Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

This past winter break, a group of us from our college and IGSM department went on a mission trip to Taiwan.

Here is a picture of our team:

There we outreached alongside our Hsinchu church to host a Christmas Celebration Party. Every day consisted of DT in the morning together, prayer time, prayer walks on campus, and then going out to the DCs to flyer and meet students through sharing meals.

This was also our first year trying a new thing called, “Christmas Host Teams.” Our mission team along with the Taiwanese students were split into 6 teams and the teams were:

Orange

Blue

Red

Black

Green

And Yellow!

(yes the team names were very creative). Notice how I put orange first. Orange, Orange! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

With our teams, we did fun activities like going to the night market

and a Saturday outing to Nanliao.

It was a competitive race to the finish line!

Here’s a picture of our entire group at Nanliao:

We ended the Saturday outing with a scrumptious hotpot meal.

Those moments together were memorable times and it was a blast getting to know the Taiwanese students!

The big night of the Christmas Celebration party was a really good turn out. The night started with praise, then we had our Christmas Skit,

(Angels we have heard on high…)

Followed by testimony sharing by our members, wrapped up with a passionate message about the Christmas Story by Andy

and our finale Song “Joy to the World”. The students seemed very engaged and many of them heard the True Christmas story for the first time.

The following Sunday we had our Taiwan Church’s 3^rd anniversary and it was a particularly meaningful one because Christie and Paul, who had made their decisions to accept Christ earlier in the week, read their commitment cards to the congregation.

Our last night in Taiwan, we had a farewell party where each team did a song and dance to capture their experience during the mission trip.

Here are some highlights:

(I wish they caught Steven Chee on camera when he strutted across the stage)

It was a sad farewell, but a lot of us agreed that it wouldn’t be goodbye forever. We’re looking forward to being able to go back to Taiwan one day!

There was a lot that happened, but this is all I have for now! I hope this encourages you to go on the next one!

Weary from finals studying (or perhaps still waiting to start!), our sophomores and juniors filed into BT last Thursday evening proudly carrying carefully wrapped presents.  It was our annual Christmas party gift exchange!  We started the night off with some incredible desserts, including a chocolate fondue fountain and hot apple cider!

With anticipation in the air everyone opened their randomly selected gift.  What ensued was shock and awe at both the most desirable gifts and the least.  Among the most was a LED Maglight set and among the least desirable and most absurd was a pack of beef round tip from safeway (I think it was on sale).  And, there were many gifts in between from the practical..

To the fun…

to the neither….

Then the exchanging began…but this was no ordinary gift exchange.  To prevail in this gift exchange your team had to tower build, Jenga, pig-fight, and yes even dance your way to victory!

You needed to have steady hands for some of these challenges

Koinonia’s annual pigfighting competition.  And yes, it’s merely coincidence that it was just the bros who competed..”Pig Fighting” is just an arbitrary term for this absurd game.

Impersonating John Ko, Steve & Suzanne’s TC performance

In the end, some were more victorious than others, but everybody went home with something in their hands.  We had a blast laughing together and at each other.  It was great to see everybody and spend some fun time together before the all out plunge into finals.

“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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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…

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!

During last week’s split Bible Study, Kevan&Jenny’s sophomores and juniors combined with Ander&Myra’s and had an awesome time. The brothers and sisters of went our separate ways, but not to say that either path was not fun. Here’s what went down:

The sisters decided to have a fun night to themselves by cooking up a storm with some delicious bibimbap at the Hillegass Apartments. Then they broke some ice by playing a fun game called “the story of my life” where each of the sisters drew one another’s faces. Then everyone tried to guess who was who. But as if that wasn’t hard enough everyone had to draw with their non-dominant hand. Just think of how crazy the drawings must’ve turned out!

On the brother’s side, the two classes split up for some peer bonding time. The sophomores brought out their game faces and played some football! There were many crazy plays, sad misses/fumbles, but also great defensive interceptions. Afterwards we gathered around for some fun q&a about ourselves and delicious Costco pizza. Did I also mention night frisbee? That’s right, the sophomores ended the night with some wild night frisbee before heading over to Buffet Town for The Friday Night. The juniors, on the other hand, went all out on food and conversations. They left no room for the games and brought out a grill and cheesesteaks. They all gathered around with their delicious, juicy, cheesy, right-of-the-grill, homemade cheesesteak sandwiches in pure darkness for their fun night.

OH yea! It’s the Choi Band!

The split Bible Study was held at our very own Buffet Town and ended with some great small group sharing time.

I apologize for the lack of photos. Our classes were too busy having fun, so I gave you all a nice, lengthy description so you can imagine just what happened.

This past Friday, the frosh and seniors went to Buffet Town after the Bible Study for a night of fun games and mucho laughter.  The night started with a game called “Best of the Best” and we witnessed both hilarious and “wow” talents, such as beatboxing, doing a split, singing with mouth closed, and taking out a tooth and putting it back instantly.

Here’s some highlights from “Koinonia’s Got Talent!” Some of these truly deserve a WOW!

One of the most memorable parts of the night was when an anonymous sister challenged an anonymous brother, who was the MC for the night, for a push up contest and won. Here’s the clip:

We ended the night by playing King Kong Shower and the freshmen had a showdown to see who were the King Kong Shower masters. The game started with more than 20 freshmen but soon came down to two brothers and two sisters competing to see who’s better. And the result was (as brothers expected) victory for brothers!