SUNDAY SCHOOL II Sharing by Haran 24 July 2011

SUNDAY SCHOOL SHARING by Haran 24 July 2011

Background

Hello, my name is Kevin Suthaharan Subramaniam. Most people call me just Haran.

Some of you may not know, I am born with cerebral palsy.
It affected my hands and co-ordination physically.
And I am slow in doing things.

In the past, I always needed extra time to do my exams - PSLE, N Level in Sec 4 and ITE Bishan Certificate in Office Skills.

Fortunately, I passed a course in Business Studies & Information Technology.

I was a tele-marketer from 1 June 2007 to 19 November 2008.

I have been working as a property agent at ERA since 20 November 2008.

Despite being born weak as a child, I was driven by determination in the inner man in Christ Jesus.

I aspire and try to live as normal a life as possible. And I try not to be a burden to my family.



Strength

Today’s memory verse resonates with what I have gone through in my life.

“A wise man is strong, Yes, a man of knowledge increases strength.”

But if I were to speak of strength, it is definitely not physical strength that I will be speaking about for there is no physical strength in me.

I thank God our Father in giving me the grace and mental strength to overcome life's challenges so that Christ’s name is magnified above all.

I sought knowledge in the Word of God and it has given me strength and wisdom. I realize that worldly knowledge can only go so much and no more.

When we know God as our Helper who strengthens us and our spirit, we can be assured that the strength that God gives will be sufficient for us to overcome life’s challenges.

When we pray and wait upon the Lord, He will give us that strength. One verse that has sustained me through all these years is:

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.”



A Recent Challenge that I Faced

I would like to share with you about the challenges that I faced in the year 2010 through 2011.

Between February 2010 leading up to being certified as a practising property agent, if not for what the Lord had done, I can say that I will not have a job or have any income.

To qualify to be a certified practising property agent, I need to have closed a minimum number of transactions and passed a professional exam.

I studied very hard and took the Estate Agent Exams on 27 and 28 February 2010, but failed.

God did not forsake me and provided a committed tutor for free from another property agency with whom I had done a deal with in 2009. This person taught me everyday for seven months up to the week of the exams. Each session was 45 minutes over the handphone. By the grace of God, I passed my exams!

Next, to qualify to become a certified practising estate agent, I had to show proof that I have done a minimum number of transactions. Despite my repeated pleas to the panel which decides whether I have met the requirements, the panel, up to the very last day of the registration, still maintained the position that I have not done so. At the very last hour, 7 pm on the day of registration, God answered my cry for help. My boss came to the rescue and showed undeniable proof of the transactions that I have done over the last few years, which more than met the requirements.


I am now a certified practising estate agent by the grace of God. He has provided me with the strength and sent people to my aid in my time of need. He has enabled me to go through all these difficult and challenging times. I thank God and praise His name.

I know it is still not going to be easy going forward, but I have the assurance that God’s grace is sufficient for me and He will provide me the strength to go through it.

The song that I have chosen is “God had not promised skies not always blue”, which speaks to my heart.



Closing and Offering Prayer

Dear Father,

We know how weak and helpless we are, but by your grace you have strengthened us all in the inner man, and you have given us hope and peace to live a victorious Christian life. We like to give thanks and praise you for your faithfulness and love towards us.

This morning, we would like to make a commitment to seek your Word diligently, as we have read from the Psalms, “a man of knowledge increases strength”.

We pray that the offering that we are going to present to You Lord is acceptable in your sight.

Please prepare our hearts to hear your words of wisdom from Pastor during Morning Worship

In Christ’s Glorious name, Amen.

Huge Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica

Huge Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica

By Andrea Mustain
LiveScience.com | LiveScience.com – Wed, Jul 13, 2011
.........A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active, has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first such discovery in that region.

Some of the peaks tower nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above the ocean floor — nearly tall enough to break the water's surface.

"That's a big volcano. That's a very big volcano. If that was on land it would be quite remarkable," said Philip Leat, a vulcanologist with the British Antarctic Survey who led a seafloor mapping expedition to the region in 2007 and 2010.

The group of 12 underwater mountains lies south of the South Sandwich Islands — desolate, ice-covered volcanoes that rise above the southern Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa and erupted as recently as 2008. It's the first time such a large number of undersea volcanoes has been found together in the Antarctic region.

Leat said the survey team was somewhat surprised by the find.

"We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't go trying to find volcanoes," Leat told OurAmazingPlanet. "We just went because there was a big blank area on the map and we had no idea what was there; we just wanted to fill in the seafloor."

Seafloor surprise

The team did so, thanks to ship-borne seafloor mapping technology, and not without a few hair-raising adventures.

Leat said the images of the seafloor appear before your eyes on screens as the ship moves through the water. "So it's very exciting," he said. "You go along and suddenly you see the bottom start to rise up underneath you, and you don't know how shallow it's going to get."

At one point, in the dead of night, the team encountered a volcano so large it looked as though the RRS James Clark Ross, the team's research vessel, might actually crash into the hidden summit. "It was quite frightening, actually," Leat said.

The researchers stopped the ship and decided to return in daylight. The onboard instruments revealed that some of the peaks rise within 160 feet (50 meters) of the ocean's surface. [Related: The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas]

Volcanoes confirmed

Though the peaks are largely invisible without the aid of 3-D mapping technology, scientists can tell they're volcanoes.

Leat said their conelike silhouette is a dead giveaway. "There's no other way of getting that shape on the seafloor," he said. In addition, the researchers dredged up rocky material from several peaks and found it rife with volcanic ash, lumps of pumice and black lava.

The find backed up reports from a ship that visited the area in 1962, which indicated a hidden volcano had erupted in the region.

Leat's biologist colleagues discovered some interesting creatures living in the hot-spring-like conditionsnear the underwater mountains, and news on that will be forthcoming, Leat said.

Despite the frozen, isolated conditions, Leat said the expeditions were far from boring. Quite the opposite, in fact. Each moment, a hidden world never before seen by humans unfolded before their eyes.

"It's amazing," Leat said, "and you can hardly go to bed at night because you want to see what's happening."

•The 10 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History
•Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench
•Images: Creatures of the Frozen Deep - Antarctica's Amazing Sea Life
Andrea Mustain is a staff writer for OurAmazingPlanet, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach her at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain.

Squirrel takes on Lamborghini… and survives

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/what-is-buzzing/squirrel-takes-lamborghini-survives-035225427.html

Squirrel takes on Lamborghini… and survives
Written by: Eric Adelson (from Yahoo! blog The Post Game)

You need guts to take your Lamborghini onto a racetrack. But all the big shots who took part in the Ultimate Lamborghini Experience have nothing on a Southern California squirrel with serious nerve.

The annual event, held in late June at California Speedway in Fontana, invites Lambo owners to test their skills on a two-and-a-half-mile open track. It promises "an incredible rush of speed and sound that will quicken the pulse and stir the soul."

Well, it sure lived up to that billing for this squirrel:

....Squirrel takes on Lamborghini… and survives
..By Yahoo! US
..Posts..By Yahoo! US | What’s buzzing? – Mon, Jul 4, 2011
....tweet12EmailPrint.....Written by: Eric Adelson (from Yahoo! blog The Post Game)

You need guts to take your Lamborghini onto a racetrack. But all the big shots who took part in the Ultimate Lamborghini Experience have nothing on a Southern California squirrel with serious nerve.

The annual event, held in late June at California Speedway in Fontana, invites Lambo owners to test their skills on a two-and-a-half-mile open track. It promises "an incredible rush of speed and sound that will quicken the pulse and stir the soul."

Well, it sure lived up to that billing for this squirrel:



Talk about precision steering. If the average Californian navigated the road as well as this little fella, the 405 would be a much better place.


But is the video real?

"It's 100 percent authentic," says Elie Rothstein, one of the owners of Al & Ed's Autosound, which put on the event. "We had cameras set up all over the track to get footage on our drivers. Only a couple days later do we see this. And I was like, 'What?!' It blows your mind."

What blows our mind is that the squirrel, by the looks of it, was more or less OK. "Thankfully the squirrel did not die," Rothstein says. "We were just shocked. He made it."

Turns out the car isn't just another Lambo, either. Rothstein says it's an LP670-4SV -- one of the fastest Lamborghinis ever made. The car was going in excess of 100 mph, Rothstein estimates. The "SV," in fact, stands for "Super Veloce," or "Super Fast."

Maybe it should stand for "Squirrel Victorious."