Who's Yo Daddy?

My Kidzone class learned about Heroes this Sunday—heroes give God the credit. We asked them to make "trading cards" of their heroes. These colorful trading cards were cartoony, some with your "normal" super-powered heroes, others not what you expected. Kids are pretty imaginative.

Isabella: Ice, the super horse with frosted power, in bright neon blue
Auriel: Lion (which represent God although she was too embarrassed to admit it was any good so she crumbled it up)
Susannah: Jesus with lava coming out of his finger as his power
Daniel: Moses with superspeed
Caleb: Cow, because he gives us milk, cheese, and meat
Keila: Jesus with shining love power
Jessica: Jesus with smiling power

The last two are pretty cool power, if you think about it. Imaging SUPERJESUS in this scene

Generic Villain: "Blah blah blah monologue about total world domination blah blah blah"
SUPERJESUS: turns the other cheek and unexpectedly a RADIANT LIGHT of GOD'S INFINITE LOVE AND MERCY hits Generic Villain in the stomach
Generic Villain: (throwing up a couple demons) "My LORD and my God!"
SUPERJESUS: "He's yo Daddy."

[Generic Villain walks offscreen RADIATING BEAMS OF HAPPINESS AND PEACE FROM HIS FACE!!!!]

Team Debrief Tonight

My first missions presentation tonight at FCC. I'm a bit anxious as I don't like speaking in front of crowds, but hopefully God will give me strength as He always does in these circumstances.

Shouldn't be that hard because these are people I know from church.

It should be exciting! And wait til you taste Kenyan tea.

LBNL (last but not least), pray for me for tonight. Asante sana Go Team Kenya! (a cheer?)

Praise The Lord

Here we go. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

Our team were commissioned yesterday. We even got to go up to the city to see where Gina goes to church and got commissioned there. Everyone at GrX-SF were really friendly, and pastor Ali's sermon was very good.

Here we go Team Kenya!!!

Heather's Hike for Discovery

My friend Heather is doing a Hike for Discovery. She is normally very reserve and not at all a marketing/promo type but it is pretty obvious she has a lot of passion for this cause. I know from talking to her that she cares a lot about the subject of cancer, and leukemia in particular.

In a nutshell, the Hike for Discovery is to raise research and awareness for the LLS (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society). The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society uses the funds raised to cure Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and Myeloma. The Society also gives help and support to over 712,000 Americans battling these blood cancers.

Part of why she is so compelled to do this is that her grandmother was recently diagnosed with leukemia. I can imagine also how cancer will affect beyond her grandmother as I witnessed first hand those effects on my mom when she fought and loss to brain cancer.

So if you ever wanted to have a positive impact on the fight for cancer, take this time to donate to Heather's Hike for Discovery. Click http://www.active.com/donate/hfdsvmb/hfdHBedy to donate NOW!

There's also the chance that your company will match each contribution. Finding the cure is worth asking your HR department the question! Remember all your donations are tax-deductible :)

For more info please contact Heather at [email protected]. Oh and please help spread the word about Heather's Hike for Discovery.

Thanks!

Team Kenya 2007

It's nearly a month until Team Kenya 2007 heads out for our short-term missions and as I thought I would quickly remind readers of my blog to keep us in your prayers.

I also wanted to share our team photo taken during our missions orientation and to let you know I updated my "Take Flight Kenya" missions blog. You can find the updates here: http://www.mhlstudio.com/kenyamissions/

I am thrilled and excited, somewhat perplexed and in awe, to be able to go to Africa and perhaps be shaped by what God has in store for me. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions about the missions and what we are trying to accomplish. Thanks!

Mission Springs Retreat Weekend

Items to bring there:
- personal toiletries
- bible, journal, pen
- comfortable and warm clothing, athletic shoes, sandles

Items brought back:
- it's okay to be a kid and live in the NOW
- love people, love Jesus
- being with my friends in such a quiet serene place is awesome

Our God is an awesome God!!! Yay!

Photos from the retreat

Testimonies, Retreat, and Weekend Plans

Last night, we had a team Kenya 2007 meeting. During the meetings there were two people who shared their testimonies. I thank them for sharing it because testimonies are one of my favorite things in that I get to hear how God's people have walked with Him, during the good and bad times. By the way, I have a Kenya missions blog for those who are interested, although it's kind of on the lean side at the moment.

Sandy is a new auntie as of yesterday around midnight. Congrats hun! I know she was somewhat bummed out about missing the actual birth, being that she was on a business trip to Portland/Seattle, but from what I heard the guy's a cutie-pie.

Retreat

The last time I went to a retreat, it was something to remember. There were a lot of worshipping as well as quiet time. Much will be expected for this retreat, in the Santa Cruz Mtn. and hopefully there will be beaches a-plenty! Can you tell I'm excited about it. The only thing is I would be cool if Sandy could go but she has a wedding from old church friends and her Dad's bday on Sunday.

Something I've been pondering...momentarily

Have you notice the longer that you are a Christian, the less non-Christian friends you have? Why is that? For me that is certainly true, although I only truly fellowship with my Christian friends during smallgroup on Thrus. and church on Sundays. So what am I doing on those other days? Question: Does it make you holier if you seclude yourselves from non-Christian people?

Have a great weekend!

Happy Good Friday

I'll be going to my company's party at Campo di Bocci and then heading over to the Good Friday service at the Hyatt. Should be awesome!

K2Uers...we're meeting "back left."

How Great Is Our God Concert

Last night, a few of us went to watch Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman performed at SJSU Event Center. The concert was amazing. I have been looking forward to this concert since a month back and had tickets for just as long. So when Sunday night came along, I was pretty excited for the concert. As it turned out, Sunday was also a pretty long day starting with teaching KidZone at church, then the service, moving onto set breakdown, then going to Barnes & Noble to get Freakonomics (thnx Alison for the Teacher's discount), drove back home to meet friends to carpool to the concert, grabbed dinner at La Vic in San Jose, then onto the concert, drove the carpoolers home, read emails, and went to bed.

Despite the long long day, last night was really worth it. It was awesome worshipping God in such a large environment, singing with Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman, and hearing Louis Giglio speak. How beautiful is our God!

Check out pictures here: How Great Is Our God Concert.

GRX Hoops Winter League

The new league season is upon us once again. Get ready for 10 weeks of great games, good fellowshipping, and all in all fun. The league is set to run from Feb. 25 to May 13. Check out the http://hoops.grx.org for more info.

If you're interested please come out to open gym nights: Sunday 2/4, 2/11, 2/18. See you on the court!

Email [email protected] for more info. Spread the word. Thanks!

Pardon My Joy

Years ago, when a friend visited me during Christmas, we would go to the Stanford church to attend the Christmas mass there. It was quite a spectacle, what with all the candlelights, prayers, and chorus music. It was very "holy". At the same time, I didn't know what the big deal was in that quiet hall, where everyone looked very pious and serious.

Shouldn't Christmas be...merry?

A few days ago, my older brother asked me where church meets this Sunday so he could take his kids there. I felt a sense of joy as I detected a sense of envy coming from him. Wow...my brother waming up to my faith...to Christ the Savior!

Continue reading

Going Offline For Forty Days

I should probably do this anyway but starting Mon. October 9th to Sun. November 19th I will be going on an internet fast for forty days. This means I won't be able to read emails, blogs, or the WSJ after my work day.

Awhile back I went without coffee for 7 days. I don't know how I survived those mornings without my coffees, but I did grow closer to God.

This time the fast is a bit longer, and there is a sense of urgency about it. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but I got saved here. Well, technically Jesus saved me, but I got baptized here. GrX is my home church so I do feel a sense of ownership.

It remains to be seen whether the Unstoppable Campaign is a "God thing", if it will succeed or fail (see Acts 5:38-39) but I'm excited to hear what God will say to me during those 40 days.

Exactly what will I do with my time sans internet? This will sound hokey but I plan on spending more quality time with my gf, more face-to-face time with friends, read the Bible/devotionals, reflect/meditate on the campaign itself.

One other update: I'll be running in the dark in a few hours with some friends and folks from smallgroup. I did this last year and it was fun. Sandy is running it, too. I have to remember though to stick around and cheer her on.

Unstoppable Batonism

Ize gotz tagged.

By the way you may be tagged so be forewarn.

I'll start this with the parable of the mustard seed that Jesus taught specifically about faith. Jesus ever the masterful teacher uses a pretty nice imagery of something like a tiny seed growing into a large tree.

Most of us are familiar with that parable. I've even paraphrased it...as in "i'll plant the seed and watch it grow...and grow...and grow...yeehaw!" I've even used it in filmschool, where we were taught in screenwriting to introduce a plot twist or a new nefarious character subtly. Again planting seed...pretty common metaphor.

Of course in biblical stories a one-two-liners could in fact span over a period of time. In this case a seed takes time to grow. Who knows how long it took for the mustard seed to grow into this tree where even birds can perch on it.

A Question To Be Answered

Q: Is Unstoppable that seed?
A: Unfortunately as the way it was communicated Unstoppable is not that seed. More like asking for a grown tree in terms of the timeline. (For such details read the the Unstoppable brochure. Running the numbers means something like $64000/week of tithing for the next 3 years. (($10mil/52)/3))

Continue reading

A Shameless Knot2Us Plug

There's a show on The Food Network called Throw Down with Bobby Flay. It's actually quite good. But the one that I enjoy the most has to be the effervescent Rachel Ray and her hilarious..."umm..." follow with her eye rolls.

Back to Throw Down. In the episode that I watched a well know hamburger maker was challenged by Bobby. Basically he showed up at this person's house un-announced and challenged her to a "throw down." Anyway I have no point and don't remember where I am going with this except to say that the Throw Down concept can be adapted to so many things.

Nothing Venture Nothing Gain-Knot2Us

My smallgroup Knot2Us will start up again this Thursday night. I invite anyone looking for a smallgroup (after Fall Launch) to come and throw down with us...whatever you have on your plates that night, leave it—come throw down with our Christian smallgroup community. We'll take the challenge to bring you to a relationship with Christ!

We made it back from Napa without any incident, having boozed up pretty hard. We hit up three wineries: V.Sattui, Sterling, and Mondalvi. Of the three Sterling was probably the most memorable since I have not yet been there. It was such a beautiful day, too.

Here are Dabruceski's photos on his smugmug site.

Lastly, our work website has undergone a total makeover. It is now mostly semantically marked up with CSS only. Gone are the HTML table markups. Yay! I'm excited about it!

To Dome And Back

The view from the top was awesome! Congrats Dan, Rich, K-dogg, mongolian deathworm, Ron, thecrystalball, Juliet and David. I even saw Clee up there and my cube-mate from work. Small world!

It was a great experience. I'm not saying it was easy...to hike 8.2 miles up 4800 ft. of elev. gain...with absolutely no water coming back down...but it was worth it.

Turn off your computer. Get away from your office. Go climb a mountain!

My humble flickr set of Operation: Mount Half Dome.

[Update] David Ko's photos of Half Dome. Dan's set.

Congrats to DWAY and JP!

Blood, Guts and Church Basketball

This past Sunday I was blessed with a "godly elbow".

It happened during a GRX basketball playoff game between my team—the Geckos—and Pastor Andy's Goats. This is what went down: someone shot the ball, Andy and I struggled for the rebound, Andy's flying elbow, I started bleeding. Nice. Next I was rushed to O'Connor Hospital for ER (see pic). Here I talked to two receptionists, two nurses, then was dumped into the triage area awaiting my doctor...about 1 hr. The doctor showed up and in less than ten minutes "stitched" me up.

With super glue for the skin.

Isn't technology wonderful?

Continue reading

Second Quarter Review

Following some highlights of the weekend, I'll blog a bit about the second quarter. (Here's the writeup of the first quarter.)

The highlights of the weekend...

- after driving up and down the 152 East for more than eight years while living in LA, I finally visited Casa de Fruta. It's a conglomerate for Casa de anything. My favorite is sampling the food, although Sands would say it's gross.
- played bocce with Sandy, Jimmy, Lauren. We were ever the gentleman, letting the girls win of course. Altough you wouldn't know that from this version.
- saw fireworks in Cupertino. We brought with us (again with Jimmy and Lauren) blanket and lawn chair. We ended up sitting on the driveway of Citibank, a bright halogen light blasting our face. If I squinted hard enough I could make out the fireworks, which lasted about fifteen minutes.

Continue reading

An Italian Weekend, Good Times

For some odd reason Ian (that's SIR to you) McKellen is in all summer movies these days.

Last Friday I went to watch the The Da Vinci Code with Sandy and some friends. Did anyone notice all the super villains making their appearances in this movie? There was Magneto, Doctor Octopus, and The Cleaner. And had they hired Liam Neeson as Robert Langdon we would have Ducard of the League of Shadow.

Some people are still trying to process the movie. I recommend reading the book.

Happy Birthday Euge (PongOR). Thanks for a nice and relaxing BBQ last Saturday. It's always nice to see such a close knit group of friend (the TASers) having fun. And I am glad I was able to become an "honorary" TAS member. Good times, good times.

I uploaded Eugene's Birthday BBQ to flickr so enjoy them.

On Sunday I'm reminded why men don't go to the opera. It's long, and slow, and NOT in English. Maybe because Madame Opera is a tragedy, but I would have preferred a comedy, like The Marriage of Figaro. I don't know, opera just feels like a very expensive anime. Thanks to Markus for organizing and Jen as the guest of honor.

I uploaded the opera pics here: Jen's Madame Butterfly Opera Party.

Bike Messenger, Where's My OJ?

I just got a call from one of our core to bring OJ tonight for our smallgroup meeting. There are 24 folks coming tonight. Thank goodness there's a grocery or convenient store (ie. 7-11) on the way to Kat's place, where we meet. The only problem with that is to carry them...on my bike.

If you see a guy on a bike somewhere on Central Expressway, with OJs in hand, please regard him in safety...

Sands, yes basically I still owe you three OJs. Or was it two?

Update: I was informed by Sandy that 7-11 does not carry OJs in the big plastic containers...just the small ones.

I Love GRX Hoops

Last night, while doing fellowship before our game, a captain on the other team shared his thoughts on the topic of patience. We go around the room saying, "Hi my name is so-and-so and I do so-and-so for a living." When we get to the captain, he told us he is helping his parent's plastic business. I started thinking of that funny scene about plastic from The Graduate.

Then we started talking about patience, one of the attributes of a Christian. This time I'm looking around hoping to find volunteers. I don't see many hands go up. I glanced back at the captain and saw that he wanted to share.

"Alvin?"

"Um...I'm looking for a new job. I'll be working at church, full time. It's not definite yet but I'm praying for it." The best part, he seemed so excited and full of hope.

Sometimes these kids at GRX Hoops say things that are pretty encouraging for an old worried-wart like me.

Cross Promoting Elijah

"We live in a cynical world. A cynical world. And we work in a business of tough competitors. I love you. You... complete me."

The above is a great line of dialog from the venerable James Cameron Cameron Crowe, albeit delivered over-the-top by Tom Cruise. In any case this is not about one of my favorite Cameron films but more along the line of blatantly cross promoting Knot2Us new quarterly bible study: Elijah: Living Securely in an Insecure World.

Read it for yourself here but the gist of it is that we live in a cynical, cynical...and may I add insecure world. Terrorism, hurricanes, avian bird flu, a possible war with Iran, oil prices, global warming, to name a few of the frightful news thrown at us from the media.

Where will we go to find courage to face our fears? In the next two months I will be learning about this and probably venture this question: "What would Elijah do?"

Okay smallgroup beckons.

Thanks for The Advice, Doc

"You have to establish boundaries, let her know that some things are not prohibited."

"You can't be too submissive. And you Marissa cannot be too aggressive, either."

"You have to allow her to speak because that is the only way she can express herself."

You'll never know where you get relationship advice these days. You get what you can, wherever you can. Even if those advice blurs between human and pets, and comes from a dog therapist/trainer. That's right, all of the above advice are indeed for the shy Fidos out there, or in this case my co-worker's dog Molly. The one where the dog therapist is talking to Marissa, that is advice for their human owners.

Relationships ARE Hard. Amen.

A few months ago we had a gathering to watch Dr. James Dobson's video about relationship.

Continue reading

Some Passages

I wanted to blog about this if it wasn't for Dreamhost servers crashing earlier. Anyway they got it fixed now.

So after Kids Club this afternoon I thought I'll write some passages that will encourage us to think about what Easter truly means. There are many other religions but only one can claim that Jesus is the Son of God who resurrected from the dead.

Continue reading

2005 Tax Refund And First Three Months: Where I Am Today?

Finally after a little over a month I got my 2005 Federal tax refund in the mail yesterday. In our modern electronic filing day-and-age, to get a refund back after more than 30 days is...well...the whole process just seems so antiquated. I could have use TurboTax to e-file but Sandy will do her's tonight and will probably file it that way. We share the software and only one e-filer at a time.

Oddly enough today I had to go to my nearest BofA to make a deposit. I don't remember the last time I actually had to do that. Incredible!

Continue reading

Weekend Recap

The hardest part is over. We won our first GRX Hoops game with a new team: Geckos. Much appreciation goes to the SLK girls (Sands Laurine and K-Dog) for coming out so late to cheer us on. You guys gave us that extra energy needed to get over the hump of the second half.

On a related note: Here is a flickr set of this year's draft night that I taken part in (one of the most exciting night) and a link of the Geckos roster. Some past articles of my scouting strategies and last year's draft night.

Continue reading

Madness Part Deux

One madness down, one to go. Tip off starts at 7pm at the new gym.

Feel free to leave your post-mortem Bruins comment(s) here.

Time to go for some refreshment, design-wise.

GRX Hoopsters Unite!

Finally the new GRX Hoops site is up. Take a look at it and play around with it, but more importantly sign up today to play in the league. They do get fill up kinda quickly.

Immersion-SNL Kirkwood Ski Trip: 9 guys, 7 girls, 5 cars, 3 days, 2 nights, 1 cabin, 1 bruised hand (Sands). Props to my Sandles for completing the three quarter of "Lift 9" and not doing the "walk of shame." =) Here is the ski trip pictures at flickr.

Another ski trip photo set from 99zeros.

Hi-lights: Pacifica sea food buffet at Harveys, billiards at the cabin, seeing one of our ski instructors telling Sandy, "I'm not abandoning you" as he skis 30 yards away. =)
Lo-lights: Lost one of my brother's Spyder glove. Peeing at the side of the road in a run down Deliverance-like place. Missing GRX's farewell buidling 899 service.

Continue reading

Too Many Ministries

There is so much going on right now I feel in terms of church activities. Relationally I'm so blessed with Sandy for her support in these ministries as well as meeting new folks and kids. But my only complaint is that I'm spreading myself too thin and I feel like I don't know if I am as effective with more rather than less ministry.

Busyness is self glorification masquerading as service rendered to God. (Pastor Dave)

For those considering where they would fit into what ministry that is appropriate for them any advice would be good. That is how do you know which ministry to serve? One where you enjoy or one where you feel you can be effective? Here are the list of my ministries and my thoughts of them. Okay some of these are more volunteer than ministries but...

Continue reading

Everybody Loves Raymond

My second time volunteering for Kids Club. This time the kids were much less rowdy, specifically two boys Gregor and Mikey (from my groups are ages 9-10 or classes 4/5). You know things go pretty smoothly where we calm the kids down with sweet snack, patiently ask them to be seated, follow the teachers in body worship. Then we have them repeat Genesis 1-22 on the slides. At this point a few of them are just in complete distractions. They are all volunteered by their parents to be here for two hours but to some of them, "it's like prison!"

Mikey and Gregor are best friends. How do I know? Gregor told me after I asked them what were their favorite Christmas gifts were.

Gregor: I got a new Nintendo game from Mikey. It's my favorite cuz his my best friend.

Continue reading

Can You Hear Me Now?

So we were leaving Pho Hoa after lunch last Sunday Lauren driving, Jimmy in the passenger seat, Sands, Ray, and myself in the back. I forgot who made the first comment (Ray?) but here's how it went down...

Continue reading

The Gift from God

This has been a very special Christmas season for me. This is the first year where I felt blessed by God first with putting me at the right place and the right time to meet my sweetie Sandy. He also blessed me with work where I can commute within a ten minute drive and friendly co-workers/managers. I feel like God has answered many of my prayers (a great community and church, friends and a ministry where I can serve.) That's why this is the first year where I see Christmas as a time to give back because Christ has given me so much.

This year the Nativity scene that is set up in my neighborhood has a more personable meaning. God came down to our level as a tiny vulnerable little baby in a manger and declared all who have faith in Him righteous, and to a restored relationship with God.

Continue reading

First Fight

Last night I've officially became a GRX Hoops Ministry committee member. What's there not to love combining both basketball and God. So I'm excited about this as well as looking forward to serve God through this ministry. Let me be one among many who give a shout out to Euge for believing in me and bringing me onboard in the first place. Dude you know you lead through your quiet examples...as testified by wuboy and drew. Definitely looking forward to this.

Aside from being welcomed into the committee and having a wonderful meal at Mark's place it was refreshing to have all the guys shared both struggles and praises, all for the glory of God. So taking this initiative I would also like to share my struggle with my new relationship with my girlfriend and specifically time management.

Continue reading

Act Fast and Carry Cash Update

I finally got what I have been wanting for a few days now—the GRX Xmas banquet tickets. In my normal sneaky online fashion, I signed up on the wait list with two different email addresses. Ssshhh please don't tell the banquet committee.

What's the big deal anyway with the banquet? Well for one I missed last year having arrived at GRX in Jan. thus missing out on the ruckus. For another, I am looking forward to spending Christmas with my hunnie & homies. Okay but if you must know I will be donating some things to the banquet's silent auction and would like to see those go to better use, hopefully benefitting both the winner(s) and City Team Ministry.

Continue reading

Act Fast and Carry Cash

Last Thursday while reading away's blog about the Xmas banquet, I went ahead and clicked on the 'get your tickets online' link. I went through and submitted my information, placed one ticket order, then got redirected to a Paypal secured site to submit the rest of my credit card information. I thought I'd go back and buy another ticket for my sweetie. Then I decided to call her and make sure she hasn't bought the ticket.

After talking to her about it and seeing that there are back to back parties that weekend (Sands company party) I decided to go ahead and purchase the tickets. Somehow at this point I never went ahead and completely finished the order.

The weekend rolled by and after service on Sunday I approached the Xmas banquet ticket booth but didn't have enough cash on hand to buy two tickets. I talked to one person at the booth about ordering them online before midnight on Sunday and he enthusiastically said, "yes you can." At around 11:00pm Sunday night when I tried the Xmas banquet link I got this: "Tickets are sold out". I was really looking forward to going, too.

GRX 2005 All In Retreat

After work last Friday I left my office to pick Sandy up for our church's annual retreat. [*Ahem*Arv*ahem* yes we are "an item" to your question.] After debating whether dinner would be Baja Fresh or New Tung Kee Noodles, we opted for noodles. According to Sandy it has been two years since she's eaten at the venerable NTK. Uh huh. Sure. =)

After dinner we drove towards Watsonville for the Koinonia Conference Grounds. We passed the time during the difficult drive by singing along to the All In Retreat CD. My girlfriend without realizing that she was being scrutinized for her "Navigator's test" handled it fairly well, helping me getting from Cupertino to the campground without getting lost. We got there in forty minutes. Thanks for being patient with my demands request for directions Sandy.

Continue reading

Congrats Jerusalem Lions

Congrats to the Jerusalem Lions for winning the Fall 2005 Championships!

Continue reading

Pale Blue Dot

Sometimes we forget how big God is. Or rather we don't want to feel how small we are compared to God. During Chris Tomlin's "Indescribable Tour", a speaker—Louis Giglio— talked about our place in the Universe from God's POV. The thumbnail image on the left inside that ray of light is a speck called the "Pale Blue Dot". That's Earth from four billion miles away taken by Voyager 1.

Carl "Billions and Billions of Stars" Sagan wrote about this on his Reflections on a Mote of Dust.

This, a psalmist's reflection: Psalm 8:3-4.

Images courtesy of Planetary Photojournal.

Jerusalem Lions Walk

You know that scene with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx where they are playing Kayne West's "Jesus Walk" song in the trailer of Jarhead—well that is the sort of song I have in mind for this post. Why? Haha Jerusalem Lions are going to the Championship of GRX Hoops ministry!

Finally after having all of the captains predicted us to go last (10-1 odds) it is even more sweeter to go play this weekend. Well to be fair two of my best players were "Dark Horse"—Darryll Burgess and Kenneth Lee. Please come out to Lynbrook High to watch what will be a good game if not a great game between us Lions and Nick Fan's Jordan Gazelles. Here is the direction if you want to come watch. Game time at 7:50pm Sunday night.

The only downside that night is that Sandy won't be able to witness a great game. Have fun in Hawaii Sands. Will miss you on the court.

Bom bom bom bom BUM bom...

We Are A Bible Study Group

Our SG had an outing at a comedy club in Sunnyvale last night. When we got there it was fairly empty. And being the only Asians (minus Heather) we decided "lets get a table next to the stage, in the front row." Sure enough someone from another smallgroup mentioned, "are we going to be pick on?" What a naive question...of course!

So for the rest of the night there were a total of 4 stand-up comic acts. The first person was this Jewish girl from S.F. and she was pretty un-funny. Okay...she was BAD! She talked about dating, life in S.F., and then she got around to us calling us the "Asian crowd except for one white girl."

Continue reading

Palo Alto Moonlight Run Results

This past Friday I got to participate in a unique event known as the Palo Alto Moonlight Run. Armed with my BofA statement that "proved" I registered, I approached the registration line with trepidation. You see my statement says that I paid for "Weekly Almanac", whereas my running/driving partner wuboy has a more legitimate printout.

Regardless I received my bib and sweatshirt for the event. For the next plus hour I am bib #886. But no doubt there is an electricity buzzing about in the air as runners of all age groups, shapes, and dress styles were stretching, running, and just ooh-ing and aah-ing in the middle of a baseball field. God does love variety, even when it comes to runners. As I walk around all these people, I wonder to myself if I was a parent would I be worry for my children among this chaos, getting ready to run.

Continue reading

Debriefing WCSGC: $%?#@@#!

A co-worker asked me when I got back from Chicago what I did there. Really I didn't know where to start. I told him it's a Christian conference. But it was much much more than that. It's about reaching out to a community, whatever that community may be. Survival within a community. The ups and down of life is "better in community." It's about growing up and facing our fears and flaws, to be honest about ourselves, to learn what it means to be...human. It's about grace revealed and hope restored that comes from the small group community...our small group community...MY small group community.

It's moments like these that I wish I have one of those photographic memories and can recall all the details of the 4 days I spent in the quiet suburbs of Schaumburg to the thriving lights of Chicago. I'll leave this short post with images captured albeit with my digitally extended "eyes". Enjoy.

No promises but I will try my best to "clear my brain". Just give me some time.

Not So Abundant Tickets

So it has come up in the GRX community that the Indescribable Tour in Palo Alto has been sold out due to the huge response. People I know are looking for ticket(s).

Here are the results of a recent wanted search for "chris tomlin" over at Craigslist:

On one such listing someone wrote this: “I'll pay you more than what you paid!”

Continue reading

Fall Launch Fiesta

I have to admit that there were times where our vision statement tried to capture way too many ideas for our small group. On top of that it was suggested that our vision statement sounded—well—too fobby. So we went back to work.

And a lot of work we did. Laughters, crazy conversations, crawling on all fours, taking naps, hot gun glueing, more crazy conversations...we all became designers, copy editors, and resourceful arts & crafts artists. The project took on a life of its own after the initial drawing, which evolved into something more elaborate and grand.

Continue reading

Presidio Trail Run Results

51:18. Not bad, not bad. I could have pushed it but I wanted to save my reserve for the last mile, which was a good thing. The funny thing was I fell into this pace with this girl and her boyfriend for the last half of the loop (last 3 miles), beginning at Crissy Field Beach. We definitely drafted each other. For the last mile I decided to take off. At the last quarter mile or so, they chased me and passed me across the finish line. Classic group run push and pull. It felt great.

Editor's Updated Note: My 10K Santa Cruz race time was 55:52. So I was able to shave 4:34 off on this run.

The weather in SF was perfect (in retrospect) for running, a little chilly and misty from the fog, mixed with the ocean breeze. In all there were thirteen of us who showed up for the run. One girl from our group placed second overall for her category, with a blistering 7.21 minute mile, crossing the finish line at 46 minutes or so. Nuts man nuts.

Reading Kat's blog regarding why we run kinda reminds me of that line in Batman Begins: "Why do we fall, sir? So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up." Why do we run? So we can run better/faster next time around.

Congratulations to Andrea Lindsay Kat Sharline Scott Viv Seth Anna Michelle Biddy Derek Francita!!!!! Can I get a WOOT WOOT!!!

GrX Dot Org Remix

As a designer the top priority in any design is focusing on your target audience. There are many examples of great user-centered websites, but where are these sites for a church? Church websites in general are community based not business based. This means information are presented differently: simple (quiet & gentle design NOT busy), appropriate logos and graphics, where news & events, conferences, blogs, forums, etc., are easily accessible. In addition to these examples the four things designers think about are:

• User Interface (information flow, user interaction)
• Layout (grid system, columns, navigation structures, accessibility)
• Graphic (visual, color, brandings)
• Typography (types/fonts, style rules)

Continue reading

Coldplay

My great weekend actually started Thurs.

DTR (Or when is it appropriate to Define The Relationship)

Thursday: Our wonderful Knot2Us small group facilitators unveiled a strategy to tip the unbalanced "singles" scale at GrX by having an all important orange color-coded bonfire night at Pacifica State beach. The location was chosen in order to minimize flirting as it's very difficult to figure out who's who in complete darkness...except for the randomn flickering fire...which in a way could be romantic — but I digress.

We discussed among many important topics such as: Do girls prefer an expensive diamond ring or a down payment for a condo/townhouse/house. The girls offered their insights: Why not an AND. Why does it have to be OR? They were joking, of course. Other important topics were: "How should women say 'No' when they're not interested." That is "How does a guy know his chance with a girl is one in a hundred or one in a million?" Progress was slow but we'll have an update on the "singles" scale with perhaps another round of discussion, where we'll try to answer more than three of the twenty prepared questions...in two hours.

Continue reading

Welcome Back: GrX Open Gym & Jen

Weekend Recap: Played Grx Hoops with Eugene, Dai, and Will. A bit overcrowded or a great turnout depending on how one views it.

Overheard On The Court

Will: "This is a high school court?"
Eugene: "That guy reminded me of me when I was tall and lanky." (Mumbling to myself: "He even looks like Eugene.")

Walking Towards Our Cars Afterward

Will: "What are those..?"
Eugene, Dai, Me: "Locker rooms mayynnnnn."
Eugene: "They go in the locker."

Continue reading

Eight Months Later

I'm not a believer of taking baby steps. I'd guess it depends on the situation but in general I'm more of a trial-by-fire type of guy. But lately it feels like I might be overextending just a bit — becoming core, taking leadership training classes, heading off to the mid-west for a conference, and training for my first marathon. Oh yeah...bring it!

Continue reading

Of Run and Friends

I placed this entry in the "FUN" categories because I tell 'ya it was fun. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the RunSFM (Run San Francisco Marathon) that occurred this Sunday. Granted our group only completed the 5K run the concensus seemed to be that everyone had a blast.

I think for me what made it fun was that we all came together a few days before to "train" for the race and the panicky feeling I had organizing it — time to meet, driving people, where to park, where to eat, driving back for late church services. We trained at different speeds and pace and some of us had second thoughts about running or training. And came Sunday everyone did pretty well. We were united with that common purpose of just having fun and you know not worry too much about the run. Before the run I prayed to God for our group for a fun run and that we all get across the finish line safely and He provided.

Continue reading

Boot Camp Wk 3

My feelings about leadership in general and spiritual leadership specifically is that it is an elusive quality. When I'm talking about characteristics of leaderships I compare it to "chemistry" in a relationship. Reason being in my life I haven't had much care or put that much thought into becoming a leader. If you're interested there are a giganormous number of books out there that will help on this topic.

A good example of someone in my life who has been a great leader is my high school badminton coach. Miss Buzdeiker — we used to call her "Buzz" — was a tough, disciplined, morally upright, warm, humorous, a genuinely caring person.

She saw in me what most people don't see at that lanky age of 14. She took me under her tutelage and pushed me hard to train, to not giving up believing in me, and to encourage me when the chips are down.

Continue reading

What If

There's a song on Coldplay's X&Y album called What If that got me to think back to what appropriately was approximately over a half year ago.

About half year ago, on January 2nd I got a called from an ex-coworker reminding me to visit GrX.

Every step that you take
could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
Thats the risk that you take

What if I never went through a difficult break up with my ex? Would I ever admit to God that I need help to get my life back on track?

What if my ex-coworker never called me and I never made the decision to go to GrX and I continued to attend the church in Foster City?

Continue reading

Boot Camp Wk 2

Second week of boot camp. Topic du jour: "How to Develop and Lead a Great Bible Study." Yah not the easiest subject and of course coming from Dave everything seems easy. (Note: Dave is the Lead pastor, very enthusiastic, and I think he studied theology and have gone to Fuller Theological Seminary (thanks Wuboy for the correction) Talbot School of Theology in SoCal.)

What did I learn given that we only have 1.5 hours to unpack and deconstruct this topic? Here are what I got from the class.

1. Methods
Two ways to approach breaking down a passage:
A. study the heck out of it. (Dave took 6 hours to come up with two study questions for the passages in Luke 23:26-49)
B. rely on commentaries and experts (G. Fee/D.Stuart)

Continue reading

Napa Valley Wine Tastings

Saturday: Napa Valley was amazing! A group of us — totalling ten — toured Beringer Winery, Mumm Napa, and V.Sattui for food and wine tasting. I bought a bottle of 1999 Leaning Oak Cabernet Sauvignon and a case of "Sweet Six" (six bottles of wine). I don't drink wine that much but something about being there and seeing all the wines. Beringer makes 45 different types of wine. They have a Private Reserve Cabernet 2001 that is rated 96 points...cost? $100 per bottle.

Sunday: Church service and end of "Authenticity" Series. Lunch at Myung Dong. If you're looking for Korean food, you can't go wrong with Myung Dong. Their tofu dishes are really good and that's what I ordered — Soon Tofu with beef. Make sure to get the regular as the spicy is "super spicy." After lunch rested a bit than had a bike ride with Frank on Page Mill going towards Foothill Expressway. Swam and dinner at Drew with Jen, Sharline, Hank, and Eugene. A very awesome (and active) weekend as that's what weekends are for.

Quatre Fantastique

Saw Fantastic Four Sat night and some comments:

Since MIT is a private school, does that mean whenever MIT is mentioned in the script that they will get a royalty? (If I was the dean at CalTech, I would revitalize the CalTech brand to compete with MIT and push for screenwriters to use CalTech as the top engineering school.)

Jessica Alba's Sue Storm is younger looking than Chris Evan's Johnny Storm. Also why can't they find someone at least resembling each other to play siblings.

Jessica Alba went to MIT and became the top researcher for Victor Von Doom. Believable? LET'S not!

Stan Lee must be loving it, appearing as a mailman in one scene. Does anyone know if every Marvel films so far has Stan Lee as a cameo? Now that's paying respect to the Godfather of comic books.

Continue reading

Growing In Christ

I have been feeling like an island at work, not really sharing on spending time with my co-workers. Specifically Thurs. at work used to be Hoop thursday. It's a chance to play hoops and bond with the guys here at work.

Until pride got in the way.

** Disclaimer ** It's okay. I'm not gossiping per se as I've prayed to God about it as well as to spoken to my Christian friends about it. Still I can't help thinking how my feelings and pride got in the way of reconciliation and forgiveness. Or rather is seems much easier to come to terms with "bridge building" when both parties are on the "same page".

Continue reading

Who's Generous?

According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Bush has been outperforming President Clinton on donations to help reduce poverty in Africa. Apparently even Bono of U2 and Bob Geldof has been acknowledging that the US "has hardly been stingy".

Also in the same article the US contributes to a Global Fund that fights AIDS and other diseases in the developing world. With the fund capped at 33% for the US, $88 million was retained. The article didn't mention what it was being retained for. Since I'm currently reading God's Politics, I'm wondering if George Bush is doing anything for poor people here in America.

Continue reading

Raise The Roof

I have been quite busy lately both at work and at thinking about redesigning the backstage blogging site (see below). After several attempts at originality both in design and CSS code I have decided to put the re-design idea on the backburner. Work, church, and community service as well as interest in doing all things outdoor has taken up most of my time.

A (Very) Brief History of (My) Time

Continue reading

Shoe Stories

What do you think shoes would say about their owners if they could talk? Someone at GrX proposed this question and made a short video to introduce a new seven week series on Authenticity, the Journey of Recovery.

Continue reading

GrX Missions Worship Night

Awhile back I had a discussion with my brother about Hotel Rwanda. He mentioned what a privilege we have living in the US. He qualified this statement by saying how his friends were shocked that he doesn't lock his door sometimes when he's running his errands. Contrasted that with the poverty and tension in some of these third world countries and my brother and I are both glad for our middle class existence here.

We complained about our state of affairs here, yet there are people who live in shanties and walk up and down dirt roads. These are the conditions that some of the people at GrX will have to deal with as they're heading to various places to serve God on their short term missions. Some of the missions are in Mongolia, China, Thailand, and Mexico. I know some of the missionaries that are going, too.

Continue reading

Lessons from Memorial Days

So the long weekend is over and it left me thinking about friendships and community. Friendships since a recent conversation was about my lasting frienships with a couple of high school buds. Our friendships go back to 20 years. There is something nice about that, like we have endured the silliness and now we can just sit down to serenely catch up on things without a need to compare status quo. Gone are the days when we tried to one-upped each others.

Instead we have gotten to a point where we can just listen about what's going on in our lives — renovating the house, our fallen idealism of our so-called educareer, gardening, pets, hobbies that keep our life interesting AND sane, relationships, home (home is where the heart is), and our ongoing friendships. Call me a sentimentalist but I would love to be stuck on an island with these group of buds, something to bbq, and some interesting conversations.

Continue reading

One-upmanship

We live in a culture that is one-up all the time. One-upmanship leads to corporations like Enron, Worldcom and ImClone. On a smaller scale one-upmanship leads to unhealthy interest in material goods (keeping up with the Joneses), backstabbing at the office, and the level of competitiveness in sports.

Take our GrX Hoops league. We Christians can be "oh so civilized" off the court, but get us on the court and it's a different story. Basic Christians concept such as mercy doesn't really apply when the final score tallied 85 to 28. On our team, one of the most competitive guy is our home church's Pastor Andy.

Continue reading

Prison ball

Ever since Pastor Dave talked about GrX and its place in the community, I have been thinking about what it means to be in a community. I have also been praying to God about what I can do to serve the GrX community. About a month ago I signed up to play "Prison Ball." However I wasn't very convicted having learned later on that we were to play at San Quentin maximum security prison.

Continue reading

Life on life...

Yo fellow bloggers...

Last time I blogged it was mostly me talking about how I seemed somewhat drifted — alright completely drifted from my walk with the Lord.

Fast forward to today and well I can say I'm opening myself up now and revealing my thoughts and praying more to God. What allowed this is just self discipline...which I have to confess I'm not very good at. Sometimes, as a young Christian I feel that God isn't around like my parents (or in this case my dad) to discipline me if I misbehaved.

Continue reading

Spiritual time

Have you ever noticed that your walk with God suffers when you're busy and your schedules take up ALL your time.

I missed having quiet time with the Lord where I can just have peace and quiet and concentrate on discerning His will for me. I noticed that lately I have been slipping spiritually, not reading Scripture and praying as often.

Continue reading

SG fun night

Last night was my first fun night with my s.g. We gathered and hand made our dinner (which in most cases is provided by one person). Dinner in this case is a concoction of sushi and "spam musubi".

Afterward for entertainment we watched "National Treasure" and made cards for Mothers Day.

Continue reading

Sending a friend off

Sending someone off is never easy and you hope the person will do well wherever it is they're heading off to. The wisdom is that with proper logistical planning the person will at least get there with enough to survive.

Having say that last night a bunch of us got together to said "fare thee well" to a friend who is heading off to Boston or Chicago, depending on his interview with a certain economic research company at Boston. When asked why having grown up in the West Coast he would move to the East coast or Midwest, AT's respond was, "a change of scenery. There comes a time when a man needs to be on his own." Much respect for AT. Good luck AT.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

Continue reading