Haruka ni mite iru yakusoku

Kid Weekend

2008-05-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

Hi, all. Well, the food poisoning has ended, and actually now we think it wasn't food poisoning at all. For one thing, Craig, who ate the food, did not get sick at all. For another, Alyssa, who didn't eat any of it, is sick and has been in the hospital for 5 days. We think it must have been a terrible flu bug or something.

Alyssa is fine; she is rehydrated thanks to an IV and is able to eat more. The doctors are waiting for her to gain back more weight before they send her home. It's been hard on all the Stolleys; Mihoko has been at the hospital the whole time with Alyssa, and Will has had to work (it's Memorial Day Weekend, after all) so I've been watching Noah and Anna these past 3 days. Thus the title of this post, Kid Weekend. But it's been fun.

My garden is growing well. Strawberries are getting bigger, and the other plants are all growing fine. We've also subscribed to a CSA, Wildberry Organics, local here in Forest Grove. Through the end of October, we'll be getting fresh produce from them every week, thereby getting local, organic food and supporting our own area's economy. We're excited about it.

I realized the other day that it's been over 6 months since I got back from Japan, and I've been so busy I haven't really studied at all. Especially if I want to go back to visit my friends in the church there in Okazaki, I want to study more, so I started that again. It's fun, like slipping into an old, comfy sweatshirt. Familiar stuff.

I'm also trying to learn Spanish, but that's another thing entirely. ^_^

Food Poisoned!

2008-05-17T18:59:00.001-07:00

Hello, everyone! It's been a horrible day.

Last night at around 7:30, Chelsea cancelled plans to go play pool because she wasn't feeling well. So, instead of playing pool with her, I went with Mihoko, Nate, Chris, and Wish to see Prince Caspian. Halfway through the movie, though, I started feeling sick. I tried to get to the bathroom, but didn't make it, and ended up throwing up on the floor in the lobby. It was so embarrassing! Everyone just kind of stopped, and I was just kind of frozen... So I went to the bathroom and cleaned up, and then thinking well, now that's done I'll probably feel better, I went back to the movie.

And about 20 minutes later, had to leave again, to throw up again. Didn't even try to make it to the bathroom, just used the trash can right outside the door. I realized I was sick, but didn't want to make them miss the end of the movie, and after all, there should only be about a half hour left, so I went back in and made it to the end. But I knew that I couldn't drive home, which was a problem, because no one else could drive a stick shift. Mihoko had been practicing last year, but didn't have confidence. So I called Dave to see if he could come and get us; at first he thought it was a practical joke, because they were just on their way to get April and Craig in Portland. April was throwing up and Craig doesn't have a license. So Alice came to get us. When we got home, we realized that Will and Anna were sick; so were the Mossbarger boys and Kim. Later that night Mihoko and Nate both also started throwing up.

By this morning, everyone was sick except Alice and baby Alyssa. Karen was the last one to get sick, and she was able to make it to Safeway for 7-up, jello, bagels, saltines, and electrolytes. The big worry, aside from feeling terrible and throwing up of course, was dehydration. It's been in the 80s and 90s the last couple days. I definitely got dehydrated; bad headache, fever, and my arms felt like they were clenched and shrinking for most of the night and half of today until I was able to stomach liquids without just throwing them back up.

We decided it was the watermelon from our thursday night dinner. That's the only thing Alice didn't eat, and she's the only one not sick. (Aside from Alyssa, but she's on a special baby diet and didn't eat anything we ate.) If there was some kind of bacteria on the rind, then cutting it without washing would get the whole thing infected.

Now, many of us are beginning to be able to move around without throwing up. Anna says she is completely better, and my stomach is still doing flips, but I can walk around, and my fever and headache are gone. I camped on the couch all day, watching movies (well, having movies as background noise as I slept, really) and drinking orange juice, 7-up, and water, and licking the salt off of crackers.

Some others, though, still have it pretty bad. Please pray for us!

Garden

2008-05-13T22:27:00.001-07:00

I've finally planted my garden! Or begun to, anyway. Over the weekend, I loosened up and added compost and peat moss to the soil in the back corner of our yard, after tearing out all the weeds and old strawberry plants (leaving any that were flowering). Back there I planted a cherry tomato, a yellow zucchini, and a cucumber, and I put up a little makeshift fence with a roof around it (to keep kids and balls out). It's right up against the fence, though, and we have a big tree that shades it a lot, so I'm not sure how well they'll do.

On the side of the house outside the fireplace, I planted another cherry tomato, a regular tomato, a regular zucchini, a bush bean, and a pole bean. That side gets much more sun, and the wall is white and the fireplace brick, so it not only reflects light but retains heat, and I can already tell after 4 days that those plants have grown.

Waiting in their little black plastic containers to be planted in this coming week are one acorn squash, a bell pepper plant, an eggplant, and a couple different varieties of strawberries. The bell pepper and eggplants will be in little pots, so that I can move them around during the day for the best sunlight--otherwise they really wouldn't do well.

I'll keep you posted on how the garden turns out this year. I'm really excited about it!

NW Service Symposium

2008-05-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday (Monday) and today (Tuesday) was the national northwest service symposium for AmeriCorps, where about 260 AmeriCorps members from around the NW gathered at PSU for a two day conference type thing. You could submit creative entries to the symposium, and for our particular group, our supervisor said that if we submit something, even if it doesn't win, we don't have to pay for registration. So, everyone who wanted to go submitted something. I wrote a creative non-fiction story about a third grader, and other people wrote stories, poems, made artwork, made songs, or made videos. One very creative guy that was there made an actual sprite video game, where evil robots have taken over AmeriCorps and you, the last human AmeriCorps member, must destroy them before they kill everybody. It was awesome.

I took the MAX in the first day, and it was a fun time of being able to read while riding, being on a train again (made me miss Japan), and walking to the school (also made me miss Japan). The whole process of having a slightly sketchy map and trying to find somewhere you've never been before used to terrify me, before I went to a different country entirely and had to literally find my own way everywhere in a different language. Now, I think it's really fun. Makes you a lot more aware of your surroundings, and once you've found the way somewhere yourself you're not likely to forget it.

We met a lot of interesting people. Those who wanted to gave sessions on their projects that we could choose to go to, for a total of five time slots, and there was also an art gallery, an award banquet, breakfast and lunch, and live performances and/or videos of the creative entries (songs, movies, etc.). In all, it was fun.

Actually, they had three meal choices for the weekend: meat, vegetarian, and vegan. I choose vegetarian, being wary of catered meat dishes, and it turns out I was dead on. The first night, the meat and veggie were the same, except the meat one had chicken in the pasta, and we, instead of chicken in the pasta, got a really tasty side dish of mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and goat cheese. For lunch, there were sandwiches: ham, turkey, or, for the vegetarians, zucchini, sun-dried tomato, lettuce, olive pesto, and hummus on foccacia bread. Score! Everyone wanted to try the veggie one! Luckily, there were more than enough for seconds, so those who wanted to try it got to.

The Future

2008-05-07T20:11:00.000-07:00

Looks busy! For a while, at least. But not forever. ^_^

I've been reading some cool stuff, so I will be posting excerpts and recommendations sometime.

Tomorrow many things are due for work; a paper, a presentation, and a lot of reading. Tuesday was my final Japanese Club, which took a ton of preparation. Coming up on the 21st is Family Math Night, which I am coordinating, which is also taking a lot of planning and prep work. But once that's done, things will slow down a lot. No more after school stuff. Until the summer school starts, at least. I don't know exactly what the summer will look like, schedule-wise.

This weekend the members of Refuge went for our annual Anniversary Retreat to Sunriver, which was a good time of encouraging each other and rest. Quite a few people were sick; Will actually had strep throat, and Alice was well on her way to getting it. Karen was just generally not feeling good, and Drew got a pretty sick stomach. So there was a lot of quiet and sleeping. But there were also good conversations, appreciations, and walks. And food. ^_^

Today the PCF final BBQ was held at our house, and Shannon made veggie kabobs as an alternative to the chicken. They were good. I also tried a simple recipe I had found in a book, to boil yams with some brown sugar in the water until tender, then sprinkle some soy sauce over them. It was pretty good, a sweet/salty taste that I can't really describe, but was yummy.

I'm going to plant my garden soon, hopefully. It's finally begun to warm up a bit.

A Steady Stream

2008-04-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Things have been moving along quite steadily. I go to work, I come home and do whatever stuff I need to for that day or the next (chores, groceries, cooking, church stuff), then I work to get more hours until I'm too tired, then I sleep, then do it all over again. It has to stop soon. I know it will stop at the end of May, because after Japanese Club is over and the Family Math Night is done there won't be much that I could do at home, even if I wanted to. Which I don't think I will. There are far too many things on the back burner right now, that can't stay there much longer. Sad Sara.

But, anyway, at least I'm doing okay at the job. ^_^

We have our Anniversary Retreat where the member of Refuge go away for the weekend to celebrate the past year and look forward to the coming year, renewing our commitments to each other, this weekend. Looking forward to that. A slower pace, some down time. Although I have to make up the missed Friday hours somehow. *sigh*

A couple was here from Voice of the Martyrs tonight, speaking about persecution in the church worldwide. I'm aware of it, but it just helped to remind me to stay that way and stay in prayer for them. We're so insulated.

I'm tired. Later.

About a book on hospitality

2008-04-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

So, because we've had quite a few people here over the past month helping with the house, the subject of hospitality has come up quite a bit. In preparation for the Ekklesia (spelling?) Project in Portland a while ago, I read "Inhabiting the Church" and "School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism" (both of which are good books, by the way, looking at the Benedictine tradition and what we can learn and how the church should be in general) and they both referenced a book by Christine Pohl, "Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition" numerous times, so when I saw it at the table at the project I bought it and have been reading through it.

It's making me think quite a bit. The book surveys Christian hospitality from Jesus' time to now, noting major shifts and changes that have taken place, then talks about how hospitality might look today in America (or the West in general) and gives examples of communities that have been living it out for a while. She brings up interesting things, like how hospitality has become an impersonal job (hotels, restaurants, hospitals... they all mean that anyone with money doesn't have to depend on people in towns to care for them while they are traveling, and they also means that people without money are usually left uncared for). Or how we can send money to an international Christian relief fund and yet walk right by the poor guy with the sign outside the grocery store without giving him a second glance. She brings up issues of materialism, how we are worried about our stuff getting stolen so we are reluctant to let strangers into our homes; how we are worried about them being dangerous (a threat which is greatly reduced when you are part of an intentional community of many people that live together or interact multiple times daily). She talks about the danger of being a host, of being prideful in the provider role and not being open to receive or learn anything from the person you are helping.

There's more in there, but just wanting to give an overview of the types of things mentioned in the book. I think it's a good introduction to the subject, but for more concrete, here's how I would actually do this thing, I'll need to talk to people or find other books, because hers tends to be more of a discussion on the ideas of hospitality.

Are they Christians? Or are they just pretending?

2008-04-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Wow! Shocked you, didn't I? Posting again so soon. ^_^

Well, I wanted to relay a funny story that happened last weekend, actually. Chelsea and I took Ben and Zack to see the Sea Chanters, which is the choir of the Navy Band or something official like that. I was worried that the boys would be bored, because it's basically watching people sing for a couple hours. And at first, they were. But then they broke away from naval type songs and sang 60s songs and other stuff, including some acting type stuff, and the boys really liked it. But anyway, during the performance, Ben turns to me and says "Are they Christians?" So I answer, "I don't know, some of them probably are."

Later, they sing the Battlefield Republic Hymn or something like that, anyway there's the word Hymn, and Ben looks at me and smiles and says "They are Christians." In the next song, the Lord is mentioned, and he turns to me again, a big grin on his face, and says "They ARE Christians!" It was cute.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Ben, Zack is sitting. When the women come out, he turns to Chelsea, and says "Why are they in uniform? They can't be soldiers. They're women." ^_^ (Right behind us are sitting two naval recruiters, by the way, who hear they boys talking through all this and occasionally say "shhh". Oops.) Later, he turns to Chelsea, and says "I don't think they're Christians. They're just singing Christian songs, pretending. That's bad." Hehe. Kids are cool.

Ben is 6, by the way, and Zack is... 8 or 9.

Oops!

2008-04-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Wow! 11 days! I thought I had posted more recently. Is anyone still alive out there reading this? Hehe. Probably not. :(

Well, I have been enjoying greatly reading books and watching movies with Christian messages or themes in them. The ones I like are not preachy, smack you with a Bible type things, but more subtle and meaningful and would appeal to people who aren't Christians too, but I love them because the authors or filmmakers convey TRUTH in them, and it's just uplifting to me to have something that isn't trashy, filled with profanity, lewdness, senseless or comic (yeah, right) violence, etc.

I just finished a book called Outriders, Christian fantasy/sci-fi, and it is wonderful. I had hesitated reading it for a while, just having it on my shelf, because I thought it was geared as more of a young adult book, but I was wrong, which I realized a couple pages in. It gripped me and I read it quite quickly, actually. I'd recommend it.

Then I watched that animated movie "The Prince of Egypt" that came out a few years back. I was just amazed, watching it, how they unabashedly made God GOD, not to be messed with, holy and pure and in control. I especially liked the scene when the rod of Moses that turned into a snake eats the two snakes that had been the rods of the Egyptian priests. It's a very short, but powerful scene. And the music in that movie is wonderful, of course.

We're still plugging along on the house. Things are going much more slowly now, since the push to move quickly is over. Drew says he wants to start on siding soon, so that the neighbors will finally have something nicer to look at than a huge white styrofoam box.

Work is going well. I've been put in charge of coordinating the Family Math Night, so that is taking a lot of time and actually is fun. I like being in charge of all of the little details, because then I can be sure it's all worked out and will hopefully run smoothly. ^_^

I'm teaching Hannah's science, too. I enjoy it, and it's a nice refresher for me (honestly, I remember learning about clouds, but of course I don't remember every detail I learned in 5th grade).

Well, type to you later.

Board Games

2008-04-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

Board games can be amazing! I'm particularly enjoying various games that have random/changeable boards, so that each time you play the layout is different, meaning that you have to adjust your strategy every time. They are challenging and fun, and playing them with others who also really enjoy them can make for a great evening. Usually I play with Ben, Chris, and Craig, and Maria if she's not in Austria ^_^, and occasionally Chelsea.

Recently we've been playing Ben's new game, Conquest of Pangaea. You must try to occupy the most fertile terrain before the continents all break apart, to put it simply. The game board changes every time you play, and your strategy has to adjust accordingly. Various cards that you draw at the end of your turn can throw even the best-laid plans out the door and force you to scramble, which adds excitement. A pretty well-planned, tight game. It takes a while to learn, though. We've played it twice and it's taken about 6 hours total, and we're still getting the hang of it.

Regularness

2008-04-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, all! Nothing terribly of notice, but I wanted to chat and let people know I'm alive. ^_^ I feel strange, because it's a Sunday, but I'm not really on anything tonight that I have to prepare for. It's not Lord's Supper, not my week for teaching Sunday School, and I'm not on dessert. It's cool.

We are doing well, having fun with our newest household member, Craig. We were all together for the first time this morning at our Sunday morning household breakfast, which was fun. We decided to try to fast from sarcasm for a month, to become more aware of what we say, how we talk to each other, and to try to see if we can find ways of building each other up (since sarcasm, though sometimes funny, so often tears people down and is usually intended to sting).

The cherry trees and the like are still blooming, and are beautiful. We're getting quite a bit of hail. Then there's rain. And random spots of sun and blue skies. But really, I prefer the clouds.

Birthday

2008-04-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

Hi all! My birthday is 3 minutes to over as I type this. Started off cool at midnight last night as, just before I went to sleep, Mihoko came in and sang me happy birthday. ^_^ Then I found an invitation to my party from Chelsea, which was cool. Woke up this morning, and went to work as usual. Same old, same old.

At about 5, Chelsea, April, Chris, Craig and I headed out for a myster location to have dinner. They took me to an amazing Thai food restaurant at Tanasbourne, which was uber delicious. Then we had gelato (Italian ice cream) for dessert. I tried one called Autumn Spice or something like that, it was a strange flavor for ice cream (kind of like... gingersnap cookies...) but it was really good. Had dough in it like cookie dough. Then the others had to go, but Chelsea and I headed into Portland for another mystery activity.

We got lost immediately. Chelsea was getting pretty nervous, because apparently the thing we were going to attend started at 8 on the DOT, and if you weren't there on time they don't seat you, but make you wait for intermission. But, suddenly, we were on the right street. And the next one was right in front of us and we were going in the right direction. We agreed that we both hated Portland (many times over) but that obviously God was pointing us in the right direction.

So we get to the place, and it's a bunch of big yellow and blue circus tents! And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, we're going to a circus?! Coolness! I haven't been to a circus in forever! How awesome! I ask Chelsea if it's a circus and she's all "Well, sort of". Turns out it's a show called Cirque du Soleil, "Corteo". No animals or anything. We go in, and they're doing a pre-show thing in the aisles, and it's a couple of guys and a coffin, and a weird super tall guy, and it's dark and atmoshpheric inside and a little morbid, almost, although not grotesque by any means. Try more gothic. A bit of smoke (not cigarette, that kind of stage smoke) and candle-like light and almost eerie but actually beautiful music. I had no idea what it was, so I was kind of jumpy thinking okay, this could be dark and I could be frightened... but it could be cool... have no clue right now. 98% of the crowd that I see are adults. But one lady is bringing in her daughter, and as soon as the girl gets inside she starts crying "No, mommy, I don't want to go in there!" and Chelsea and I do this nervous laugh thing (she knows more about what it is than me, but not much).

It was a Cirque du Soleil show, by the way. I hear they're big in Vegas. I had never heard of them before tonight, though. The show was called "Corteo".

So we get to our seats, and the guazy curtains come up, and it's about this guy who dreamt of his funeral. So he's lying in bed and an angel is being lowered from the top of the tent over him and there are two midgets on his bed and a whole bunch of people start coming in in random 30s clothes or macabre clown costumes or flowy dresses singing a dirge and greeting the two midgets and I'm thinking "My... goodness... what the heck is this?" The music was really cool already, which I loved, and live, and instrumental and vocal, and in different languages (Italian, Spanish, French... Chelsea and I actually bought the CD at the booth during intermission). And then these three huge chandeliers lower from the ceiling, and these four girls who had been in dresses take off the dresses to be in more of a gymnast's type suit and grab the chandeliers which are then raised and the girls are spinning and swinging in them (no safety cords or nets) and some of the people on stage are kind of running or bouncing around and it suddenly hits me... it's an acrobatics show! OHHHHH! It all immediately makes sense, and it no longer is creepy at all, and I sit back to enjoy it and

IT WAS AMAZING!

Seriously! Those people were awesomely skilled! Really cool stunts. Dance. Acrobatics. Juggling. Singing. Instruments. Giant man-sized spinning rings and lots of stuff in the air and tight-rope walking and human marionettes and comedy ladders and sad clowns. Jumping and throwing people and spinning and I can't even describe it in words at all except for that it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen and I absolutely loved it. It was so fun.

Then we got lost again coming home. Go figure. That's Portland. (But we had bought the CD, remember, so we just popped it in and listened to it the whole way back and it was all cool.) ^_^

Back to Work

2008-03-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

Hello again. I'm going to stop saying "It's been a while" because it seems like that's been happening for a while. When I get back into a habit of a couple posts a week, then I'll use that term again if I fall behind. ^_^ For now, I don't know exactly when that frequent updating time will be, although it's possible that it will be in the foreseable future.

Spring Break went very well. It began with a Good Friday dinner on Friday night, and I made a lima bean soup that I ended up really liking, as well as an asparagus casserole that everybody liked. Alice had readings and verses prepared to think about and discuss and we had no lights but candles to set a mood, and it was just a good night.

Students helped move the Mossbargers, Cooks, and Millers out of the Brown house over the weekend (they had to be out by monday the 24th) and into their temporary homes: the Millers and Mossbargers are in borrowed RVs in the driveway of the new house (currently under construction) and the Cooks are with their parents. Craig moved in here, which is going well. He's excited about being with the church and learning more about the community before the internship starts this summer.

Then for the rest of the week, they helped watch kids and build the house. I made lunch and dinner each day, which was a time consuming but fun task. I managed to get some reading in and work done during the week, too. I also discovered that prepping meals, which takes quite a bit of kitchen time, is a great time for watching DVDs on a laptop on the kitchen counter. Lucky me; I happened to finally get Heroes the first season from the library on Monday, so I breezed through that.

Heroes is an amazing series. At least, the first season was. Basically, the characters are realistic, the powers are cool, the villian is psycho and deserves fear, the plot is wonderful and keeps you guessing, and it's just all around good. Mysteries and motives are slowly unraveled (but we are left with a lot to look forward to learning in the second season, everything is not explained by a long shot) and my opinions of quite a few characters changed dramatically as the show went on. I'd say it's an R rated show, though, for violence (in much of the series) and suggestive themes/sexuality (in a few episodes). Also, for being something working with super powers and time travel, they had relatively few bloopers or inconsistencies that I caught. A very tight storyline.

Students hung out here at Main St. for many nights during the week, watching movies, playing video games, doing a scavenger hunt, etc. On Saturday night we went to Comedy Sportz, a clean comedy show kind of like Who's Line is it Anyway where there are a lot of little games and the suggestions and ideas come from the audience. It was very fun.

Today I've gone back to work, and it's okay... but you know, I think I want to start my own craft business and write. Hehe. We'll see.

Wow!

2008-03-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

Has it really been two weeks? This blog has been on my to-do list forever, but I literally just have not had time.

Well, the sickness is finally almost gone. Now all I have left is a lingering cough in the morning and night, but each day it gets better.

Other stuff that has kept us incredibly busy: hospitality. There is a push to get the new house built, because the Millers and Mossbargers are in RVs in the driveway until it is livable. We sent out a letter asking for help, and people have been coming to stay, most recently a group of seven from LA COSK (Church of the Servant King). They're all staying at Main St., which means we are packed full. It's wonderful, but between shopping and preparing meals and working and watching kids and all that stuff, I'm just busy and tired and trying to get healthy again and time has just slipped away.

But, spring break starts after tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. We have three or four students from Pacific who will be working on the house with us during spring break, and I'll be making lunch and dinner for all the people working on the house throughout, but I'll also be catching up on hours for AmeriCorps and stuff. So that should be good.

It's rainy and cold again here; we had a warm spell with temperatures up in the 60s even, but now it's back down to 40s and 50s. I like it, because it means that I get to wear comfy sweatshirts longer.

Also, colors are beautiful about now. Muted, but crisp and beautiful. Especially when I'm driving out to work; there's the gray sky, with dark green trees, with browns of different shades, and now that the flowers on trees are starting to bloom, reds and pinks and whites, with mountains in the background, and it's all just testimony to God's skill as an artist.

Sickness...

2008-03-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone. Well, I've been sick since last Friday. It began as an achy, sore throat and headache thing. Then the aches and the headache faded but the throat got worse and my lungs and nose decided to jump into the fray, so now I have a congested head and a not so great sounding cough. But other than that, things are fine. ^_^

The Stolleys are gone to Hawaii, and we're watching their kids. Yesterday I had the baby, Alyssa, all day (yes, I'm sick, but she has a runny nose too, and she's been exposed to me for the last week anyway, so...). She loves stuffed animals, so I brought down one of my big bears, about twice her size. She loved it, bouncing up and down and squealing (she's 1 year old). She was afraid to touch it at first, though, but she warmed up to it and likes to lay on it now. Also, she had previously been walking around the perimeter of the room over and over, holding onto the couches or whatever else was there to keep her upright, but now she is getting braver and starting to walk into the center of the room without holding onto anything; she'll make it 3 or 4 steps before plopping down on her behind, grinning at how far she got. She's really cute.

We're having quite a few guests this weekend to work on the house; people are coming from Portland, Eugene, and San Fransisco. It's wonderful! I'm on meals Sunday (lunch and dinner) so I think I'll make curry for one of those, and I'm not sure about the other one, yet.

I am now behind in hours at work, though, because of being sick and staying home. I've been working at home, getting about 5 hours a day, but that's not 8. So somehow I need to make that up.

I really like Jars of Clay's CD "Good Monsters". I keep checking it out from the library to listen to it, and eventually I suppose I'll buy it. But it's really good.

Happy Days

2008-02-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I am in a pretty... charged mood right now. I feel like things have come together a bit in my mind. We had a team meeting today, which is when all of the PSA (partnerships for student achievement, the type of AmeriCorps program that I am in) in Washington County come together for a meeting. I have felt this way since I started--but today gave me a boost--that I should become a teacher. Whether it's a private tutor of homeschooled kids, or at a private school, or a public school, I don't know. But I know that I should teach. For one thing, so much is wrong, in so many systems and ways, and there just aren't enough people.

Did you know, there are about 3.5 million teachers in America, but there are also about 6 million people who are licensed to teach but have quit (or never started) and are working in some other job? Turnover is tremendous; people are burning out, or losing drive and vision. Large class sizes, pressure to succeed on state tests, competition rather than cooperation in many schools and districts (and intra-county, state, and national levels), low pay, high stress, low respect, high expectations... all of this does a lot to break teachers' spirits. But the more I read about it, and the more I am in contact with schools and kids, the more I feel like I need to do something. That I can't just stay out of it, and do my own merry thing, trusting that someone else will take care of it.

Of course, it's not as if I think I can change the way school is in America. But that I could do something, for some kids, somehow--that I do believe. Like I said, the exact form that will take is cloudy, but I think that's the direction I'm moving in.

So, after a week of pretty much being down, getting a booster shot of sorts today was very much needed. God's been in it, for sure. I got home from the meeting and ran into the kitchen and hugged Mihoko and told her that I had become happy again. ^_^

Hi again

2008-02-26T23:05:00.000-08:00

Here we are, a Tuesday night, 11:06 pm, and I finally have a chance to post again. Sorry, it's been a busy week. On Thursday, the members of Refuge went out of town for an overnight business planning meeting, talking about the coming year for the congregation and what we hoped to accomplish. Saturday was a work party for the house, but, unfortunately, April, Nate and myself had to work for AmeriCorps, since that was our service project day. Ironically enough, we worked for Habitat for Humanity. ^_^ While April and Nate and a few others worked inside the house, the majority of us filled in ditches with dirt. Shoveling, wheel-barreling, and stomping. We did get a nice break for lunch, though, during which we walked down the street a ways to a green spot and just picnicked. It was one of the first sunny days we'd had in a while.

Some guys from the Church of the Servant King in Eugene came up to help on the house, and a guy from the one in Portland, I believe, brought dinner for everybody, which was wonderful. So many people are responding to help us build; God is definitely answering prayers quickly in this case. Sunday was the Lord' Supper, and April and I made spinach lasagna, which everyone liked, to our joy. ^_^ Although the onions weren't cooked completely, and were a bit crunchy. *shrug*

Then yesterday and today have just been working. A lot of work, but then again, I am trying to get done early, before the official last day in September deadline. We'll see what happens.

I might be getting a cold; hopefully not. We'll see. My throat is a little scratchy at night, but during the day I'm fine. Could just be having wet hair, or something.

Books, Superclean Stores, and Pirates

2008-02-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

Hi guys. Another couple days have passed. Well, we have been trying to put whatever extra time we have into the house, whether it be by actually physically helping, or watching kids, or running to stores to get stuff, or planning, or cooking... etc. Instead of a Mexico trip, we are having PCF's spring break event be working on the house. Hopefully there are some people who will help out.

Monday was no school, but to get hours, April and I volunteered at the Portland Children's Museum. They were having a pirate party day. We dressed up like pirates... (um, we wore peasant shirts and belts with tassels and patterned scarves around our heads...) But, that wasn't until the afternoon, so we went to Powell's first. Powell's is the biggest bookstore in Oregon, (the Northwest? America?) I don't know, but it's huge, with new and used books. We both had books to sell, and left with a pile. I got one I'm excited to read, on Bioethics and the Christian perspective. And one on the manners and customs of Biblical times, a couple by G.K. Chesterton, a contemporary of Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis' book on the Psalms, and a sci-fi one by Timothy Zahn, a favorite author. It was a happy time.

We ended up parking in Whole Foods' parking garage a couple blocks away from Powell's, so to validate our ticket and not pay for parking we got food from Whole Foods... which is like a super clean New Seasons... to the max. Seriously, this place was PRESENTATION. It was nice; I'd like to go on a day that we have more time to just wander around. They had good bagels and soup.

Then we went to the children's museum, but since it was the first sunny day in forever, and no school, EVERYONE was going to the zoo, so we actually had to park in a different lot and take a shuttle bus there, and got there about an hour late. Then we helped kids make magnets or pins, but there were only about 6 kids total that came in the hour and a half we were there. Hehe. But driving also counted for hours, so being delayed was fine.

Tomorrow afternoon and Friday the members of Refuge will be gone; April and Chelsea are watching all the kids. Pray for them. ^_^

Updates and Happenings

2008-02-17T10:46:00.001-08:00

Hi, everyone. It's been a while, hasn't it? ^_^

This has been a pretty busy week. On Thursday, for Valentine's Day, all of the guys in the church put on a big, wonderful dinner for all of the girls. They had everything from soup and salad appetizers to main courses of either stuffed chicken or elk, and three different choices of dessert. It was all delicious.

On that day, earlier, for AmeriCorps I also had the opportunity to visit Hillsboro High School to see what Ryan, another AmeriCorps member, is doing there. It's kind of discouraging; he is in a class that is a tutorial period all day, trying to help kids get back up to passing (most are getting an F or less in any or all classes). They are almost all freshmen, and they are almost all completely unmotivated to do anything school-wise, and most also come from high risk families or bad home situations, or poverty, or stuff like that. There are fights sometimes. Ryan is trying his best to connect with these kids and try to help them, but there's hardly any outside support, either from their families or other teachers in the school, and most of the kids don't want help or to be told to do their homework. :(

On Friday, I got to watch the Miller girls for the afternoon/evening. It was a blast. I took them to Jo-Ann, and then to dinner at Red Robin. Sammi had a recipe book that we looked through and made a dessert from, and with the stuff from Jo-Ann they both made a pillow. It was a good evening. Then, yesterday (saturday) night, we had a household dinner of Papa Murphey's pizza, then watched an Indiana Jones movie. A lot of people showed up randomly: Craig, Ben, Shannon, Wish... so it was really fun. But, I (and a few others) fell asleep during the movie. Oops! ^_^

Then for our Sunday household breakfast, we were all shocked when people from the Brown House showed up with a huge breakfast that they had made for us! Eggs, potatoes, cinnamon rolls, yogurt/granola/fruit parfaits, sausage and juice! Plus we had the pancakes that Chelsea had been making. So we had a feast for breakfast, which was delicious.

And it is sunny and not rainy today! Good day for a walk.

Book Recommendation: Inhabiting the Church, by Jon Stock, Tim Otto, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

2008-02-11T22:01:00.001-08:00

In preparation for attending the Ekklesia Project, a conference on New Monasticism going to be held at Church of the Servant King in Portland the last weekend this month, I've been reading the book "Inhabiting the Church", by the guys listed in the title (don't want to type the names again...). It's roughly 100 pages, but it packs a punch. I love it. Seriously, I want to quote it. The whole book. So I highly, highly recommend it to anyone, especially those wondering about what being the people of God, the church, entails.

The authors are all members of intentional communities around the country. I've been to visit two of them, the Church of the Servant King in Eugene and the Church of the Sojourners in San Fransisco. I haven't been to Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina. The book investigates the rule of St. Benedict, trying to see how vows, conversion, obedience, and stability are called for in both the Old and New Testaments and how we can live those out in our discipleship today, trying to model ourselves after Christ. It was an encouraging read for me, being someone who is already convinced of the concept of intentional Christian communities in order to get at love and life laid down for others. I imagine for those searching it could be a great help. I can also imagine that some people will scoff. *shrug* But I do recommend it highly.

Bad Advertisement

2008-02-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

I heard an advertisement on the Fish the other day, about a surefire 10-step plan to make your kid get better grades within a month. Call for this program, the announcer said, and you can make your child the smart, successful kid you know they are. I was upset listening to it; there are no ten steps that will guarantee that every kid will get higher grades within one month. The whole thing is highly insulting to the kids. And the type of pressure parents who actually buy this sort of thing are going to put on their kids to get results just makes me sad to think about it. I guess people try to make money off of anything, though.

Book Excerpt: The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

2008-02-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

More from The Four Loves. Page 121.

***

"There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

***

He's talking about those who never allow themselves to love because they are afraid of getting hurt; thus they wall themselves off. I just thought it was a thoughtful statement; in Heaven, love will of course be perfected and no one will ever disappoint you. In Hell, there will be no love, and so no one will ever disappoint you. On earth, you are always in danger of being hurt... but without risking the hurt, without loving, you will never be in Heaven in the end, to experience perfect love. Continuing the same subject on page 122-122.

***

"The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield? As so often, Our Lord's own words are both far fiercer and far more tolerable than those of the theologians. He says nothing about guarding against earthly loves for fear we might be hurt; He says something that cracks like a whip about trampling them all under foot the moment they hold us back from following Him. 'If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife...and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14:26).

But how are we to understand the word hate? That Love Himself should be commanding what we ordinarily mean by hatred--commanding us to cherish resentment, to gloat over another's misery, to delight in injuring him--is almost a contradiction in terms. I think Our Lord, in the sense here intended, 'hated' St. Peter when he said, 'Get thee behind me.' To hate is to reject, to set one's face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil. A man, said Jesus, who tries to serve two masters, will 'hate' the one and 'love' the other. It is not, surely, mere feelings of aversion and liking that are here in question. He will adhere to, consent to, work for, the one and not the other. Consider again, 'I loved Jacob and I hated Esau' (Malachi 1:2-3). How is the thing called God's 'hatred' of Esau displayed in the actual story? Not at all as we might expect. There is of course no ground for assuming that Esau made a bad end and was a lost soul; the Old Testament, here as elsewhere, has nothing to say about such matters. And, from all we are told, Esau's earthly life was, in every ordinary sense, a good deal more blessed than Jacob's. It is Jacob who has all the disappointments, humiliations, terrors, and bereavements. But he has something which Esau has not. He is a patriarch. He hands on the Hebraic tradition, transmits the vocation and the blessing, becomes an ancestor of Our Lord. The 'loving' of Jacob seems to mean the acceptance of Jacob for a high (and painful) vocation; the 'hating' of Esau, his rejection. He is 'turned down,' fails to 'make the grade,' is found useless for the purpose. So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God. Heaven knows, it will seem to them sufficiently like hatred. We must not act on the pity we feel; we must be blind to tears and deaf to pleadings."

***

Busy, busy

2008-02-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Well, tomorrow I am watching the Mossbarger boys all day. ^_^ That will likely make it an interesting, busy day. I hope to get some work done in there too; I need more hours if I'm going to be done with my 1700 total by September.

I wonder what people think of me when I'm buying the snacks for the Japanese Club at Uwajimaya, and I walk up to the check-out and buy 40 dollars worth of crackers, chocolate, and candy. Hehe. I got those gross shrimp flavored french fry shaped chips for them. Who knows, someone might like them. The kids didn't like mochi-too chewy and foreign. They also didn't like anything, really, with anko (sweet red bean paste) in it. Kids don't know what they're missing. ^_^

Book Excerpt - The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis

2008-02-08T21:17:00.000-08:00

Continuing on with excerpts of interest from The Four Loves. This is another one about patriotism, page 28-29.

***

"Patriotism has, then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step--has already begun to step--into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them, or at least to prepare for their defense. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for 'their country' they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, of civilization, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their country's cause was just; but it was still their country's cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds--wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine--I become insufferable. The pretense that when England's cause is just we are on England's side--as some neutral Don Quixote might be--for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things that are very much of this world."

***

So, even though I'm not sure whether or not I agree with war... I do agree with the end of this section. If we claim that "God is on our side" or that "we are on God's side" as in saying that we are fighting for God, that America is His chosen country (equating Him with freedom, liberty, capitalism, democracy, yadda, yadda) then we have no right to leave anyone in the Middle East alive. God, in telling the Israelites to fight, told them to kill every man, woman, child, and even animal that was an inhabitant of the land they invaded. So, if God really told America to go to war...

I don't think I would disdain the whole thing so much if the honest truth were spoken: the war isn't about "God", but about getting even (and getting oil?). If people would just stop dragging God into their justification of supporting the war, like some shield or something. America isn't holy or chosen or best or always right. I think I could respect people defending their homes and families more than I can respect those sending people to force "democracy" on people halfway around the world.

Tired

2008-02-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

I have been getting... not a lot of sleep lately. I've just been waking up many times at night, and not being able to actually sleep when I'm just lying in bed, despite being very tired. I also had this weird painful earache Monday, which came randomly and left just as randomly. So, yeah. I'm tired.

I updated the url for Ben's blog; he changed it.

I realized today that freezing split pea soup isn't the best idea. It's so thick when I make it that freezing, thawing, and re-heating it makes it too... mushy and grainy at the same time, if that's possible. I mean, it is, because it's what I had for lunch today so this is first hand testimony, but you might not be able to imagine it. So as for my brilliant plans of making and freezing meals ahead of time for time-saving and convenience, my list will have to be minus split pea soup from now on. Which is okay, since I can/am still freezing spaghetti sauce, bread, flat-bread, gyoza (pot-stickers), nikuman (filled steamed buns), applesauce and things of that sort. If anybody has suggestions, I'm up for them. ^_^

Delicious Recipe - Whole Wheat Flat Bread

2008-02-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

I got a recipe in an old magazine (libraries are wonderful) for this flat bread, and it was wonderful. (Oh, this is my own wording, not the magazines.) ^_^

1.25 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbs olive oil
.75 cups warm water

Mix flours and salt. Drizzle olive oil over flours and mix in with wooden spoon. Add water and mix. Knead on a lightly floured surface 3-5 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit half an hour. Heat griddle or skillet on medium heat. Separate dough into 8 balls and roll out to roughly 6" diameter circles. Place one at a time on griddle. Flip after 15 seconds. After one minute, check underside. When brown flecks appear, flip again. Bread should puff up a bit. If not, turn heat up slightly for next one. Cook until both sides are flecked with brown. Dip in that most wonderful of foods, hummus. (Or use it as a side for salad, dip in salsa, spread with pesto or peanut butter and jelly, make a mini-pizza... be creative!)

Organizing, organizing

2008-02-03T17:41:00.001-08:00

Last night I put something together for the first time ever. Chelsea and April helped. It was my new loft bed. Turned out to be a torturous event, because the instructions didn't mention the differences between domed, slightly domed, and flat heads and feet for various posts and the ladder, meaning we put the wrong ones in the wrong places and only found out later when the other ones wouldn't work and had to take a butter knife to the things to get them out and switched around... took quite a while and Chelsea and I both almost had nervous breakdowns. (There were about 50 other things that went wrong, too... but now it's up!) That gave me courage to put the new bookshelf I had bought together all by myself this morning; mission accomplished! With no mistakes! I've got a great learning curve.

So, then there was organizing. Yay. But our room now has visible floor space. And an awesome curtained off under the loft bed space that we're either going to call the monastery or the cave.

SNOW!

2008-02-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

A nice Saturday morning here... completely white! It has been snowing for hours. So pretty. I am really enjoying this winter; there has been so much more snow than we've ever had before here in... 4 years at least.

So we all switched up rooms last night; now I'm upstairs in the big room with Chelsea and April, Noah is in my tiny room downstairs, the Stolleys have moved over one room and put Alyssa in with Anna. So today is an organizing all the moved stuff day. Hooray. ^_^ (Seriously, I actually like organizing. Every time I do, I find more stuff to get rid of, and that's always nice. I have a large stack of books now to take to Powell's and sell.)

Book Excerpt - The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis

2008-01-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

Continuing on in the current book. (Actually, I've only got about 10 pages until the end, but I've fallen behind in my excerpt typing.) ^_^

Lewis, in the chapter on Affection, comes to a love of (affection for) one's country. He's more patriotic than I am, and I must admit that I don't completely agree with his views on the whole matter, but I thought that this was a good paragraph. He's referencing patriotism with which a person loves his homeland simply because it is his home. Page 24.

***

"Of course patriotism of this kind is not in the least aggressive. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes militant only to protect what it loves. In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude toward foreigners. How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs--why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different."

***

I'm more open to considering a "patriotism" that, like Lewis here talks about, is not aggressive. It's the patriotism prevalent in the world today (not only America, of course) that tells us that we have to make everyone else conform to us, that is afraid of anything different, and that thinks it is superior to everyone else and therefore has a right to force our system on them that I take issue with.

Random Information

2008-01-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I've added some lists to the sidebar to the right. They are made up of various groups of books that I would highly recommend. Most of the Christian fiction books are allegory, science fiction, or fantasy. Most of the Christian non-fiction are books that have been formative for me over the past 4 years. The other books are simply that: books that, for one reason or another, I have enjoyed and would like to recommend to others. If you have a question about any of the books, just leave a comment, and I'll get a reply up. ^_^

Also, I have another article on Associated Content published, 7 Tips for a Successful Homestay in Japan, so if you're interested there it is.

It has been extremely cold here, more so than it has been for many years. School has been closed or delayed due to weather a ton this past month... which isn't all that bad, actually. ^_^

One of the local churches hooked up with a network of others in the county to be a Severe Weather Emergency Shelter, allowing homeless people to come in and sleep inside, and giving food, blankets, clothes, etc. That was good to see and support. We've been trying to partner with churches in town a lot, so this was a great opportunity. Happy!

Play - The Lion in Winter

2008-01-26T19:02:00.000-08:00

April and I went to the play "The Lion in Winter" at the Theater in the Grove (the small community theater here in Forest Grove) last night. It was great. The play is set in Christmas, 1183, in Henry II, the king of England's palace in France. Henry is there with his young mistress, his three sons, his wife (who has fallen out of his favor), and the occasional guest, the young king of France, Phillip. The play revolves around who will become the next king after Henry has died, pitting the three sons and their various supporters against each other.

It is definitely a play for adults; there are many adult themes and jokes inappropriate for children. However, the acting was great. The characters all had strongly formed personalities and the actors put them across very well. There were many humorous jokes and circumstances throughout to amuse. I was pulled into the play; I didn't know which son I wanted to win, and I had no idea who would prevail in the end. If you're in the Grove, I would recommend going.

Book Excerpt - The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis

2008-01-26T18:54:00.001-08:00

Continuing in The Four Loves, I've finished the rather large chapter on Affection. A part that struck me as I was reading it was when he begins to talk about affection as imprisoning people. For example, you have an affectionate mother, who does everything for her children. She does the washing, stays up late waiting for them to get home, takes over, basically, cooking hot meals even in the summer when they would like cool leftovers, generally overbearing. And when she is exhausted and aches from all the work she does she consoles herself, telling herself how much she loves her family, to work herself to death for them. But there's also resentment, because her family doesn't give her the love and respect she deserves for all her efforts.

In actuality, they don't really like her. Why? Because they can't go out late to have a good time, because she will stay up until they get home, so the first thing they see coming in the door late is her tired face, "sacrificing" her sleep for them but really telling them they shouldn't go out, because look at how they are making her stay up so late worrying about them. They don't appreciate how she slaves over the oven even in the summer heat, or sews all their own clothes by hand instead of letting them buy clothes, etc. And so she smothers them, and resents them.

The problem is that she is needing to be needed, to the point that she makes up needs for her family that she can fulfill so that she can feel like they need her. They don't really need her to sew all their clothes by hand; but she won't allow them to buy them elsewhere so that she feels that they need her to make them. They don't need her to stay up late waiting for them to get home, but she does it anyway. And so on. It's a reminder to me to let people be, instead of making myself "help" them even when they tell me plainly "thanks, but no thanks". It's not a dismissal of me as a person; they simply might not need help with whatever task is at hand. Taking a "no thanks" to an offer of help graciously keeps resentment and frustration from breeding on both sides.

Charity - Shared Hope International

2008-01-26T18:44:00.000-08:00

I was reading an old issue of Today's Christian Woman magazine, and they had an interview with Linda Smith, a former congresswoman who founded Shared Hope International, a group that is working against human trafficking, particularly the sex slave trade. Smith talks about how she had gone to Bombay, and seen parts of town where the women and children kept as slaves in small cells lining the prostitute district were, and God called her to do something about it.

SHI works to free women and children all over the world, (including third world countries and countries like the US and Japan), building shelters and schools and helping these women come out of their horrible pasts. They share the message of God's love with these people and teach them skills that they can use to get a job and support themselves so that they won't have to fall back into being helpless slaves.

You can learn about the website or make a contribution online at www.sharedhope.org. I recommend at least checking it out.

Book Excerpt - The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis - 1

2008-01-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading "The Four Loves", by C.S. Lewis. In it, he talks about what he views as the four basic types of love: affection, friendships, erotic love, and the love of God. It's interesting so far (I'm about a quarter of the way into it), but kind of unlike other works of his I've read. I mean, his voice is the same, and writing style is the same, but the book seems on a higher, less accessible level than most of his works. This one and Miracles are the two of his so far that I think I'll probably have to come back to in a couple years to re-read and see what happens then. Not to say that I'm not enjoying it now.

Here's a bit from page 6:

***

"Hence, as a better writer has said, our imitation of God in this life--that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states--must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions."

***

A couple things jumped out to me from this. First, is the reminder that we are called to follow Christ. Often I think we strive to imitate him in, say, his suffering, or death. And while we are certainly called to die with him, to complete his suffering in the body, we are also called to daily take up our cross and follow him. Lewis brings this fact out by listing the dreary, day to day things that come up, like occupations, chance encounters, demands, etc., to remind us that in everything, no matter how little, we are called to follow.

I was particularly drawn to the part about the interruptions and lack of peace and privacy. Living as I do in a house with 11 people (family of 5, 5 other singles) from my congregation, I can well empathize with interruptions of peace and privacy. It is easy to get annoyed and become short with others, especially when you are asked 5 different times in one evening how your day went. Even if it went fine, I tend to be the type who doesn't like repeating the same conversation over and over... I forget that this particular person didn't hear me earlier, and get snappy or reticent to be as elaborate or talkative as I was with the first person who asked.

I also have the bad habit of becoming absorbed in what I'm doing: reading, writing, watching a movie, playing a video game. If someone comes to talk to me, I can be standoffish, sending across the message that whatever I'm doing at that moment is much more important to me than that person. I'm learning to constantly pray that God will remind me always that people are more important than things; they are more important than the book I'm reading, the post or chapter I'm writing, the movie I'm watching or the video game I'm playing (all of which can, of course, be paused and come back to later). It's a good lesson to learn, I think... Hopefully I'll get better. ^_^

Trouble with Becoming a Teacher

2008-01-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

Another thing I've struggled with when thinking about whether I should become a teacher or not is the pledge of alliegance. They make these kids say it. I don't know, but I don't feel right leading little children to pledge their alliegance to a country. It seems like brainwashing. Plus, I certainly don't say it. I don't know how I'd be able to lead kids in it if I don't say it myself.

And then there's the fact that, unless I'm at a private school, it's illegal to talk about God. There are private schools around here, so I suppose I could try to find a job at one of them... Hmmm...

Japanese Club - Robots

2008-01-23T22:00:00.000-08:00

So, I'm leading a Japanese Club at my elementary school for 10 3rd and 4th graders once a week. Of the 10 students, 8 are boys... so it gets quite rowdy in there. It's opening my eyes to a lot of things; I was thinking of becoming a teacher, but now I'm pretty sure that unless I taught, say, kindergarten, or got a lot more strict and forceful, I wouldn't be able to hold the class in line. I guess I'm too lenient, or something.

It's cool, though, to teach them about Japan. They get so excited. Today, for example, we were talking about robots, and I had brought a book from the library with pictures, etc. The kids were up out of their seats lined up in front of my desk so that they could see the pictures close up, and really got into thinking about what these robots could do.

Some of the stuff kind of disturbed me, though. They are talking about how they are trying to provide robots that can be companions for seniors. Japan is an aging country, with more seniors than young people. What disturbs me about this is that, instead of the young people taking care of their aging relatives, they are going to be all alone, with their little robot friend to be their only companion. It just seems... cold. Like nursing homes here.

Plus, the developers of a lot of the top of the line robots in Japan are enthusiastic for making Japan, at least, a robot driven country. They want robots in every home, doing all manner of things that people used to do: manual labor, cleaning, playing with kids. If this goes on, people will become sedentary and secluded. Who needs to play with Suzuki next door when you've got robo-pup in your own house? It seems like it may only exacerbate the problems we all have with video games, tv, and, yes, the internet. (hehe)

And then there's always the Matrix...

German food and newspapers

2008-01-21T15:52:00.000-08:00

Well, for Maria's birthday, we took her to a restaurant called Gustav's Pub and Grill, which was delicious! It was fancier than we expected, and waiters were giving us dirty looks as they walked by our booth... but then they stopped. *shrug* The food was delicious. We got a couple things and split them; bratwurst, spatzle (kind of spongy pasta), pickled red cabbage, potato pancakes, duck, schnitzel (kind of breaded meat), fondue. It was great; I would go there again. It was a lot of food, too.

Today was our service project for January for AmeriCorps, and we did painting at a home in Beaverton, and then made cards to go for a senior center with care baskets from Loaves and Fishes. Apparently there was this big service day with Hands On Portland, because a reporter and a camera-man from the Beaverton Times showed up at our painting thing and interviewed some of us. Then, ironically, they also showed up at the card making session! Same people! ^_^ It was great.

Book Excerpt - Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller - 1

2008-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I definitely know what I want one aspect of the blog to be: literary. I read a ton, and I often mark passages that struck me that I want to share with others, mostly from books that I enjoy and want others to be interested in reading, but sometimes just to share what was written with others, and maybe my thoughts on it. So, recently I re-read Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What and here's something that touched me. From pages 206-211.

***

The Danger of Marketing the Formulas

It is true that people need Jesus, not religion. And yet at times I am concerned our most passionate missionary endeavors are more concerned with redeeming our identity as Christians within the lifeboat than with presenting Jesus to a world looking for a God. As my pastor friend down south revealed in his question to my lost friend, it often seems what we really want is for people who are not Christians to think we are valid, or Christianity is valid, rather than showing them Jesus, who won't act as a balm for their wounds.

I've a friend named Deacon, for instance, who attended a church here in Oregon that boasted a thriving youth ministry. My friend, who is a ridiculously intelligent physicist, told me that he was involved in this youth ministry when he was in high school. The strategy of the youth ministry, he said, was to recruit the most popular students from each of the local schools, knowing that if the popular students came, everybody else would follow. Because of this, youth ministers aggressively pursued jocks and cheerleaders with events such as slam-dunk contests and pizza feeds. The strategy, of course, worked, and hundreds of kids came, following the cheerleaders and jocks. Each year this ministry would divide the massive youth group into teams of about ten students, and the teams competed against one another for a series of weeks in games--stuff like three-legged races and that sort of thing. Bands were brought in, and speakers came and gave talks about how a person can be cool and still be a follower of Jesus. Each week the intensity would grow as teams competed for points toward first, second, and third places. And each year, as the winning team was announced, students would scream and cheer as the winning team, most often a team with a lot of jocks and cool kids, came up and received their trophy.

My friend told me, laughingly, that when he was in high school he was scrawny, awkward, and definitely not the sort of kid the ministry prized. And not only was he not one of the popular kids, but there weren't any popular kids on his team. "We were really a bunch of nerds," he said. And yet somehow, Deacon told me, their team managed to stay neck and neck in the points.

"I don't know how we did it," he said. "There wasn't a jock among us. But on the last night, there we were toward the top of the pack. And I remember thinking about how awesome it would be to win the event. Every year the team that won was ushered up front and people went nuts. I could just feel it, you know, walking up there to get the trophy with all these cool kids, all these jocks and cheerleaders finally noticing that I existed."

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Well," Deacon continued, "the last night came around, and we knew we were in the running. We competed hard, harder than any of us had ever competed before, and because the games were so screwy, you know, run to the other side of the gym and put your head on the end of a baseball bat and spin around and then come back, that sort of thing, the fact none of us were athletes hardly affected us. Anybody can turn around and get dizzy. But it was still close, and when the whole thing was done, we didn't know whether we had won. There were a couple other teams that were also close."

"So did you win?" I asked, rather sucked into the story, hoping, quite honestly, that a team of misfits would come out ahead.

"I'm getting there," Deacon continued. "So the youth leaders left the room and started calculating the scores, you know, and all of the teams were cheering, kind of yelling at one another in unison, and my team was so nervous that we kind of sat there in silence. And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the youth leaders came back into the room. They gathered everybody around in a big semicircle and grabbed the trophy and talked about how close it all was, and everybody was still kind of cheering so they had to quiet everybody down, and then the head youth pastor told us all to give a drum roll, you know, like pat our legs and the floor and the place was going nuts with this drum roll. And then he yelled the name of our team into the microphone. We had won. I couldn't believe it, but we actually won the thing." When Deacon delivered these last lines, he said them softly, almost as though he were ashamed.

"But you won, Deacon. That's great," I said.

"Yeah, it was great, but it was also one of the most humiliating nights of my life."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, when the youth pastor called our team's name, the place more or less went silent. I mean, some people were cheering, but as we stood up and they realized who we were, they all went quiet. It was as though they weren't sure whether it was right to cheer for us or not. The place had been so geared around jocks and cheerleaders, they weren't sure if our winning was a good thing. I never felt like such a loser in my life."

And of course I told Deacon what he already knew, that this kind of thing was wrong, that Jesus went directly to those who were marginalized, not showing partiality at all. Deacon said he knew that, and he assured me he was over it, but I wondered. I wondered because I grew up a misfit, too, and while the youth ministry I attended when I was a kid was a safe haven for misfits, I can't imagine being able to get over that moment as quickly as Deacon did. I can't imagine not having stayed up at night wondering if God would feel the same way about me as the kids in the lifeboat.

I began to wonder if what we were really doing in evangelical circles, then, had more to do with redeeming ourselves to culture than it did with showing Jesus to a hurting world, a world literally filled with outcasts.

Not long after Deacon told me that story, I was in a record shop with a friend who was also in ministry. And we were having this same conversation, and I was saying that I think, as Christians, we might be obsessed with whether or not we appear cool to the world. My friend disagreed and talked about all the ministries that minister to the outcasts; how if it weren't for the church, many people would go hungry, and many people would die lonely.

"That's true," I said to my friend. "But let's try a little experiment." I looked out over the record store, a mass-market chain store that must have housed ten thousand CDs, and I asked him to go into the racks and find one ugly person on the cover of a record.

"Do what?" my friend asked.

"You know, find an ugly person."

"Okay," my friend said reluctantly, and with that he walked into the aisle and started thumbing through the discs.

"What about this one?" he said, holding up a compact disc with a dorky-looking guy holding an acoustic guitar, the letters of the type looking like something printed in the sixties, but the picture very much modern.

"Easy enough, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure," he said sarcastically. But the reason I had asked him to do this was because I knew our next stop would be a large Christian bookstore here in Portland, a bookstore that has an entire room devoted to music. We were heading over there to pick up a case of books we had ordered. When we arrived at the store, I asked my friend to come to the music room with me and I asked him to do the same thing, to find a record with an ugly person on the cover.

"I see what you're getting at," he said with a smile. And he started walking down the aisle. I went with him and both of us thumbed through the discs, picking out covers and showing them to each other, but none of the artists even slightly passed for ugly.

We spent about twenty minutes looking through the records but came up with nothing. We literally couldn't find one record cover with an ugly person on it. You can try the same experiment if you like. And I don't mean any of this to say that good-looking people are bad. I would actually like to be a good-looking person one day. I am only saying we are, perhaps, even more obsessed, in the church, with the stuff culture is obsessed with. We are hardly providing an alternative worldview. The matra seems to be "Trust in Jesus! He will redeem you to the world."

The examples get worse. A friend told me recently he volunteered at a church only a mile from my house. This is a large church with a successful television ministry. He said that his job was to usher people to their seats, and that after he had been on the job for a while, he was asked to put some of the more "pleasant-looking people" on the front rows as these people were more likely to be caught in the picture when the camera pulled out on the audience, or when the preacher walked down from the stage to make a point.

I assure you, I am not making this up.

And please don't misunderstand me. There are very few churches like this, but as a Christian community, if Paul or Peter or whoever were to write a letter to us, I think this business of showing favoritism and being obsessed with the way we market our faith might come up.

The second chapter of the book of James tells us, specifically, not to take a wealthy person and seat him in a place of honor and leave a poor person in the back. I take this to mean that in church, the rules of the lifeboat don't apply, that church is a refuge, where the kingdom of God is emulate, not mocked.

***

So, Miller mentions the lifeboat a few times, and I will try to explain what he means by that. He is talking about how society values people. As in, if we were all in a lifeboat, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, who would be pick? There is a type of social stratification going on, where we rank how important or valued people are compared to other people, compared to ourselves. This type of ranking the importance of people is not any part of Jesus' teachings, but the cultural pervasiveness of it seeps into even the church, as evidenced by his examples. His book is about getting out of it, out of the lifeboat, and into Christ, where God gives us all value and worth, and we don't have to try to measure ourselves against others to feel validated.

This is a sobering passage. I think of other ministries I know, and it's true that often, the "popular" kids are focused on, the "natural leaders", so that they can perhaps pull others in. I never agreed with that mentality, and I still don't. On the one hand, it is pushing for and cultivating a relationship with a "popular" kid (or college student) not for their own sake, but to use as a tool to get other people in. Second, the other people can plainly see the effort thrown into those few "special" kids, and so instead of youth groups or college or any age ministries sending out the message that all are equally valued, they are sending out the message that they are just like the world, using the world's ranking system and marketing strategies to draw in the crowds.

We need to stop thinking about popularity and big smiles and nice singing voices when we set up group leaders or spokespeople (if we set them up at all). Personal experience shows that the popular types fall just as often as the unpopular, and that you will often be surprised by the inner strength of those who have been marginalized for being less "attractive", or outspoken, or flamboyant, or shy. Let's reach out to everyone equally with Christ's love, and escape from the lifeboat.

I love success

2008-01-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I figured out why the links didn't work, and I fixed them! Happy day! It makes me feel warm inside.

Today is Sabbath, so it will be a slow day, trying to grow closer to God.

It is also Maria's birthday, so we will be going to a German restaurant (good thing there's a spell check, because I could never have spelled restaurant correctly without one) and then out for girl's night after gathered worship for her to taste test different drinks, since it is her 21st. We will have fun!

Post the Second (of slightly less importance)

2008-01-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

It's sad, but for some reason the links aren't working correctly. I am searching for the answer. I will let you know when they work!

I'm hungry. April made wonderful pumpkin bread that is almost all gone. I've eaten a lot of it. I should eat vegetables. I got an interesting-sounding sesame ginger sauce from New Seasons (a natural/organic store at Orenco Station) so I will make a stir fry. Type to you all later.

First Post (of monumental importance)

2008-01-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

So... I thought a blog would be cool. Honestly, I'd never so much as read one before today, though of course I've heard the word (and acted like I knew what it meant, being a CS minor and all... *sheepish*). I actually looked it up on Wikipedia and howstuffworks (being almost ocd about checking stuff out thoroughly before doing it, as the mountain of library books in my room makes clear). So, now I know what it is, have randomly checked some out, and since I like to drone on in writing, I thought I'd start one. ^_^

Of course, I have wonderful plans of making my own business selling crocheted crafts and homemade cards online, while writing and gardening to support myself and adopting a girl from China and striving to live for Christ first in everything. But for now, I'll stick to striving to live for Christ, and letting this place be a way to connect with friends and family. I've wanted to be a better correspondent for a while, so here we go.