Day 2 began with the hotel breakfast. Nothing to scream about. They didn't have much meat, and had relatively little variety and not so fine food. But it's ok, we still filled our stomachs and got ready to find our way to Sunway.
I did my research before hand, and know that we can get to Sunway relatively easily using the LRT, followed by a public bus. But, just for comparison, we decided to check with the Hotel Reception to find out if there was an alternative way to get there. There seem to be no shortcuts, except by Teksi, and the journey was estimated at 1hour, and cost of RM50.
We decided to go by public transport. First we took the Monorail from Bukit Bintang Station to KL Sentral Station. The Monorail and LRT stations are not together in one complex like in Singapore, but it's not too difficult to find the stations. KL Sentral turns out to be a la Grand Central New York. It was a huge complex of interchanges - Bus, Train (KTM), LRT, etc.
From KL Sentral we proceeded to travel to Kelana Jaya LRT Station. Kelana Jaya is like the furthest station on the Kelana Jaya line. Upon arrival, the bus interchange was just below the LRT station and made transiting to public bus very easy. We quickly spotted the bus to Sunway - U623. And for RM1 per person, it brought us to Sunway Shopping Mall in 20 mins. All in all, the two of us spent under RM10 to get from Bukit Bintang to Sunway, and I think slightly under 1 hour journey time.
I like Sunway. It's a very self-contained placed. You want shopping, you got shopping. You want accomodation, you got good accomodation (though quite pricey). You want entertainment, you got ice skating, cinemas, theme park. You want food, there's loads here. You want foot reflex, you also got it (no need to go BB liao). Basically, it's like visiting KLCC and Bukit Bintang, all in one. We should have stayed here the whole time. The only deterrant was the rather expensive hotel rooms (at around SGD200 per night).
No. 1 on my mind was to get the Passion tickets. And once I got the wrist bands that guarantees our entrance to the conference, I guarded it with my life. We were told that the queue would begin at 4 pm, and the doors would only open at 5 pm. The Conference was scheduled to start at 6 p.m.
We went to recce at around 4 pm, and found that there didn't seem to be any queue. So, we took our time and went to eat New Zealand Natural Ice Cream, buy Dunkin' Donuts to snack. We joined the queue at 5 pm. There was already a mass of people queuing outside the three entrances. We decided to stand at the center block and did not regret that choice, as that led us to seats right in the middle block. Though we were at the 2nd or 3rd last row from the back, we were facing the main screen and main stage. It was great!
The KL people are a lively bunch. It was great to worship with them. The Conference began with powerful multimedia presentation, and really solid live music (I thought they were playing from CD). It was truely a world-class event, very professional. Their camera crew is so professional. They even brought in this huge crane with a videocamera mounted on it to capture shots of stage and the front rows. There is no way I could tell you the atmosphere that night, unless you were there to experience it for yourself. But it was a treat for the senses.
Chris Tomlin and his band kicked off the night with worship songs. Songs were mainly from the God of this City album. The band was energetic and that energised the crowd too. The beats were so strong, my heartbeat kinda beat along with the bass notes. I don't typically worship with hand raising, jumping or anything too expressive, but I think once in (long) while, I like to do so, just to express in a different form my worship unto God.
Charlie Hall and his band took over at some point, and the worship changed. From the popular congregation friendly songs, we transitioned to more alternative sounding songs. The lyrics of these less familiar songs were actually quite rich in theology, but the music....rather "advance". Nonetheless, I've always liked Charlie Hall and his band's music, they are very creative.
There was a segment of prayer, and we learnt how to pray in cords of three. There was also a word session where Louie Giglio spoke a little about Isiah 26:8...just the "Yes Lord" part, and from 2 Corinthians 5: 11 to 21.
It was a evening where we sung songs and heard messages of grace and hope. Grace that God bestows abundantly, and Hope to help us through our darkest nights. I was reminded that God is in control, and how He wants the very best for us. How His will will be done, how our lives will only count if we do His will. How amazing His grace is, that we can have access to salvation so easily (on our part). And because God is so great and so good, there is Hope for all of us, no matter how dark our current situation may be.
We sang some more songs of worship - led by Chris Tomlin after the sermon. Indescribable, Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone), How great is our God, etc.
Louie also shared the moving story of Ashley's conversion. Ashley is a 22 yr old undergraduate at University of Florida (just ranked as USA's no. 1 party school). To cut the story short, she was a non-believer, party gal, who after a break up with a cheating boyfriend, found a new roommate (affectionately known as Fruitcake). New roomie is a Christian who in her gentle ways managed to introduce Jesus to Ashley. In 14 days, Ashley was converted and lived a new live as a believer of God. She was changed, but met with a car accident about 3 months after her conversion. Her life may have been short, her post-conversion life even shorter, but God used her life, her story, her journal to tell us that there is no life too short in God, no life too meaningless if He is in it, and that He can give hope and salvation to all who believe in Him.
I am no longer a University student, kinda past that stage. But, I think the Passion movement is doing such great work all over the world. They have got superstars in their team. Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, David Crowder Band, Matt Redman, and the super charismatic Louie. They could have easily gone on their own to do their own thing, but here they are coming together to influence, to inspire Collegiate students all over the world to make their lives count for God. That's really something.
We didn't bring a camera for this trip, which was kinda dumb. 'Cuz we saw Charlie Hall and Chris Tomlin (whom hubby FORCED me to shake hands with when we saw him checking out of the hotel same time as us, i was too shy, kept saying "let's go...") at our hotel lobby during this trip. Which meant excellent photo opportunity. We didn't even bring any phone cameras. So for photos of the conference and beautiful KL...see the 268 blog.
