Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

Some of the sophomore brothers made this video for Brian!  Check it out–they wrote the whole song–lyrics AND chords!

Hey guys, I hope you’re all hanging in there as the final stretch of the school year gets underway!  It’s already been a packed April so far.  This past weekend started with our Bible Study on the church in which we discussed the distinctive of our church, and Pastor Ed used a recipe analogy to describe how  ingredients are necessary in the right proportions to build a Biblical church.

Afterward, we headed over to the RSF for an exciting time of basketball, volleyball, and ultimate Frisbee.  It was fun and relaxing after a long week of midterms and projects.  Check out the action below:

Brandon’s wide open

Our very own Cal Basketball walk-on stroking the mid-range jumper

Amanda dominates the net

Then on Sunday, we were so privileged to have Dr. Ajith Fernando come and give messages on 1 Corinthians 13.  It was a challenging set of messages on the concrete details of how love is lived out, and it was so inspiring coming from a minister who has been sacrificially serving in Sri Lanka for over 30 years, and who has seen it all.

Through his experiences of loving people and his gripping stories of persecution and hardships that he experiences in Sri-Lanka, we were given a full and rich picture of what it means to love, and saw both the joy and pain of this kind of life.  It was an opportunity to re-calibrate  our lives to the life of love that Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 as we were reminded in a powerful way of God’s high calling for us to be channels of His love, and how the hard work of loving people is certainly worth it in the end.

This past Valentines day, a day often devoted to romantic love, we wanted to spend it to show God’s true love.  We as a homegroup got the privilege of preparing and running a program for the residents at Mcclure Rehabilitation Center in Oakland.  We prepared our program Friday night after Bible Study for our Sunday visit.  It included singing, dancing, crafts, and even a very special duet!

10 pts for who can guess what we’re doing in this picture!

As we worked on decorating picture frames, there was a clear discrepancy between the sisters’ frames and the brothers’ frames.  Personally, I thought that the brothers’ frames reflected a kind of elegant…simplicity.

As soon as we got there, we were received warmly by all the residents.  We were initially told that only about 10 residents would be there, but when we arrived the room was packed with residents!  We started off with the classic Joyland songs

Brian then gave a touching message about the bleeding woman, how Jesus loves each person as his daughter or son, irrespective  of how well we’re able to perform or produce and how the world evaluates us.

Then a special song “King of Love”

We also got a chance to spend some time talking to the residents and hearing their stories.  There were some really amazing stories that we heard.  One gentleman whom I had met fought in World War II AND the Vietnam war.  In World War II, he fought in  the Battle of Okinawa!

What a worthwhile way to spend our Valentines day!  We were all beaming after the visit as many of us expressed how good a time it was just talking to the residents and spending time with them.  Not only was it great to get out of our comfort zones to show love to the elderly residents, but it was such a great reminder that although the world has its categories of value and worth, in God’s eyes each person is a precious son or daughter.  Can’t wait until next time!

How do you effectively celebrate Chinese New Year as college students? Definitely not through exchanging the few precious dollars we own in crisp red envelopes (we need those bucks for bobas and textbooks)! Instead, all of us did the incredible and actually worked for our dinner: by making tons of jiao zi, aka dumplings!

The senior sisters hosted the few lucky freshmen (and sophomore!) who still remained in Berkeley with tons and tons of good home-style Chinese food. Esther and I went a little nuts at 99 Ranch (along with the other hundred Chinese families in El Cerrito) buying not just dumpling-making materials but nian gao (sweet rice cake), cong you bing (green onion pancakes), lo bo gao (turnip cake), fried rice, and almond jello, which all turned out delicious! …Though we’re not sure if anything had any traditional significance for this holiday, haha.

Our delicious finished product!

After feasting on our mighty meal, we all busted our belly even more through multiple rounds of Imaginiff! Through this game, we found out what we all REALLY think of each other…

Brandon contemplates whether people see him more as a piece of broccoli or a gallon of milk (broccoli).

Some notes and observations from the night:

- Do not be deceived! Brandon and Carol are master dumpling masters, able and proficient at creating dumplings that look pre-packaged!

- Amy is the most ambiguous character to try to guess for. No matter how many times we tried to guess what Amy was more like (brick or glider? cheerful or tired?), we continuously ended in a tie. Enigmatic…

- Jane was unanimously 1950s film The Ten Commandments (Sorry, Jane, not the Greatest Show on Earth) while someone else who shall remained unnamed was for some reason hands-down a “microphone.” Apparently, these were really easy guesses…

- Gina to Brandon: “Hey man, we’re like on the same wavelength!” Daniel: “UV?”

- Here’s a question to Wilson (and everyone else): if you had to choose to go to any of these events, what would you go to? World Figureskating, The Indy 500, the Masters, the World Series, X Games, or the National Spelling Bee? Because apparently, we don’t know you at all.

Anyways, hope everyone else had a fun Chinese New Year like us! Xin nian kuai le!

Last Friday after Bible Study, our homegroup took refuge from the pounding rain inside Shooting Star Cafe, a dessert cafe in Chinatown.  We huddled around plates of waffle with condensed milk & peanut butter, crepe with strawberry ice cream, egg puff, the classic boba milk tea, and even some chow fun and baked rock cod! (that was me)  It was nice to get out of the rain and hang out together after a week of reading, problem sets, and quizzes.

Welcome back everyone!  We’ve missed all of you and can’t wait to see everybody again!  This past weekend many of us joined the rest of Gracepoint Berkeley on our annual Winter Retreat.  After classes, we drove down to Santa Cruz to Mount Hermon Retreat Center.

It was a packed weekend! Packed as in we packed the auditorium to its maximum capacity with our whole church.  It was awesome worshiping God all together as we heard timely messages, sang songs of praise, and listened to honest testimonies.  What a great chance to get away from the craziness of Berkeley and spend a weekend in beautiful nature to hear from God.

We studied different Old Testament and New Testament characters such as Saul, Samson, the Rich Young Ruler,  and Pilate, all of whom tragically missed God’s vision for their lives.  A study of these character challenged us to carefully examine our hearts for so we can embrace the grand vision that God has for each of us.

We also heard many testimonies detailing the amazing way that God has worked in people’s lives.  We saw how God dealt with different peopleregarding their struggles with ambition, insecurities, materialism, pride, and fears to shape them into people who can be a blessing to others.

We learned about faith through Abraham’s journey, and how faith means to trust in God and remain faithful through thick and thin.  On the last day, Pastor Ed gave a message about God’s vision for the church and each of our lives.  We then jotted down the world’s vision for our lives versus God’s  vision for us, and reflecting on what steps we can take now to move towards God’s much grander vision.  Towards the end of the retreat, several members of our very homegroup made significant decisions to follow Christ, praise God!

I was personally really blessed through this time, as it gave us a chance to recalibrate our hearts towards God and start the semester off on the right foot!  For those of you who weren’t able to make it, don’t miss it next year!