The greatest adventure in my life thus far…

And so begins my time in Germany.

It’s pretty cool. I was reading through my journal the other day. I looked back to the very beginning where I wrote down the things that I wanted to see God do in my life this year. I think this will be the first one to be fully answered, “allow me to study abroad” 🙂

I actually arrived on the 22nd (though I was planning on arriving on the 21st) in Frankfurt to first visit my new friend Eileen at her university. I haven’t had much time to journal or rather blog in a coherent sense because the last few days have been relatively busy and I didn’t have wifi, making it difficult to write into a blog. I did however jot some notes on Word and all over the place. I’ll probably have to slowly update as I put thoughts together. Unfortunately,  I’m a pretty boring writer so I’ll try to include some pictures and bold certain things so you can just look at the pictures and jump over the rest.

I fit everything into my backpack… except the camera 🙂

Following the advice of my brother and Tynan, I have decided to make this 5 week adventure relatively luggage free. I have a Deuter 28L backpack which is sizable yet isn’t as big as the majority of hiking backpacks. Inside my pack contains 1 shirt, 1 tanktop, 2 sets of undergarments, jeans, a belt, PE shorts, toiletries (this includes 3 types of lotions), medicines, other feminine things… and then pens and pencils (as I will be taking classes), chargers for both cameras as well as my phone and laptop, my laptop, 2 books for my classes and a spiral for notes, my journal, my bible, a purse to carry around during the day, my water bottle, my wallet… and a few other random things like thank you cards and a first aid kit. I couldn’t fit the DSLR into my backpack without fear for its safety so I also brought the camera bag. I also brought my mini Winnie the Pooh my sister gave to me last year for my birthday. He’s been to SB and Canada, so I thought I would take him to Germany. Good thing he’s small enough to pack (see how he doesn’t take up any inside space) and large enough to not loose. I also brought this little tofu guy I recently got at the quarter machines at the Puente Hills mall. A group of my Genesis girls all got one and we all had matching colors (except Amy… sorry Amy). One of them is going to China, so I figured one should come to Germany.

Adventure 1: Stranded in Canada

So the plan was to fly into Toronto and connect to another flight to Frankfurt. There was a one hour gap. The first plane was delayed more than expected I guess because I missed the second flight. It was quite embarrassing really. I went to the connecting flights line to have my passport checked and all that. The guy looked at it and simply said “… did your plane already leave?” He then directed me to exit like everyone else. Sad. So I went almost all the way out and talked to the first Air Canada person I could find. The next flight to Frankfurt wasn’t until Tuesday at 5:30pm. They gave me a free room in the Hampton Inn and free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to make up for it. Not a big deal – being stranded in another country is fun and it gave me time to calm down before coming to Germany. I have to say though I was a little afraid. The first little hiccup in my plans. Oh well.

It was definitely something I’ve never done and this trip is really about things I’ve never done. I had a whole room and two twin beds to myself. So what did I do? I gchatted home 🙂 I also checked to see if there was anywhere I could go in the morning since the flight wasn’t until late… but apparently there is nothing within 20 minutes of the Toronto airport (unlike Vancouver where you can train yourself anywhere).

As fun as having a whole hotel room to yourself sounds, it was a little lonely, good thing Pooh and Tofu was there with me.

There was a nice set of everything ready for four people, but there were only 3 of us and only one of us uses a towl 😦 too bad. I wondered if the cleaning lady still had to wash everything. I hope not, that’s a huge waste of water. I tried to make sure they could tell the other bed and these towels were untouched.

Thanks to everyone to talked to me on g-chat that night, it was fun.

I like to call my second day of adventures the day of eating. On Monday I ate two bagels and a small bowl of oatmeal. I didn’t even get to eat an apple 😦 I missed lunch because of the first flight and then I missed dinner because the Hampton doesn’t offer dinner and the flight came in late anyway. I woke up relatively hungry on Tuesday. I went down to the complimentary breakfast and ate. A lot. It was almost a feeling of “I don’t  know when my next meal will be so I better eat all I can now”. I wasn’t sure which meals were offered on the plane and I wasn’t sure how the meal situation would work out since the Hampton didn’t serve meals. I made myself a waffle, had two omelets and had a bite of a muffin that I soon decided wasn’t worth eating. Then I took a nice long bath and thought about life.

Check out was at 12pm so I went back to the airport. I didn’t have much to do so I bought lunch. It took me about 3 hours to eat a roasted vegetable sandwich. Then I checked in and bought dinner. Instead of a real dinner I bought 6 muffins and a smoothie from Tim Horton’s. I only drank the smoothie and I couldn’t finish it. I basically ate 400 to 500% more food than on Monday and didn’t move at all. In the small times in between I walked around and read books from the airport stores. I saw that there was a larger selection of Christian books in the US airport than the Canadian on even though the Canadian store was larger and contained more books in general. I also noticed that the only Christian book the Canadian store had was The Shack which is of questionable integrity. In the US store I was able to read the first 6 chapters of 90 Minutes in Heaven and saw a few other books that we already own at home. I don’t know if that has any indication of the religious beliefs of either country, but perhaps it does. I didn’t have much interest in reading The Shack because it was a little dry in my opinion. I tend to be a little picky about writing styles.

Anyway, it’s 12am now which I deem now to be my bed time. I suppose all the posts on what is going on will be slowly uploaded and slowly written. You will probably hear about my flight to start my classes next week or the week after. I seem to have a lot to say because there seems to be a lot I want to remember about this trip. It is of course the greatest adventure in my life thus far. If you have any suggestions on how I might make this more interesting to you, let me know.

Prayer and Humility

On Monday, we (as in the graduating seniors on core) shared encouragements and other “wise things” to the new core for next year. This made me reflect on my past two years of ministry on core for AACF. What are the main things I’ve learned about leading? I would say that #1 I learned about prayer. Seeing as how someone else was at first planning on sharing about prayer I decided to choose another that is closely related, humility. Then I found out that person was no longer doing prayer… but my heart had already been reset to humility. So I tried to weave the two together a little. But 5 minutes is not very long to share about humility and prayer in full… so prayer only got a small paragraph. Anyway, I thought I would share in a tweaked version of what I shared.

We as Christians seek to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator. In other words, we seek to imitate Christ in all that we do. One of the key components of this transformation is the clothing of humility. Especially as leaders, we must humble ourselves before our almighty creator.

“⁹He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.” – Psalm 25:9

Now, I want to encourage you with something. This might not apply to you, but I think it helped me a lot when I went back to think about humility when I first started in ministry with AACF. I’ve seen many Christian leaders succumb to this depressed attitude because of their human sinfulness. I think for a lot of Christians, especially Asian Christians, there’s this feeling that being humble means not talking much, not insisting on our own opinions, and not taking a stand for ourselves, ya know, not thinking that we’re always right… but I think those are misconceptions. I think it’s similar to the theme of women’s ministry this year – to have a quiet and gentle spirit. In the same way that this doesn’t mean that all women should be week and hide in corners, humility doesn’t mean you down play yourself or just say the “right” things. I think there is such a thing as humble strength. If we look to Jesus, we see:

Philippians 2:3-11

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷ but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

And we think… WOW, if Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior made himself nothing, how much less nothing are we! Which is true… but the reaction is not to say “woe is me, I can do nothing for the kingdom of God, I’m just going quietly sit here and not make a scene”. But Christ was not like that! While he humbled himself before the Lord, he was strong in preaching truth. See, people try to learn humility through preoccupying themselves with their sin. We constantly bag on our sinful natures and how we are unworthy. It’s along the same lines of how we look to the cross and we mourn that Christ had to die for our sings, but then we forget to look up and say that “He has risen!”, “He has risen indeed” – we forget that not only die there crucified on the cross, but he also rose again on the third day. Christ defeated sin and we are no longer slaves to it.

The Christian experience becomes beautiful and blessed, when we realize how God is everything in life. We must embrace the sense of being nothing to make way for God to be everything. Through the awareness of our nothingness, we experience the richness of life through God. And this is the essence of true humility.

2 Corinthians 12:9,10

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ‘s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

The important thing is that we are not only week, but God has made us strong.

In these last two years on core, God and God alone has sustained me. Indeed, the secret to writing skits, organizing missions trips, and organizing events is this – prayer. When we come to God in desperate prayer, God helps us to humble our hearts and allow Him to run His ministry. If I were to do things myself, I would make a mess of things. Not only would I make a mess of things, but I would stress myself out, go crazy, and still make a mess of things. I have learned from experience. I encourage you –  pray for your ministry. Not just when there’s an event, not just when you feel stressed, but every week if not every day. If there is no prayer, if there is no reliance on God, then this is nothing more than a campus club and we are doing nothing more than entertaining people. It’s like Will said last week – God doesn’t need us, but it is our joy and privilege to be able to serve and to be able to pray.

I want to let you know that if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you believe that He died on the cross and rose on the third day. If you believe that He defeated sin, and if you desire to be with Him in heaven and live your earthly life for Him – then you have been made strong. So if you are leading a ministry, in a ministry, or just serving in the way God has called you, then remember – if you feel like you aren’t good enough, if you’re not equip, if you’re not ready, it’s ok because it’s not on you, it’s on Him. And if you feel all the weight on your shoulders because you are burdened with your ministry, then take the time to give the burden to God, because it’s His ministry and not yours alone. You being here means that God has indeed ordained you. That He has given you the authority to lead His ministry.

6am is early…

Even for me.

Although I was tired in the morning, for some reason it was never hard to get up. Through my morning prayers, God was faithful to me as I was faithful to hi. Each morning was a reminder of my commitment, reminder of my own failings, and a reminder of God’s sovereignty. Though in my grogginess I don’t know if my prayers were very “coherent”, but since God knows even the groans of my heart, I can put that word in quotes.

Here now is a summary of how I was blessed throughout the week:

Monday, which I blogged already, was like a wakeup call and reminder that God is my portion. The passages in Proverbs were like BLAM! Look at yourself, your spirit is broken, your heart is burdened, your soul is weary… but here, I AM.

On Tuesday I must admit I could barely stay awake. In fact I don’t think I did stay awake for the whole hour… and though I planned to do work after prayer, I crawled back into bed (this would be a trend continued for all days in which I had 10am class rather than 8am). It was one of those times where no matter how hard I tried o keep my eyes open, it was like my eyelids were heavy. Even as I was reading a line out loud, my eyes were still closing! I’m old. But somehow God still spoke to me. Near the end in desperation I opened my eyes super wide for a few seconds and my eyes locked onto one passage,

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Also on this day I fell asleep in lab and my professor noticed me since there’s only like 16 of us in the class :T I had been pinching my hand to keep myself awake. My hand was red, but I still fell asleep. I wish my friend sitting next to me had tapped me awake earlier, not just so that I wouldn’t get caught sleeping, but so I would have gotten to hear what he was talking about… I missed some good stuff L If you know me, I’m a student to likes to pay attention in class for the most part. Maybe I should clarify to my friends from now on that anytime I’m falling asleep in class or other places, please PLEASE wake me up. I don’t like going to things and falling asleep. The only time I like to sleep in the day is if I purposefully put my head on the desk during the 10 minute breaks in class, on my bed, and on the bus. That’s about it.

Wednesday and Thursday I stayed awake much better, but this time it was a test of how long I could pray for one thing. I must admit, I kind of failed. Not that I couldn’t continue praying for the same thing… but that I just really wanted to pray for other things. Also during these days God revealed to me sin in my heart. It’s interesting that even during a week committed to Him, it’s still possible to try to run away. I realized on these days that there aren’t a lot of sins in my life that I’ve caught that are like… physical sins that I can actually physically stop myself from doing. I mean, I guess at the root of them all, sins come from heart attitudes… though some manifest themselves more physically I guess. But anyway, in these mornings of praying for other things, I was also able to pray for God to help me overcome my sin. Through this time I realized how long it has been since I’ve come to God desperate for Him to change my heart and desires.  It’s good. I believe that sincerely asking God to cleans me and consume my heart so that no sin may enter… and coming before Him humbled knowing that my strength alone is not enough, it’s really putting my faith into practice. Like that one speaker said, actually sitting on the chair that I believed would hold me. And God is faithful.

The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.

And finally it’s Friday… Friday… finishing up with Friday. Hahaha, I woke up at 6am, and at 7am I went back to sleep 🙂 But yes … reflecting on the week of prayer, I truly have been blessed. There were times when I kind of felt like giving up… no one would really know anyway… but a commitment to God is a commitment to God. And having my yes be a yes and my no be a no has been something I’ve been working on. How fitting 🙂

It is a trap for a man to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider his vows

For Acts and Genesis we went to Answering the Atheist put on by Presence Ministry. Apologetics has always been something that interests me and though I study up on it a lot all that knowledge never seems to help me when explaining things to friends. It’s like everything just goes out the window. I was thinking it might be good to collect all my thoughts on paper (or online) or something so that it will be well prepared and thought out before hand.

I also found another good one to match this idea!

It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor be hasty and miss the way

And now I am very tired. Tonight I hope to get a lot of sleep 🙂

Tearing my robes

In the old testament, this seemed a common practice. To come and humble myself before an almighty God, desiring His presence and desiring to know His will … I feel like I should be tearing my robes. Of course though, a friend of mine pointed out that our clothes are probably harder to tear than they were back then, so my efforts might prove fruitless.

But I still think there is something to doing something out of the ordinary in times of desperation. Fasting is something I frequently enjoy. But this time… this time requires something different.

Yesterday Pastor Chan talked about how the Chinese congregations had started 6am prayer meetings to pray for the future of the church and other things. He talked about how directly after, he came under spiritual attack. He got into a pretty bad looking car accident and survived. Truly God protected him because his work for the Lord was not yet done.

Recently I had been talking to a friend of mine about being disciplined in seeking discipline, being accountable for seeking accountability, etc. Now I feel that God is pushing me to extreme discipline. In the situation that I am in, I need to humble myself more than I ever have before and need to seek God’s will more than I ever have before.

And so this week I have committed myself to an hour of prayer and devotion, 6am with the rest of the church to pray for God’s direction. It’s funny because after I decided this I found that this would be academically one of the busiest weeks. And a few minutes ago I found another assignment that is due tomorrow that I had entirely forgotten about. Now, would I call this spiritual warfare? Maybe, I don’t know, but it sure makes my commitment to God a lot harder.

In today’s devotion, verses that spoke most were:

Many are the plans in a man’s heat, but it is the LORD’S purpose that prevails.

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

A man lacking in judgment strikes hands in pledge and puts up security for his neighbor.

Post-pi day!

Happy belated pi day!

The yummy homemade pie I received from the friends across the hall while studying for finals (like the concrete design background behind the pies?

Compared to my day of boring, the last two days have been not boring.

Yesterday I was authoritative.
Today I am productive!
(following from my last post)

I helped a friend proctor a final. Pretty cool! I helped print out the packet of papers and bring them to the class. I wrote the time on the board and checked everyone’s ID’s to make sure they were who they said they were. I looked up every once in a while to make sure there was no cheating. I collected the papers as people finished their finals and walked out the door. I also directed all questions to the other proctor. No, I cannot answer questions about peer to peer programming despite my Google sweatshirt.

Today I finished up three classes, which is why I feel entitled now to do something other than work for a little while. This morning I took my final for concrete design. This afternoon our group finished our report of the design of an aerated lagoon waste water treatment plant. And just now my other group printed out our report on pre- and post-fire hydrologic modeling. Tomorrow the goal is to finish my research report. The likely hood of me attaining this goal is slim.

Meanwhile my apartment mate has been sleeping, shopping, sewing, and painting all day. Oh the pain of research papers.

Today I also ate the last of this monstrosity. It is my burnt and dry meatloaf.
Number of meals = 5.
Yes. This is how I eat during finals week.
Time to move to the next meat to eat for the next few days.
I must find a recipe for chicken.

Today I am a boring person

Today I am a boring person.

I stayed at school instead of going home so that I could meet with my project partners and work on my many many papers.

There is no one else in the apartment.

And today, I feel boring.

My desk is cluttered with engineer’s work. Doesn’t look too exciting.

Instead of doing interesting things, I did what usual college students do, I went on facebook for a long time. Really… really… it’s not that exciting. I don’t see why people do it all the time. In the end I have learned nothing and achieved nothing in such a long period of time.

I made a list of all the things that I need to do. What a boring list. I added to the list to remind myself to cook and eat. In my boring-ness I decided to listen to some music, but all the exciting music was too much to handle today. So instead I’m listening to boring music to match my mood.

I made some meatloaf. But today it was a loaf shape. No dogs, no whales, no hearts.

And then I overcooked it. It was dry and slightly burnt.

Our group didn’t finish our project, though it was the goal of the day.

The end.

Luke Study

I was never one to listen to podcasts of sermons… or really listen to any recorded sermon.

I tried before. I mean, it seemed like so many people loved listening to sermons, but no matter how many times I tried to listen I could never seem to pay attention because there wasn’t a person there standing in front of me talking and my mind would wander.  It’s also hard to keep my mind focused if there’s no visual. Perhaps that’s also why I don’t like talking on the phone either… not sure.

Anyway, recently God gave me a challenge.

At the AACF retreat this last weekend, Arthur Shieh spoke on Following God as He Wants to be Followed. He took us through Luke 14. He challenged us to go through the gospels and note every time Jesus gets angry – at who, why, where, when, etc. He also told us to go through Luke and note every time that Jesus interacts with the Pharisees. He also challenged us to look for Jesus’ secret to bringing people’s hearts to God… and ask ourselves what we’re missing now that people are so offended by the church instead of loved by it.

These already were pretty interesting challenges that I really wanted to take up.

And then God challenged me even more. He brought someone into my life that has been searching for God, yearning to have Him be real in her life. With prayer and the advice of my mom and another friend whom I highly respect, I decided that it would be cool to go through Luke with her so that we could take a close look at Christ’s life so that she would be able to see him as a real person and not just a historical character that other people talk about.

And as I started going through it… I realized how little I really know about Luke.

I’ve never read through the whole thing on my own. If you gave me a quote, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which gospel it was from. I didn’t really know much about the person Luke. I didn’t really know what set the different gospels apart from each other.

And so, with the advice of a person whom I respect, I decided to do something I’ve never done before. I looked up “grace to you”. I went to the section of resources and sermons and I began downloading  John MacArthur’s sermons on Luke.

So this Friday, for the first time I heard John MacArthur speak. For the first time, I listen to an audio sermon and paid attention the whole way through. And for the first time, I really thought about the character of Luke.

I pray that God will teach me some amazing things through my time of study and that He will give me the wisdom in leading my friend back to Christ 🙂

2011

Happy New Year!

For me, it always feels like this is when the year starts for me.

Every January 6th since my senior year of high school, I’ve devoted to God through fasting. It’s funny because after I made the promise, I’ve always felt like January 6th has been one of the worst day of the year for me to fast. It’s always around the time when friends are visiting LA and we want to take them around to eat. I always seem to have a lot of classes Thursday of winter quarter. There always seems to be some fun thing going on that I can’t do because I can’t eat (this may also be due to the fact that my roommate’s birthday is on the 7th). And this year I’m sick… so it would seem that not eating would probably make the being sick situation worse. On the 6th, many a time I’ve thought… why do I still keep it this day? Why don’t I choose a more fasting friendly day? Same idea right? Fast, spend time with God…

But then I thought… why does a day have to be fasting friendly? Why should my day of devotion be just what’s more convenient for me? So really, the idea is silly. God is number one.

Why did I choose this day? Well, on January 6, 2007 God took something away from me, something that was very important. And it hurt… it hurt so much more than I could have ever imagined. But it reminded me. It reminded me of God’s goodness and strength. During that time, God met with me and comforted me and reminded me that he is number one in my life (and for many good reasons). Without realizing it, things can easily become idols in my life. Whether it be school, people, things, and even my hopes and dreams can become idols. And so today. Today I fast and re-devote my self to God. Today I set my resolutions. I pray over my hopes for the year and my desires. I list out how I want to see God work.

And it’s cool. Today 2 things I’ve been praying hard for … for a long time were answered. For the last 2-3 weeks, I’ve been trying to contact these missions agencies… but neither of them were responding… I sent many e-mails and left messages. And then I just prayed. Today both of them contacted me at around the same time… at around lunch time.

Funny how God works.

It’s so good to be refreshed by God. Feels good to do some spiritual breathing. Breath out all the bad, breath in all the good. Refocus on our one and only Lord and Savior.

Painful Dreams

Nightmares.

It’s very rare that this happens, but I think I actually woke my self up today from the pain that I was having in my dream. In my dream, I was crying so hard, gnashing my teeth so hard that it hurt. I almost hurt as much as it did after I got my surgery. When I woke up I wasn’t crying, and my jaw didn’t really hurt… but I could still feel the imaginary physical pain lingering from my dream and the emotional pain weighing on my heart.

It’s strange… for someone who is so bad at evangelism, God has given me such a big heart for the lost…

If I think back to all my nightmares… the only ones I really remember are the ones that were re-occurring and the ones about sharing the Gospel.

In one of those, some really good non-Christian friends of mine died without ever knowing my great God and Savior Jesus Christ. I saw their soul fall into dispair. (The sad part about this one… is it could be very true… in fact it happens everyday… not my direct friends, but someone’s friends…perhaps my indirect friends…)

Today’s dream started off extremely joyous. We were in another country… I don’t know why. Everyone that was with me was a Christian. But while we were there I met a man… and for some reason I couldn’t remember his name the entire dream… but I kept thinking his name was Raul because he looked a lot like Pastor Raul from Guadalajara. Anyway, in our travels… he was with us for some reason even though we had randomly met him at a hotel. He was a native there. At one of the stops we were making, he was having dinner with us, and suddenly I realized… I need to share the Gospel with him! (Though I didn’t ask if he was a Christian or not… I guess I just assumed he wasn’t) So I started… I said, can I tell you a story? And he said sure 🙂 So for a long part of the dream, I was telling him the story of our great God who created the heavens and the earth. For some reason during the dream I kept on digressing from the actual story and getting frustrated with my self (like… why did I mention that? What does that have to do with anything…?). The others we were traveling with were being distracting or making comments that didn’t really make sense and detracted from the Gospel. For some reason the story was taking a long time .I continued to talk even as we left the restaurant and got into the car… It felt like it was a 3 day story of me saying absolutely nothing except how God created the earth and how that was pretty amazing. Finally, I was kind of fed up and I pulled him to the side and emphatically told him I needed to finish the story because we were leaving the country soon and this was the most important story he’d ever hear. So I told him. I told him that we were sinful and in need of grace, I told him that God had sent His only son to die on the cross for our sins. He didn’t look phased. I tentatively asked him if he would like to pray and ask Jesus into his heart and accept him as his Lord and Savior. To my surprise, he turned towards me and said “I’d like that”. And so I prayed with him. I prayed that God would be working in him. I prayed many many things. During the prayer, I could see him genuinly breaking, repenting of sins, and allowing God to come in and fix everything about him. Afterwards, I was extremely excited! We had to tell everyone the good news! We’ll have a party for sure! This is your new birthday! We ran to share with everyone 🙂

(then you know how in dreams, people change for some reason… well for some reason, I realized that the person I took with me was a girl… but I had the impression they were the same person so… ya… dreams)

And this is where it turned sour…

We ran to the kitchen where … well let’s not name names… but some adults I really look up to, people I know are passionate about missions… I was so excited and bursting as I told them! But instead of getting joyous reactions like I thought they would… they suddenly became very solemn and continued cooking without looking at us. A couple of them at least acknowledged it and said “oh that’s good to hear”, “oh that’s nice”… but that was it…

We ran to another room and got the same reaction. I asked them, why couldn’t they be excited with me? Excited with her? Excited that someone had come to Christ, the greatest gift of all had been shared!! A life has been saved!

They replied something along the lines of… ya, this happens all the time, they say yes, but what does that really mean… and something along the lines of… accepting Christ will just make things worse. I had several flashes in my mind about stories of how prostitutes who want to accept Christ turn away because they can’t give up their profession… or if they do… they’re at a loss of what to do… they run out of money and turn to poverty… and then about people who become persecuted in their countries because of Christ. And all those other stories of hardship.

I was so heart broken I ran out of the room frustrated and confused. As I fled, I clenched my jaw super tight (this is where the physical pain started), trying to hold back tears… I ran down the stairs and ran into a person I didn’t expect would be the person I would run to in a dream for consolation. But this person seemed to be the only one who cared to listen… (maybe also because I ran into them bawling). Through the pain and gnashing of my teeth and the uncontrollable tears I just vented all my frustration…

No one wanted to help me share the Gospel… infact, during that time it was almost like they were trying to stop me, they kept getting in my way.
When it finally happened, it finally happened… no there was no one to share the joy.
My heart hurt so much for her, I could see her face… looking so dejected. I had took her, hoping to bring her into a family that would accept her with open arms… but it was like everyone was rejecting her. What have I done?
Why didn’t anyone care about bringing people to Christ?
How could they think this could ever be a bad thing?
How could they be so pessimistic about someone’s salvation? Is it even possible to be pessimistic when someone’s been saved?

How am I supposed to help her and disciple her and teach her about the faith by myself?
What am I supposed to do?
Why am I so alone?

There was no resolution. The pain in my jaw became too intense to bear. I was trying to talk while holding back tears even though I was crying the hardest I’ve cried since Jan 6, 2007. That puts a lot of stress on the jaw… I felt like my bones were going to break.

And so I woke up sad.

Edge

This weekend my ThinkPad Edge came in all its smooth, thin, black, sleek, quiet, new, amazingness.

It’s definitely a huge update. My old laptop makes continuous fan and buzzing noises, I’ve lost track of the stuff that’s been installed on it, it’s still running vista, it takes like 15 minutes to start up completely, and most of all… the hinge broke… so other than the loud noises, there’s a possibility of me not ever knowing when my laptop is actually on… and if I move the screen a little… it all turns black. It’s quite sad really, even when its on screen saver, my old laptop is louder than this one.

But despite that, I can’t help but feel a little sad. I can’t help but think I can still revive my old laptop and stay with it forever. And its not just because I can’t use my laptop as a tablet anymore or because I can’t turn my screen… it’s just that… well it’s my laptop. I feel connected to it somehow… somehow moving on makes it feel sad and left out.

I miss the post-it notes that were on the cover (even though I didn’t originally want them… they just became a part of the laptop…), my cool firefox on the bottom left corner… my rss feed in the upper right… the finger scanner I never really used except for the fun of it.

I’m just used to my old laptop… where the sound buttons were located… where the power button was located… how I could adjust settings in the dark because I knew exactly where each part of my laptop was. The square size of the screen, the worn out feel of the trackpoint.

I think I have this problem with a lot of things. I’m a person who can’t really seem to let go and move on.

I like to hold on to all my old toys, stuffed animals, notes, cards, and even homework…

It’s like this anytime I own something… even like broken backpacks… I have a problem with throwing things away. I feel like they can always be of use…. or the memories they hold are just to sad to part with even though I know they’ll just sit there and I won’t think about them or use them… ever.

I guess I just don’t really like change, just like I don’t like making decisions. I don’t like it when things are made final… guess it makes me feel trapped or stuck… my mind easily gets filled with the what-ifs.

But once I do move on, things get better (typically). Sometimes holding back can be a stumbling block to ministry and a way for Satan to have a strong hold in my life.

Life changes and I need to get used to it.

Glad some friends came over and liked my laptop. Made me happier about my decision 🙂