What is your Love Language?

Love is probably the most important word, and also the most confusing word in the English language. Have you ever wondered why your loved one* doesn't seem to understand your care and concern? Or that you don't feel love from your loved one*? (Loved one can be used interchangeably with family member and friend. Love goes beyond BGR :P)

It maybe because you do not understand your love language/ the love language of your loved ones.

Thanks to Salvation Army, I attended the "5 Love Languages Workshop" organised as part of the volunteer appreciation programme by a Family Life Educator.

There are 4 stages of a relationship.

1. Hi-Bye relationship
2. Sharing of facts (such as daily events)
3. Sharing of opinions and views
4. Sharing of feelings

Due to multiple commitments, it's quite sad to know that actually many families are at stage 2. :(

How do we deepen our relationship? What are the love languages? Here are 5 ways we express love:

• Words
• Time
• Gift
• Touch
• Service

Words
Offering words of affirmation. When we tell someone we love them, it is being communicated via 3 ways:

1. Words (actual words we speak) - 7%
2. Tone of voice - 38%
3. Body language (our facial expression, our eyes, etc) - 55%

It's probably no surprise that body language speaks in greater volumes than words and tone alone. Yes, it forms 55% of the communication of the love language "words".

Time
Time refers to both quality and quantity time.

Gift
Caution though, it is not giving gifts that you like to give/ receive, but rather giving the gifts that your recipient would like to receive.

Touch
This refers to not only physical touch, but also "non-touch" cues, such as looking into the eyes, etc.

Service
Performing acts of service, such as helping your wife in household chores or lending a helping hand to a colleague who is having troubles with the project.

What do you think is the most common love language among men and women respectively?

• Women- words of affirmation
• Men- touch

So what's your love language? Take this test to find out your love language.

1. For each question, circle the "Y" which corresponds to the sentence that you think describes you best. Each question has 2 sentences.
2. Tabulate the total no. of "Y"s for each column.
3. The column with the highest score is your primary love language.

Remember, your loved ones may not share the same love language as you, hence the way you express love may not be receptive to them. On the other hand, they are speaking in their love languages, which maybe different from yours. Hence, try to see from their perspective and not dismiss them as being unconcerned about you.

Start sharing your love in the most receptive way! :)

Love reading? Join us at our book fair!

The few months of hard work to select, sort, price, pack, count, stack, etc, is going to be paid off. We are all packed for the upcoming second-hand book fair happening next Saturday (12 June 2010) at Bishan Community Club. This book fair is jointly organised by Salvation Army and Bishan North CC Youth Club. Proceeds will be going to Salvation Army's beneficiaries.



We have packed a wide range of books, from non-fiction to fiction, and children to adults. And they are all going 'cheap cheap'- mostly ranging at $1, $2 each. Here's a sneak at what we have packed:


Some examples of fiction titles we have prepared.


It's piling to the ceiling!

Thus, do stock up your books with us, and meanwhile contribute to charity and the green cause at the same time. Remember to drop by to visit us next Saturday, if you're in the vicinity of Bishan. I'll be volunteering in the afternoon shift :)

Here's how to get there:


If you are helping to tweet the event, pls use this hashtag #salebkfair :)

Sidetrack: our volunteer group is known as SALE (Salvation Army Library Enterprise :)

And if you're interested in contributing your old books, check out this post.

Pass it on! :)

After one-month break of activities, I am finally back to SALE last Saturday, and was pleasantly surprised to hear of a new collaboration:

A couple has donated money to a Community Centre to start their reading programme for their under priviledged children, and this money would be used to set up a library for the children to borrow and read, and for volunteers to to conduct story-telling sessions.

Where do they buy the books from? Instead of turning to the commerical book stores (first hand/ second hand), they'll be using the funds to buy books from the Salvation Army Family Thrift Shop.

That's killing two birds with one stone! Smart move! The same sum of donation is being used to help 2 charitable organisations :)

I heard from a fellow volunteer-friend, that this is now the trend, using a donation to help a few charitable organisations, passing on the deed. That's really neat!

Pass it on! :)

Troubled over the leftovers from the spring cleaning exercise you've just completed?

It's the time of the year again. CNY! And of course before we start to indulge in the 2 public holidays with great food, hongbao, visits and well-deserved rest, we have to do spring cleaning.

As the chinese saying goes, 旧的不去 新的不来, are you cracking your head over where you can donate/ give away/ dispose of your old stuff?

As many of you would know, I volunteer at Salvation Army, at the Upper Serangoon Family Thrift Shop, as part of the Salvation Army Library Enterprise aka SALE.

Thus, I often receive offline and online enquiries on donation of stuff to Salvation Army, and I decided, why not have a FAQ on this topic. Hope this mini FAQ will help you answer your initial queries. :)

Q: What can I donate to Salvation Army?
A: Anything! At the thrift shop, they sell clothes, books, electrical appliances, furniture, crockery, etc etc. Almost anything you can think of, are available for sale at Salvation Army.

However, do be considerate and only donate those working items, instead of items which are already spoilt and just need discarding.

Q: How do I go about donating my old stuff?
A: You can drop your stuff at Salvation Army collection points, or you can email to donor@SMM.salvationarmy.org for bulky items.

Personally, I have packed my old but workable items (clothes, books, electrical appliances) into boxes and arranged for a collection by the Salvation Army before. They would require a list of items you are donating, so do prepare your list.

Disclaimer: that's about 2-3 years back, so I'm not quite sure if there are now other SOPs in place. :P

Q: Where do my donation of old stuffs go to?
A: Generally speaking, they will be distributed for sale at the thrift shops. And as Upper Serangoon Family Thrift Shop is the biggest 2nd hand book store among the thrift shops that Salvation Army has, most of the donated books will arrive there.

We would then price, sort and display them for sale. Proceeds will go to the beneficiaries under Salvation Army.

Q: Will the books go to the less priviledged in children's homes/ poorer countries overseas, etc?
A: I'm not too sure about that, but we do hear of cases whereby student groups work with Salvation Army to select books which they intend to bring overseas to set up libraries/ help the poor. We also have regular buyers who select books for other volunteering activities, such as story telling for the less priviledged children in Singapore.

Q: I'm interested to buy books. How's the collection like?
A: The collection is really wide. We receive fiction, non-fiction, comics, Chinese. English, even foreign language books like French, Japanese, etc; even medical books, law books, Geographical Magazines, Archie's comics, recipe books, text books, assessment books, etc.

Q: I'm looking for a particular series. Do you have the complete series?
A: As it's on donation basis, we can't control the supply of books that we receive, so sometimes, the series don't come complete too. We will try to keep a lookout and place serial books/ comics together though, when we spot them in subsequent sessions.

Q: What do you do at SALE?
A: We have our regular SALE activities on Saturday mornings, from 9.30am - 12.30pm.

From the boxes of donated books which we receive, we will sieve out books which are torn and tattered (non-saleable conditions), sort books by categories (eg. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children, Comics, etc), price them and shelve them.

Occasionally, we also have book fairs, depending on Salvation Army's tie-ups with other organisations. Visit us on facebook or read about us on Salvation Army's blog.

Q: That's interesting! Can I join SALE too?
A: Yes! If you're interested, you can email Salvation Army at volunteer@smm.salvationarmy.org The Salvation Army staff will liaise with you following that.

P.S: Nevertheless, if you're a friend of mine, I don't mind showing you the way around on one of those sessions I am going. :P

Disclaimer: The above is drafted purely based on my personal observations as a volunteer of SALE, thus if you have any further enquries, or need more detailed, confirmed SOPs of how things are done, pls contact the Salvation Army directly. :P

Hope the FAQ helps!