cool story

hey guys,

i just watched Transformers and it was really entertaining! the action was great and the plot line and script was dumb and hilarious.

anyways, i just wanted to share a cool story I heard today at a church BBQ today.  So I was talking about one of the older adults in my congregation and he was talking about another guy in our congregation who's a surgeon and they pray together and he prays for his patients a lot.  He was telling me that recently (for less than a year now), during surgery he cuts his patients open and puts his hands on their tumor and starts praying and recently one of these patient's tumor completely just got smaller and went disappeared!  with some premed kids on this list, I just thought this would be a really cool story to share.

peace,

Kevin

Birds + Babel = Sleepless Night

Hello again, everyone. It's 4 AM in Virginia, and I'm still as wide awake as the annoying birds that are chirping away outside my window. Since coming home, I've come to realize that the most annoying thing about being jet lagged is the birds. The birds here in VA are extremely strange. They start chirping and screeching away starting about 3:30 AM at dusk, which happens to be just around the time when I get into bed. I shuffle around my sheets for about an hour, fighting - with no success, might I add - to keep the noise from registering into my consciousness. Actually, it's quite ironic. The more I try to ignore the noises, the more I become alert, and the harder it is for me to lose consciousness (Jon Paris, anyone?). Crazy birds. They might catch the worm, but they sure don't earn my affection.

I just finished watching the movie "Babel" (yeah...watching movies is how I'm spending away my summer at the moment >.<). If you haven't seen it yet, I highlyyy recommend it. It's so dang depressing. Wow, seriously, there was not a single moment in the movie when I wasn't depressed. It's one of those movies that makes you want to gag and rip your hair out while watching it, but afterward, the movie makes you realize how precious, as well as how fleeting and agonizing, life really is. I even teared up during one of the scenes, which isn't something that I normally do. Heck, I actually PRAYED during some scenes. That's just weird.

Okay, I just wanted to share that with you all. Hope everyone is enjoying this break! I'd love to hear more about it :)

Steve

Amazing Author, Amazing Book

Thanks for the shout-out, Claudia! ;) Helloo friends, I got back to Stanford from SumCon a few days ago, and spent majority of my time on campus running a few annoying errands. Oh, I lost the keys to my sister's place (where I stayed before coming back home in VA) while running the errands, and ended up spending about two hours retracing my steps throughout campus. Have you ever tried looking for something really important, but realized that it could be in a million different places? It's hecka depressing. Perhaps that's a bit like how God feels when we're lost.

Anyway, moving on to the fun stuff! Although I didn't do Prayer Sem like Claudia or Jeanette, Summer Con was still an amazing experience. Firstly, it was pretty baller being surrounded by friends and gorgeous nature, not to mention being away from campus with so little to worry about. Secondly, it was even more baller studying the Scriptures nonstop throughout the week, to the point where my neurons began killing off each other. Well, maybe my brain cells getting decimated wasn't so baller, but I still learned a ton.

I was part of the Mark 1 seminar, along with Kevin, Hiyabel, Mi, and A'Lester (btw, you three have to post when you get the chance!). One of the most significant things that I learned for the seminar was...how kick-butt Jesus and the Bible are. We all know how awesome Jesus is, but the Bible, I truly realized for the first time, is kinda like a huge jigsaw puzzle that takes a lifetime to be solved (or perhaps, it can never be completely solved). For instance, each verse, say in a parable, works together to reveal a specific meaning or characteristic about the Kingdom of God. This is the sort of understanding that I've been accustomed to receiving in weekly Bible studies. However, an entirely different layer of meaning and depth are attained when the parables are studied in context with one another, something that I've never been able to realize in the past. These parables of Jesus, in conjunction with the personal testimony of Mark, fit together to provide a larger picture- fraught with deep symbolism, imagery, and meaning- about God's glorious kingdom. It's WILDDD.

If the book of Mark, just by it self, is so saturated with meaning and understanding, just imagine how much life is contained within the entire Bible! It's truly unfathomable, as well as utterly humbling.

That's it about summer con for now! I'm sure I'll have more to say as I take the next few days at home to reflect. Hope everyone is well! Let's encourage one another to honor God with all that we are and all that we do this summer. :)

Aloha

Hi guys,

Summercon indeed was great.  Claudia prayed for me.  It was awesome :)

Peace,

Kevin

PS

I also finally went to Nichigo service today with Taiei!  We listened to this Japanese guy after talk about how he used to get drunk and go to cabaret clubs all the time in Japan and spend all his companies money on that until one day he met Jesus at a bar toilet and felt convicted to go to church and then has totally turned his life around and been a believer for 33 years! He even talked about how when he now is involved in planning many church and social service kind of things and how his prayers are always answered in their success.  I would tell you more but I only understood like 75% of what he said but me and Taiei both thought it was cool to here a Japanese person talking about Christ since there aren't very many Christians in Japan.  

Back from SummerCon and on to Taiwan

Hey friends,

Like Jeanette, I just got back from SummerCon yesterday evening. I was also in prayer sem. There weren't any fireworks, which I was excited to see from hearing stories of past prayer sems, but I still learned so much. Not only about prayer, but a lot about myself and the dynamics of my relationship with God. One thing I felt God was challenging me to do is to develop a discipline of Sabbath and creating space just to be with God and let him speak to me. The structure of prayer sem was incredibly different from the Mark studies. There was a lot of unstructured time (with reading assignments) that created space for me to do whatever I needed to do with God. And it was so good. Which is why I hope I can figure out a sustainable way to incorporate Sabbaths into my summer and next year at Stanford.

God also convicted me of a lot of things that had come up this last year, but I had shelved because I didn't want to deal with it or was too distracted by school. The space allowed me to rest and gave me energy to do spiritual work and deal with these things.

Back in the 'real world' for less than 24 hours, I feel very much thrown back into the busyness of life. I'm leaving for Taiwan tomorrow night (Tuesday morning), and there is so much to do before then. I'm a bit scared that everything I learned will be undone if I can't apply it these couple days.

I'll be in Taiwan for 8 weeks for an internship at the zoo and then Korea for a few days. I'll update you when I settle in there since I'll be quarantined for a week with nothing to do anyway :P

Claudia

PS Kevin and Steve should post cuz I know you guys have really good testimonies. Yes you did share with everyone at SumerCon, so you should share with our class too!

Back in Elk Grove from Summer Con!

Hi friends!

I just got back home from Summer Con a few minutes ago, and let me just say that Summer Con was AMAZING! I was in Prayer Seminar, and one of the things God has been putting on my heart this past week is the need for celebration and joy. Celebrating has never been something that I've done naturally (kind of like receiving affirmation), but God has been telling me that one way to celebrate is to be bold and to remember the ways that God has blessed me. I could elaborate on this, but you can ask me individually.

Also, I am no longer going to Hong Kong to teach this summer because Hong Kong closed all their primary and secondary schools due to the swine flu. No students = no job for me.

I'll keep you updated if I find something to do with my life.

Have a nice summer!
-jeanette =]

P.S.: SPECIAL SHOUT OUT FOR IHEOMA AND BRUCE, OUR LOVELY '011 BUDDIES DOWN IN LA FOR LAUP. Please keep them in your prayers! They won't have much internet access, but let's pray in faith for the work that they will be doing with Estelle and Mindy.

Hello from Hamburg!

Hiya friends!

I'm in Germany!! The time zone is 9 hours ahead of California, so it's 5 AM on Friday right now. I'm a little jetlag, but I'm going to try to go back to sleep after this. I just wanted to have a first post. If you would like to read about my summer in detail, I have a travel blog: http://karistq.blogspot.com/

I hope you're all having good summers. I can't wait to hear about SummerCon!!

~Karis =D

Summer is good.

This is why.

summercon today!

I'm about to go to bed and wake up for summercon! Yay!