Greetings to all!

My name is Zong Geng ('Pakerdee!'). I am a drummer and I have been playing drums in my church's (Eternal Life Baptist Chuch www.elbc.org.sg) worship ministry ever since I was baptized on 16th April 2006.

In this blog, I want to share with you how important Jesus is in our drumming and our music and to remind ourselves how He is both the Creator of us and of music. (So theoretically He would be the greatest drummer EVER!)

I hope to gather all the drummers and musicians in Singapore who has the desire and passion to play for Jesus through this blog and to share our personal testimonies of how Jesus has changed our (musical or not) lives. I also pray that though this site, we can all become closer to one another and to Jesus in our friendships of eternity. Through our music, may we fulfill the Great Commission left by Jesus before He ascended to heaven and that is to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19 NIV). What a great privilege if we could be used by God in this manner, through drumming, through music!

Like what Salvatore shared in his DVD, "music without Jesus ain't fun". This is certainly true. Drumming for Jesus fills me up with so much joy and direction that I can only bow down to Him and to worship and thank Him. So today, let us "Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy." (Psalm 33:3 NIV)


The following is my testimony of my (music) life (as of Jan 2007):

I was born into a Buddhist family and yet my parents chose to give birth to me in Mount Alvernia Hospital, a Christian one, on 16th November 1982. The hospital wouldn't seem like a natural choice because it was not the nearest to my house. I stay in Bukit Batok (the west) and the hospital's in Toa Payoh (North-Central). Little did I know that under the unknown prayers of the Christian doctors and nurses, my life with Jesus began. The prayers probably started when I had to stay in the hospital for extended weeks because of some health conditions like G6PD where they had to do tests. Thankfully I was discharged and like life on earth, was a miracle from God.

Next, I was enrolled into a Christian (Presbyterian) kindergarten and subsequently, after successful balloting, into its affiliated, next-door, primary school, Pei Hwa Presbyterian. Thinking back, even this email is a miracle because I knew so little English at that time that I couldn't even pronounce 's'. Therefore my teacher Miss Bao became "Mee Bao". I could still remember my 1st English lesson in Primary school where I couldn't understand, let alone read a single English word. Thanks to Jesus, now I am undergoing my last semester in NUS, majoring in History (minoring in China Studies) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

During my primary school days, I got to know Jesus and also music. We had special dedicated lessons for the bible where we learnt about biblical stories like how Jesus fed the 5000 etc. During assemblies, we sang songs of praise and worship to God too. My 1st hands on experience on music was probably the recorder which I sucked at. Can remember one of the music teachers, Mdm Yap, as the fiercest teacher in the school and we called her all sorts of nicknames like *censored, censored* I don't know if she had an impact on my initial distaste for music but the next big thing was my enrollment in violin classes in school. I enjoyed the violin lessons, not cos of the music but because of the fun things we did in the studio like "giaping" (holding) the violin between your left cheek and jaw bone and your shoulder and jumping around. That was really fun!

Then my parents enrolled me as a private student of one of the teachers who stayed near me (can rem he stayed on the 25th floor! Real high up there..). Without my friends, I gradually lost interest. making matters worse, my father, a bass harmonica player (he claims himself to be the best of his trade in Singapore), forced practices on me. I practised till I cried (it's true! I even have a picture of that. Now u know how Zehk4 Akh4 my parents were when they forced me to take picture knowing I'm crying!) and I started to hate the violin and music.

My father's family was a family of artistic people and musicians: 2 of my aunties were and still are piano teachers and many of my cousins played the piano. One of my cousin majored in dance at La Salle. Under their influence (yes, those who know me know that I am VERY easily influenced by people around me, especially my friends), I had this enthusiasm to learn the piano but was rejected by my dad who said that there were too many pianists in the family and I should learn something different. Hence, the violin again. I played my squeaky violin for 5 years and was never even good enough that my violin teacher recommended me to take an exam. So I guess music was not in my genes.