD, it seemed to take longer for anything to display then usual (well, I am just impatience). After a while, the LCD screen started to display the bootup sequence, and what do you know! Yes the display is back to normal.  That is why I am able to write this article.

Like the writer of the blog, I do not claim that this will work for you.  But before you take laptop apart, and even before you decided to send your laptop to the service man for repair, you should consider the trying this solution.  It might work for you.  And you could save some money.

Recent, I found 2 very old photographs in my mum's place.  They were taken during one of my kindergarten class photo shoot.

As you can see from the background, which is just outside the classroom, this was a single storey  wooden building, in a kampong, which has now turned into Ubi Industrial Estate.

Guess which of the boys is me?  I wonder how I can reconnect with this group of people?

If you happened to be one of those in these pictures, please feel free to contact me.

Newsletter from David Kou & Family

Dear Friends and Prayer Warriors,

Merry Christmas to you.

Indeed, time flies!  Soon the year 2009 is coming to an end, and we will be welcoming year 2010 in a few more days.

As the year comes to a close, it is always good for me to reflect on what the Lord has been doing in my life through the past year, and look ahead to anticipate with eagerness and faith what the Lord will do in my life.  I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some highlights so that you will be encouraged too, and you can pray specifically for me.

1.      Planting of a Church (March 09)

Over a year ago, with God leading and prompting, along with a few friends (some are pastor and preacher), we have been praying over the possibility of starting a Church.  Almost all of us are in someway or another involved in Mainland Chinese ministry.  As we prayed, God has led us to conclude that this Church we are planting will do more than Mainland Chinese ministry.  The key purpose the Lord has laid upon our heart is the Lord Jesus mission and purpose as stated in Luke 4:18-19: 

 ¹⁸"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
      because he has anointed me
      to preach good news to the poor.
   He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
      and recovery of sight for the blind,
   to release the oppressed,
    ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

So after much prayer, we decided that it is God who has led us from various background to come together and to do something.  We began our first worship service together on 1^st March 2009, with 3 families, and few 3 other brothers.  Then the Lord led us to the name “Matheteuo Christian Church”, which we adopted as our Church name.  “Matheteuo” is a greek word meaning:

(a) to be a disciple of one-to follow his precepts and instructions

(b) to make a disciple-to teach and instruct.

It was the root word used in Matt 28:19,20, thus providing the meaning and concept of the Great Commission. Our Church’s chinese name is “大使命基督教会”.  We will be a Disciple-Making church.

I have been given the opportunity to preach once every month.  It has been a good training ground for me.  Being one of the founding members, I have been involved actively in the planning and leadership of the Church. 

Over the pass 9-10 months, God has been leading few others who have the same heart beat with us to join our Church.  We have also seen 2 mainland Chinese girls accepted Christ. To date, our church as made 2 mission trips to Indonesia and India.  We thank God for the ministry opportunity He has given to us in these two fields. There is much to be done, and we will continue to pray for God to avail to us all the resources we need to involve in these two fields.  It is exciting see God’s working among us.  More can be told of His great work which I will not be able to put it down in this letter.  If you are interested to know more, please feel free to contact me, I would be glad to share with you what God is doing.

2.      Training the Chinese Migrant Workers (June 09)

I have been part of a group called “Chinese Christian Fellowship” (中华联合团契). It was founded by a group of like minded Christians (both Singaporean and Mainland Chinese), to network, mobilize and motivate churches in Singapore to reach out to the Mainland Chinese in Singapore.

This year, we decided develop a training session to raise up more trained Mainland Chinese Christian who can lead small groups in Churches, and ultimately when they return to their country, can evangelized and disciples others. 

So in June this year, we started the “Timothy Training Session”, using “The Timothy Principle” from Training Evangelistic Leadership, a training material to teach basic Christian Living and discipleship.  In our first batch of students, 6 construction workers and 1 sister completed the course.  We have just completed another round of training recently.  Our second batch of students consist of 5 construction workers and another sister. This sister actually accepted Jesus only during our first session, when I teach the Bridge to Life (gospel presentation tool).  And I have seen her grow spiritually as she participates in the training.

As the training drawing to an end, I have challenged them to put into practice what they have learnt.  I also encourage them to join us in the second level of training, where we will teach them basic biblical truth, and skill in leading a group.

3.      Birth of my 4^th son (September 09)

On 7^th September 2009, God has added to my family another lovely baby boy.  What a gift from God!  It has been a long awaiting gift.  He is our 4^th son.  We named him Joshua Kou En Yu (许恩義).

Joshua has grown a lot over the past few months.  His 3 elder brothers love him a lot and enjoy playing with him.  Samuel (my eldest son) is learning to take care of his little brother while mummy is busy.  David （my second son） is learning to do some chores, and helping in tidying up their room. 

I thank God for giving me 4 boys, though there are times of frustration especially when they are playful.  But seeing them grow and learning to love one another, and especially learning to trust God, Ruth and I enjoyed and cherished every moment we had with them.

4.      Leaving the Navigators (Dec  09)

After serving the Navigators for more than 4½ years as the Property Executive, managing maintenances of the Building, Accommodation and conference facilities, and IT services, the Lord has showed me that it is time to move on, since my service is no longer needed there, after the change in leadership and restructuring of the office administration.

I thank God for the opportunity to serve in that capacity.  I have learnt much.  Through this I have learnt to be humble and to serve others willingly and joyfully.  The Lord has enabled me to acquire many handy skills in the process.

Leaving the comfort zone, and launching into the unknown can be a fearful moment, especially when this leaving means a lost of financial stability and income.  After much prayer and discussion with my Ruth, we felt led by the Lord that it is time for us to take the step of faith to move into full-time ministry, trusting for the Lord’s provision. 

Our Future Plan

TEL (Training Evangelistic Leadership) was the mission organization I have served when I served in China.  I have been asked by Don Klein, TEL Field Director, to consider Vn as the possible mission field instead of China. He wants me to develop a personal disciple-making ministry model there.

I told him I will not be able to move on now as I have just planted a Church, and I would need to help established the Church.  I requested that I will serve the Church during the next year or so, while praying and preparing by building up my support base here in Singapore.  I also wants my Church to work in partnership with TEL for this mission.

With this in mind, I will be serving in full-time capacity beginning 2010, serving the Church while raising support for my future mission ministry with TEL.  This is a bold move.  It requires great faith for my wife and my boys, as well as for my Church and my co-workers in Church, and also for me.

As I learn to trust God to provide for me, please join me in prayer for the following:

1. That God will show me clearly the possibility of the field in Vn, mode of entry and method of ministry.

2. That God will continue to grow Matheteuo Christian Church to accomplish His purpose.

3. That God will raise group of brothers and sisters who are committed to pray for me regularly.

4. That God will move people who are interested in my ministry be willing to support me financially.

5. For the Construction Workers Training, that through this God can equip workers for the ministry.

6. For my boys to continue to grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord, that they will be healthy both spiritually and physically.

Thank you for reading this long newsletter, and for your partnership in the gospel. Please feel free to write to me or contact me if you want to know more.

May God bless you..

Kou Tin Lur

(aka : David) with

Ruth, Samuel, David,

Daniel & Joshua

But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews . . . proving that this Jesus is the Christ.  Acts 9:22

Psychologist Sheldon Kopp says, "All of the significant battles are waged within the self." That's true. The greatest of the battles people wage is against their own flaws and failures. To have an opportunity to reach your potential, you must know who you are and face your flaws. To do that:

1. See yourself clearly.
2. Admit your flaws honestly.
3. Discover your strengths joyfully.
4. Build on those strengths passionately.

You can reach your potential tomorrow if you dedicate yourself to growth today. Remember, to change your world, you must first change yourself.

This article is written by Kome originally posted in Roots & Wings Ministry Forum.

Tag: potential growth

This is to announce to the world that my wife Ruth has delivered a baby boy on 7 September 2009.

Yes! God has given me a 4th son, and healthy baby.  At 2116 hour, he was delivered into this world.  We named him Joshua Kou En Yi. Joshua weighs 3.69kg.  He is a big baby, the biggest among his brothers.

I want to thank God for giving Ruth a smooth and safe delivery.  Also thank you for praying for us. 

Please continue to pray for Ruth that she will recover quickly, and that Joshua will grow healthily.  Pray also for me as I will be taking care of Ruth, the baby, the other 3 boys, and all the house chores. This is a lot of work for the next one month during Ruth's confinement.

May the Lord continue to meet all our needs.  Thank you for praying.