Category: Stanford/Ministry News

Forget stuffing the turkey–we stuffed our apartment this Thanksgiving! Not only did Glen’s brother and Paula’s college roommate travel down from Washington state, but we were able to host over 20 Stanford students in our home for lunch on turkey day (nearly 30 total people)!

Let me tell you–that’s an awful lot of people to cram into one apartment!

In case you’re wondering why they didn’t head home to visit their families, all the students were international students (mostly from Singapore). Traveling internationally and getting jet lagged is a big hassle (and pretty expensive) for such a short break from school.

For many of them, this was their first real celebration of Thanksgiving. Think about it–how many other countries celebrate the pilgrims’ survival? To my knowledge, only Canada…

Several of our guests were already following Christ, but many have yet to experience God’s transforming love. The Kingdom of God flows through relationships, and so please pray that God would use our hospitality as a catalyst for spiritual growth in these students’ lives.

Cooking for so many people was a huge task, as was seating them. Thanks to Greg, Rachel, and Ailin for helping to prepare the food, and many thanks to Southbay Christian Center and Three Cities Assembly for loaning us chairs and tables, and a heap of thanks to Pastor Mike Brown of International Assembly of God (as well as his worship leader Paul) and Josh Wong and Ming Fai Wong for helping to cart the chairs and tables to our place. We couldn’t have done it without you!

UPDATE: our Photo Gallery has been updated with pictures from the Thanksgiving feast!

Today’s edition of the Stanford Daily had an interesting article about Hillel (the Jewish campus ministry at Stanford). [Hillel’s website]

They were able to lease some property on campus–for a whopping $15,000,000. Yes, that’s 15 times 10 to the 6th power. Fifteen million bucks. If I read the article correctly, that was $5,000,000 for the lease and other initial costs, $5,000,000 for renovation, and $5,000,000 to create an endowment fund for the center. They’re still working on the last $10,000,000.

Wow. I remember when I was a student back in Louisiana, and we were able to purchase a house and a six unit apartment complex for less than 1% of that price (a relatively paltry $90,000).

Doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a Chi Alpha house at Stanford anytime in the near future–unless you’d like to charge $15,000,000 to your credit card!

According to Seventeen magazine, Stanford is the fourth-coolest campus in America. What I want to know is–how in the world did we fail to attain the number one spot? 

In any event, the Stanford Daily has a somewhat tounge-in-cheek (yet appreciative) response.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original article online. Here’s the Stanford Daily’s summary:

Stanford revels in its rep as the best of the West, and even more important what other school can boast its own campus mall! the article said. Stress relief is big on this campus of notorious overachievers: Students are aggressively casual, the most popular for-credit sport is windsurfing, and almost 20 percent of those who go on to graduate drop out for a semester or two along the way (part of a formal policy called stop-out). 

The magazine described the campus as looking like an upscale taquera, and praised the warm weather, the suburban setting that feels secure and the proximity to San Francisco. 

The magazine also included a picture of bikini-clad bikers, noting owning a bike is practically required. 

The University was even noted for the quality of boys on campus. As for boys ever see the hunks snapped in the tabloids with Chelsea Clinton before she graduated from here? Hope she left some for the rest of us. Boy-girl ratio: 48:52.

Well, tonight will see the annual practice of a particularly devilish Stanford tradition: Full Moon on the Quad.

In most of our minds, the only cultural reference we have to full moons involves lycanthropy (that’s a 50 cent word referring to werewolves).

At Stanford, Full Moon means something completely different (and I’m not sure the metaphor of man turning into beast is entirely inappropriate).

For Stanford students, Full Moon on the Quad is a major cultural initiation: freshmen head to the quad and get royally smooched (kissed within an inch of their lives) by seniors. As you might imagine, the evening has more than a hint of debauchery about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Stanford Daily: In theory the very idea of it is quite romantic lovers kissing under the gentle moonlight amidst a sea of endless stars, a beautiful church hangs as a backdrop, and all around you frolicking naked people dance drunkenly to techno music. Well, on second thought, Full Moon on the Quad is devoid of all romance. (full article)

FMOTQ is a true Stanford tradition… and one more evidence that Stanford needs Jesus!

There are lots of web links related to this festival, including a poem, tame photo galleries (here’s one and here’s another), and a mildly humorous essay entitled Got Mono?.

This weekend was Stanford’s homecoming celebration, highlighted by a victory over the Arizona Wildcats!

Reading the Stanford Daily news article about this homecoming, I was once again struck by how influential this school is. I already knew that four of our nine Supreme court justices are Stanford alumni, but I didn’t know that Stanford could also boast of Robert Mueller (the F.B.I. director) and former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

What a mission field–today they learn, tomorrow they lead!

Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and Stanford grad, spoke in Memorial Auditorium last night.

Read the school paper’s write-up, which contains several interesting anecdotes, such as this one about how Barak, who served in the Israeli Defense Force for over 30 years and is often described as Israels most decorated soldier, illustrated the need for ruthless resolve as he recounted some of his most memorable operations against Palestinian militants. He told the audience about a successful raid he led on a hijacked airplane, and he described the execution of a Hamas leader he carried out while disguised as a female brunette with everything in place, he laughed, gesturing toward his chest.

of course, such an event could not pass without protest (albeit peaceful)

and in an interview beforehand he made an observation that I found particularly relevant to my calling as a campus missionary: Though Barak ultimately left his mark on the world not through academia but rather through the military and politics, he said that he considers universities to be at the forefront of international leadership. 

Somehow, the university is the place where the leadership of the future in all areas of life is formed, he said. Since the best and the brightest are coming through … these institutions, they have a great influence on the leadership of this nation and nations as a whole. (source universal remote divx )

Wow–the Cardinal was just trounced by the ignobly-named Wazzu, with a final score of 36–11.

Paula and I were able to attend because I did the morning devotional for the Wazzu team (the team chaplain is the Steve Barke, the Chi Alpha director up in Pullman, and he asked me to fill in for him while his team was on the road).

In any event, they gave me a pair of comp tickets right in the middle of the fan Cougar section. Not only did we see Stanford get spanked up and down the field, but we did it while sitting in front of a former cheerleader and her slightly inebriated companions who let the whole world know what they thought of Stanford’s lack of prowess.

It was a sad, sad day for Cardinal fans, but the Cougar fans must be ecstatic.

On the up side, the opposing coach had a nice comment to make after the game: I feel like this Stanford team is about ready to explode and do really well on offense, so I think our defense did a nice job of keeping them at bay. It won’t be too long before Stanford gets their offense going. I think their penalties were a result of a lot of frustration on their part. They’re going to spoil somebody’s Saturday real soon, and I’m just glad it wasn’t ours. (source)

Yesterday Paula and I had the chance to get together with Stanford Law Prof Jeff Strnad (who’s quite a swimmer).

Anyway, we were walking through White Plaza on our way to meet him, when all of a sudden we were confronted by a clipboard-wielding graduate student asking us if we wanted to ‘talk to a robot.’ We looked around and saw a Dalek-like construct sitting outside, apparently engrossed in conversation with a student. I was extrememly interested, but we were almost late for our meeting with Jeff and so we passed.

We had a great lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club, which has great food a cheap prices (but you have to be a member or the guest of a member to eat there).

As we were leaving, Jeff mentioned that the guy at the table next to us was a Nobel laureate in the field of economics. I didn’t catch the name, but I figured it would be easy to go online and figure out which prof at Stanford had won a Nobel in the economic sciences–I didn’t count on 8 laureates in one field!

Overall, Stanford lays direct claim to 23 laureates (14 of whom are still living), and indirect claim to many more, among them novelist John Steinbeck, who attended Stanford but got a C in his freshman English class and dropped out before graduating.

Wow–what a school!

As you may recall, a few weeks ago I leapt atop the pedestal that usually holds The Thinker and mused about Stanford’s spiritual condition.

I was puzzled that the pedestal was barren, but I didn’t know where The Thinker was. I was even more shocked when I later passed by the same area and saw that even the pedestal had gone missing!

It turns out that The Thinker was on tour in Australia and Singapore (which explains the barren pedestal)! Now Rodin’s ruminating reposer is restored, and he’s been given a new place on campus (which explains the missing pedestal). 

Buried in the news piece is an interesting little fact–Stanford has the third-largest collection of Rodin sculptures in the world!

I just ran across a really interesting article about life in the Stanford dorms from the perspective of a faculty member who’s been living in Donner House for 16 years.

One excerpt on the late-night scene: By day, freshmen manage the ins and outs of academic and residential life; they are dedicated students, loyal friends, committed musicians, gifted athletes, devoted community volunteers. But an RF soon learns that this everyday world is to some extent a concession on their part: theyre generally very nice people and bear us no particular grudges. Theyll play our detail- and schedule-laden game if thats what we really want. But when the adult world puts on its bathrobe and gets ready to turn in, another reality bubbles up in the hallways and lounges.

Late at night, when the everyday has lost its grip, convention, habit and expectation fall away in a general liberation from the demands of the clock. There is no etiquette for pajamaed encounters over Proust, MP3s, the Buddha, the Band. There are no courtesies between two students with toothbrushes in hand and something on their minds. During these clockless nights, students begin to find and educate themselves. The conversations are not always tony ones on religion or philosophy; students also mix it up on the design of the dorm T‑shirt, the no-car policy for frosh, the virtues of Willy Wonka, the difference between mankind and humanity. And these discussions take place in the nontraditional space of no perceptible time at all.

The late-night community students seem to create automatically is an important, perhaps even vital, rite of passage from the world of inherited ideas to the world of real thought. In this nocturnal place of chaotic challenge and revelation, new worlds can be contemplated, along with the latest crush. And it was an invitation to this conversation that I refused when I reminded Brian of the time.

Except in the classroom, most of us at the University have little to do with undergraduate life. When we do become involved, we are often representing the Universitys authority to its most insistentand sometimes troublesomestudents. As a resident fellow, Ive had my share of difficult discussions. It falls to the RF, for instance, to tell a student that, delightful person that he is, hes an ugly drunk. Or, as the caretaker of the whole community, an RF will have the unpleasant task of letting a few students know that their particular brand of hilaritysexist, homophobic, or just plain loud or smellyis a pain in the collective tush. I remember once having to remind a group of young men that when our facilities supervisor (a wonderful woman who took virtually every other thing about dorm life in stride) was in the mens bathroom, they needed to refrain from using the urinals. And I remember rather twitchily seeing the students out, carefully shutting my door and collapsing in laughterat the sheer ridiculousness of having to remind smart young people of such a normal courtesy; at the very real importance of it; and finally, at the fact that no one had ever told me Id have such a conversation in my own home.