And off we go!

In about 13 hrs, we'll be on our way down to Mexico (with a one night stop in LA beforehand). I'm a little bit anxious, as I am no longer just a team member, but as one of the "adults" on the team, I'm co-responsible for the high schoolers - there aren't any adults (no quotes) along as a security blanket. But then I have to remind myself, whether in hardship or in blessing, or even the blessing of hardship, God will grace us with Him, and that makes all the difference.

I leave you with a snippet from an interview with one of my favorite songwriters, Derek Webb (formerly of Caedmon's Call). For Christians in America, it is so easy to desire the American dream of blessing, comfort, a nice house in the suburbs with 2.5 children and 3 cars, with a picket fence to provide a boundary for the dog. I'll let Derek say the rest:

Stocki: The content of the album is as hard hitting as the production. Sadly, what is the standard Gospel call to follow Jesus is very fresh and somehow quite jarring. What provoked the repentance from the American Dream?

Webb: I think that most Christians in the West believe that the world revolves around them. We are so wrapped up in the idea of our country that we've started to mistake Christianity for a heightened sense of nationalism. It's very much in the whole "God bless America" idea. It makes for bad foreign policy and even worse theology. There's much still to repent of here in the west, and I want to explore that to the ends that I would be a more faithful follower of Jesus, and an honest patriot.

Stocki: Why do you think a Church that supposedly follows Jesus has bought into the American Dream?

Webb: Rich Mullins once said that Christianity is not about you and your perfect wife and your perfect children, carving out a perfect little place for yourselves, far away from any gays or minorities or risk. And I totally agree.

Stocki: Where can we begin to redress the compromise?

Webb: I think the cross is the only place we can go. At the cross we will receive both the humility and the boldness we need to grieve and repent of where we are coming from and where we are, and the hope to move towards our glory.

Weekly update

The last month or so, with the combination of missions preparation, work, and regular day-to-day busyness, I haven't had much time or energy to process the events and thoughts of my life and record them here. Seems like new posts to this page are coming every week rather than on a more regular basis. Not sure I like that all that much, seeing as how the struggle of working things out has always been a regular priority for me since college. My recent lack of processing in my life was vividly illustrated in this past Sunday's sermon by Pastor Tim. I finally noticed that one reason why I tend to relate to his sermons so well is that for almost every Biblical truth that he explores, he has an example from his own life to show the application of that truth. As someone who tends to learn best when I put myself in someone else's shoes, this helps me enormously when something seems to be a high-handed concept. The thing is, I know that he's done the groundwork of reflecting and praying through the events and feelings of his life to see where God is applying truth, which enables him to testify to these things when preaching. I think my general spiritual malaise that I've been wallowing in and out of the past few months could be tied to this lack of building in time in my schedule to process and learn from these teachable moments. Hopefully I'll be able to set aside some time after coming back from Mexico... perhaps during retreat.

Speaking of Mexico, we'll be heading out this Saturday. This week, I've had to outline two sermons that our organization provided our team, and I may get the opportunity to preach to our Mexican church next Monday and Wednesday (in English, with a translator). I'm rather nervous. Other than that, we're putting together all our supplies and getting geared up. Any prayer would be appreciated!

Quick hits on other topics...

- Congratulations to Jonathan and Kathy on their beautiful wedding this past Sunday. Hopefully the bachelor party festivities of Friday night didn't... um... "scar" him up too much for her. In comparison to button-down congregations from Chinese churches, folks from "Real World" are quite the lively bunch. Amusing moments - the slideshow turned into a cheering contest between Berkeley and Stanford alums, and the "answers must match" game where the bride and groom sat back to back and had to answer questions with either the bride's name or the groom's name, and match up their answers to win. They actually asked the question, "Who is more nervous about tonight?"

- Had the opportunity to catch up with Jason and Iris at the wedding... haven't seen those folks in like two years. Cryptic comment: Iris said, "Someone - I won't say who - says that you've grown up some, Bob." Really? And here I was thinking that I was the same juvenile dad-like spirit I've been since Berkeley.

- You might have heard the news about Grand Theft Auto being pulled from store shelves and getting rebranded as an "adult" game due to hidden unlockable code depicting explicit sex scenes. What kind of commentary is it on America when we pull a game due to sex, but didn't have a problem with kids playing it and slitting throats, beating women, and shooting people?

- Late last year, I played through the 4-player PS2 game "X-Men Legends" with Andy, Mike L, and Byron. After Mike's wedding, we shelved gaming for quite a while, but sometime this fall we might revive some semi-regular gaming sessions. To that end, I did some research online on the sequel game to "X-Men" and subsequently got onto something of an X-Men kick for a few days. Did anyone else watch the cartoon religiously in the early '90s? I know that the purists probably thought it was pop culture crap, but I loved that show - the storylines, mostly culled from the comics, were top-notch. My favorite character in both the game and the comic is Gambit - probably because 1) he's not a major character like Wolverine or Professor X, and I tend to gravitate towards background guys, and 2) he's pretty much the diametric opposite of me in terms of personality - he's a suave, wisecracking thief, while I think most people (at least the youth) view me as an uptight, lame-commenting do-gooder... haha. Anyway, check out UncannyXmen.net for all the info you could ever want on the superpowered mutant team.

No post would be complete without a quiz (this is my second favorite X-man!):

You scored as Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is a very sympolic X-Man. He is persecuted by society because of his devilish looks, but it is his faith in God that gives him strength. He is a very gentle x-man but he does know how to fight and he enjoys fencing. Powers: Teleportation Nightcrawler 85% Cyclops 80% Colossus 65% Beast 60% Wolverine 55% Storm 55% Gambit 50% Iceman 45% Rogue 40% Jean Grey 35% Emma Frost 5% Most Comprehensive X-Men Personality Quiz created with QuizFarm.com

War of the Worlds, War of the Old West, new rims, and a request for prayer

Personal update on a host of topics:

Watched "War of the Worlds" on Sunday with a bunch of folks. Some thoughts, in invisible ink:

The good:
- funniest quote from a reviewer: "While someone knowing a bit about Scientology might have expected Cruise to bow down to our new alien overlords..."
- most poignant quote from a reviewer: "Having Cruise scuttle underneath the table alongside his daughter makes a larger statement about parent-child relationship. What could be more terrifying to a child than to see his/her parent scared out of their wits?"
- the CG special effects served the story and not the other way around. Some examples:
- humans instantly incinerated by disintegration beam results in ash and flaps of clothing. These flaps of clothing are used to represent the swath of death without actually having to show bodies, kind of like having the red tide wash in and out of the beach in "Saving Private Ryan". Speaking of which, I found it somewhat interesting that while some moviemakers will hesitate to show women and children die on screen, there were quite a few women incinerated, one with the camera focus directly upon her. I don't recall any children though
- the destruction of bridges and buildings looked real and not green-screened
- classic Spielberg in bringing out details that most action directors wouldn't even think of. For example, "the wind is blowing towards the storm", the clotheslines ominously stop flapping wildly
- excellent acting job by the daughter (Dakota Fanning, who looked like a cross between a young Drew Barrymore and a young Jodie Foster) and a decent job by Cruise
- awesomely memorable scenes/set pieces:
- the daughter standing, horrified, at the river as first one, then hundreds of bodies float by. Such a simple effect, but so powerful - I heard sharp intakes of breath and "Oh my gosh" fill the theater during that scene. This might have been my favorite in terms of unexpected impact
- Cruise wandering through the ruins of a downed jetliner, bringing to mind some images of 9/11
- a train goes by with every car and window on fire - a bizarre version of reality
- there is one scene where the camera starts in close on the main characters driving in a minivan, then swoops out a window, rotates around 270 degrees of the van's exterior, then comes back in another window for a dialogue closeup. Never seen a shot like that before
- both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman ('s voice) show up in this movie, reuniting the stars from one of my favorite movies of all time, "The Shawshank Redemption"

The bad:
- the suspension of disbelief required is absurdly high, and there are internal logical inconsistencies galore
- the entire second half of the movie lagged greatly and mostly rehashed scenes and themes from other (and often better) movies like Jurassic Park (raptors in the kitchen chasing kids) and The Matrix (using humans as raw material)
- the ending, while filmed almost straight from the original source material, was wholly unsatisfying and left me with a bad taste in my mouth on the way out, which is not the way you want to leave your viewers. It took reading a few reviews before I remembered that for the most part, I enjoyed the first half of the movie

The ugly:
- internal logical inconsistencies like, why does the electronics-disabling EMP appear to be selectively effective against all devices except those which the protagonists are going to use?
- the red, slimy, solid ooze - what is it for?
- the aliens were disappointingly non-menacing
- the son is annoying for almost the entire movie

De-cloaking for the final thought - while I was entertained by half of it, I ultimately ended up somewhat disappointed in the movie. I suspect my expectations may also have been unfairly elevated since I greatly enjoyed the last Cruise-Spielberg collaboration, "Minority Report", which was exciting, action-packed, featured decent acting and imaginative visions of the future, and was internally consistent for the most part.

Recently, my group of friends has been getting into a relatively new group game called "Bang!" Set in the Old West, you basically have your classic story of a sheriff and his loyal deputies facing off against outlaws who want to take down the sheriff, and a renegade who wants to take down everybody. The catch is, at the beginning of the game you only know who the sheriff is, so through gameplay and dialogue you need to figure out who everyone else is. It's basically Mafia with an attack system.

I've participated in three sessions (about 9 games) so far, and I've made some observations... first, the game fits neatly into a void - it doesn't take as long as Settlers of Catan, it's more action-packed than a Taboo or Scattergories, and involves the use of more of your brain than a Sequence (naming off several other games that have had long playing lives in my sphere of influence). There is strategy in the way you play cards, there is psychology in observing, probing, and responding to other players, and there's enough variety in roles and in luck to make sure that no two games play the same way, which ensures freshness.

Thus far, we've determined that Mike P can be devious and rather astute in his character judgments, Andy Y might have the best grasp on card playing strategy, and I am super easy to read in terms of my role - I can't hide for very long what team I'm on. This usually means I'm one of the first to die. Ah well... live and learn.

After nearly a decade (since mid-college), I've finally bought a new pair of glasses. I'm quite excited about the clip-on sunglasses portion, and the fact that these are more durable - my current glasses will bend out of shape with the lightest touch. Thanks to Dr. Vivian for the hookup on a good frame and a good deal on the glasses, and to both the optical technicians who offered opinions on which frames looked good... even though I won't pick them up for a few weeks since the frame is on back-order. Hey, if it's on back-order, that must mean it's a good frame since so many people are buying it, right?

Finally, in a week and a half, I'll be heading down to Mexico for a one-week short-term missions trip with a team of combined young adults and youth from my church. For those who haven't received either a hard copy or a soft copy of my prayer letter, here it is:

Hóla! Qué pasa? Some of you I serve and fellowship with regularly, some I have not seen in a while, but God is faithful all the same. For those who I have failed to keep in better touch with, I’ve been living in the South Bay since graduating from college in 2000, working at a few different networking companies and going through two different acquisitions. Ministry-wise, I’ve been blessed to be able to serve and worship with a community of believers at Canaan Taiwanese Christian Church. It’s been a remarkable ride these last few years seeing God work in and through me, both inside the church and also in the Silicon Valley.

This August, I will be co-leading a team of young adults and high schoolers for a one-week missions trip to Mexico (July 30 – August 6). We will be partnering with an organization called YUGO Ministries, which is dedicated to serving and equipping the local church to do the work of the Gospel in their communities. We will be serving at a church in the children’s ministry and the sports ministry (focused on young men). Our team will have opportunities to build relationships with locals, teach Bible studies, play sports and games, and most of all, share the life-changing testimony of the Gospel with those we come in contact with.

I would like to invite you to prayerfully consider supporting me in prayer before, during, and after this trip (I intend to support myself financially, and prayer support is more important to me). This will be my first short-term missions experience since a particularly life-impacting two months in New York City back in 2000. Thus far, the preparation has been hectic and sometimes overwhelming, with the amount of logistics involved with co-captaining being more than I had anticipated. As such, I don’t feel as spiritually excited yet about this trip as I feel like I should be. Please pray for a closer and tighter walk with the Lord, and that through this process I might be able to hear the Holy Spirit’s promptings more clearly before and during Mexico. Also, please pray for the team – we are currently training together and gelling together well. For most of the youth, this will be their first missions experience, and I am enthused to see what kind of impact God will make in them and through their lives. We are learning how to support one another and how to be flexible, as we have little way of knowing what our host church may ask us to do, or what God may call us to do at any given moment.

If you would like to support the team and myself in prayer, please send me an email at (address to the right) with the following information by 7/25:

Name:
Email address:
I would like to pray for Bob and the Mexico team on: (circle all that apply)

7/30 (Sat) 7/31 (Sun) 8/1 (Mon) 8/2 (Tues) 8/3 (Wed) 8/4 (Thurs) 8/5 (Fri) 8/6 (Sat)

There is a memorable passage in 1 Samuel 30 where David, returning from battle to greet the men who stayed behind to guard the camp, grants a full share to each: “’The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike.’ David made this a statute and ordinance for Israel from that day to this.” Likewise, I know that God values the work of the senders as much as the goers. Thank you for your fellowship and partnership. If there is anything I can pray for you about, please let me know in the email reply you send.

Be God’s!

For the past few days, the EFC Music Ministry has been staying with Canaan, and they presented their program tonight and did a great job. The musical worship was fresh and unlike what we usually do (particularly like the dual female harmony), the people giving their testimonies each wrote a song (!) based on their difficult experience and performed it, and the drama - portraying three young Asian-American Christians dealing with parental expectations, hypocrisy in one's own character, and disillusionment with hypocrisy in the church - was very well-acted and surprisingly genuine. I was never jolted out of the story.

Marvelous group of folks. I'm greatly encouraged by their youthful enthusiasm and energy, their striving for excellence, and their heart to share God's work in their lives with others. They'll be doing a lot of driving in the next month (check out the website to see their schedule - Oakland, to LA, to Seattle, to Arizona, in that order... yikes), but it's cool to consider and pray for the impact they'll have in people's lives up and down the West Coast.

Retroactive history

For some reason posting has been rather sporadic these last few weeks. Apologies to all my faithful readers...

Some of you who have been reading for a while may recall my mentioning graduate school-related life happenings back in fall of 2004, like studying for and taking the GRE, turning in applications, etc. Back in April, we had recently been acquired by Cisco and I had gotten into two schools for medical informatics (the use of of computing to solve problems specific to the health industry). Since one of my initial driving impetuses for going to grad school was to stop living the startup life, being acquired, as well as some other things I observed God was teaching me through experience and the people around me, combined to throw a wrench into my initially conceived plan. In addition, while one of the schools was willing to grant me a deferral of admission to next year, the other one located in NYC (which was my first choice at the time) would not do a deferral and so I had to choose whether to go or to stay. While I know that many of you were on my initial email asking for prayer, I figured I'd finally post (3 months after the fact) the email I finally sent to convey my decision, some reasoning, and some of the things I learned through the process:

April 15, 2005

Thank you all for your prayer, support, and advice. I appreciated the testimonies of everyone who's been in a similar situation, and who kept me grounded by reminding me that as much as I might agonize over a decision like this, I am ultra-blessed to be able to choose between good options - such opportunities come along rarely.

So, why didn't I choose to go to NYC, which from the outside would be considered by most to be the more alluring path? The chance to be educated at a good school in an interesting and relatively new field, living for two years in the world's "biggest" city, being in relatively close proximity to my bro (who's in law school at NYU), meeting new people and perhaps having the opportunity to serve the inner-city poor again - there were/are definitely benefits. One thing that gave me pause was the eye-opening cost it would take to get a degree - over ~$110k for a two-year Master's, which I wasn't totally sure was worth it. Moreso, as I read up on the opportunities of each option, and fasted, prayed, and dreamed about life in each, what this decision basically came down to is that I am more excited about opportunities here in the Bay Area over the next year and a half than I am about school this fall. Exploring career opportunities at Cisco, with all of its associated resources. Opportunities to serve in the new things God is doing at Canaan, like the cell groups. New opportunities to make a life impact in the lives of youth and the international students in my small group. Opportunities for witness in the lives of extended family and coworkers. Upcoming missions trips. As Rich Mullins said, "God ain't done with any of us" - and I feel like He's not done with me yet at this time, in this place.

Straight-up education-wise, I have not sacrificed much, as I still have deferred admission available to (one school) in 2006, and right now I'm intending to reapply to (NYC school) for next year. While declining this year may reflect poorly on me for next year's possible admission at the latter school, I trust that if God wants me there in 2006, He'll provide a way, and if not, I will seek joy wherever He leads me. Medical informatics is still a field that I find fascinating and intend to continue to explore.

Something that's been interesting for me to think about through this decision process it that for people of faith, often, the stereotype is that "going" is usually the more "spiritual" choice, while "staying" is the "safe" choice. Thinking about overseas missions? Go! Choosing whether to be involved with a new ministry? Go! Push the envelope! Take the initiative! Step out in faith! What's less emphasized, however, is that even the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing, and God's timing is often just as hard or harder to discern than God's call. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure of how the timing will work out in my life over the next few years with regards to education, work, ministry, or even that nebulous "settling down" thing that I hear you're supposed to do when you hit your late 20s and 30s. However, what I do know is that God wants my love and obedience tomorrow when I wake up, and He wants me to exhibit that love to those around me every day that I wake up, whether here, in the Big Apple, or elsewhere. So I'll trust to that and let Him take care of the rest.

Again, thank you all for your support and care. My life kinda felt like it was on hold these last three weeks, but I'm ready to move forward again, and hopefully you've been blessed with a little glimpse of my world through my eyes.

Be God's!
Bob


As I look back on the last few months, I have learned new lessons, experienced new frustrations, and have developed new anticipations that I'll eventually attempt to capture here in words. The first half of 2005 has been pretty crazy so far, and the second half, with big events like a missions trip to Mexico and my first vacation of duration longer than 3 days in two years (Spain!), probably won't let up very much. Here's to the second half!

What've I been up to?

I've been away again, what'd I do?

- Last Thursday, Mexico Missions training. I think the team is starting to come together, and definitely not a moment too soon, since it's coming up quick! Lessons learned so far: it's easier to spiritually prepare yourself for short-term missions when you're not the co-captain in charge of logistics. Still, I'm looking forward to it.
- Youth group - spoke from 1 Corinthians 6 and 10 ("Everything is permissible...") passages about freedom in Christ. More thoughts to come in a subsequent post related to Sunday's message and the idea of independence vs. freedom.
- Saturday morning - browsed at the flea market, didn't find any new CDs to purchase, but bought a bunch of escapist action-adventure novels (Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler)... I know, not exactly high art, but darned if it ain't entertaining. Plus you can't beat the price of $1-$2/book.
- Saturday afternoon - Batman Begins! Some thoughts (minor spoilers, skip down a few lines):
Katie Holmes talks/smiles out of one side of her mouth disconcertingly like Drew Barrymore does.
I wish the fight scenes weren't all filmed so closely. I could never tell what was going on, and I like seeing competent action.
Christian Bale was Bruce Wayne. I was less impressed with his voice and look when he was in the Batsuit.
Stellar acting performances all around (Morgan Freeman looked like he was having a blast), but Michael Caine (Alfred) stole every scene he was in. "Some of us haven't given up on your future."
Interesting to consider that in a movie intentionally about Batman alone, there were no "superstar" villains to steal screen time or character development away from Bruce Wayne. Now that Wayne is fairly well established, the next movie can now expend effort developing backstory for villains.
It's a wonder to see what a good script will do for a movie. It was internally consistent, witty, and never sacrificed story or character for special effects. See that, George Lucas?
- Saturday night - Andrea's birthday shindig. Welcome to the late twenties!
- Sunday morning - marvelously thought-provoking sermon/Sunday School lesson from Dr. Samuel Chiow. More thoughts to come in subsequent post.
- Sunday afternoon/evening - hoops from 2:30-5:30, then watched most of "Saving Private Ryan" on TNT and went up to my uncle's place in the hills to watch the fireworks over Great America.
- Monday - more hoops from 10-12:30, then monster BBQ at the abode of JT/Walter/Andrew N/Eon. 50+ people. Highlights included the flank steak, my friend/coworker Garfield busting out the turntables and providing ambiance music for the entire evening, tossing a football around, and playing ball with 2-year old Lucas. He's gonna learn stellar hand-eye coordination even if I have to keep bouncing passes off his chest!
- Wednesday - dinner and sendoff for longtime reader Andrew W, who will be heading to the missions field for a year. Godspeed, bro.

Two opinion topics for discussion:
1) From Thursday before training began - trying to pinpoint at what point does a relationship become "icky", i.e. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (16 year gap). For example, is the Harrison Ford and Callista Flockhart (20+ year gap) pairing icky?
2) From Saturday at the birthday shindig - taking into account the holistic lifestyle, which one of the X-men/Superman/Spiderman/Batman would you want to be? Not only would you have combat powers, but you'd also have psychological traumas, secret identities, etc. to make life complicated. For example, Wolverine is cool, but you'd have to deal with rage attacks, amnesia, and psychological trauma from the past. Batman has the gadgets and the bling-bling, but he's a pretty dark, unhappy fellow without too many friendships outside his own house. At least Spiderman has a semblance of a normal life, with a job/wife, even if he's not as powerful as some of the other guys. I think we concluded that psionics would probably have it best because no one would be able to tell they had powers.