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CAFÉ MINISTRY In-The-Beginning

October 2007 to March 2008

Everything there is a beginning, here is the background to St Peter’s CAFÉ Ministry.

Sometime in June-July 2007, Holy Trinity Parish started the CaFE program, it was announced in St Peter’s church. I went to the first session, hoping to increase my Catholic Faith over a cup of coffee.

The Session began with Praise and Worship and Fr Stephen Lim, the Parish Priest gave his blessings. We watched a video talk by David Payne, have some sharing over a cup of coffee and some biscuits, session ended with more praise and worship and closing prayers. I think it is similar to the ALPHA program, of which I have never attended.

I went for the second session, and then never turned up due to my heavy schedule.

Then I met Connie Chin of X-Fab at a FMM meeting and introduced her to the Café program. She went and attended most, if not all of the 7 sessions of Module 1A as well as the 5 sessions of Module 1B. The Modules ended with a big event somewhere at Damai.

So far so good until one Sunday morning after Mass, Fr Chin told me he wanted the Café program to run in St Peter’s. Well Father, we can invite the Holy Trinity Group to run in our Parish. No, we want to run our own Café. Find out more. OK, will do.

The best person to help is Connie. And she did a good job, contacting UK, Singapore, getting the resource list together with prices.

Here Father, I have done the enquiries, this is what is required and you need to appoint a leader to run it.

He looked at me for a long while and said I should be heading it!

But Father, CAFÉ is for adults, I am doing the FFC which is meant for Children!

He looked at me for another long while and said I should be heading it!

Well, Father if you insist, I will run it the way I think best, and I want Connie to be my Secretary. Agreed.

Connie, we have to make KOPI from now on! First we must get our Vision, Mission, Objective and Guidelines in place… Here is my draft modeled against FFC’s Vision, Mission, Objective and Guidelines, please fine tune them…Done. Then we set up googlegroups to facilitate communication among members and participants.

Father found some sponsors who sent the resources from Singapore, arrived in April, we called the first meeting on 19 April 2008.

Few days before the meeting Connie called, Michael I am leaving! What? Where to? US. For Holidays? No migrating, Oh ho ho, When? Few months’ time. Connie, I am happy you found greener pasture on the other side of the globe, but we will still appoint you as the first secretary of CAFÉ, I insist.

Before the first meeting, Elizabeth Kueh was identified as the Treasurer, she agreed happily. Then Fr wanted her to help in the Parish website... but Father we need her in the CAFÉ ministry… In any event we will appoint her as the first Treasurer of CAFÉ.

Valentine Harry was appointed as the Assistant Leader, but he is overloaded with the Parish Council.

The rest is history in the making –

Connie said goodbye, Anna Ting became Treasurer, Liz remains low key, Michael and Harry found successors in Lawrence Lee and Abraham Choo so we can concentrate on FFC.

We are still trying to brew our first cup of coffee…

KOPI-O SATU !

1 September 2009

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