More On The Madhouse Called San Francisco

“San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people…” Rudyard Kipling

I found out I’m not alone in my opinions about San Francisco’s sanity. No less an authority than Rudyard Kipling is squarely in my corner: “San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people…”

Kenny Worthley (a friend from Springfield) wrote in with a marvelous observation: San Francisco seems to be confused about pot and pots. I quote:

“My questions is: what if you were on pot, medically necessary of course, and need to use the pot, but were not in a spot with a pot because you were growing pot on a public lot? You would have to put down your pot, run to another pot spot, and privately poop.

So here is the scoop on poop — I think you should be able to claim medicinal pot pooping — so you could publically poop on the spot in a pot lot.”

Well said, Kenny: that would make an excellent letter to the editor!

Acting Like Tourists in San Francisco

Visiting Fisherman’s Wharf and the Exploratorium.

We took my mom to do the tourist thing in SF today: we took the Cal Train from Palo Alto into SF, and then the Muni buses (which take forever) to Fisherman’s Wharf (overrated), the Exploratorium (San Fran’s best-rated museum), and a Blue and Gold Bay Cruise (there were so many people we could barely see anything, and the noise from the engine drowned out the audio presentation for a good portion of the tour). We ate lunch at the Expo Family Restaurant (no website), and at the Rain Forest Cafe (which was quite an adventure: the food was decent, but the atmosphere was excellent)!

We also had a chance to drop by Ghirardelli Square (yes, like the chocolate company). It’s a mall area, but they do prominently feature chocolate! Very tasty.

San Francisco is a Madhouse

San Francisco is a crazy, pot-loving place with poor public health standards.

On a non-Stanford related note, this area is a madhouse. San Francisco is planning to vote on whether to grow pot (marijuana) on public lands. This is because Proposition 215 legalizing medicinal marijuana hasn’t flown at all with the federal government. I suppose the city figures that if they grow the pot on public lands the DEA is less likely to come in and arrest government employees.

Advocates say that this legislation has the additional benefit of providing job training for the unemployed. Training unemployed people to grow and distribute drugs just doesn’t seem like a helpful social strategy to me…

This, of course, is the same city that just now made it illegal to poop in public, and the decision was hotly contested. No joke. 

In my mind, not pooping in public is just basic courtesy (not to mention good public health policy).

We Got A Screamin’ Yellow Ford Focus

Wow–this has got to be the brightest car in the world!

Yellow Ford Focus 2001Check out our extraordinarily yellow Ford Focus. We’re conducting an informal survey to decide what to call it. Current contenders are:

1) The Bumblebee
2) The Banana
3) The Taxi
4) The Lemon
5) The Happy Car
6) The Curious George Mobile

Let us know what you think! Either post a comment below this message or just send me an email. Incidentally, if you’re looking to buy a car, I highly recommend checking out CarBuyingTips.com and CarsDirect.com. The advice in that first site saved us tons of money, and the second site helped us find good dealers in the area and gave us a great starting point for our negotiations.

Photos Are Now Online

Links to photoso from our move.

Click for more pictures!
We have uploaded some photos from our move, click here to see them! It took us 7 days to make the trip but we were able to lots of friends and some really cool attractions.

We’ve also got a few pictures of our new apartment online now. (Many thanks to Ikea for making such excellent, cheap furniture!)

Stanford Student Moving In!

Our new roommate–Andrew Wright!

Andrew.jpg
Wow–we’ve been living here seven days and we’ve already got a Stanford student moving in with us!

His name is Andrew Wright, and he’s a sophomore here at Stanford. His major is technically undeclared, but he’s planning on International Relations.

Among other things, he writes for The Stanford Review.

God is really opening up doors for us on campus–and we haven’t even started yet! (We’re not allowed to begin formally ministering on campus until we’ve secured 100% of our funding as mandated by Assemblies of God Home Missions. We’re currently near 70% of our assigned budget–pray that God would provide the rest by our September 23rd deadline.)

We’ve Arrived!

2674.6 miles later and we’re finally here in Palo Alto, and we’re loving it! Our life is consumed by cardboard boxes right now, but we’re slowly eradicating them from our lives (forever, God willing).

It took a while to get our Internet connection set up (although now we’ve got a smokin’ fast T1 connection!), so we apologize for being out of touch for so long.

Soon we’ll post some pics of our new apartment for those of you who are curious about such things, and we’ll also upload the story of our move. It was more relaxing than I thought it would be, and we got to see some truly amazing sights (Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon: two of the most famous holes in the world. After seeing them, I understand why people make such a big deal about them.)

Promotional Photos of Glen

Both formal and casual pictures of Glen suitable for church bulletins, retreat brochures, and dartboards. 🙂 There is also a press release for churches.

If you need a picture of Glen for your church bulletin or for any other reason, feel free to download one of these. You can click on the photo if you need a higher-resolution image (for the record, you can also download any photo of us off of this site).

If you need a blurb to accompany the photo:
Glen and Paula Davis are the Assemblies of God missionaries to Stanford University, where they lead a Chi Alpha ministry. Chi Alpha is the Assembly of God outreach to students at secular colleges and universities, and is on over 200 campuses across America. Glen also oversees Assemblies of God college ministries in Northern California and Nevada. You can learn more about them at http://www.GlenAndPaula.com/ and more about their Chi Alpha group at http://www.xaStanford.org/

If you want a pre-made church bulletin
Download it here (PDF format, 500k, half page format). If the size of the bulletin is wrong for you, you can create your own by adapting the following text:

Glen & Paula Davis
Glen and Paula are nationally appointed home missionaries with the Assemblies of God, and have been given the privilege of representing Christ to the future leaders of the world at Stanford University. Together, they lead Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship at Stanford. Glen also oversees the Assemblies of God college ministries in Northern California and Nevada. Prior to establishing the ministry at Stanford, they helped to lead a Chi Alpha ministry in Springfield, MO.

Chi Alpha Campus Ministries
Chi Alpha is the Assemblies of God outreach to colleges and universities. There are over 200 Chi Alpha groups in America, and many more around the world.

Chi Alpha takes its name from two Greek letters which stand for the phrase Christ’s Ambassadors.

Why Reach Stanford?
Because it’s like a steering wheel to our society&em;as goes the campus, so goes the culture. Just think about this: four of America’s nine Supreme Court Justices are Stanford alumni. 

And it’s not just America that Stanford influences’the president of Peru is a Stanford graduate. In fact, 1/4 of the students are from another country, and the two most represented nations are China and India. 

Today they learn, but tomorrow they lead. These future world-changers must be reached with the gospel while they are more open than they will ever be again!

If you need a press release:
Rev. Glen Davis, leader of the Chi Alpha ministry at Stanford University, will be speaking TIME AND DAY, DATE, at NAME OF CHURCH, LOCATION.

Glen and his wife Paula are the Assemblies of God representatives at Stanford University, the school which produced four of America’s nine Supreme Court Justices. 

Together they lead a ministry called Chi Alpha where they help the future leaders of the world find reasonable answers to honest questions. 

Chi Alpha (XA) is the Greek abbreviation for “Christ’s Ambassadors.” There are over 200 Chi Alpha groups on college and university campuses across America (www.ChiAlpha.com for more info).

Prior to establishing the Chi Alpha ministry at Stanford, the Davises served for six years at the original Chi Alpha group in Springfield, Mo.

You can learn more about them on the Internet at www.GlenAndPaula.com and more about their Chi Alpha group at www.xaStanford.org .

For more information about Rev. Davis’ presentation or NAME OF CHURCH, contact the church by calling PHONE NUMBER or online at WEBSITE .

Core Ministry Values

This isn’t a full philosophy of campus ministry–it’s more of a summary statement on my life and ministry.

At the core of my ministry lies a set of convictions summarizing my understanding
of the Biblical teachings on ministry and life. 

I Must Nurture Intimacy With God: if I do not act out of a vibrant
spirituality, then I labor in vain. I must regularly:

  1. Pray:
    both with my spirit and with understanding
  2. Read
    His Word: for personal growth in addition to ministry tasks
  3. Attend
    Corporate Worship: participating regardless of my emotional state
  4. Meet
    With a Small Group of Fellow-Believers: for accountability and encouragement.

I Must Cultivate My Character: who I am is more important that
what I do. Character is a broad topic, but I consider these qualities
to be central:

  1. Honesty: neither telling lies nor slanting truth
  2. Consistency:
    acting on what I profess to believe in public and private
  3. Courage:
    disregarding personal consequences when facing moral choices
  4. Hard
    Work: doing the best I can do because God is always my boss
  5. Fiscal
    Responsibility: living within my means, being generous, saving for the
    future

I Must Build My Marriage: God gave me a wife for a reasonshe
is to be a friend and a partner in ministry. Plus, I will be married after
I retire. I ignore that fact at my peril.

I Must Hone My Skills: God deserves the very best I have to offer.
Therefore I read widely and wisely, and I earnestly desire book, conference,
and other resource recommendations from those I esteem. My goal is to
master the essentials of my profession. At present, I understand those
essentials to be:

  1. Spiritual
    Discipline: learning to live a Godward life
  2. Hermeneutics:
    learning to interpret the Bible responsibly
  3. Leadership:
    learning to help others act effectively
  4. Communication:
    learning to articulate ideas persuasively
  5. Marketing:
    learning to intrigue others with Christ and His Church

I Must Maintain Healthy Relationships: fundamentally, ministry
is about relationships. As a spiritual leader, I accept responsibility
for the health of the relationships I am involved with and will work to
deepen them.

I Must Rigorously Analyze My Beliefs: beliefs drive behavior.
I have a tremendous capacity for intellectual laziness and self-deception.
I must read the most challenging works and talk with the most challenging
people to test my ideas for truth.