Mission Trip at World’s Largest Church, Yoido Full Gospel Church

Over 40,000 lives were impacted from 23 to 25 October in Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC), Seoul, Korea, as Kong Hee, senior pastor of City Harvest Church (CHC) ministered to them.

Kong preached to them a practical message, “What to do when you don’t know what to do”, which was very well-received by the members. There were a total of four services, the first one for the leaders and staff of YFGC on Friday night followed by the Sunday morning service, YFGC Young Adult service and finally ending off with the YFGC International Service. Every service had an atmosphere which was very lively and full of expectancy.

The main highlight of this trip was the Prayer Rally in the Seoul World Cup Stadium, where about 100,000 leaders and members of the YFGC came together to pray for the world. The atmosphere was very powerful, with 100,000 people believing together for God to move mightily in their midst.

During the prayer meeting, Dr. Yonggi Cho, founder of YFGC, encouraged all the members to keep on seeking God and also to pray for peace in the world.

PHOTOS: Andew Teow

Another highlight of the Prayer Rally was the President of the Republic of Korea, Lee Myung-Bak, addressing them in a video clip. He thanked them for their prayers and encouraged them saying that he also gets up at 5a.m. in the morning, as well, to pray.

Eric Soo, personal assistant to Kong, described the atmosphere of the prayer meeting as “Awesome! Especially when 100,000 people shouted to God in prayer in unison.”

Next year, Kong will be taking another team of 300 to YFGC for another study trip. The trip will be held from 4 to 7 January 2010.

The Anatomy of Influence

PHOTOS: Desmond Tan

On a Thursday evening, about 400 people gathered at City Harvest Church’s premises at The Riverwalk to listen to Reverend Robb Thompson, who spoke on “The Anatomy of Influence”.

It was a relevant and timely message for this regular group of business individuals and professionals who had been hearing related messages emphasizing the need as influencers to wield influence by doing community works.

Thompson, an internationally-renown leadership speaker, author of 18 books and senior pastor of Family Harvest Church in Chicago, said to his audience: “Our main purpose must be to know God; our purpose is not to make money or even do works of compassion.” When the purpose is right, the right works will follow. God-centered compassion is not just about doing the right thing, but about realizing that when we know God and try to influence others to know God, we become people who do what we believe in, instead of believing what we do. And as a result we become people of influence. Just a moment spent with a person of influence can have an eternal impact on our lives.

Robb Thompson also reminded the business group that leaders are people who lead by influence, not position. Hence, employees of corporations can be people of influence. There is good influence, and there is bad influence. A person can choose to influence by force, intimidation, manipulation, position, exchange, persuasion or by respect. Influencing by respect is when a person is influenced by someone to do what the person requests for, and also out of respect for the person.

He also shared 7 qualities of a person of influence: unflinching courage, a submissive heart, deep-seated self-control, integrity, unswerving diligence, uncompromising relationships and a commitment to sow.

Robb Thompson ended the meeting by telling the people that our future is created by something we are doing in the present. He encouraged the people to be people of character. If we lose our wealth, we lose nothing. If we lose our health, we lose something. But when we lose our character, we lose everything.

The Big Screen: 2012

What would you do if the world was about to end? Would you be the selfless hero? Or would you crumble and become the selfish survivor?

2012, another “end-of-the-world” movie from the producers of The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, questions humanity in the face of adversity.

With jaw-dropping movie effects, car rides through a crumbling California, plane flights through crashing skyscrapers, an exploding Yellowstone Park… this movie is one big adventure.

As with any “end-of-the-world” movie, 2012 tells the story of Earth in its final days. Due to a solar explosion, the Earth starts heating up like a microwave, causing the Earth’s crust to crumble into pieces, and killing millions of people along the way.

Though scientists discover the devastating effects of the solar explosion and come up with an evacuation plan for the human race, the world starts crumbling a little earlier than they projected. Land literally disappears as the world falls to pieces in a “great flood”.

The world’s political leaders and top scientists are given a seat (together with animals, two by two — sound familiar yet?) on each of the “arks” — ships built by the Chinese government to sustain humanity when the great flood hits.

In a materialistic twist to this retelling of the Biblical tale of Noah’s Ark, one final ark is built and seats upon it offered to the richest of the rich in the world. If you can’t afford a place on the ark — it’s priced at 1 billion euros per person — well, you die.

It makes you wonder, if the Earth really does end the same way (of course, we know it won’t), would the last beings of the human race be the enormously rich and enormously important people of the world (all of whom are mostly old)? Would there be no succession plan for the human race?

2012 presents an interesting assumption on how the world will end, its plot, centered on the author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and their two children (and his ex-wife’s new husband who is conveniently killed off). 2012 does call for suspension of disbelief — how many times can you cheat death? — but still, it gives hope that even in the worst disaster, you might be the hero who lives through it all.

Stunning effects, this movie puts you at the edge of your seats — or could it be the fact that you have to go to the bathroom after two-and-a-half hours of explosions and tsunamis?

Rating:

Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum: Annie Gan’s Guts Of Steel

Malaysian-born Annie Gan was just an administrative worker when she started working at a construction firm. Working her way up the ranks, she eventually became a partner at another company — but that was only the start of her uphill climb in an industry that has no place for a woman.

“Annie, I am leaving you,” her business partner dropped the bomb one day in 1996. At 26 years of age, with only a quantity surveyor background and a family to support (she was the eldest child), “I did what a woman does best — I cried and cried,” she said wryly at the Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum 2009 at Novotel Clarke Quay on 13 November 2009. But the pressures of being a breadwinner and the refusal to admit defeat compelled her to pick herself up. Rallying the support of her roughneck subordinates entailed the humbling experience of having to beg them for a chance to work things out together, and buying them meals and drinks. She pointed out the irony: “Who ever heard of the boss having to suck up to the staff?”

Gan has burned her fair share of midnight oil, poring over site maps and studying the technicalities of a trade where a single nail can make the difference between life and death. Many times she has had to conduct investigations at the construction sites late into the night, supervise workers and perform other equally unfeminine duties. “If you do everything with your whole heart, opportunities will naturally come to you,” she says. Learning milestones such as successfully casting columns by herself and the like spurred her on.

In 1997, her company tendered for an MRT construction project, only to have the door shut in her face the moment the contractors saw that she was a woman. With dogged determination, she followed one of them for a month, unwilling to back down without being given a chance to prove herself. Finally, he relented and gave her two weeks to complete a task. Toughing it out, she and her team not only got the job done in 10 days, but did it so well that they were awarded two other MRT projects. Who knew there was such a gritty story behind that mundane commute to work every morning?

PHOTOS: Jayson Lee

Today, the mother of four children is managing director of Jian Huang Construction Pte Ltd. She was honored with the Top Enterprise 50 award for both 2006 and 2007, and won the ASME (Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprise) Top Entrepreneur Award in 2007. She credits her success to the love and support of her husband, who laid aside his own dreams to help her achieve hers.

Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum: Fong Loo Fern’s Stitch In Time

Judging by the swanky shopfront of CYC The Custom Shop at Raffles Arcade, you might be surprised to know that the tailoring company used to have to hold warehouse sales just to stay afloat. That was in the 1980s. No wonder Mrs Fong Loo Fern, now CYC’s managing director, had her work cut out for her when she decided to leave her high-flying post in the Commerce Department of the US Embassy in 1992 in order to save her grandmother’s ailing business.

Speaking at the Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum 2009 at Novotel Clarke Quay on 13 November 2009, Fong shared how the drastic changes in the retail market scene caused the company’s market share to plummet, as it was ill-prepared to face new challenges and competition. Unwilling to see the family business fall apart, she ploughed through a series of rebranding and relocation exercises, and gradually managed to pull the company out of the red. But it was an explosive mix of ingenuity and opportunity that set the tills ringing for good for this 74-year-old establishment.

Taking its cue from customers who would come into the shop commenting that they had been buying clothes from CYC for the past 20 or 30 years, Fong initiated a promotion in 2001 for long-time customers to trade in their old shirts for a free new shirt, with the collection going towards an exhibition of old CYC shirts . The quirky offer brought Mrs Lee Kuan Yew to the shop with three of her husband’s shirts — one of which was the very shirt he wore on Independence Day in 1965. The event made its way into the dailies, and generated a windfall of mileage for the shop.

PHOTOS: Jayson Lee

“To this day, people still remember the story. It really helped to elevate our image and create the awareness we were trying so hard to build.”

Ever the shrewd businesswoman, Fong also realized the need to develop a new bread-and-butter business to supplement its tailor-made business. The opportunity to branch off into the corporate uniform market presented itself in 2002, when CYC was approached to make new outfits for the wax figures at Fort Siloso. But there was a catch. How do you tailor clothes for a body with immovable limbs? An engineer on the team offered the nifty solution: Velcro patches fixed to the clothes facilitated not just the creation of a perfect fit but easy changing. Since then, they have built up a corporate clientele that includes UOB, Standard Chartered, the Esplanade and the upcoming Sentosa IR.

Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum: Valerie Tan, In the Driver’s Seat

In 1996, three months after Valerie Tan set up her automobile retail company Pinnacle International with her husband, all four of her salesmen walked out on her to join a competitor. “Why are you in this business? You’re too small — no match for your competition. Go home,” they told her.

With a maximum of four cars in their inventory as compared to the industry average of 30, there was some truth to their ex-staff’s words. Tan realized at that point that one of the biggest obstacles for a start-up was to get the right people who believed in the same values and visions as she and her husband did. Hiring from outside the industry where people had no preconceived notions about how things should be run became her strategy of circumventing the problem; it also made it easier for her to share her dreams with her employees.

“It’s so important to share your vision with your employees, so that everyone moves in the same direction. You cannot succeed unless the people under you want you to succeed.”

Giving her first public speech during the Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum 2009 at Novotel Clarke Quay on 13 November 2009, Tan shared personal stories about a dysfunctional childhood where her parents divorced when she was 12, leaving her without a proper roof over her head. It forced her to grow up fast as she was the eldest of three siblings, and had to help her mother bring home the “dough.”

At 19, she had the opportunity to work as a receptionist in a car company, which was to be the stepping stone that would lead her to where she is today. She was promoted to salesperson within three months by virtue of her keen product knowledge, and Tan has not looked back since. “Grab every opportunity, you never know where it will lead you.”

PHOTOS: Jayson Lee

On leadership, Tan says, “You need to build trust by being open with your employees such that they will not second-guess you when things get tough. Even when things are hazy and you can’t really see what’s ahead, they need to believe that you can, otherwise they will jump ship.”

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry, she is used to getting no’s, despite having grown the company into the global brand it is today. To sift out the real advice-givers from the naysayers, “Ask for justification every time someone says no,” she says. Also, being a woman entrepreneur does have its advantages: “Your perceived weakness can be your strength, if you know how to use it correctly.”

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