In the beginning when we went to the centre, we didn't know what to talk about with them. It was rather awkward as some of the elderly were shy and did not want to talk to us. Even when we tried to talk to them, we ran out of things to say to them pretty quickly due to lack of common topics. Eventually, when they warmed up to us, we could talk to them for a longer length of time. Then, we helped to run 3 game stations. The first was where the elderly had to throw balls to knock down the soft toys. Next, was where the elderly had to use spoons to carry around a pingpong ball and walk for a certain length before passing the ball to the next person. The last was a memory game where they had to match two cards from a table of many cards which were overturned.
After the games, we had house visits. We visited two houses, Uncle Toh's house and Auntie _. They lived in small one room rental flats alone ): In Uncle Toh's flat, he taught us some 中国香功 which required lots of arm movement and was quite a good form of exercise! In Auntie _'s flat, we learnt about her life story, how she lived with her aunt for many years before her aunt passed on and how she got her extremely pale complexion (she worked in a factory for 15-16 years). Each flat in block 105 and 106 has a remote with a button which is and alert alarm system used for emergencies for which if they are in trouble, they can press it and an alarm would ring, informing the staff at the centre or the rest of the residents (after office hours) who would then send someone to check on them to see if they really are in trouble.
Lunch was provided by Sarah Centre and we had a choice between chicken rice or charsiew with roasted pork rice. After which we had a slides presentation by the in-charge of Sarah Centre and someone from the PCS. He told us about the PCS (its 40 years old this year) and how they have eldercare services (Dorcas Home, Sarah Centre, etc), partnership programmes (Andrew and Grace Home, Grace Orchard School, etc) and children services (infant care, childcare, daycare, integrated childcare services, etc). He also shared with us how each centre had only a small number of staff yet was able to reach out to a large number of people due to volunteers who played an important part. I was quite amazed by how the staff there (Jane, Samuel, Matthew, Timothy(?)) were able to be so passionate about helping the elderly and I know that it is quite hard taking care of the elderly as they can be quite demanding at times. I guess it's time we all started to volunteer and help out at organisations eh?
We had a time of worship led by Xue Ning followed by devotions led by Trudy. The bible passage today was Luke 17:1-10 on sin, faith and duty. It was quite a good one as Trudy kept close to the bible passage and explained it verse by verse.We also shared on times where we found it hard to forgive others (Matthew 18:21-35). The verses from Luke 17 painted a picture for us that no matter the amount of faith that we have, even faith as small as a mustard seed (yes mustard seeds are really small, like a sesame seed), we will still be able to do great things. I think that this ties in with the verse "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" -Philippians 4:13.
-Elainex
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