To God be the Glory!

Last night's 10th anniversary thanksgiving and fund raising dinner for Pusat Berdikari Seremban was the successful culmination of a fantastic teamwork from my staff, volunteers, church members and supporters who believed that charity towards the disabled is vital to one's own well-being, knowingly or otherwise. God blessed all of us with a memorable time that stretched from 7-11pm at the Restoran Min Kok, Seremban. What can I say? It was a one-in-a-kind dinner that Seremban had not seen before. I jokingly said that for RM50 it is nearly impossible to enjoy a good sit-down Chinese dinner PLUS over one hour solid entertainment from a seasoned and crowd-pleasing singer like Francissca Peter, who made a grand entrance and mingled with the crowd as she sang her opening songs.

Fran cajoled and teased the guests to donate to the cause of PBS, danced with a guest and gave us a good selection of Chinese, English and Malay songs with keyboardist Leonard backing her. We raised over RM4000 at the song bidding session in addition to what we raised from the dinner and souvenir magazine. Guests increased that by bidding another RM600 for two cakes baked by the PBS trainees.

The near full PBS trainees team gave us a rousing dance led by some students from the International Medical University here in Seremban which got the crowd standing and clapping as they swayed to the techno beat of the music. It was hilarious and fun. Then Yoga, another trainee sat down at his Yamaha Electone organ and skillfully played out two pieces of music that wowed us into silent attention. We wondered if he was really disabled? Yet, this is precisely the mindet we ought to discard. That a learning disabled person is NOT disabled in every faculty. He or she have skills we must discover to make him or her excel in life.

The biggest surprise of the evening came when the human capital senior manager of Giant Supermarket chain, Mr. Nesan, came on stage to announce that 7 of 25 PBS trainees have been accepted to join the supermarket chain which includes the Guardian Pharmacy. What a joy!

I said to Mr. Nesan that what Giant did for the successful trainees is like breaking down a wall to let them leave the centre to join the job market outside. These trainees were exuberant. It showed on their faces. We were excited and thankful. This announcement has helped us realized the vision of job training our trainees and send them out to work. Those who could not continue to find employment within PBS's own Sheltered Workshop. And the vacancies created allow us to bring in many more learning disabled people who need to be trained to find employment.

I wish I had taken pictures from my camera that was left forgotten inside my laptop bag. But I will photoblog on this topic again as soon as I get back the photoCD from the professional photographer in a week's time.

I had a good sleep last night, went for communion service this morning, napped 4 hours this afternoon and blog this to tell you and the world how great our God is. Hallelujah!