Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

“Egg brain!” “Egg skull!” “Egg cranium!”…the word was actually “egghead.” As I fruitlessly tried to describe this word to the group around me during a hilarious game of Catchphrase, I couldn’t help but be thankful for being able to play this game with Berkeley students because only with Berkeley students could “egg cranium” come up and we could all laugh so hysterically. However, this was only one of a long list of things I was thankful for on Thanksgiving. During Thanksgiving break, most of us went home and a few of us stayed behind in Berkeley for various reasons. Despite not being at home with our families, we ended up having a great time!

Thanksgiving festivities spanned two days (sort of) that weekend. On Wednesday night, many of us went to Steve and Suzanne’s home to have a send-off/goodbye dinner for Isaiah and Will who were returning to Taiwan that night. After a delicious dinner of Korean rice cake soup, we prayed for Isaiah and Will that they may safely return to Taiwan and waste no time in getting back into the groove of things, revitalized and ready to continue their mission after their trip to Berkeley. Some of their peers went to send them off at the airport and the rest of us stayed to watch old G-Live videos, which is always a good way to end the night!

On Thanksgiving day, freshmen and seniors went to John and Ellen’s for lunch and sophomores and juniors went to Steve and Suzanne’s, where Jenny cooked Thai Curry for us! After that we all met up at a park to sweat off everything we ate and prepare ourselves for dinner by playing fun games of ultimate frisbee and soccer. Although I am not one particularly fond of sports, it’s a great way to get to know people you might not otherwise meet. Especially if the same tall person keeps grabbing the frisbee from over your head just as you are about to catch it. Those kinds of encounters are hard to forget.

After we were done playing and our stomachs were ready to eat Thanksgiving dinner, we all congregated at Steve and Suzanne’s. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and staff alike all pitched in to finish cooking dinner and right before we ate, we all wrote on a paper leaf something that we were thankful for and taped it onto our Thanksgiving tree that Summer made. It was really exciting to see the empty branches be filled by all the things that people were thankful for and see it become a full-blown, literal Thanksgiving tree! We then sat down together to feast on turkey, beef, cornbread, stuffing, etc.

Everything tasted so good that we all ate until we could eat no more. Literally. Really. It was a little hard to get people motivated to play games after that, but everybody soon got into the competitive spirit when Josh (from Element Youth!) and Kevan split us all up into teams in order to get to know each other and play ridiculous, made-up-on-the-spot games like paper airplane making contests. But it didn’t matter, because it was all too hilarious. After being demolished by Ellen in the semi-finals of arm-wrestling (reaffirming my belief that moms are ridiculously strong), I was exhausted and everyone else was, too, after such fun. So, of course we ended the night again by watching more G-Live videos!

Although we should always realize how blessed we are, it tends to be easier to realize our blessings on holidays like Thanksgiving. Being in a smaller group than normal, we all got to meet a lot of new people and got to know the ones that we already knew even more. Thanks be to God who brings us all into community so that we can share such great times together! I hope all of you who went home for Thanksgiving had a great time and felt God’s blessings. Those of us who stayed in Berkeley sure did!

I can’t believe TC is done already. Feels like just yesterday we were practicing for our ridiculous dances. Oh well, post TC blues aren’t nearly as bad as post G-Live blues.

TC this year was pretty awesome. After 3 years of TC, it still doesn’t get old. It just gets funnier as you realized that you know more and more people on stage.

The Kairos act was a first…first time I’ve ever heard a song used word for word…turns out that “To Save as Many as Possible” is an actual song. It was also surprising because it wasn’t completely ridiculous. Of course, this was followed by the more normal ridiculous, shameless dances….like this

SF Campus was next and of course there would have to be something with Richard and the Evil Beanbag. SF Campus didn’t disappoint.

Poor Richard. That beanbag is going to end up following him for the rest of his life at Gracepoint.

After SF the order of groups going up gets all jumbled up in my head. The pictures on Flickr being out of order doesn’t help either…

So anyways, I think the next act was A2F. When I saw that the name of their song was “OT Rhapsody”…well, there’s only one song I can think of that has the word Rhapsody in it. Yeah, that song by Queen.Way too many awesome moments in this one. I think that most awesome ones (read:sick) were these two…

Wait…it gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view)

Yeah. I was kinda speechless at that point. True shamelessness.

After seeing that shocking act, I had enough awesomeness for the day. Enter the Koinonia Freshmen and Seniors. They started with a serious and meaningful time of giving thanks for different things. Best things I heard people giving thanks for were “Food” and “Dana House”. Nice.

Of course this was followed by some less-serious times of thanksgiving.

Besides learning that the frosh were thankful for BT, I also found out that Steve and Suzanne know how to dance.

Sadly, they declined to give us an encore performance later after dinner.

We (the Koinonia sophomores and juniors) were up next. Don’t really remember much from this act except that we were supposed to get a cue at the end of the second song, but it never came. Yeah, that was awkward. The cue never came. Anyways, they said that our act had “Best Use of Props”. Judge for yourself.

(I guess the powers that be like to cast Wilson as a ridiculous looking circular object. I wonder what it’ll be next year….)

Objects are Larger than they Appear

That’s one nice looking pencil. Yeah, I think we had the best props.

We also had this…

Yeah, that didn’t really serve any purpose at all. Just wanted to jack David. Look at the person laughing  in the background!

The next act was the Youth.

This was supposed to be about how it’s “Too Hard to Evangelize” for today’s youth. I think they just wanted an excuse to dress up and look cool. Well they also had a dance to the Pokemon theme song renamed “Fisher of Man.” They pulled it off well! Sadly, no pictures…

IGSM and VSM was next, to give us all insight on what life is like a grad student. That professor was a jerk, but I wonder how much they’re actually exaggerating. Anyways, I think the funniest part was Professor Great drinking that lab experiment that he shouldn’t have drank.

For all of you that took o-chem, I think you got the joke about L and R enantiomers. For those of you who didn’t, go ask someone who took o-chem to explain it to you.

No TC act would be complete without a grand finale act. That was Praxis’ job this year, although I think “finale” to them meant “try to gross people out as much as possible”. Here’s proof…

I think they one-upped our waiters.  I was in shock (again), but then this happened…

And this

Wow. Just. Wow.

That wasn’t all of the act though (I can’t end the blog post like this). There were many other dances (that I forgot after being shocked by above said pictures) so hopefully you guys remember them and can fill in the blanks. They ended with an awesome finale dance

After all the performances, all Koinonia headed back to Berkeley for a Thanksgiving FEAST!

Turkey and mashed potatoes and corn and ham and chicken and pumpkin pie, oh my! And of course, that Thanksgiving staple – kimchi.

And because we didn’t get enough dancing, we had some more live encore performances:

So that’s TC for you. We all go on stage and make fools of ourselves, but somehow it ends up being awesome. One of those mysteries of life. But overall, a wonderful time of thanking God and enjoying sweet fellowship with each other. For those of you who weren’t able to be a part of it, you missed out! Don’t let that happen again next year!

Join us and join in next year for more fun, laughter, and exuberant thanksgiving!

This past Friday, all the Koinonia sophomores and juniors were combined for a special talk on why Truth Matters. We also had SFSU Koinonia join us for this special talk!

We started off with dinner at Dwinelle courtyard, where we were able to meet and mingle with the SFSU Koinonia people. After eating, we crammed into 145 Dwinelle and had a game of telephone!

What are you trying to say??

The sentence went something like “I woke up at the crack of dawn and tried to put on my shoes, but I had no shoes”. The sentences ended up being something like “I had no shoes”, “I had a crack in my shoes”, and something ridiculous like “My shoes smell really bad”.

After that hilarious time of fun, Ray gave a talk on the different “-isms” that people have come up with in the past to explain truth: naturalism, empiricism, skepticism, foundationalism, and post-modernism.

In the end, he challenged us to all seek the truth because these 5 “-isms” fail at showing what truth is.

Afterwords we headed over to BT for some games, ice cream sundaes and TC practice! We had games of group charades, and a ridiculous game where you had to blow cups off of a table, using a balloon!

This is ridiculous

If that wasn’t ridiculous or hilarious enough, we watched some of the old TC skits and were shocked to see people rapping, dancing, and going all out in performing. After being inspired by those old TCs, we started practicing for our TC this year! The staff demonstrated the moves to our last song for us…

and then it was our turn!

If you want to find out what our TC skit is going to be this year….come join us for TC practice next Friday!

We ended the night with this group picture with SFSU! Apparently we had so many people that we couldn’t all fit into one photo…so use your imagination and pretend these two photos were one!

The right side of the picture

The left side of the picture

Join us next week at BT!

This past weekend, the sophomores and juniors headed up to the Sierras for an awesome time of fun and fellowship at our very own Sierra Lodge! Check out the video recap! Awesome!

Friday night, we headed up to Sierra Lodge and had a great time of board games, basketball and King Kong Shower.

King Kong Shower Ridiculousness

But the highlight of the night was gathering at the gazebo to sing around the campfire! We roasted marshmallows, sang songs, and even had some people sing solos for the rest of us! Gathering around the campfire and singing songs just never gets old.

Gathering around the campfire

Saturday, we went on a quick hike to get out and see the beautiful nature around us.

The sophomores on the hike...

...and the juniors!

After hiking we went kayaking at Lake Spaulding! We rowed all the way across to the other side of the lake.

Well, most of us.

We told them not to take the rowboat...

...because we had to "rescue" them after!

The rest of us went over in our spiffy new pontoon boat.

It looks like a Disneyland ride!

We had lunch on the other side of the lake and climbed some cliffs to take this awesome picture.

A little bit too awesome..

Awesome picture!

After the tiring time of kayaking, there was no time for rest as we headed back to Sierra Lodge to play frisbee and basketball! We also had a rematch of the staff versus students basketball game from last time. Needless to say, the students won.

Frisbee

The Epic Staff vs. Students Game

After all of that physical activity, we dug in for dinner at the lodge. After dinner, it was time for everyone favorite game not named King Kong Shower….Ming Mang Mong! We had an epic final round of Ming Mang Mong, but when all was said and done, the sophomore guys prevailed! Good job!
(Sadly, everyone was too busy watching Ming Mang Mong to take any pictures. Use your imagination!)

The night wasn’t over yet. We broke up into groups afterwords to brainstorm ideas for Thanksgiving Celebration, and then we had to go up and present our ideas. Here were some of the better ones…

They want to see YOU at TC!

The level of shamelessness in the performances was inspiring. The sophomores and juniors will definitely be ready for TC when it comes around.

Join us next time!

This past Friday, our homegroup played tennis at the Hearst Tennis Courts. For the people who had never played tennis before, we had lessons from our very own Coach Choi. For the rest of us, we played singles and doubles matches. It was an awesome time…so awesome that no one remembered to take pictures. Whoops.

After playing tennis, we walked over to Dana House, where we had Sushi Bake for dinner!

Yum!

Of course, no dinner is complete without a hilarious post-dinner game! No, it wasn’t King Kong Shower. Instead, we played [indoor] volleyball!

Zach is ready to play!

So is Annie!

Playing Volleyball

It was brothers versus sisters and then juniors versus sophomores. The brothers destroyed the sisters and the juniors beat the sophomores (as expected). There were devastating blocks, mistimed bumps, and confused looks on people’s faces (more on some people’s faces than others). It sounds like an easy game, but it might just be harder than the real thing.

Then, it was time for bible study at BT with the other Koinonia sophomores and juniors. We had a time of praise led by our very own Choi band (plus Dan Chiang)!

The Choi Band!

After that, Pastor Ed gave a message on John 4, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. After the bible study, it was time for dessert: root beer floats!

Join us next week for more fellowship and fun!

2 weeks ago, our sophomore/junior homegroup went to the famous Fenton’s Creamery (from the movie Up) for some fellowship and what else.. ice cream! 8 brave people took on the Fenton’s challenge — that’s 3 POUNDS of ice cream with whipped cream and toppings galore in only 15 minutes!! Are you disgusted or impressed??

Here’s Austin in awe of the Fenton’s Challenge

It's almost as big as her head!

Here are the people who conquered the challenge holding/wearing their shirts proudly. Some of them were already talking about their next challenge.. a 4 pound bowl of pho!

Last week all the sophs and juniors in Koinonia went to SF for some delicious late night In n’ Out.

Then we went on over to Ghirardelli for some ice cream. And if you go to Ghirardelli, then you have to get an earthquake! What’s an earthquake you ask? Well, here’s what went in ours!

Here’s a group picture we took to end the night. See you next time!