Yes, it's really been put on the web and is accessible to everyone: a2f Gold's Vamos a la Gracepoint is online and viewable. Watch out folks. As the caption says,
Please don't watch this more than twice, as it can be harmful for your emotional health.More to come. Happy Thanksgiving!
Since this week is Thanksgiving and everyone's heading home, we're having a combined bible study on Tuesday (11/25) at 8:00pm @ First Pres!
If you want to join us for prayer meeting, it'll start at 7:00pm, also at First Pres.
In other news, Thanksgiving Celebration was this past Sunday. Pictures and videos will be posted soon, so watch out.
Thanksgiving Celebration is over, but the turkey is just beginning! For those of you sticking around during Thanksgiving (11/27) and still in Berkeley, we'll be having lunch together with everyone who's around from Gracepoint Fellowship Church. Berkeley? No! We'll be in Alameda, doing a potluck barbecue at Tilman Park. So there'll be lots of food and sports too so we can get started working off all that accumulated Thanksgiving high caloric intake!
If you can come (or want to come), post a comment so we can make sure you have a ride, and also so we can cook together to bring food to the potluck!
This week's news is super-punctuated by Thanksgiving Celebration, which is coming up really quick. But before we get there, let's have at it with this week's news:
That's it for the news to come, but wanted to briefly talk about the news that's been happening in the last several days. Last Friday, Pastor Manny and Sunny joined us from Koinonia Austin. Pastor Manny gave us a message from the book of Jonah about God's calling for each of our lives. It was so good to see them again, and it's hard to believe that it's only been four months since the first Austin team departed Berkeley!Here is a story of what happens to gifts when you don't claim them right away:
My roommate, Harry Jiang, calls me one Sunday afternoon after Sunday Worship Service asking me to ask Eddie to come over to the dorms because he has a present to give to Eddie. So after service, Eddie decides to drive me home so he can stop by. When we arrived at the dorms, we couldn't find a parking spot so we called Harry to bring down what he has for Eddie. Harry responds, "Ehh... that's okay. I can just give it to him next time." When I return back to the room, I find out that Harry planned to give Eddie some Chinese pastries.
Anyway, I managed to get a quick video using my phone to get evidence of whose stomach the pastries would end up in.
For all you chefs out there, Tom has posted an article on his wonderful Dish-Gracepoint blog that gives you some great tips how to make a rock star turkey this Thanksgiving. Tim So from a2f actually provided the tips, and let's just say if you're looking for reading material, this one's a knockout. Plus, you can impress your friends (and family!) this Thanksgiving!
Check out the recipe on Dish-Gracepoint.
Hola H.1ers
As Thanksgiving draws closer and closer, we've been practicing hard for our annual Thanksgiving Celebration. For those of you who don't know what TC is, it basically happens every year around Thanksgiving time. We gather together as a church and gorge ourselves with delicious thanksgiving food while watching entertaining skits/dance performances/talent shows! Sounds fun right?
Anyways, this past Friday we went to St. Augustine's for bible study with Pastor Manny. We were all so excited to finally see him! (and his funny hair cut). Sunny was there too! It was such a blessing to see how Gracepoint Austin has been growing this past semester.
Afterwards we had our TC practice in St. Augustine's cafeteria. Together with H.5, we are putting on three performances: 1)Doing it God's way pilgrim dance (i forgot what the name of the song was) 2)Pilgrim puppet show 3)Pilgrim's paridise (hardcore gangster rap)
here are some highlights:
- Sarah Yuen's amazingly precise English accent
- Hugo Hua's "grand finale" in the Pilgrim dance
- Patti Suen, John Kwon, Simon Kim and many others rapping
- many many sick moves that are too sick to describe (come and see them for yourselves)
Hope you guys are excited for TC this Friday and Saturday! on Friday, all the Koinonia groups will be performing. The best group will be selected to perform on Sunday with the rest of the church.
Pastor Manny's in town for tomorrow's Thanksgiving Retreat! And since he's here, he'll be joining us at Koinonia's "This Is Your Life" bible study. In fact, he's not just joining us, he'll be speaking too and giving the message!
See you guys tonight!
The juniors from across Koinonia, acts2fellowship, and Kairos all took off for Sierra Lodge some Fridays ago after "This Is Your Life" bible study. About 60 juniors left from Berkeley with a handful of staff for our Junior Discipleship Retreat, Fall 2008.
Once we got there, after registration, we played a fun game, "This Is Very Fun." The whole point is no laughing, no smiling, while trying to be as silly as you can to eliminate the other folks in your circle. Some people were terribly gross in their attempts to get others to laugh (ahem, K.Huang & K.Ding), and there were others who were just plain funny (Daniel).
The next morning, Pastor Ed and Kelly joined us and we shared insights from our week's devotion, Ezekiel 3. Then, we read an excerpt from Nation of Wimps before heading out to Island Lake for a short, but beautiful, hike. After returning to the house, we discussed the Nation of Wimps excerpt and how we could apply it to our lives and how we can understand the college campus. Then it was Sophie Scholl, an incredible movie about a young woman's conviction to stand up for what she believed to be right during the Nazi regime.
The next day, after some time of reflection and sharing, and some work around the house, we had our Worship Service there. And then we came back home to Berkeley. It was a whirlwind, but very memorable.
Caught some things on video. Think it's a pretty good summary of what happened:
Junior Discipleship Retreat, Fall 2008 from kevan on Vimeo.
As usual, pictures are posted online (and have been for a while now!). Until next time.
Thanksgiving Celebration in-house for Koinonia is just a week and a couple days away! We practiced last Friday (video below!) and are planning on practicing again this Friday. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's give the whole news, starting with the Friday plan:
Just wanted to send a reminder that if you're planning on heading to the Thanksgiving Retreat, please sign up online! This helps us plan for food (and rides!). The Thanksgiving Retreat is this Saturday (11/15), 10am-9pm, and the cost is $20 (lunch, dinner, facility):
The Gone music video was uploaded. Hooray! Now we can see Howard in three different outfits go through a normal day.
Matt, part of Praxis and Element, worked on the video and prepared it for the event last week. We had a great time last Thursday! If you were able to join us, cool. If not, sorry! Don't miss out next time! You only missed out on hearing about Will owning noobs in Warcraft, Vivian living the KTown life in the real Los Angeles, Annie and her celebrities, Sam and all the Manga and Anime, and Steve's race that he was running.
We were all able to connect at different points with one of the people, and I for one am very thankful they shared as candidly as they did. It just goes to show that God can really change people and redeem their lives, even those parts of our lives that feel like they're gone and wasted.
Our special event, Gone, was a lot of fun and is now... yes, you guessed it, gone. During the night, the seniors who hosted asked a bunch of trivia, some of which I didn't know! Then there was the music video (when I find it, I'll embed it here), and personal stories from some of the Koinonia juniors and seniors.
Anyway, Josh also went onstage and asked a couple questions that led to some really neat conversation in the group I was a part of. I met Vanessa (soph from H.2) and David (from a2f Blue), and we talked through these questions:
I'm not into writing about extraneous stuff on this blog apart from Koinonia and H.1 happenings, but here's something a friend sent to me which deeply moved me. Billy Graham is turning 90 years old today (Friday, Nov. 7). He's been America's great pastor and preacher, and arguably, for the world, throughout the 20th century and into this new millennia. Despite his old age, he had this to say about his life:
"I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn't mean that we must grow weaker spiritually," said Graham in a statement this week.What a radically different approach to growing older. We might think people degenerate and diminish in their engagement with the world as they get older; and subsequently, that their significance and impact likewise also diminishes. But Billy Graham insists this isn't the case, and his insistence is so strong because he's convinced that these 70-odd years on earth really do precede real life: eternity.
"In fact, we ought to be growing stronger spiritually, because our eyes ought to be on eternity and Heaven -- on the things that really matter."
It's election week and believe me, there's plenty of news. First, we have a new president! And more,
I just wanted to share with you all the good news that we received today. Annie's CT/PET scan came out clear and there was no trace of any tumors in her lungs or anywhere else. Thank you so much for all your love and support the past several months. Through the surgery and then the six cycles of chemotherapy, we have received so much love and encouragement. So many people brought us dinners, Annie always had a ride to the hospital to receive her shots, we had so many visitors bringing flowers, cards, and snacks. We really experienced being carried and supported by everyone during this time, and so were able to go through it with so much more strength than Annie or I have within ourselves. Thank you so much!! I'm grateful that I can share this joyful news with so many of you who suffered through it alongside us.
The trailer is on Youtube but you can see it here, now. It's two days away: Watch out.
First Pres., Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008. Invite your friends. See you there.
Koinonia zip-up hoodies coming out soon before the end of the semester. If you want one, you'll need to pre-order online. Pre-order deadline is this Friday, 11/7, so do it soon! There's more details on the online order form.
And here's a video of some of the guys when we went to Cordonices Park several weeks ago. We got burritos to go and headed up Euclid in North Berkeley. Saw the beautiful Bay Area at sunset, and played around on the playground, the centerpiece of which was a 15 foot concrete slide. Totally fun. More pictures online, but here's that video:
Cordonices Park from kevan on Vimeo.
