Gandhi Manalu

GBC Sermon on January 9, 2011: What’s Next?

Gandhi Manalu — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:29:09 +0000

Today’s sermon is still related with the previous sermon about who Christian is. The sermon is taken from 1 Peter 2:2.

The pastor preached about the stage of life in Christianity, that is newborn baby, young Christian, and mature Christian.

A newborn baby need a strong root. He/she also need additional spiritual support. A young Christian develops strong roots and branches. We can grow deep roots as we meditating on God’s Word day after day. A mature Christian begin to produce healthy fruit: fruits that turn our thoughts towards God (Love, Joy, and Peace), fruits that turn our thoughts towards others (Long Suffering, Kindness, and Goodness), and fruits that turn our thoughts towards ourselves (Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control).

In a sentence, the sermon teach us that God wants us to grow up spiritually and be a mature Christian.

Am I a spiritually mature child of God, able to be responsible to Him for every part of my life?

God bless us.

Filed under: Christianity

Jia you snack

Gandhi Manalu — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:47:09 +0000

This evening, when I just came back from my lab, I got a snack distributed by a group of students. Actually, they’re distributing it to support students that will face the final term in the coming days. But I accept their snack with a hope I’ll pass my research and graduate very soon. God bless me.

The snack is just a one sachet of coffee and one piece of vegetarian cracker, just what I need

Jia you!

Filed under: campus, daily

GBC Sermon on January 2, 2011: Who is a Christian?

Gandhi Manalu — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:13:41 +0000

I’d like to share an excerpt of a sermon delivered in Grace Baptist Church, Taipei, on Sunday, January 2, 2011.

The sermon was from John 3:36, and the pastor preach about the real Christian.

The pastor began with an introduction that God loves all people, including me! He emphasized that the whole Bible is actually teaching that God is Love (1 John 4:8).

But, God hates our sin (Exodus 34:5-7).

The good news is that God wants to forgive our sin. A very good verse on this is John 3:16, the pastor even said that it is the Gospel in a nutshell. John 3:16 teaches us, that the Greatest Giver is God, the greatest Motive is Love, the greatest Mission Field is World, the greatest Sacrifice is His Only Son, the greatest Suffering is Perish, and the greatest Gift is Eternal Life.

God wants to forgive our sin because He wants us to live with Him forever (John 14:3). How? By accepting his Son, Jesus, as our Lord and Savior.

In a sentence, a Christian is one that has accepted Jesus as his Lord and his Savior.

At the end of the sermon, the pastor asked a probing question: “If you died right now, would God receive you into heaven to be with Him for all eternity?“.

Happy Sunday. God bless us all.

Filed under: Christianity

Taipei 101 2011 New Year’s Fireworks

Gandhi Manalu — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:51:21 +0000

The year 2011 is special for Taiwan (Republic of China), because it’s his 100th anniversary. I got the chance (through standing 2 hours waiting for the fireworks) to record the Taipei 101 fireworks directly from the spot.

Happy new year 2011 for all of us. Happy 100th anniversary for Taiwan.

its 100th anniversary

Filed under: taipei

Happy New Year 2011

Gandhi Manalu — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:00:59 +0000

I just want to say Happy New Year 2011 to all of my readers (if there are still any ).

Be committed to your New Year’s resolution, and be not weary in pursuing them.

God bless us in all our ways.

Filed under: Christianity

Beef Hotpot at Shida

Gandhi Manalu — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:14:58 +0000

This afternoon, my friends and I went to hotpot restaurant at Shida area, Taipei. It’s not far from our place so we went there using bicycle, and it took only 15 minutes to get there. From the main road of Shida night market, turn left at the 7-11 intersection, just walk a little more and there the restaurant is. I don’t really know the name of the restaurant, but it’s with an ’8′ written in its name.

There are lots of hotpot choices, but I ordered beef hotpot because I just like beef What’s nice about this restaurant is the price is not too expensive, all food is in the range of 100 – 130 NTD. Better yet, you can take as much rice as you want, and also take as much ice cream and cold tea as you like

For the range from 1-10 (where 10 is the most delicious), I give this restaurant a score of 7.0.

Filed under: Daily Life, food

Music for My Soul

Gandhi Manalu — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:01:05 +0000

I usually play particular songs for different states of my mood. Whenever I felt angry, distressful, or disappointed then I’ll play songs from Kenny G. But not all of his songs fits my weary condition. I usually listen for these songs of Kenny G:

The moment
Morning
Theme from dying young
Loving you
Forever in love
Sentimental
Silhouette

Whenever I heard those songs my soul becomes calm again. I feel relax. It feels like there’s a calm strength fill my mind. And usually, I gain new power to do cope with my problems and do my activity again.

But it doesn’t mean that whenever I play those songs it means I’m in a weary condition

Filed under: blah, daily, lagu, motivation

Steps in dealing with procrastination

Gandhi Manalu — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:40:05 +0000

Procrastination is an evil thing. It comes like a disease, but in a convenient form, yet very disastrous. All of us may have suffered this disease once. Me myself has been dealing with this disease ever since my undergraduate study, and yet it still come tempting me.

I’ve read several book in dealing with this disease, unfortunately it can only help for several weeks. I think I need to always be reminded about this. Lucky me, I’ve just found an article about the cure, I’ll summarize it here (with my own words):

Try to identify the cause of the procrastination.
Plan to do your activity on a certain period of time.
Prepare to do your activity, by preparing things you’ll be more motivated on doing the activity.
Just do it.
Reward yourself for things well done on time.

This article has helped me in motivating myself again against procrastination, and I hope it will help you also.

Filed under: blah, Daily Life, motivation

Pay attention to the detail

Gandhi Manalu — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:15:46 +0000

I’ve been struggling with an anomaly in my code for several days now. I’ve tried to rewrite the code, change some more variables, add the number iterations but it doesn’t work out. But then after re-read the paper again I realize that the problem lies on the number of intervals length, I used a very small number of intervals where actually it need a little more number of intervals length.

How I can miss such information? It’s because I thought I’ve understood the global flow of the algorithm and didn’t read small information written at the end of the paragraph. D’oh!

Lesson learned: don’t assume you’ve already understood the program, until you read the whole paper thoroughly and in detail.

Filed under: blah, daily, motivation

Qingming Festival

Gandhi Manalu — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:39:57 +0000

Today is holiday, let me scream first, Horraaaayyy

It is called Qing Ming festival, or usually known as Cheng Beng festival. It’s not really a festival in a way like there are parades on the street. No, there are no such thing. In contrary, usually people go back to their hometown and together with their family they go to their ancestors tomb and sweep them, that’s why it is also called Tomb Sweeping day.

This tradition is quite similar with what my tribe (Batak tribe) has back in Bonapasogit, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Usually, few days before Easter, a family gather in their ancestors’ tomb and clean it. I don’t know what’s the reason behind this tradition, but I think it’s a good one to pay respect to our ancestor.

Could it be that this tradition rooted from the same source? Who knows..

Filed under: batak, History