Want to remember this later

DT for Friday 1/4/13

Genesis 13:16 "I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted"

Genesis 14:22-23 "I have lifted my hands to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, 'I have made Abram rich'"

Genesis 15:1 "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great"

Genesis 15:6 "And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness"

Reading about Abram inspires me and warns me at the same time. When Abram is offered the goods by the king of Sodom, he rejects, showing his dependence on God and not on man. I think about just in the current world, how I would react to something like this. The goods that were offered to Abram were probably very valuable, not just couple dollars here. I would have probably gladly accepted, just thinking of it as a reward on the side. It wouldn't hurt to accept the gift that the king is giving to me, out of respect, I would have taken it. But seeing how Abram rejected those gifts made me wonder why I would take those goods and not Abram. All I see inside of me is selfishness, not seeing how God really provides. If God really does provide, then I don't need any reward from the earth. If Abram were to accept the goods, then he isn't trusting God wholly. It would be something like God thank you for providing, but here's something for myself as a reward for what I did on earth. His response in 14:22 seems very admirable. I have given full surrender to God, and I don't need those goods, but through God, who is the provider of all things, I can live. I wish to have that kind of attitude when similar opportunities come up, and I can surrender to God. Turn all glory to God.

I guess continuing this same theme, God tells Abram to not fear for God is his shield, and that his reward shall be very great. God affirms Abram that his reward will be great. This wouldn't have happened if he turned to temporary rewards of what the king gave him. Nothing that I gain on this earth will matter in the future, yet I still seem to hold on to idols of this world. God promises me that the reward will be great if I am to follow his ways. This seems so clear, but it seems like I still worry. Worries of money and future. These seem to be a recurring thing in my life. I still see myself reluctant to put money in the offering basket, especially at home, and I still see myself wanting to pay for younger students, but something screaming at me to stop. I want to go where my heart goes. Even though God has made it VERY clear that he provides through numerous instances, I still want to control things on my own. I must say that I am slowly letting go and letting God control, but I just don't understand why I keep on holding on even though the message is clear that God provides. It just indicates my lack of trust even though the evidence is clear. I guess I'm still stubborn that I need to do things on my own. As I see Abram's response, I want to emulate that. "He believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness." Abram believed that God will provide, and even though things seem uncertain to him, such as whether he'll have an offspring or not, but he believed in the Lord. I want to be like that, where I can fully let go of control. 

In Chapter 16, the actions of Abram warns me. I think he was a little impatient about his heir, so he hastily listens to Sarai to gain an heir. Even though God said in the beginning that he will make Abram's offsprings as the dust of the earth, meaning there will be countless number of offsprings, Abram just forgot about that. Often times, I do this too. I do this all the time. Through numerous experiences and messages, God has told me in numerous specific areas that He does provide. I just forget and become impatient with it. It's about God's timing and not mine. 

Psalm 4:2 "How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?"

Psalm 4:7 "You have put more joy in my heart that they have when their grain and wine abound"

This psalm seems fitting after my reflection on this section of Genesis. How long will I love VAIN words and seek after LIES? These vain words of promise that I will be successful when I depend on myself. These lies of the world that if I store up for myself, I will be secure. How long will I do this? Answer is so clear that God's ways are so much better than my ways. This has been the message of my life in college. God's ways are so much better than this. I hope that this message will be true in my life in the next semester and more.

Finally, Psalm 4:7 summarizes this past semester for me. I have realized the mundane and lifeless lifestyle of the real world. I look back to this past semester and think of what things I remember or what things brought me joy. It wasn't the cs project that I finally finished after 50 hours. It wasn't the paycheck that I received every month. It wasn't the internship I received, nor it was getting an A on this test. The things that were memorable and joyful were the times when I was hanging out with my peers, ministering to freshmen together, the Sierra Lodge trips with Freshmen, going to winterfest with bunch of freshmen and juniors, doing Course101 with Chris. Especially the last one, my joy in each week came from teaching God's heart and learning Chris's view on God. These were the most memorable from this semester. God has indeed put more joy in my heart than anything in the world could.

New Resolution

Ok, I am really going to do this every week. It's crazy how it's been a year since I've started this, having a new years resolution to start a blog. Although I haven't been too faithful in keeping up with it, I think I can do better this time. 1/1/13. These past few weeks have been a blessing. As the DT's guides my thoughts to what has been happening this past year, I can see how God has been working in me all these years. I can see how much I have matured in the past year alone.

Here are some ways that I have matured

The Bible as God's words and as our highest authority

-This past year has been the greatest year in me getting to know the Bible. Starting with SK1 in the spring semester, and junior discipleship in the fall semester, I have learned tremendously what God has been telling me all these years I went to church. I just can't believe how long it took me to get to where I am. God has been always speaking to me through the text, but I never realized the full potential of God's words. His words are truly the highest authority and contains so much wisdom. I have received the privilege of having this community teach the word in so much depth. I've been realizing this more and more as I come back home for breaks, and my knowledge of the Bible doesn't grow as much. The sermons that I hear here are nowhere in depth as the ones I hear in Berkeley. I just can't imagine that I have lived like this for the past 10 years I went to church. But more than looking at the past, I look at how much there is in store for me. With just one year, I have come to where I am now. I am nowhere near complete, but I have so much more year to learn about God's words. I am really excited to master God's words and have more knowledge. Truly as Psalm 119:105 says Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. Countless times I've experienced being lost, but God provided me with his words a light for my path. Whenever I'm struggling with anxieties or sins of lust, God's words provide a way out and guide me to holiness. And Hebrews 4:12 became more true for me as I have been realizing more and more about myself as the Bible points out the different flaws in me. It is truly a double-edged sword as it is a powerful weapon as well as a powerful indicator of my sins.

Personally experiencing and testifying to God's grace

-Truly, this year has been a blessing as I am realizing more and more of how sinful I am. God's grace is becoming more real. Before, I thought I understood what grace meant. I thought grace meant that God was so generous that he sent his only son to die for our sins. That is true, but it had no personal effect. Now grace means that I am helpless in my battle against sin because I keep falling and falling. Without grace, I am hopeless and I cannot save myself. But God, who was so gracious, loved me so much that He had no choice to send his son to die for us on the cross. Jesus Christ died for my sins and what I had done to Him, the very people who were nailing on the cross. That's what grace is. Ephesians 2:8-9. For it is by grace that I have been saved, not by my works because my works are evil. This past year, I've experienced many sinful things, especially with relationship with sisters, shallowness, self-deception. I've been realizing how shallow I am in terms of my thoughts, reflection upon DT's or messages. Because of my shallowness, the understanding doesn't' stick that long. That is why I have hard time remembering messages or DT's. It's because I don't reflect enough. God's grace is amazing and I wish to experience that more.

Being Faithful in Spiritual Discipline

-I have grown to be more disciplined this past year. In the beginning of the year, I still didn't see the full power of DT's. I still wasn't fully disciplined in doing DTs everyday. Over the course of the year, I learned how to do DTs, how to reflect deeper, and how to arrive at a personal connection with the Word. I can't believe that it was just a year ago that I didn't realize my sinfulness. It was only a year that I had this pride barrier blocking God from my life. I became more disciplined in reading and in reflecting. But still by the halfway point of the year, I hadn't fully understood reflection. This past semester, I have learned what it means to reflect about my actions in regards to Biblical truths, making decisions according to the truths in the Bible. I have learned what it means to discern what is good and what is not pleasing to the Lord. Because I have just realized these truths, I am still not experienced with constantly reflecting about my actions and deciding based on the truths not by how I feel. But I want to grow in this area. Psalm 1:2 says that the psalmist meditates not he law day and night. I realize I don't do that. I mean sure I might meditate time to time about some verses, but I don't do this day and night. But as I meditate on the law day and night, those laws will be truths to me and be engrained in me. This means that I will be able ego better discern what is pleasing to the Lord. This break, I need to constantly do DT's and have those verses in my mind so that I may not sin against God

-Sharing God's heart for the lost

I have definitely grown in this area this past year as I think about the drastic contrast of Sophomore year and Junior year. I was mainly focused on myself Sophomore year as I grew in my own way, just focusing on myself, which was not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that I missed many opportunities to love the lost because I was too selfish, worried about myself. But as Junior year came along, I was more willing to take risks, love the younger ones more. As the gospels became truer for me, I saw the need of the gospel for the younger ones. Also, the urgency of the gospel to the younger ones became played a central role. I just didn't want to die the next day with a lot of regrets, which made me take more risks in inviting the freshmen, getting food, or just trying my best to love the freshmen. I definitely want to grow more in this area as my love for them isn't complete. There are a lot of others who have no heard about Christ, who are lost. And a lot more students that will come in the future. I pray that God will guide me in trying to love more and more people and figure out new ideas of evangelism. I think I need to grow more in the area of evangelism. Evangelism wasn't a strong point to begin with for me because I am naturally awkward and introverted with strangers. I need to get more experienced at it. I did grow this past semester in terms of evangelism. I wanted to go out and reach out to more people during welcome week, and throughout the semester, I did go visit the dorms for outreach. Although it wasn't very fruitful, I did gain things out of it. And also, I need to be more prayerful when I am evangelizing. Next semester seems like interesting as I'll be more equipped and more willing to create more memories with others. 

This is just only a few of the many topics that I reflected on. God is good, and I'm excited to see what has in store for me this coming year. 

Starting New

Man, seeing my post in the beginning of summer, I feel like I just wrote that post couple weeks ago. But two months have passed already. I just remember how excited I was to enter summer in Berkeley with a lot of training and a lot of fun. And my expectations were right!

So many things have happened. To quickly recap what happened over summer, I had Middle School Retreat for a weekend when I came back to Berkeley. The weekend after that, our life group had a Sierra Lodge day trip, and also a class day trip to Monterey Beach. On July 4th weekend, Junior Brothers had a Yosemite camping trip....(to Yosemite). It was pretty in-tents. And right after, I got to serve in Joy Camp, a camp for 2nd-3rd graders at Sierra Lodge. The weekend after that was our hosting of the World View Camp. And then the week after junior class went to Gualala for couple days.

During Middle School Retreat, which was only two days, we were pretty busy. We didn't have much time to prepare, but we had to play for praise, give an apologetics talk, a seminar on heroes of faith, and a panel. A lot to do, but not much time. I got to be part of praise and one of the apologetics topic, Relativism. As I was preparing for that talk, it went through a lot of revisions and a lot of tough times, EVEN getting it discarded completely the night before I was supposed to give the presentation. That night, I couldn't sleep that much because of nervousness and oh yea, I was sick too. I just remember praying that God will give me knowledge and guidance to speak about this topic well. What I realized was that I wasn't thinking about my audience when I was preparing for this talk. Because relativism is such a hard concept to understand even for college students, I had to be extra careful of how I presented it for middle school students. I realized how dependent I was of myself, and thinking too much about how I can present this topic well that I forgot what the true purpose of this talk was: to educate Middle School students. As it was getting discarded completely because of how convoluted it was, I prayed and realized that God needs to speak through me not me speaking out of my own strength. In the car ride up, Irene helped me make my presentation a little more simple and more digestible for the middle schoolers, and when we got up the Sierra Lodge, although it was finished, I wasn't prepared to present it that night. And I REALLY have a hard time speaking in front of a large crowd of people even though I'm passionate about that topic. My voice gets trembly and I get nervous. When I went up though, that fear just disappeared, and I was speaking very smoothly. I'm not sure what happened, but even though I didn't practice that much, everything was flowing well through my mouth, and I knew that God was speaking through me. Apparently, according to the audience, it was digestible. So it was a success for God. Another exciting thing about Middle School Retreat is the praise of course. The students are so excited for praise that it's a whole another experience for the praise team. As I said in the previous post, I got to play the electric guitar, and it was pretty fun. Even though I was horrible, just the fact that it was loud and powerful made it sound ok. One thing I regret about this trip is not being able to spend time with the students as much. Because we were in a time crunch all the time for lack of preparation days, their play time had to be our prep time. It was necessary, and the results came out to be powerful, but I just wished we had started earlier and got to spread the love to the students by interacting with them. But I mean the timing of the retreat wasn't too optimal for us to do that, but I'm still glad to be able to serve in this area.

Another area that I got to serve in was Joy Camp. It is basically a retreat for 2nd and 3rd graders. Some of the students from SFSU and Berkeley received the opportunity to serve. Luckily, for this camp, we had two weeks to prepare, and we had a lot of time to play with the kids and show some love. Especially because they are 2nd and 3rd graders, they have short attention spans. So basically, a lot of the day was spent playing games or just going somewhere for the whole day, such as Sand Harbor, which is a beautiful place by the way. There were three student messages and skits to go along with each message for a more interactive and engaging message. I was in charge of one of the day's scripts for the skit and also the campfire. My script-writing was eventually refined and modified by the staff, but it was an interesting experience to write a script. It is pretty hard though. Also, like I said, I was in charge of the campfire, basically preparing different songs and practicing so that I can lead the time of campfire. I am naturally not an energetic person who doesn't really get excited about a lot of things. Well, let me rephrase that, I don't show my excitement that much, but for campfire, I had to be especially excited and lead the time of excitement so that the students have a memorable night with fun and songs. I was a little scared because I'm not that great at guitar playing and I am not really good at singing and I can't even sing loudly, but the time turned out ok. It turns out kids just like singing really loudly and shouting, so they couldn't even hear my guitar playing and I didn't have to sing that loudly either. I thought that was good. It was just amazing to see how just having fun with them and spending a lot of time with them is a way to show God's love to them. They experienced a lot of joy and a lot of attention. Although I still don't like teaching little kids (I think they won't retain anything), I still grew a heart for them. They are young and innocent, and they need a lot of guidance to go in the right direction. I'm glad for what I got to experience because I got close to a lot of the SFSU Koinonia ministry and a lot of the Joyland teachers. I truly experienced the power of the gospel, bringing people together.

Along with all the fun trips, the thing that was most exciting for me probably was Advanced Course 101. I got to be trained to teach Course101. This is what I have been wanting to do for a long time. Even though I am inadequate and I have a lot more knowledge to gain, I love teaching. I love teaching about what I love. There are few things that I get excited about, and this is one of them. Each week, we got together after making an outline of the weeks, and got in small groups to teach each section of the topic for that week. And then, the staff would give us feed back or ask us some challenging questions that might arise from that week. There's a lot that I have to prepare before I can lead one, but I am still excited.

Summer was filled with a lot of fun and a lot of training, which is what I prayed for in the beginning.  I am so excited for the new semester. It's like starting new again after some stormy sophomore year, learning a lot about myself. I'm excited for what God has in store for me and all of my peers.

Beginning and the End

Summer started...three weeks ago. Now is the beginning of summer, and also the end of summer. I would say a new beginning.

The three weeks I was in SoCal can be summarized into two words, relaxing and busy. Seemingly contradictory words both describe the summer days that I experienced. Some of the days, I went to my mom's work for the whole day, being my mom's assistant. It still amazes me how she can do this job by herself. At the same time, it's encouraging to see that she likes the job she's doing, and the business is getting better and better. The other times that I didn't go to my mom's work, I would be stuck at home because I had no car to drive and places were too far to walk. Those times were pretty relaxing because I just stayed home all day. My day would consist of sleeping, eating, reading a book, playing guitar, learning android programming, or watching basketball. Ok....it was pretty relaxing, but it started to get boring after a while. I would have SO much time throughout the day, just doing my own stuff at home, trying new things and repeating the same things over and over again.

What I'm glad though during those times, is that I didn't stay idle. Like I prayed in the beginning of summer...beginning beginning of summer, I occupied myself with doing things instead of just sitting on the computer thinking of what to do for 3 hours, eat, and sit around again. I guess it helped that I had books to read and things to learn. I started reading Shadow of the Almighty, a story of Jim Elliott. It is pretty inspiring to see how much faith he had in God. All his actions clearly revolve around God, and he is with God. Along with that, I had to prepare for Middle School Retreat, which is happening on the 16th and 17th. Because I am playing electric guitar for the band, I had to practice a lot....since I don't really know how to play electric. I guess it's a good motivation to learn. Also, NBA Playoffs are going on, so I got to watch that. Finally, my internship starts this week, so I had to prepare for that by watching online videos of android programming tutorial. Man, that's a lot of stuff. I'm glad that God provided me with all these things for me to do rather than just sitting idle in front of the computer.

After three weeks of that, I started to get bored. But I guess it was a perfect timing, since I came back to Berkeley now. That was the relaxing part of summer, where I can bum around at home...well more like stuck at home. Now, that summer ended. And a new summer is beginning in Berkeley. I'm looking forward to this summer, showing love to younger brothers and getting closer to everyone. I mean I already hosted an incoming freshmen before his CalSo, and he enjoyed it. There will be more people staying at our place over the summer, including Monica's little brother. I'm excited. It is indeed a new beginning. I know I don't show much excitement, but this is one thing I am excited about. Plus, the recent sunday service messages really spoke to me. It was about being cynical, and how deadly it is. I know how deadly it is because I experienced that a lot last year. What if this person thinks this way? What if they don't want to eat lunch when I ask? Eventually discouraging me to reaching out to other people. But not anymore. I gain strength through my God, and he will protect me and guard my heart.

Philippians 4:7 "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus"

End of the Year

I fail at this.

So much have changed since last time I wrote a post. I ended half of my college years. Soon enough, graduations are going to come around and I'll be the one walking while my name is being called. That's pretty crazy.

Going back to dead week, I was pretty lazy and refusing to study. I kept up with all my work (most of my classes), and I was doing well in all of my classes. There was no point in me trying too hard especially because I didn't really care about getting an A. Not that I didn't mind not getting an A. My pride would probably be hurt, but then again, I just reasoned with myself that I don't need to get an A because I am a CS major, and grades don't matter too much with experience. While I was feeling this, I never bothered studying and always had no motivation to study. While I tried to study at DL, I got distracted in 10 minutes and walked around to see what other people were doing. In my heart, I was feeling that I should study because I want to get an A, but intellectually, I kept refuting myself and proving myself wrong that I don't have to study. I probably was going to be ok, but I felt somewhat frustrated that I didn't have enough motivation.

One day, I just wanted to gain more motivation and let my leader know about this, and he unexpectedly called me right away. I wasn't really expecting a response, but I'm glad that he did because I was motivated to study after talking to Joe for 15 minutes. One of the things he said was that diligence in one area leads to diligence in another. So if I am lazy about my studies, I am more likely to be lazy in my spiritual area. Another thing he said was to use what God gave you as much leverage as you can. What he meant by that is that God gave each one of us different talents and different strengths. It is our responsibility to cultivate that and use it for God's kingdom. The parable of talents come into mind. Joe said that whether I go to Grad school or not, I should still try my best in my field because they need Christians in all fields. If I have higher authority in academics, then I'll have greater impact when talking to someone. This led to him talking about how if I am reaching out to freshmen next year or the years to come, I'll have a greater impact if I have a higher GPA and do well in my classes. Think about same EECS major GPA 3.2 and 3.7. I would listen to the guy with 3.7 more carefully, not that I am discriminating with GPAs, but it's just the inherent respect. In any case, he said that I should try my hardest in anything so I don't regret.

I guess this really inspired me to study more. This small talk made me want to get A's in my classes. I think the reasons why I didn't want to study were that one, I could probably get an A without studying; two, I didn't want to fail. I wanted to attribute my failure to my lack of effort if I were to fail. This has constantly been my struggle where I never want to seem like I failed. I wanted to say that the only reason I failed was that I didn't try hard enough. If I were to try harder, I probably could have done better. I know  that this is not a great thinking, and I should change. From now on, I want to try my hardest in every area so I am not lazy in other fields too.

So summer is here. Finals ended. I am back home in Irvine, and I have made some commitments that I want to keep for the summer. I am not going to waste time sitting idle like I usually do. One thing I wanted to do was read through the gospels because if I want to spread the gospel, I have to know fully about the gospel right? And another thing is I want to read other books, such as the Shadow of the Almighty.

One cool thing that I'll be doing over summer while I am back in Irvine is do something with my home church. Some of us from Gracepoint who went to my home church thought that our youth group needed something more substantial. Like I explained in the earlier post, the youth students are just going to church and thinking that they are Christians because they go to church. When the pastor speaks or they have bible studies, I'm sure it goes through one year and out the other. Just thinking back when I was in youth, I did the same thing. I didn't know what being a Christian meant or didn't know how to view my relationship with God, if I even thought that it was a personal relationship. Knowing this, we wanted to start a Course101/SK1/other stuff course to promote independence in the youth students that they'll never be complacent in their spiritual growth. The short time I am here, I can contribute, and Lloyd, who is staying down here the entire summer, is going to try to do it every Friday. It seems exciting to do something like this, actually being proactive about what I saw during Spring Break.

I pray that God will speak through us and use us to spark the interest of the youth students. There needs to be a lot of preparation done, but I pray that God will provide, and he will prepare the hearts of the youth students.

One quote that I liked that I read this week. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

Spring Break

Spring break was this week. As I am about to go back to Berkeley later today, I don't know what to say about spring break. I fear people asking me "How was your spring break?" I don't want to give such a boring answer, "It was good," or "It was relaxing," but at the same time I don't want to give a full out long answer to bore them to death or anything. I'm sure people who are asking are probably just expecting those kinds of short answers. The truth is, I didn't have just such a good or relaxing spring break. In fact, my spring break was full of adventure, very fun at times, and other times were.....hm.....disappointing.

On Friday night (when spring break started), 12 of the Koinonia sophomore brothers and 3 staff went on a SoCal trip. We drove about 2 hours to San Luis Obispo first and stayed at a hotel there. Then, we decided to go on a night hike nearby, and it was pretty amazing. I love going on night hikes; it's very peaceful and relaxing even though the hike was pretty steep. I love the view once you get to the top and just staring at the stars at the peak of the hike. We did the very exact thing that I love about night hikes! However, as we got to the peak, there wasn't much view to see. It was like a power generator or something at the top, which was somewhat disappointing. But, we did sit down at a nearby grassy area and stared at the sky for a while. After a while, someone decided that we should sing, so we sang Amazing Grace. I have to say, it was a pretty amazing reflecting on God's creations and singing hymns to God at the same time. One more thing I like about hikes is that I get to talk to whoever I want about private matters in a public setting. I like talking to people one on one, but I always lose the opportunity. During a hike, everyone is either paired up or in a group, so it is easy to just talk to someone. I talked to Alex when I was coming down. Even though the hike was not too long, maybe 10-15 minutes, I had a nice conversation with him.

The next morning. We were about to go to Santa Barbara beach to hang out there, but we decided to just stay in SLO at a nearby beach because it was very empty. We didn't want to risk the fact that the beach would be full, and we wouldn't be able to do manly stuff, like playing sports. Well, first, we did a Mark Inductive at the beach, which was pretty nice except the wind. Listening to the waves crashing while reflecting on God's words and discussing with fellow brothers, I had a blessed time. Here are some pictures. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/68938658@N04/sets/72157629335037874/). Afterwards, we just played around at the beach, playing football, volleyball, rugby, and even sumo wrestling. Then, we tried to do a human pyramid with 15 people, but it didn't go too well. Even though I like these types of manly stuff, sometimes I wish I can just sit down and enjoy the beach. I wished we would have done more peaceful stuff, just taking fun pictures or sitting down. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I'm a Beach person rather than a Mountain person. You know those questions, "Would you rather go to a beach or a mountain." I always say beach, but it has to be an empty beach or sort of empty. I want to just sit down and stare in the distance. It is very peaceful. But yea, instead we played a lot of sports, but that was fun too. After a while, we headed down to our final destination, LA korean bbq. We met our peer sisters there at the korean BBQ place, and we ate a lot of food.

Overall, I would say the trip was pretty fun. There weren't any injuries or feelings hurt. Everyone had fun and got sunburnt. And everyone had a nice bonding experience.

On Monday of spring break, I met up with Alex, Gerald, Alec, and Wooky at a Korean BBQ restaurant in Irvine, called Gen. It was Alec's first time eating Korean BBQ, so we had to take him to a nice place. We destroyed that place pretty much. For five of us, we ate 24 plates of different kinds of meat, and 6 bowls of different soup, and 5 bowls of rice, not to mention the different side dishes that we kept ordering. The meat was in good quality, too. I kind of felt bad for the animals that were dying because of it though. The reason is that we ate so many varieties of meat there. Oh, that's one good thing about Gen. It has A LOT of variety that you can choose from, rather than the plain, old, but amazing, brisket and pork belly. We ate like cow tongue, cow belly, small intestines, and more. Afterwards, we went to Guppy House to get a "small" shaved ice. I say, "small," because that thing was HUGE. It's supposed to feed 4-6 people, and yea it did.

So yea, those were the more fun and exciting adventures of spring break. Now to less fun and exciting. I mean it was still fun and exciting, but I don't know. I guess it was tiring too.

Next few days, I decided to help out with my mom at work. My mom works at an Albertsons Sushi corner. It's a small business within Albertsons that we own, and basically, my mom makes different rolls and packages them to sell. I went last time during winter break, and it was pretty tiring. She has to constantly roll, but at the same time, she has to restock for the next day, prepare the crab meat/spicy tuna/raw fish, clean up, and a lot more. It's definitely a two-person job, but I'm not sure how my mom is handling by herself since September. I mean I guess it's do-able with one person, but it would be a lot easier if there were two people. So when we got there, we had to stock the display as fast as we can because a lot of people come around lunch time...to get their lunch...makes sense right? So we got there around 930, and had to prepare a lot of stuff, and then rolled around 40 rolls until 2ish. Then, we had our lunch break and rested for a while until maybe 4. Basically from there, she rolls the ones that are missing from the display, so the customers have a full choice when they come around dinner time. At around 6 or 7, we do a final filling of the display, and then clean up and leave. That's basically the job that she does except I just didn't mention all the preparation that are needed, such as cutting up cucumbers, making wasabi, making crab meat/spicy tuna, making rice, frying dumplings, cutting up raw fish, and a lot more. That has to go on while she is making the rolls and serving the customers. I did a lot of the cleaning and the preparation things while my mom rolled most of it. BUT, I did get to roll a lot :) I think in a day, I got to make around 10 rolls, while my mom made about 60. Each day, we average around 60-70 rolls. I was pretty proud of myself making those California Rolls and topping rolls and more. Even though it was tiring, just thinking about how my mom does this 6 days a week, and by herself, made me work harder and appreciate what she does. So this was a fun adventure, yet tiring. It was interesting going to her work and experiencing her life. I think she is happier though about this work because the hours are more flexible, it's our own business, and it's less tiring than being a waitress. I think she enjoys coming back home early. Also, she has some relationship with her customers too. There are some regulars who come everyday or every other day, and she knows them by name and knows what they want. I thought that was amazing seeing that she doesn't really know English that well. But seeing how she enjoys the work made me happier and seeing how she works hard made me want to work hard at school.

Finally, Friday. I didn't go to my mom's work because she told me to just rest and go to church later. It was a disappointing day. I got to see some of my high school friends. I guess I felt very disconnected from them. Just living as a Christian for a while, I see the sad life they are living, deluded by the world, and just deceiving themselves that they are happy. Maybe they are truly happy. Maybe because I see the other side of the world, I compare the two worlds together and decide which one is better in my preference. I do not know what it is, but I wish they are on the other side. I wonder if they will ever realize the truth in their lives. Also, I went to my youth group's bible study in the evening. Our youth group is falling apart. It kind of made me sad. We don't have a youth pastor anymore, no stable leaders, and not very many committed individuals. Because we don't have a pastor, our English Ministry pastor sort of leads the group, but it's mostly the staff taking care of the growth. 3 out of 4 staff are still in college, and one of them can only come down on the weekends. So it's pretty different from Gracepoint in that....well it's really different. I'm pretty sure it's not too different from when I was there in highschool, but now that I experienced Gracepoint, it kind of makes me sad looking at the youth. I feel like I really want to help in some way, but  at the same time, I don't know how much of a help I can be from far away. But what encourages me is that there are some individuals who are really seeking out the truth, and really wanting to have a relationship with God. Most people, I feel like, come to have fun and the message is just another thing. Christianity is just a Friday/Sunday thing. They really need a stronger foundation and some of the leaders need stronger foundation also. Just imagining, if I went to UCI or UCLA, I probably would have served as a leader. And knowing me back then, there's A LOT of differences between me now and me back then. And thinking about how that me back then could have led those youth students, I wouldn't want that right now. I'm sure the college students/staff need some kind of a growth also, but I mean what can I do. Just one more thing I should pray for.

Through this experience, I realized and became even more grateful of my leaders and never giving up on me even though I was so blinded to my sins. It's so funny looking back and how I thought I didn't need leaders to grow and how I can grow on my own, but leaders are truly important. Spiritual leaders that can guide me and always keep me accountable. Spirituals leaders who set examples and show me how to live a better Christian life.

Ephesians 4:11, "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers."
God didn't just appoint some random people to be teachers and pastors to be there for nothing. They are who I need in order for me to grow. I thank God for all my leaders, carefully placed in different places in my life.

First Post

I guess I haven't posted in a month even though I said I'll try to at least once a week. That failed as school work piled up and procrastination took over me. I would always think, "I can do this later. This is not that important," and a week always ends up passing quickly. Similarly, I've been becoming lazier and lazier about doing homework and going to class. I can feel myself waking up later and later or feeling like I don't want to get out of bed. This is what usually happens every semester around this time, but I was determined to change. Even though I feel like being lazy, I am constantly pushing myself (with the help of others) to not be lazy and get out of this loop. The truth is I don't like to be lazy either. So I am starting this again, so that I can constantly push myself to procrastinate less and be on top of things.

Starting couple weeks ago, I realized that I wasn't very reflective. Well, I knew this from before, and part of the reason why I started this blog was because of that reason. But, starting last week, I felt the need to push myself to be more reflective. As I was in DT groups and sharing about how God spoke to me, there was something not full about my sharing compared to other people who shared after me. In a way, I was a little jealous and envious towards the people who were able to share really well, but most of all, I was frustrated at myself for not being able to reflect. I began to feel more distant from God, and there was this conflict between what I wanted to do and what I was able to do. What I wanted to do was to reflect and dig deeper, but what I was able to do was just reach a dead end while reflecting.

I'm glad that I confronted my leader about this issue. All these times, I knew that I wasn't really reflecting too much, but I think my pride stopped me from approaching him and pretend that I was good. It was hard asking him for help. After service on one sunday, I was going to talk to him, but I became a coward and stopped myself. That would usually be the end of it when I wanted to talk to my leader, but this time it was different. I went back to him and asked for help. He sat me down and asked me a lot of questions about why I couldn't reflect or what I was doing. Most of the answers that I gave were "I don't know." I truly didn't know too much about myself.

He told me that he struggled with the same issue when he was a sophomore, and the thing that helped him reflect was to keep digging deeper and not being satisfied with the answer that I was giving. He walked me through some reflection questions that I can keep asking to myself to go deeper. What I had to do was settle on one topic and keep examining my thoughts and dig deeper by asking different questions. "What motives did I have when I did this?" "What are some specific ways that I am this?" "Why did I want to do this?" Then, he went through an example passage with me and asked me the same exact questions, and I was told to answer. By doing this, I could tell that I was reflecting better.

Honestly, this past few weeks have been hard in two ways. It was hard just reflecting and thinking of those questions constantly and not being satisfied with shallow answers. But it was hard when I DID reflect and revealed some parts of my thoughts. It really hurt my pride because I thought I was a good person, but by reflecting and examining different motives, I am truly evil inside. "For all have sinned and fall short of glory of God" -Romans 3:23. I am indeed a sinner.

Looking back, it wasn't that I didn't know about myself. It was that I didn't WANT to know about myself. I was always afraid of digging deeper and finding out the motives behind the things i did because I knew that I was evil inside. Now, I am not afraid to look inside because it has to be revealed in some way. Through that, though, God works in us to mature us and make us complete. I am happy that I am reflecting more. I still have long ways to go, but now I am not afraid.