The Forerunner Times

"A life journal by Nathan J. Elias, called under God's grace to be His forerunner and restorer for His glory."

Hear from heaven
And forgive our wicked ways
Hear from heaven
And heal our land today…

Habakkuk 3:17-19
“Though the fig tree does not bud
 and there are no grapes on the vines,
 though the olive crop fails
 and the fields produce no food,
 though there are no sheep in the pen
 and no cattle in the stalls,
 yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
 I will be joyful in God my Savior.

 The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
 he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
 he enables me to go on the heights.”

I just need You, LORD, to rescue me, to free me from this pain, this burden and temptation. Deliver me oh LORD, from what I am facing, for I can no longer bear this on my own. It is only by Your strength that I might be free…

“Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness:
but a faithful (Greek: trustful) man who can find?”
(Proverbs 20:6, King James Version)

These weeks I have been so busy traveling around East Java to promote my HP products for the government education programmes such as DAK, BOS or BIS SSN. One week I’m in Lumajang, another week I’m in Jember and today I just returned from Mojokerto to present my company’s proposal to several school headmasters and headmistresses. After conversing and having dialogues with many of them, I can seem to find one particular virtue that is missing from today’s people and especially business people: TRUST.

Having traveled to three places already, I can see that all of them are interested in what I offer in my presentation, but they seem unable to trust me because they have been deceived before by others. Previously, others have come to them with a similar offer to mine, and they accepted. This is where the problem started for them and usually the lies from the other companies came in these categories:

1. They fail to deliver the amount of goods they promised
Let’s say that the support given by the government to each school is enough to purchase 20 units of PCs and so they ordered 20 units from these companies. The company did not send all 20 units in one delivery but they said they will do so in two or three deliveries. But after the first delivery, the company just vanished without a trace and so the order was left incomplete. Not only will the schools suffer a loss of money, but their headmasters will also face probes for corruption. If they spent the money to buy 20 units, but only have let’s say 10 units at the time the goverment surveys the schools, of course the government will question where did the rest of the money go. And in this case, since the company is gone happily, the schools are the ones who will face the charges of corruption.

2. The goods don’t match the specifications in the agreement
Another case of companies who sold lies for their own profits. Since the headmasters are not well-versed in terms of computer technicalities, these companies think that it would be so easy to fool these headmasters. They promised to give goods with a certain specification but in the end they replaced the contents of the PCs with lower-spec components, such as replacing a Pentium Dual Core (Exxxx) with a Celeron or Pentium D, or installing less RAM than originally promised. And guess who will be in trouble when the goverment’s anti-corruption team comes knocking? Poor headmasters and poor students. Even if the headmasters are not charged with corruption, the students will be the ones suffering from this practice, because they’ll get lower spec PCs than originally intended and thus they will not be able to use the PCs as efficient as originally intended (it will definitely be slower).

3. They fail to deliver the warranty promised for the goods
Again, poor headmasters and poor students should this happen. These companies usually only offer store warranty, not vendor-supported warranty. And guess what, since these companies usually come from a different city than where the schools are located (let’s say the company is from Surabaya while the school is in Jember), the company can just vanish or give a fake address and the school won’t be able to trace it. So if the PCs get broken, poor them, no warranty and they have to send it somewhere else for repairs, and of course they’ll be charged for it.

After knowing these issues they face, I feel that it is my place and my duty to become a good and truthful businessman that can be trusted and will become a blessing for them. I made them a commitment to send all the items in one go to eliminate the first issue. And as I am a Premier Business Partner and Master Dealer of HP Indonesia, I guarantee them that all my goods and softwares will be original and true to the specifications. This eliminates the second issue and assures them that they would have no problems when the government team comes for a survey.

For the third issue, my position as both a Master Dealer and Authorized Service Partner of HP Indonesia grants my company with the ability to handle all services for HP products in Surabaya and East Indonesia. Thus, if they have any issues with the PCs they can just send it back to my company and I will handle it for them. In addition, HP products come with a nationwide warranty, and HP have more than 25 service centres all around Indonesia that can handle these issues, so they can just send their PCs to any service centre that is nearest to them and the warranty will still be valid - it’s not just valid in my company, but nationwide. This makes it easy for them if, let’s say, they buy a laptop and they are having issues with it while they are on a trip to another city. They can just deliver it to the nearest service centre and they’ll have it fixed in no time.

It is my wish that I can be a blessing for others in my business, not just in it for the money, but also seeking to grant them peace and happiness by what I offer. Giving them the right solution to every problem they seek, the right answer to every question they have. May God use me more and more to be a blessing in this aspect of my life.

Just a quick poll to freshen things up. I’m so busy that I haven’t had the time to update lately. Maybe soon I will continue to write some more interesting articles for you. For now, this will have to do.

Just so you know, I vote for Chelsea

Well, I’m back, hopefully.

It’s been a long 268 days since I last wrote something in this blog. Actually I was planning to make another blog titled Rants of the King focusing on spiritual articles written in Indonesian so that churches and organizations can pick it up to use in their publications, but my lack of time had made me unable to fulfill that dream (designing a blog can take a consuming amount of time) and seeing that this blog still works perfectly fine, here I am back again. Oh, and you might want to install the Calibri font to view this blog, because I have updated this blog’s template to use that font because it has better readability. If you don’t have Microsoft Office 2007, download the font pack here and install it, okay?

First things first, let’s start with a scoop of what I’m doing at the moment, okay?

Since September 2007, I have decided to move out from my old church to another one. Now I’m ministering in Christ Mercy Center (CMC). It is located on Ruko Panji Makmur D23-D25, Jl. Panjang Jiwo 46-48 Surabaya. Be sure to pay a visit when you’re in town, our Youth Celebration Day (or maybe you’ll call it Sunday Service) is every Sunday on 10 am. Currently we are gearing our ministries more towards university students, because this church was first established by a group of alumni from Surabaya University (Ubaya). Most of our ministers and our members are from Ubaya, and we’re also planning to minister in Petra Christian University soon.

For the outside movement, we are establishing evangelistic teams to be sent to small cities and villages like Kediri, Tulungagung, Blitar and so on — basically to places where the Gospel hasn’t reached and where most people won’t want to minister. Why some people would want to minister to other countries while there are still so many places in Indonesia where the Gospel hasn’t been preached yet is beyond me. Right now due to my busy schedule I’m confined to the inside movement, tending and counselling the university students, sometimes writing articles for the church bulletin and also attending the Young Professionals community. I haven’t practiced singing for a long time and I seem to have lost some of my musical aptitude, so now I’m gearing my ministries more towards writing, mentoring and counselling.

In my personal life, I’m starting a relationship with a friend I’ve first met in 2005 but had to leave for one year during my time in Singapore. I proposed her on May, 5th 2007 and she agreed on the condition that both of our parents must agree to our relationship. By one week, my parents already gave their green light for the relationship, but her parents wanted me to wait until she graduates from her bachelor degree. It means that I roughly have to wait until August or September 2008, and as of today I have been waiting for a little more than 10 months.

I am very thankful to God for giving such a precious someone like her to my life, and I also thank Him for the strength He has given me to wait these ten months. I’m surrendering my life and my relationship in God’s hands, and I believe that if she is truly the one for me, God will open up a way for us. Now that there’s only less than half a year to wait, my hopes are so high and my faith for this relationship is increasing. She has truly been the light of my life, always helping me in the times I sometimes stumble and fall. Her spiritual maturity and love for God has made me very sure about her, but I must learn not to trust my own judgements and my own heart, but only to trust in the LORD’s judgement and time. Hopefully by the end of it all, my wishes would be the same with God’s wishes.

Oh, and before I end this, like all good marketers out there, I should give this post a shameless plug. Right now I’m working on an IT solutions company called Multi Star Electronics. If you’re in Surabaya, Indonesia and you need computers, printers, notebooks or servers, don’t hesitate to contact me and leave a message. My company is the Premier Business Partner (Master Dealer) and Authorized Service Provider of Hewlett-Packard products in Surabaya and East Indonesia, and also an IBM-Lenovo Business Partner. So if you’re looking for IT solutions that consists of HP or IBM products, you know where to contact me.

This is it for now. I’ll update this blog with more posts soon, hopefully. Please pray for me so that I can find the time to write more articles to bless others despite of my busy and jam-packed schedule.

Happy New Year 2007 to my fellow friends and blog readers.

I bid you a happy and blessed year for 2007, though for myself, 2007 might not be a happy year and there will be a lot of changes, trials and challenges that I have to face. I have to enter a new world, the next step, the next phase in life, and in every options that I can choose to take, there is a price that I have to pay for each of the choices. To lay it out simply, here are the options that I can take on 2007.

A. Go home to Indonesia and continue parents’ business
This might by the “easy way out”, and the easy way usually brings a toll on the maturity development of a person. If I go this way, I will lose the chance to develop myself both in personal aspects and spiritual aspects towards maturity. I might never be able to become a fully grown man that is able to make choices, have responsibilities and take consequences with every actions that I make. At the moment, this is not the choice that I want to make and my parents also wished for me not to take this course of action. Besides, the emotional toll is quite high if I have to leave KP-GPO now. I have been with them for only four months and I still have a lot to do here for my growth. I feel the need to tackle on more ministries and I have yet to follow the developmental activities like cellgroups and bible studies, so at the moment, this option A is not an option to consider taking.

B. Stay here in Singapore and face the many new challenges
The more difficult option, albeit the most rewarding one (provided I managed to finish unto the end). Two more months left in my study equals to having to start many preparations such as writing resumes, filing in extension of stay to the Singapore immigration and many nitty-gritty issues. Coupled with the fact that I will enter a new phase of life, namely the working life, many things will have to change. My sleeping cycle (too late at the moment so I must try sleeping and waking up early), my poor health and stamina which may make me unable to work 8-9 hours every day and many more. It will be a steep challenge to face, but if I take it, I know I will grow and learn a lot, even if I fail somewhere, I know that I will be able to learn from the mistakes. No one can become successful without stumbling here and there, the difference between the successful and not successful people is that the former always learn and take something from the mistakes.

In spiritual development, as I stated above, KP-GPO gave many more room for spiritual growth than I had before in Indonesia. With cellgroups only bound to start this or next week, I definitely need more time in here. There are a lot of spiritually mature people whom I can learn from here as opposed to my prior settlement which is still fussing over “internal matters” even to this day, straying their focus from the more important things at hand, and definitely, from God. Option B might take as little as two years to as long as God wanted to, from six, eight years to maybe more than that. And that is if He intended for me to stay in here.

The plan to take?
Maybe option B. I know God is with me and I just need to take this step… or maybe leap of faith. If I don’t get out of my comfort zone, no good will ever come to me and I will not be able to let God shape me and mold me to His purpose and likeness. It is indeed hard, and I pray that I will be given strength to endure and overcome it all through the year.

In this event, I would like to give my thanks to…

• GOD, for His enduring mercies and protection during the year, even when I am not faithful at times. Thank you for everything and I can’t believe it has been almost one year I’ve been here in Singapore. Can’t do it without you, GOD. For all you’ve done in my life, I am eternally grateful.
• My parents, who have given me the chance to study here in Singapore, and probably, extend my stay here for some another few years. Yes, I know that’s very costly for you… I’m sorry.
• Special dedication to friends at KP-GPO, thank you for bringing light into my life after six months of ‘no-life’ here in Singapore. Thank you for accepting me and I hope we can bring more glory into the LORD in 2007.
• Blog friends, campus friends, net friends and other friends that have supported me and carried me through during the year. I thank you for all your support. Thank you very much.

Step One
Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered…whatever you’re comfortable with) to your blog. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fun (”I’d love a Snape/Hermione icon that’s just for me”) to medium (”I wish for _____ on DVD”) to really big (”All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.”) The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your blog, or link to this post (it’ll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two
Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here’s the important part:

If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.

You needn’t spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn’t to put people out, it’s to provide everyone a chance to be someone else’s holiday elf–to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not–it’s your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached.

Just…wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you’ll have the joy of knowing you made someone’s holiday special.

My Christmas Wishlist

Hmmm, my bottom line really took a hit this week…

First, my glasses broke on yesterday just hours before my exam, so I had to buy a new glasses after the exam, and since my minus was high (4.75) I needed a special kind of thinned multicoated lens that is quite expensive to boot - it is $140, plus the cheapest frame which is $69, it totalled to $209! Expensive for a pair of glasses, but as I spent more than $200, I was entitled for another free $99 worth glasses, which I will use for my backup - same power but thicker and non-coated.

Talking about backup glasses, I was lucky I brought another old pair of glasses here. Even though it has less power, I could still use it for the exam quite well. Without it I don’t know what will happen with my exams.

Also today, I bought myself a new HP Pavilion DV2123TX laptop for $2,300. It is quite cheap, I reckon. My old Acer Aspire 2000 was bought for around $2,500 two years ago, and the actual list price for this HP laptop is $2,899. I got this one from an internet forum classifieds and bargained it down from $2,400 to $2,300, thus saving a total of $600 compared to the original list price. Must say that it’s quite a bargain. It is armed with one of the most powerful processors today (Core 2 Duo 2 GHz with 4Mb L2 Cache), 1 GB RAM and 120 GB Hard Disk to boot. Add a very nice design on top of that, and all the interactivity of the Windows Media Centre - and did I mention the remote control which can be used not only for media viewing but during Powerpoint presentations as well? Neat!

Well, I have to conserve money now, though… parents will come in December and hopefully I can manage to survive with this very little amount of money at hand until that time. Sure they can transfer me some funds, but it will be cut down a lot by the bank, so if possible, I prefer to receive the money in cash and not with transfers.

Oh yeah, all prices are in Singapore Dollars ($1 = Rp 5.900).

The Road That Ends Here will tell you the summary about two months of my life in this Merlion country. It will have six chapters, corresponding to the six terms that I will endure in this one year. The idea about the title comes from a journey to hike a mountain. I imagine that getting my master degree is like enduring a long mountain path. Between the summit and the peak, there will be five stopping points to rest and regain strength (this is Chapter I through Chapter V). After the five stopping points, if I still endure, then I will reach the peak and reach my final destination (Chapter VI). Enjoy these stories and may the tales bring you new strength and encouragement to reach your goal.

Chapter IV

On to the fourth semester of my MBA, by now I have finished eight subjects of the allocated twelve. For this term, the subjects were Organizational Behaviour and Competitive Strategies. Like I said in an earlier post, got two most entertaining lecturers in my campus, Samuel Lee and Frankie Yee, who made studying in this term very interesting and so much fun, so no problems with boring lecturers at all, but the biggest problem came in the way the schedule for this semester was laid out. That’s right, no holidays other than the Study Week one week before the exam, so right after the exam it’s a new term again. This made the assignments scheduling very much hectic.

I don’t know what went wrong along the way, but it seems that the schedules were a bit messy in this term, which in the end led to the deadlines of assignments keep getting pushed back again and again, until in the end the deadlines for two assignments came into the Study Week. This was a problem, as I have to return to Indonesia during that week.

For the first assignment it was no problem, since it was an individual task and I managed to finish that 4000 words essay in due time. For the second assignment though, it was a whole lot of problem and in the end it was my teammate Angel who suffered most. Due to lack of communication, the workload distribution became a bit messy. I was thinking that she could help me on this one and handle the work, just for this once, but she was thinking that I should at least work on one question of the three presented (and the 50% marks one at that, so basically in the end it came down to 50:50 work).

This issue came into light just a few hours before the deadline, in the morning, so we only did what we could do at that moment and hoped we could pass with that. I know she was disappointed with me, but in the end, there was nothing that I could do, as it was too late to do anything drastic and I am not too good with this strategic thing altogether. If there was better communication and she told me to do my work earlier that might made a difference. This is the dangers of assumptions - I assumed she would do all the work and she assumed I would help her on the work. Because of our assumptions, our assignment suffered. Let’s not dwell in the past then, and move on, hope that all will be okay in due time.

For the exams, I think it was a bit easier than previous term (especially the Marketing Management one, that was difficult). Both exams were case studies and we were already given a glimpse of the kinds of questions that will arise on the exam, so when we came into the exam hall, we kinda knew what to expect will appear in the question paper. And it was, so we were able to answer the questions quite well, and even though I might not reach a Distinction mark, at least if I am fortunate and God wills it, I can get a Credit, or at least a Pass, I am sure of that.

So that’s it, moving on to the next term, with only four weeks of the usual six weeks and a lot of double classes in a day. I believe that I can make it out though, with God’s strength, and even give myself in to participate in the Christmas ministry. With Him all things are possible, and I surrender what will come in the next term entirely to Him.

Related Links:
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter I (May 2006)
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter II (July 2006)
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter III (September 2006)

Have been thinking a lot about my future lately and truthfully I become uneasy every time I have to think about it….

It’s not that I do not trust that God holds my future in His hands and He have the best plans for me, no, but I am currently in some pressure to have some assurance about my future here. Jobless and counting only three months towards finishing my MBA study now, I do not know whether His plans is for me to stay here longer in Singapore or to return in Indonesia by February or March next year. I need to know this because my friends have been thinking about bringing me in to more ministries that are more long-term, such as committees and likes, and for this, they need to know whether I would be here longer or not. It would be bad, let’s say, if I join an Easter preparation committee for next year but later on quit just weeks before the D-Day because I have to return to Indonesia for good.

From my perspective, there are two possible reasons why my future is undecided at this point:

1. God wants me to “wait” and believe in Him. So the ministries will have to wait too, He might have something in plan. Trust Him. Wait. Shoo~! Don’t rush Him, all will be good in His time.
2. I am just too damn lazy…

I have never applied for work before and I do not know what kind of work I am interested to do, so I tend to just wait and wait without doing any proper action. Before I know it, February will come and I will find myself jobless then. As for what kind of job I want to do, all this time I’ve been doing a lot of ministries and I am not feeling like wanting to collect a lot of money or to become filthy rich. As long as my income is enough for me, my family and my ministries, that would be enough (grant us our daily bread o Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches — lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God; Proverbs 30:8-9, The Wisdom of Agur).

The first and foremost criteria for my future work is that it should not be in the way of my ministries - i.e. working on Saturdays (maybe possible only up to 12pm) and Sundays are not acceptable. And for my job preference, maybe it should be something that can help others, empower others and bring others unto a better life. An HR job might be suitable, but I do not have the expertise nor the background. The most possible job for me is to become a consultant or give seminars and workshops, but to this, first I will need to be the understudy of someone who has been successful and has been long enough in this field - and I do not know how can I do this in Singapore and how or who to apply to. In Indonesia, I can work as the understudy of Mr. Tanadi Santoso or Yakoeb Ezra or other trainers/seminar people I personally know, but this would mean having to leave by next year

If somebody in Singapore can help me to get in touch with a consultancy firm that I can get in to, I would greatly appreciate it. If somebody who has known me can also give me a hint on what job I can possibly take, I would greatly appreciate it too. Some of you might have known that I have a Bachelor of IT degree, but right now I am not too concerned on working on the IT field - especially as programmers due to my lack of expertise there (I am only a below-average PHP programmer back then and now I’ve forgotten everything) and the working hours could possibly clash with the ministries. Maybe there’s a suitable job in the IT field that I haven’t known of such as IT consultant, or even an HR department job on an IT firm like my lecturer suggested me (quite possible, but hard, looking at the stress level that most IT jobs have). I have to consider everything and see what is best for me and what God wants for me.

See? Life is hard, it needs a lot of effort to get through it, but I believe with God I can do it. Now it’s just the matter of where He will have me be. My friends, will I have to leave you so fast?

Prayer Request:
Now that you have read this, please help me pray for my future…

It was the Moon (Mid-Autumn) festival in 6 October and my friends invite me to go along with them to celebrate it by going to the Chinese Garden in Singapore. Really, it would have been a beautiful night with a full moon shining in the sky, if it wasn’t for the haze covering up the sky and ruining the whole situation…

We departed each from our own locations and decided to meet by 8 pm in the Chinese Garden MRT Station. When all of us have arrived, turns out that it was only seven of us coming: me, Esther, Cory, Mori, Evi, Michael and Edy. As always, we come equipped with cameras to collect memories of the night. It was very hot and jam packed there, as it seems that half of the Singaporeans are coming to this place (while the other half are going to Chinatown). The Moon festival is also dubbed as the lantern festival, and certainly the exhibitions in the Chinese Garden did not disappoint. There were many beautiful formation of lanterns and a lot of beautiful sceneries that we took pictures with. I have uploaded some of those (not all of those as most are my friend’s pictures and they want to keep them private) and you can click here to access the whole album.

As a shameless self-promotion, I will post two of my best pictures of that night here.

Well, I told ya it would be shameless

I must say my thanks to my friends though. I am really grateful for being able to come into KP GPO. The first six months I have been practically doing nothing but studying, but on this first month alone being with them, I have been able to see a lot of places I haven’t been to before, like the MacRitchie Natural Reservoir, the Roti Prata House (yum!) and this Chinese Garden. Well, I seem to have gotten a lot fatter too because I’ve been eating too much with them and I’ve been to many eating places I’ve never been to before, but it’s good, it feels just like home with Latreia, going out and trying new places to eat. Certainly it’s a lot better than my daily chore of just eating in either JCU’s cafetaria or the nearby hawker centre…