Month: November 2002

This has been a great year for Paula and I–we’ve had a lot of fun changes to process! Think­ing back, here are sev­en things we’re thank­ful for:

1) We’re thank­ful for five won­der­ful years of min­istry to the stu­dents back in Spring­field, MO!

2) We’re thank­ful for a safe and fun move west (and espe­cial­ly for the friends we were able to vis­it with as we drove across Amer­i­ca).

3) We’re thank­ful that we now have the hon­or of rep­re­sent­ing Christ to the world’s future lead­ers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

4) We’re thank­ful for the many rela­tion­ships God has grant­ed us with Stan­ford stu­dents, both grad and under­grad (near­ly 25 so far). Pio­neer­ing is often much, much hard­er, and we’re grate­ful for how easy God has made it for us!

5) We’re thank­ful for liv­ing in such a won­der­ful apart­ment across the street from cam­pus. The best thing about it our prox­im­i­ty to stu­dents: Kevin, who is pur­su­ing his mas­ters in engi­neer­ing, can bike from his dorm to our apart­ment in about three min­utes!

6) We’re also thank­ful that God has pro­vid­ed us with what is quite pos­si­bly the most vibrant­ly yel­low car on the plan­et! We’ve got a few nick­names for this irre­press­ibly perky vehi­cle, includ­ing “The Curi­ous George Mobile” and “The Hap­py Car.”

7) And final­ly, we’re thank­ful for friends like you who sup­port us, pray for us, and show con­cern for us and for our min­istry. Thank you and thank God for you! We whole­heart­ed­ly echo the apos­tle Paul, “How can we pos­si­bly thank God enough for all the hap­pi­ness you have brought us?” (1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3.9, CEV)

Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing!

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any­thing on this site (although look over at the Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford site and you’ll real­ize that I’ve been quite active online).

Still, this is the site that bears my name and all…

Here are a few lit­tle tid­bits:

• I vot­ed today. It was worth­while, but it real­ly wrecked my sched­ule.
• I have a bone to pick with the Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal sys­tem: what’s up with statewide ref­er­en­dums? Don’t they defeat the pur­pose of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy?
• And why do we use plu­ral­i­ty vot­ing to select pub­lic ser­vants? There are much bet­ter ways!
• I broke the 10,000 mile mark­er on our car yes­ter­day. I’m get­ting quite famil­iar with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s inter­state sys­tem…
• Also yes­ter­day I had a chance to meet with a real­ly neat pas­tor named Paul. He has eleven chil­dren. All by the same wife. Who still looks like a mod­el (his words). Wow.
• While I was meet­ing with Paul, he gave me a free tick­et to a remark­able cave in Vol­cano, CA called Black Chasm. Creepy name, gor­geous cav­ern. I was the only per­son on the tour when I vis­it­ed the cave, so it was real­ly cool. If you’re ever near Vol­cano, you should real­ly try to vis­it the cave–it’s well worth the time and mon­ey.

Any­way, I’m still work­ing at rais­ing our full mis­sion­ary bud­get (hence all the miles on the car and the meet­ing with said pas­tor). Keep us in your prayers!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I am giv­ing about two hours a week of min­istry time on Stan­ford’s cam­pus. We’ll be hav­ing our sixth meet­ing of the year this Wednes­day (Paula will be speak­ing), and we’re expect­ing around 20 stu­dents to show up. Rough­ly 1/3 of them will be Sin­ga­pore­an grad­u­ate stu­dents.