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!

LastFriday after Bible Study, our homegroup look 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!

As you are holed up in a library, cafe, or your room studying for finals, it seems like the merry days of Thanksgiving Celebration were so long ago.  Actually, it was only just over two weeks ago that we were dancing on stage.  So to help bring a smile to your face as you study and face the harsh reality of finals, I thought I’d try and cheer you up with some of my favorite snapshots from TC.  Which of the following pictures is your favorite?

On Friday  after our challenging Bible study on the four soils, all of Koinonia headed over to Oakland for an end of the year ice skating extravaganza!  We strapped on our skates and waited for the Zamboni machine to finish paving a perfectly smooth surface of ice.  The gates soon opened and we eagerly hopped onto the ice.  While some glided effortlessly and gracefully across the ice and around the rink, it was the first time ice skating for many of us.  Yet with the help of friends (and the wall), even the most beginner were able to enjoy the extremely low kinetic friction constant surface (shoutout to those with Phsyics 7A!).

We ended the night with some fun games (like get into a team of 15 and get into a rose-shaped formation) and an exciting speed-skating race!

Here’s a picture of our guys doing a very beautiful skating pose, while some holdouts (to the left mostly) are simply too cool for school.

We had mercy on the sisters (we all had snowballs made and ready to fire but out of manly decency and restraint decided not to)

It’s hard to believe that it’s the end of the semester already!  What a semester it’s been, and as we think about all that we learned through God’s word this semester, and all the new precious relationships that we’ve formed we can truly give thanks to God for all that he has done in our midst.

GOOD LUCK ON FINALS AND STUDY HARD!!!

We had a packed weekend and definitely had a lot to be thankful for this year, started out with a thought-provoking message from Luke 15, followed by lunch, and back-to-back performances from our Gracepoint Orchestra, Praxis Choir, interspersed with sharings and year-end videos galore!

Pastor Manny visited us all the way from UT Austin and he and the rest of the team shared a “Thank You” song originally sung by Ray Boltz:

Eugene from our Gracepoint Hsinchu Church came as well, sharing everything that’s been going on over there.

Man, just coming out of it I was just reminded everything we should be thankful for not to mention all that we did this past year: Glive, Mission Trips, InterHigh, Impact, New Student Welcome Night — and much, much more!  What are YOU thankful for: take the Thanksgiving Dare and share your stories!

Now to leave you with a funny picture:

Can you think of a verse from today’s DT that would fit with this picture?

This Friday, join us for the next installment in our message series, Incomparable Wisdom where we will investigate another one of Jesus’ parabables that are chalk full of truths about life and who we are as people.   We’re meeting in front of Dwinelle at 7:30pm for Boba before we go in for Bible Study.  Afterwards, are going to have our much anticipated first Thanksgiving Celebration practice!!! Last week we watched old clips of previous Thanksgiving Celebrations and was inspired by the brilliant performances (very loose definition of brilliance)

We also brainstormed ideas of what kind of act we want to do.  Some ideas included doing the ten plagues (complete with gnat, frog, and locust costumes), Disney themed thanksgiving about a spoiled princess, and the parable of the tenants set to Bollywood dance!!

Well, taken all of these insightful and original ideas into account, our professional Broadway-caliber script writers and choreographers will unveil their masterpiece come Friday! This will be only 1 of 2 practices, so you definitely don’t want to miss out! We’re going to join up with Kevan and Jenny’s homegroup for our practice, woohoo!

In other news, I hear that this Saturday we’re going to be doing something incredibly awesome (did somebody say hot pot dinner and movie in Alameda?)  So study hard during the day and keep your evening free! stay tuned for details…

With another eye in the storm of midterms and papers, it was the perfect time for a quick escape from the frenzy of Berkeley and enjoy a relaxing and fun time together in Alameda.   So we packed into three cars and headed over to…our house!  (”our” as in the house that me, Brian, and seven other of our peers are living in, coined “island” house after the street that it’s on).

We started with, what else?  A devastating meal by our very own homegroup chef, “Kan Can Cook”  Over a scrumptuous dinner of stir-fried eggplant, asparagus, pork chops, and potstickers, we broke up into groups and tried to come with commonalities within our groups and personal uniquities.  Coming up with a non-trivial commonality proved to be quite the challenge, but it turned out to be very revealing. For instance, we discovered that amongst the frosh bros there are four highly competent Yu-gi-oh players!

After dinner, we cleaned and busted out the projector to watch an episode from Band of Brothers.  Using the 101st Airborne as an example, Wilson gave us an exhortation to build our relationships with one other during the sometimes turbulent but very special season of life that is college.

Bullets flying, artillery booming and machine guns flashing, we were transported into world war II and experienced just a slice of what it was like for those soldiers (many of them freshmen in college) who served bravely to defend our country.

Sufficiently inspired by the impressive tactical execution by Lt. Winters and company, we couldn’t help but test out our own battle-competence–WITH NERF GUNS!  Locked and loaded, we played captured the flag with a team upstairs guarding the flag and a team downstairs leading the charge.  Needless to say, it was a blast! (no pun intended…)

Epic Nerf War on Vimeo.