Daniel & Denise Song
Daniel writes:
I’ve been asked to write a feature article about serving in the WAM team with family members. More specifically, I’ve been asked to write about my time serving with my sister.
Well, I can say that my life up here in Penang is way more productive than my life down there in Johor. I’m not saying that Johor is a bad place. I’m just saying that Penang is a more “conducive” environment than Johor. One of the things I have done is joining the WAM team. I have been serving with the team only for a short period, 8 months. My sister, for about 5 or 6 months.
Ahhh…..I’ve come to the part where I talk about how my sister joined WAM.
Without the will to serve, and God’s pushing, I don’t think she would’ve joined. I’ve also got to say, UNCLE DANIEL (Khoo) also played an important role in getting my sis to join. Please don’t edit this uncle :D. Anyway, uncle is a real persuasive person.
Another person I’ve got to thank is, Wilbur. No uncle this time, because you’re not married. He managed to “loosen the lid” before letting uncle deal the final blow. Finally, I have myself to “blame”. I, being her brother, kept on irritating and poking her to join. I don’t think that did much though. It probably just provoked her.
My sister and I are both musicians. I dare say that she is a much better musician than I am, cuz she has a passion for music. I’m not really sure about the kind of music though. I hate k-pop, she likes it. Go figure. Our roles in the worship team are different too. My sister is a bass player, I am a drummer. There are some benefits that come with serving in the same worship team. For example, we can always discuss the songs if we’re not sure about them. It’s a two way thing.
As siblings serving in a team, it is always crucial that we encourage each other, so that we can both advance together as siblings. Again, this is a two way thing. We both encourage each other before we play. We both have only served together about 3 times. She would encourage me before service, because, no matter how prepared I am, I still will get scared. I encourage her during practice when she needs help. God has really helped us pull through. I mean without God, we can’t really do much. All of us rely on Our Father, but we also can draw strength from our brothers and sisters. One of the challenges we face while serving is, disagreement on certain things. Never mind about that.
I do hope that my other family members will be able to join my sister and I in serving the Lord with our talents. Actually, my mum was an usher for a while, and my brother is way too young. My dad actually can play the guitar. He even boasts that he is actually Orianthi’s teacher. HAHA!!!! Just joking. I mean about him serving. He is a very busy man. He really said that he taught Orianthi the guitar. My advice for them is that they keep walking with God.
I cannot stress on how important it is to keep going to Him in prayer each day. My parents have really helped me out by encouraging me and pushing me on to serve God in the worship team, and in the world. My mum plays the same role, that of an advisor and earthly parent. They also do much more.
Finally, I’d like to thank my dear brother Melvyn Loo. I wasn’t very close to him, and he is in Australia now, but he showed me that drummers are as talented as the rest of the musicians. I used to have the perception that drummers were not very musically inclined, that we just knew how to hit things. Again, I’d like to thank God, who helped clear the fog.
Denise writes:
To me, it now seems like forever since Daniel has started learning drums. And I say that because he has always been so enthusiastic about it since he started playing. It also seems to me as if he has always been excited about serving in WAM as a drummer. I would say it was both an enthusiasm for playing drums as well as for worshipping God that made him join the WAM team. In fact, his excitement was so great at times, he was literally hopping in his seat.
At times, it got annoying, I will admit that. But his excitement is sometimes refreshing to see. I suppose in a way, that has been a non-verbal encouragement to me since I’ve started serving in WAM. Most of the time, we have been serving together under the same teams. Each time, if I should feel like I didn’t do well, he’d tell me that it sounded ok to him. It may not sound like much, but coming from my brother, it’s a lot. Following that, he’d sometimes tell me to throw in a few cool moves like flipping my hair while playing. =D
Serving together has probably brought us closer at times. It’s a bit reassuring to be able to discuss the songs beforehand, talking about the difficulties, and what might go best. Serving together has established a new shape of communication between us. Like I said before, his enthusiasm can be irritating, it can be encouraging. Serving with Daniel is always entertaining.
Thankfully, we have awesome parents. They both encourage us in every way I can think of. They fetch us to practice, listen to our accounts about practice, and are there to watch us serve during service. After service, they’d give us feedback on how we played, on how worship went. At times, when we get worried about our studies and time factor, they’d remind us to just rely on God, play our best for Him, and everything else would be taken care of. In a way, that’s the best encouragement they could give us.
