Category: Personal News

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.

My Mom is Coming to Visit

My mom is com­ing, and so we get to be tourists!

Also, my mom will be vis­it­ing with us from today through next Tues­day. We get to be tourists and see all the cool stuff that we’d nev­er see oth­er­wise. I’ll be sure to post some trav­el­ogue info!

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 reason—she
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.