Category: Personal News

We’ll be in Washington, D.C. for General Council.

This one will actually be an important one–we’re deciding on some pretty vital internal legislation (how we plant churches, for example). Nothing should make national news, however.

All that to say this: if you send either of us an email, it may be a while before we get back to you. We’re not sure how solid our connectivity will be on the road.

I haven’t been updating the site much lately because my mom has been visiting. It was a good visit–we went to some beaches, ate at some restaurants, and relaxed.

Of particular interest to my father (who stayed back in Louisiana) will be the fact that not only did we eat Dungeness crabs, but we cooked them ourselves (as good Cajuns ought). Here they are in the bathtub awaiting their fate!

Yesterday was an astoundingly good day: I got up at 5am to drive to Sacramento for a meeting to appoint a new college ministries director for our district. The meeting went well, I offered some opinions and strongly recommended one of my peers for the position, and then I recused myself from the meeting (it just seemed proper since I was technically a candidate).

I waited out in the hallway for what seemed like an hour, and when I was invited back in I was asked to take the helm in an interim capacity while we seek someone full-time for the position!

To clarify: this doesn’t involve Paula and I leaving the ministry at Stanford. This is an added thing.

Although I didn’t seek the position (and I actually mean that–this wasn’t one of those I won’t seek it to make myself a more desirable candidate sort of things), I was very excited to be selected. There are more than 500,000 college students in this zone spread across over 40 sizeable campuses (and many, many smaller ones), and I’ve got some ideas I’m eager to try out.

After that I drove back and discovered that our ministry had received a pledge from a church. Woohoo!

Following that I did some piddling work until the workday ended and played my current video game, Brute Force, and beat a level that was vexing me greatly. Also a cause for celebration.

Following that I headed into downtown Palo Alto to the Stanford Theater to watch The Forbidden Planet and the original Time Machine (two fine movies) with some of our Chi Alpha students. I just loved watching those wonderful films in that cool old theater, and I was pretty surprised to realize that Leslie Nielsen was the star of The Forbidden Planet. The whole movie I kept telling myself I’ve seen this guy in some other films but I couldn’t place him. I was shocked at the end credits! In fact, I didn’t even fully connect the dots until Lynette Garcia said something about it.

Finally, I came home and read very briefly from Daniel Boorstin’s engaging book The Discoverers. The only complaint I have about his book is the giant chip he seems to have on his shoulder when he talks about religion (any religion). I’m very curious to see if that theme continues through the end of the book. Other than that it’s excellent (and his comments about religions and religious communities are insightful).

Then I fell asleep–it was 11:00pm!

All in all an excellent day.

If I may be permitted to vent for a moment, I just received the worst treatment I’ve ever received from a barbershop–namely the The Haircut in the Stanford Shopping Center.

Once I sat in the barber’s chair everything was out of my control–my hair was not cut as I asked, my head was manhandled as though I were a fidgety three-year-old child, and at the end the protective drape was ripped off my body and an industrial-strength blowdrier was run over me to remove any loose hair.

They never even asked me if I was happy with my haircut. I had to remain seated and ask if I could look in a mirror to see the results!

I still have stray hairs prickling my skin as I type this.

Most disappointing…

I’m really getting into off-the-wall proverbs.

Two of my favorites:

1) Buffalo can’t see its own butt. (I’m told it’s from Kenya)
2) Dogs bark at what they can’t understand. (Heraclitus)

Paula and I are heading up to Reno to preach this Sunday. We’ve got a ministerial meeting in Susanville tonight (about 90 minutes from Reno), so we’re just going to spend the whole weekend up there. I probably won’t be able to check my email again until Monday.

Side note–we’ve had students living with us the last few days. A lot of students are in-between housing right now, and so we offer our pad to those who are in a homeless zone. Nate left yesterday to go do his summer studies at Princeton. Jimmy is leaving Sunday to go do his military service in Singapore.

I guess today is the last time we’ll see Jimmy for a long while. In fact, it’s possible that we’ll never see him again. That’s an incredibly sad thought…

On a more upbeat note, Shih-Yang and Andrew will be moving in Sunday (while we’re still gone). Talk about roommate flux!

Today I had an interesting lunch with Andy Carver, all-around cool guy and former congressional candidate (Libertarian). He’s working on his Ph.D. in Management, Science, and Engineering. He also drives a really nice motorcycle.

Anyway, we had lunch to talk about God. Andy is somewhere in the agnostic realm (he thinks there’s probably something out there, but despairs of knowing exactly what it is–he’s just doesn’t see how you can choose between the major world religions).

We talked for about 2 or 3 hours. We’ll have to get together again sometime soon, we both seemed to really enjoy ourselves!

Here’s the thumbnail version of my half of our discussion:

Why choose Christianity?

1) God exists
2) God is good
3) God has revealed Himself in Jesus
4) The Bible is God’s trustworthy message

We spent a lot of time talking about the different reasons I find each tenet plausible (and have in fact chosen to base my life upon them).

At the end, Andy allowed me to pray a simple prayer for him: God, I know you love Andy. Please reveal yourself to him in a way that makes sense to him and is persuasive to him. Bless him in his studies, in his relationship with Glo, and in everything else he puts his hand to. In Jesus name, Amen. He seemed to genuinely appreciate it.

Towards the end of our conversation I asked his permission to make a little posting about our meeting. He granted it, and you just finished reading the result.

This morning Paula and I went to a simulcast sponsored by CCN about Innovation and Risk-Taking in Leadership.

The presenters were George Barna, Larry Osborne, and Mike Slaughter.

It was pretty good. Two slightly humorous soundbytes stuck with me:

Larry: So what if people think I’m a failure? I’ve been one before!”

George: Yeah. You gotta run with your strengths, right?

and then another comment by Mike Slaughter: We have all these ethical problems with cloning people, but we seem to have no problem with cloning churches.

Those both seemed very funny to me at the time… looking at them in print I think the first one in particular needs tone of voice to make it sound right.

Last weekend Paula and I were preaching up in McKinleyville, CA (almost all the way to Oregon). On the way, we had a chance to drive through the giant redwood trees (literally).

If you’ve never seen the trees before, it’s hard to understand how large they are. They get to be over 350 feet tall, over 2,000 years old, and weigh up to 1.7 million pounds!

We even got some cool shots of us in some tree trunks.

No, we didn’t try to count the rings…

Last night Paula and I had next year’s Chi Alpha officers over for supper. It was great (both the meal and the company)!

We laughed–a lot. That’s a good sign.

Left to right: Nate, Shaowei, Nathaniel.