Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

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!

FREE. FOOD. FUN. That’s what happened this past Sunday at Willard Middle School. More than 100 of us crashed Willard Field and had some awesome games of ultimate frisbee, post-world cup soccer, 4-on-4 basketball, and a girls-only game of solitary frisbee! We all had a good workout and had lots of fun….but of course, we couldn’t end the day feeling tired and hungry.

For some of us, we drove over to NATIONS, a fabulous burger joint in the Bay Area, to try some of their famous burgers and pies. It was the first time ever for a lot of us, but for some, it was one time too many…

Congratulations Becky and Daniel! They got baptized a few weeks ago, but the pictures just came in!

After last week’s Bible Study, we had our final Maxwell Field Night of the year, featuring some great class competition! The freshmen are improving fast, but couldn’t keep up with the mighty seniors, who were determined to end their college careers with a bang. Here’s some pictures:

And finally, last Sunday, we had our Commissioning Service, where we heard testimonies from each of church planting members going to San Diego, Riverside, and Minnesota, including our very own Lem, Karen, Mike, and Joanna. We also got to pray for them as a church. I can’t believe that they’ll be moving out so soon, in just a couple of weeks! Let’s really commit to praying for them!

Good luck with finals everyone! Study hard – time to stop reading the blog and hit those o-chem books! And don’t worry – after you finish your finals, we have a lot of fun events planned for the summer to celebrate!

Like my fellow author Isaiah K., I will inundate this post with pictures and words of wisdom!

Last night, the upperclassmen bros of our homegroup headed to the beach for a precious time of fellowship and relaxation. I can’t tell you the name of the beach, however, because it is our super secret hangout place. Also, I don’t even know the name of the beach in the first place, so there! (All I know is that it’s in Alameda next to Sushi House).

Anyways, you can’t have a satisfactory day at the beach without having played the manliest of all sports: whiffle ball (in essence, it is exactly the same as baseball, but you are permitted to use a giant bat so that you can never strike out, unless you have no hand-eye coordination at all).

Here is our dramatic, boyband fadeaway shot.

This particular brother was not dressed properly for whiffleball, explaining why his athletic performance was so dismally appalling.

Either Kevan is explaining the rules for whiffleball and Jerome just threw the ball at someone, or they’re attempting a very sloppy performance of our homegroup’s infamous Jai Ho dance.

Either Joe is strategizing how to win the game and Hugo is approximating the distance between the bases, or they are doing the Robot dance quite well.

Kevan was complaining that the pitcher’s throws were too arbitrary and impossible to hit, but I don’t think he really has a right to complain when the width of his bat is bigger than his arms.

The two teams had a very intense skirmish on the sand, but ultimately Kevan’s team won by a fairly small margin. I can honestly say that my team lost only because of one, unnamed particular brother (he is part of the staff and his name rhymes with Freddie Lung) who lacked any kind of accuracy in his throws whatsoever. Fortunately, the rest of the team’s amassed skills saved us from being totally crushed into the sand, and we lost only by 2 points.

Unnamed brother (whose name rhymes with Freddie Lung and is wearing a green jacket so that no one can identify him by his torso) contemplates how on earth he destroyed his own team’s chances of winning the whiffleball game.

By this time, the fiery orb that we humans like to call the sun gradually sank behind the silhouettes of San Francisco’s skyscrapers. As we sat on the sand and marveled at the beauty of the scene, Kevan abruptly told us that he brought us to see the sunset because he believed that it symbolized the end of our undergrad college years (suddenly that sunset didn’t seem so wonderful and magical).

In all seriousness though, the juniors and seniors took turns saying what their summer and post-grad plans were, and we hoped the best for each other’s plans. But no matter what happens, we know that God has something planned for us.

The few, the proud, the upperclassmen brothers of HG KJ.

The few, the shameless, the wackos of HG KJ. It’s one thing for two guys to complete the heart shape, but it’s just plain weird and sad when one guy does it by himself.

After our time at the beach, we grabbed our dinners to-go from the neighboring plaza (is it just me, or does the Chipotle in Alameda give way smaller burritos than the one in Berkeley?) and headed back to Central to watch Ajith Fernando’s message on the sovereignty of God during suffering. Personally, I was really blessed by Dr. Fernando’s encouraging words and stories of heroes of faith who never gave up on their vision for God. After all, if God transformed Jesus’ humiliating and excruciatingly painful execution on the cross into the greatest triumph over sin in all of history, does He not wield the power and wisdom to change the trials and suffering we are enduring into something wonderful and priceless? Dr. Fernando himself said that the sovereignty of God will not become so obvious after just one day, but we must have the patience and faith to know that God will surely change our circumstances into something beautiful.

And this concludes the end of this post. Persevere in your studies and don’t ditch class!

Hey guys!

If you haven’t already noticed, this month has been busy, buSY, BUSY! This past weekend we started off with a night of sports at the RSF. Nothing like some good ol’ physical exercise to help work off the stress of school before finals hit. Here are some pictures from the night, where we had intense games of basketball, frisbee, and volleyball:

I guess Kevan doesn’t even break a sweat in his sweater when he plays against the students.

Defeat?

Of course, we can’t be concerned with just our physical health. We need to maintain our spiritual health as well. That’s why the highlight of this weekend was a one-day retreat with Ajith Fernando. As a missionary and YFC (Youth for Christ) worker in Sri-Lanka for over 30 years, we know that his words of wisdom and exhortation are backed by personal experience. As he walked us through 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter, we were all inspired to live lives of love, despite the pain that it may entail. But even more than that, we were challenged to live lives of joy and unity with one another, as we experience both the ups and downs of life together!

After this weekend, I feel like my definition of Koinonia – true fellowship – has become deeper and more beautiful than before. I hope these pictures bring a smile to your face like they did mine:

Don’t forget that this jam-packed month still isn’t over. This coming Saturday (4/17) renowned apologist William Lane Craig will be giving several lectures on campus. See the Koinonia Homepage for more details and don’t forget to sign up!

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.