Back in Santa Barbara

I got back to Santa Barbara late last night. I had a great time over Christmas seeing lots of family. I don't really know what to say about it, so instead here is a list of few things that were different about being at home, relative to being here in Santa Barbara.

1. I kept trying to open the wrong side of the fridge.

2. I couldn't find the magnet used to operate the child-proof (cat-proof) locks for the doors under the sink.

3. It turns out there aren't child-proof locks installed, so the magnet didn't matter anyway.

4. A car that didn't have a clutch, no matter how often I tried to press the clutch.

5. A car with 2nd gear where I'm used to 1st gear being.

6. The cats don't respond to the name Sasha... Never mind, Sasha doesn't either.

7. A cat that will stay in your lap longer than you are willing to provide a lap.

I think that'll do it. There were certainly other things, but these things are probably more amusing to me than they are to the rest of you.

Merry Christmas 2004

I've been thinking a lot about gifts fit into Christmas. Thoughts have come from a variety of different places. Every bit of it is relevant to me personally, so to anyone reading this, please don't take this as criticism aimed specifically at you. Although I hope you find it insightful for your own life, it is based around my experience and what I am learning.

The gift of Christ is the Christmas gift. So I don't think gifts, in and of themselves, are a bad thing to be giving at Christmas. In fact, I think they have the potential to be expressions of God's love for us. I think our approach to gifts is where we have gone wrong. I think we can learn a lot from looking at Jesus, the true Christmas gift.

First, why are they given? I think that for most of us, gifts are given out of obligation. We know that it is expected of us to give gifts to certain people around Christmas time. Although there is often love in the relationship, that is not the driving force behind the gift. Furthermore, we give these gifts regardless of whether or not we actually come up with something worth giving. Neither of these is a trait of God's gift giving. He had no obligation in giving the gift of His son. Jesus is given to us for our salvation as a gift of love. Furthermore, Jesus is the perfect gift. He is the one thing we desperately need above all else. I think we would do well to follow God's lead if and when we give.

Second, how do we receive them? Have you ever been given a gift by someone you didn't expect to receive a gift from? Perhaps you expected a gift, but didn't expect it to be as costly as what you actually received. What is your first reaction? Is it thankfulness or an uneasiness because you now feel indebted to them? For many of us, I think it is the latter. If I can't be thankful for gifts from people whom I can see, how can I possibly be thankful to God whom I cannot see? I think many of us have a lot of growing to do in our ability to truly be thankful for each gift given to us.

Third (and largely related to the second point), when you give a gift, how does the attitude of the receiver affect you? Whenever I give a gift, I tend to look anxiously to see their reaction. I hope desperately that they will enjoy and treasure my gift. My fear is that they will reject my gift, either outright or just in their emotional reaction to it. On the other side, what do we do to each other by our attitude as receivers? Every year I receive gifts I'm not immediately sure what to do with (and often these gifts later end up being far better than I had originally imagined). Yet no matter how much I would like to hide it, I'm sure my hard, unthankful heart comes through in my attitude toward the giver, hurting them in spite of their often thoughtful gift. How much more does this happen with God? Can anyone claim to truly understand the extent of the gift that was given in Jesus? How often do we reject the joys of Christmas rather than thanking God for them? God has given us Jesus, and He has given us an abundance of other gifts too. Is it not right that in this season our attitude should be one of thankful humility for everything God has given us?

Anyway, I hope that you had a blessed Christmas and were able to thank God for the gifts in your life.

Blessed in my Travels

On Wednesday I flew from Santa Barbara to Portland with a transfer at LAX. I didn't realize how tiny the Santa Barbara airport was, and arrived way too early. It actually turned out to be a good thing. I used it as an opportunity to call some people and talk. I did the same thing again during my layover at LAX. I talked to Ethan (college friend and roommate), Ron (friend from my home group at Church), Rachel (team member for Kolkata trip), and Brian (another friend from college).

On my flight from LAX to Portland I was blessed by the couple I got to sit next to. They were on their way back to Portland after a two-week trip in China where they had just adopted a one-year-old daughter from an orphanage. It was great to hear about their trip, particularly their experience at the orphanage. They also told me about why they chose to adopt. It was so encouraging to see a couple with such obvious love for world beyond their immediate surroundings.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

After work today I'm flying home to spend Christmas with my family. I'm lucky enough to work a few miles away from the airport, so I'm going to leave my truck at work and not have to pay the small fortune for airport parking.

I'm pretty excited to get home and see people. God has shown me a lot about thankfulness during the past three months in Santa Barbara. One thing I am definitely thankful for is my very supportive family, both immediate and extended.

Early Christmas Present

Traffic on my way to and from work has been amazingly light this week. It seems like for some inexplicable reason less people are going to work this week.

On an unrelated note, there have been noticeably less cars in the parking lot at work this week. I can only assume that more Toyon employees are using alternate forms of transportation to come to work.

Whatever the reasons, I am very thankful for the light traffic and not having to squeeze my giant truck in and out between two other vehicles.

I Just Dodged a Bullet (Figuratively of Course)

While I was writing the last post, I heard a familiar sound. It was the sound of a cat about to vomit. I looked over to see Sasha standing on carpeted floor, with her head over a pair of shoes. I jumped up, grabbed her, and nearly dove to get her over the nearest section of tile floor. It started coming out before her feet hit the ground. If I had been even half a second slower, then I probably would have been cleaning the carpet or the couch (the quickest path to the tile was over the couch).

Ian Was Right About Sasha

Ian is already gone for his Christmas vacation, leaving just Sasha and I in the apartment for a few days. Ian has mentioned to me several times that Sasha always uses the litter box right after new litter is put in. Tonight I changed her litter box for the first time. I dumped the old stuff out and put some new litter in. Right away she went and used it, even before I could open the next bag to finish filling it. After she was done, I finished filling the litter box. As soon as I was done, she used it again. (And yes, she did in fact use it both times.)

I was tempted to keep dumping it and filling it to see how many more times she could keep this up. I decided against it.

Posada

The Posada celebration with Kid's Club took place last Friday. It was absolutely crazy, but also a lot of fun. I left work early to go help set up, and stayed late helping with the clean up. I really enjoyed being part of that. There's something about working together with a bunch of other people towards a common goal that is very satisfying.

For the event itself, we had the kids sing a couple songs for the parents, then we went down the street singing the traditional Posada song, and gathered back up to do the Christmas pageant. Then came the food. It took a long time to get 150 (my personal guess) people through the line, but it did happen eventually. The rest of the time was largely unstructured social time while people ate. We did have a couple pinatas during that time. One was for kids seven and under, and the other one was for kids eight and up (and no, I did not get in line to hit that one).

Kid's Club X

Quick Note: The X either means that this was the tenth week of my going to Kid's club, or I lost count and decided to use a variable instead. If anyone decides to do the math and figures it out, I'd love to hear which one it is.

Yesterday was our last meeting of Kid's Club prior to our Posada celebration. Therefore the bulk of our time was spent preparing for that. I was helping with the kid's who were going to play the animals in the pageant. I'm not sure they were any worse than any other group, but it certainly wasn't easy to keep their focus on the pageant.

At the end we fed them pizza as always. Trisha, one of the women who helps with Kid's Club, was telling a story from that session. One of the kids had told her she should marry Jason, a man that helps out with Kid's Club. Fortunately Trisha had the excuse that Jason was already married to Nancy, one of the primary Kid's Club leaders.

Five minutes later one of the girls walked up to me and asked me if I was married. I told her I wasn't. She smiled and told me I should marry Trisha. She then went back to Trisha and informed her that she (Trisha) was mistaken and that I was not married. I convinced the girl that I couldn't marry Trisha because I am going to India so soon and Trisha has to stay here and finish school. Now the girl wants us to get married as soon as I get back from India. Hopefully she will have forgotten about that by June.

After all of the kids were gone, a bunch of us went and picked up stuff from the Church to use for the Posada. We loaded a dozen tables into my truck (It was so nice to use the truck for stuff that actually required a truck). When we got to our destination and started unloading them, I noticed some damage on a few of the tables. In retrospect, we probably didn't think things through while loading. Usually I would expect myself to kind of freak out and worry about the way we should have loaded them. Instead I had an amazing sense of calm. I realized that they were just tables, and the damage wasn't even that bad. It really wasn't anything worth worrying about.

Special Features Have Gotten Out of Hand

At first I thought the 10-disk Ultimate Matrix Collection was a joke. It turns out that this is real. Fortunately the 100-disk Final Ultimate Complete Matrix Collection is a joke.

The Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition already has a 12-disk set, I'm wondering how large its "Platinum Collector's Extended Uncut Home Marathon Edition" will be.

Home Group Christmas Dinner

My home group finished off our study of Matthew last week. Since we were without a planned study, one of the couples hosted a dinner last night. I could get into the details of the delicious food, or the beautiful house they have, but that wasn't what made the night so great. It was great simply because of the people I was with.

Towards the end of the evening we all gathered in the living room to share what we were going to do for Christmas, and sing Christmas carols. It was late enough in the evening that the kids were getting tired, and I was lucky enough to have Sierra (Diego's older sister, previously mentioned here, although not by name.) cuddle up with me on the couch and go to sleep. She never completely woke up, so I just carried her out to the car when everyone started leaving.

On the way back I had a choice: I could either leave the way I came, which would go the wrong direction for a bit because I came straight from work, or I could go the general direction of home. I decided to brave the unknown and head straight for home. This might have worked if I had known the area, but instead I found myself driving down a lot of long winding roads until I looped back on somewhere I had already been five or ten minutes earlier. At that point the mile detour to get back to known territory didn't seem so bad.

An Answer to the Question You Never Asked

Actually I'm posting an answer because someone did ask me. Perhaps there are more people out there looking for this answer. First, the question:

Q: Since you are at 75% of your budget, does that mean it's time for people to slow down on their contributions?

A: No! I still have a good chunk of money left to raise. In addition to that, if I raise extra funds, then it goes towards other team members that haven't raised enough. In particular, I have a specific team member with a lot of fund raising to do very quickly. In fact, if you'd like to give specifically to her, I'd be happy to give you the information to do so. Just send me an email.

Child Care II

I had child care duties again this Sunday. This time I was serving during the first service, which is aimed more at families in terms of child care. This basically means that things are segregated by age, and there are a lot more kids. They placed me with the toddlers, so once again I got to play with Diego! There were a lot more kids than adults there, so I ended up playing with quite a few kids, as well as just holding some of them while they cried. I really enjoyed my time there. Some of the other adults commented that I was a human jungle gym. I would let them pull me to the ground and climb all over me. At times I had four kids on top of me. Most of them tried to keep me down. One girl was nice enough to keep helping me up, although I think it was just so that I could give her a ride on my back.

Afterwards, I was talking to Jonna (a woman in my home group), and she mentioned something about me being a father someday. It really clicked for me when she said it. I guess I have been thinking about kids a lot recently. I certainly hope that someday I'll have at least one child of my own. However, there are a few other things that need to happen first...

Another Diego Story

When I arrived at home group on Thursday night, Diego (the same Diego as Wednesday's post) greeted me with a hug, and I in turn lifted him up into my arms. While I was holding him, he informed me that he needed a diaper change. Furthermore, he wanted me to do the honors. Heidi (his mother), however, decided that it would be best for her to handle the job. I couldn't help but smile. Kids are such an amazing blessing from God!

Offer #1 is on the Way

I had a talk with my boss at Toyon yesterday. He said that they are planning to make me a job offer for when I get back from Kolkata. I'm not sure how quickly they'll want an answer, or when the actual offer will come. I also don't know if or when Honeywell will make me an offer. For that matter, I don't know where I will want to be or what I will want to do after I return. Please be praying that God will give me clarity as I make decisions about my future.

And Then There Were... Six

My Kolkata team is back up to six members. Word Made Flesh added a new member to our team, putting us back up to six members (plus our leader). She (The new member) is from Texas, and that's about all I know for now. Hopefully I'll hear from her soon so I'll know more.

Child Care

All of the Home Groups at my Church take turns helping out with child care during the services. My home group got / gets our turn last Sunday / this upcoming Sunday. Last Sunday I was in the nursery during the second service. There were about the same number of adults as kids, so it freed us up to focus on a specific kid or kids. If not for our numbers, we probably wouldn't have stood a chance against them.

I really enjoyed spending time with the kids. Some of them were crying, some wanted the toy that another kid had, and some just enjoyed whatever was in front of them. I spent a lot of the time with Diego, the two-year-old son of a couple in my home group. I absolutely love him! We built a tower out of blocks (which he promptly knocked over). I pushed him around on a toy car that wasn't actually meant for movement. Later he ended up sitting down in a flying chair. We even "took turns" giving each other rides on our backs.

Eventually I settled into watching a video with a few of the kids. I chose a show that I remembered watching back when I was a kid, McGee and Me. Unfortunately, what I didn't remember was that this show is aimed at a mature audience, ages 5-12. There was one part in the beginning that was a bit too scary for the kids watching. About that time a parent walked in and suggested that I put something else in. By the time the new video was going, the kids had lost interest and went to another room in the nursery.

I can hardly wait to help out again this Sunday!

75%

I received another update on my Calcutta fund raising today. The woman updating me was out of the country for a few weeks, so the last one I got was about three weeks ago. Thank you so much for your generous gifts and for your prayers.

Alternate Units of Time

I recently hit my third pad of paper at work. I just use them for my
random scribblings about the stuff I work on. It led to the
semi-interesting thought that I had been at Toyon for two pads of
paper. I guess a pad of paper is equal to about 1.2 months. In other
units of measurement, I've been at Toyon for a bit more than half a
pen.

Weekend at Honeywell

I went down to Torrance to interview at Honeywell this weekend. The interviews seemed to go pretty well, and it seems like Honeywell would be a good place to work. The type of work would probably be more along the lines of Electrical Engineering than my current work at Toyon is. However, if it comes down to a choice between Honeywell and Toyon, there may be other factors that play into my decision. For now, I'll just wait and see what comes.

I spent the rest of the weekend with various friends I don't get to see nearly enough of anymore. Amazingly enough it was a mutually exclusive list from the people I saw when I was down in LA last weekend.

Just Read It

I finished The City of Joy yesterday. It was an amazingly eye opening book for me. I highly recommend it to everyone else out there. It isn't a light book, but it will give you a glimpse of a part of the world most Americans never see.

The Future of Philip and Work

As many of you know, I am currently working at Toyon Research Corporation as a paid intern through the end of January. Then I'll be in Calcutta, India for four months. So I at least know sort of what my life will be like through mid-June of 2005. However, I don't know is much of anything about my life when I return from Calcutta.

There is a possibility that Toyon will want to hire me on longer term. In fact my boss seems fairly favorable to that idea, except that I can't tell him much about what I'll want when I get back. It looks like I will probably at least work long enough to tackle my college debt, except that I don't know where God may lead me after Calcutta. My boss said he would look into making me an offer of "permanent part-time." I would only work eight or so months of the year, and my benefits would be scaled accordingly. At first I didn't think much of that idea, but it's starting to grow on me. Being able to spend 3-4 months of the year in the mission field or some such thing might be a good balance. I guess I'll wait and see on that one.

Another possible option is Honeywell. Thanks to Rose, I'll be heading down to Torrance this weekend to interview with them. I'm certainly not ready to make a commitment to them either, but for now I'd like to keep my options open.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I was blessed with the opportunity to see many wonderful people. I drove down to Pasadena on Wednesday night and visited Greg. I hadn't seen him since the last day of LAUP (August 7th). I got to see his living situation, as well as meet some of the kids that frequent his apartment. While I was there I helped Greg make a batch of lumpy mashed potatoes. I'm sure Greg could have made mashed potatoes on his own, but they probably wouldn't have been lumpy without my help (Sorry about that Greg).

On Thursday afternoon I headed over to Jason's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a pretty large gathering of people, as well as a large gathering of food. I really couldn't have hoped for a better feast.

Thursday evening I headed down to Irvine to meet my aunt Mari and cousin Karin. They were down there for Karin's team to play in a soccer tournament. We were meeting at the Marriott in Irvine, where we would stay for Thursday and Friday nights. We discovered that Irvine has at least three Marriott locations within a six block radius. I ended up at one of them, while Mari and Karin ended up at a different one. We discovered this when Mari and I were both in the lobby, but couldn't find each other. Even with cell phones it took us a while to get it all figured out. I can't imagine what sort of nightmare it would have been without each of us having a cell phone.

We spent Friday at the soccer game. The first game ended in a 0-0 tie. It was a lot of fun to see Karin out there playing. She really enjoys playing soccer, and seems to be pretty good at it. Unfortunately, she rolled her ankle toward the end of that game and had to come out. She kept ice on it and taped it up before warming up for the second game. She returned from warm-ups early, and was fighting to hold back tears. She wasn't going to be playing in the second game. I felt really bad for her, and wished that I could somehow fix her ankle. The upside was that I got to sit and talk with her during the game. She shared a lot of stuff about her team with me that I probably never would have known otherwise. This game ended in a high scoring 1-1 tie.

The three of us spent the evening together just relaxing. I really enjoyed getting to spend time with them, something I don't get to do enough of. Karin will be thirteen in January, and it is wonderful to see her growing into a woman. Obviously she isn't all the way there yet, but she isn't the kid she used to be either.

Saturday morning I parted ways with Mari and Karin. I had coffee with Diana (One of the four most amazing women on my LAUP team) before heading out of Irvine. It was so great to see her again. We talked about all sorts of things, and probably could have talked all day. Instead, due to the limitations of reality, we cut it short after two hours.

I traveled to Claremont to visit Lydia and hear about her experience in Calcutta this summer. She wasn't there when I arrived (probably my fault for never giving her an exact time to expect me), so I got to catch up with John (Batman) for a bit. She did return home eventually, so I got to listen about all sorts of stuff from her trip. I won't go into detail about all of the stuff she told me, but it did reinforce for me how difficult my four months in Calcutta will be, as well as how much God will be working in me during my time there.

After that I headed out to Pasadena again. I visited Sergio at Harambee for an hour or two, then visited Nate Leung in Eagle Rock for another three or four hours. Eventually I drove back up to Santa Barbara.

Well, that's the condensed version of my Thanksgiving weekend. It certainly left me with a lot of people to be thankful for. To everyone that I got to see, I really enjoyed that time. You are all such a blessing to me.

Pre-Thanksgiving Post

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Don't expect too many posts this weekend. Take a break from the internet (yes, even my blog), and go enjoy some time with your family and friends. The internet will still be here next week (and that's something to be thankful for).

You Say Calcutta, I Say Kolkata

While reading about Calcutta, I keep seeing the words Calcutta and Kolkata used seemingly interchangeably. For quite a while I've just been scratching my head, wondering why there were two spellings for it. I no longer have to wonder! I found an answer in my favorite online encyclopedia. Calcutta was the name given to it while it was controlled by the British. It looks like the official name is now Kolkata, although the rest of the world still seems to use Calcutta.

All City Prayer Meeting

Yesterday evening I attended a prayer meeting for all of the Churches in Santa Barbara. It was really great coming together in prayer with so many Churches. We prayed through Ephesians 3:14-21. It was divided up into sections of a verse or two each, and given to pastors from different Churches. The pastors spoke briefly on their designated passage, just enough to get us started. Then they set us loose to pray in groups of three or so. Interspersed with the prayer were times of worship. It was a wonderful time of coming together in prayer as the body of Christ.

Cheaters Never Win

Last night my home group had a game night. I have to admit that I cheated and lost. I was playing Chutes and Ladders with the four-and-a-half-year-old daughter of a couple in the group. I cheated so that she missed some of the chutes, and I missed the big ladder. In the end, I still almost won, but with some more cheating, I missed the victory ladder, and she slipped in ahead of me.

I had a great time playing some other games too. During a fierce game of Cranium, I had the opportunity to act out "Hormone" for my team. Think about that for a second. How in the world do you act something like that out? Amazingly enough, my team actually figured it out. Later, between turns in a game of Taboo, I was recounting one of my favorite Taboo stories. The very next card that came up was the card I had been telling the story about.

Overall, a very fun evening of games.

Cats are amazing!

In this case, amazingly entertaining. Sasha is in a very playful mood right now, so I gave her a little tape to play with. She grabbed it off the floor with her paw, then realizing it was sticking to her, pulled her paw away as quickly as she could, sending the tape flying across the room. As soon as she saw it move like that, it was her self proclaimed duty as the hunter of the household to go after it. The cycle repeated until the tape got folded over onto itself. Now she has moved on to hunting a dangerous twisty tie.

With any luck, she won't have the energy left to hunt the two mysterious objects that appear every night at the foot of my bed.

I Remember When...

...the Christmas season didn't start until after Thanksgiving.

Today I met someone from Kid's Club over "coffee" (neither of us actually got coffee, but we did meet at Starbucks) to work on organizing the Posadas. Starbucks was already using their Christmas themed merchandise: Christmas cups, cookies, and compact disks.

What does the rush towards Christmas say about Americans? Thanksgiving is about thankfulness for what you have. The secularized, American Christmas is about getting what you want. Americans already spend the whole year wanting stuff, yet we spend very little of the year actually being thankful for what we have. Why can't we slow down and enjoy Thanksgiving before launching into Christmas?

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs

About a month ago at work, I was given a project to verify that a bunch of stuff in a massive program was actually doing what it was supposed to be doing. I'm basically done with that project now. My discovery was that there were a few important algorithms with suboptimal behavior. Two were fairly extreme. Even though it was a less desirable outcome for the company, it was a lot more satisfying for me to have my work uncover important bugs than if I'd found out everything worked perfectly already.

My next job: Fix those bugs.

I'm Not Last!

Tonight was the first time in four weeks that I wasn't the last person left at home group, other than the residents of the house. I could look at this as me getting better at not staying there so late, but really I stayed there just as late. Someone else just stayed even later than me. I love my home group!

Incomprehensible

This weekend I started reading The City of Joy. It is one of the assigned books for me to read in preparation for India. It is a really intense book about Calcutta. I'm having a lot of trouble comprehending that the things I'm reading are actually real. More than that, I'm trying to comprehend that in three months, I will be experiencing this in person. Although I'm only a third of the way through it, I will already highly recommend this book to anyone willing to shake up their view of the world.

Here's one of the many passages that really blew my mind. It is a passage talking about the extreme overcrowding of the city.

In a few years the city was to condemn its ten million inhabitants to living on less than twelve square feet of space per person, while the four or five million who squeezed into its slums had sometimes to make do with barely three square feet each.

I really don't know how that's possible. Sure the space gets multiplied out a bit by buildings with more than one floor, but...

There's a lot more in the book that is just beyond what I could have imagined. More and more I'm coming to realize a little bit of how intense my four months in Calcutta are going to be.

And Then There Were Five

Or six depending on how you count.

One of the members of my team for Calcutta decided that she will not be going on the trip. She has instead accepted a full time position with International Justice Mission. So now there are five of us, plus the leader of our team. If you count her, then there will be six of us. If you don't, then there are just five.

Needed: Change of Perspective

It took me 45 minutes to get to work this morning. That's about 3 times what it usually takes to get to work. Eventually I saw that one lane of traffic was blocked off because of an accident. All I could think about was how ridiculous it was that traffic completely stopped because only two of the three lanes were available. The accident caused me to lose half an hour of my morning.

Later in the day, a co-worker mentioned off hand that one person had died in the crash. That caught me off guard. I was so concerned with my 30 wasted minutes, that I didn't even give thought to the people in the accident. I didn't so much as say a quick prayer as I drove by. There are many important things in this world. Life is among them. Half an hour of my time is not.

International Day of Prayer

This Sunday, November 14th is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. My Church is hosting a prayer meeting that day. I suspect many other Churches are as well. I encourage you to find one and go join with them in prayer this weekend.

Kid's Club IV: Preparation

Kid's club has shifted from their standard program to preparing for a Posadas celebration. I gather that this is a Mexican Christmas tradition (Help me out here Sergio). Anyway, it's a pretty big deal. We're getting the street blocked off. There's going to be a pageant, and then we'll go door to door as a group asking each house if they have room for us. Each house will say no, until we get to the last house, and then they'll let us in and they'll be a big dinner. I'm pretty excited about it. From now on, we'll be preparing for the pageant instead of having teaching times each week. If anyone happens to be in Santa Barbara on December 17th, I'm sure you'd be welcome to come partake in the celebration.

Afterwards, I offered to take a few kids home and was informed that I wasn't actually supposed to do that until I'd filled out some liability paperwork... whoops (See Kid's Club III if you missed it). I gather that some of the leaders there care a lot more about that legal stuff than others.

Birthday Dance

I enjoyed my first ever birthday dance tonight (If you don't know what that is, see the note at the bottom). It was a lot of fun! The place Ian and I went to is on the small side, so there wasn't the huge crowd of a place like Lindy Groove or Memories. I guess the confident (in terms of dancing) women must have rotated through pretty quickly, because I ended up dancing with one woman for quite a while. Eventually one of the other women grabbed me a second time. For my final words on the subject of birthday dances: anyone out there that knows Lindy, and has a birthday coming up (like say... Greg) needs to get out to a Lindy club and enjoy their own birthday dance.

To everyone that dropped me a line on my birthday (or bought me dinner), I really appreciated it. You made me feel special. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It didn't ruin my day (and you're always welcome to buy me dinner some other time). Twenty-three was much better than twenty-two. For those of you that aren't aware of how my birthday went last year, take my word for it that it wasn't the kind that you want to have.


The Note at the Bottom: For a birthday dance, everyone gets in a circle around the birthday boy / girl. They (the birthday boy / girl) start out with one partner, and then new partners cut in over the course of the song. It's the way swing dancers celebrate birthdays.

Praise Report

I got my first fund raising update from Word Made Flesh today. I'm doing quite well so far. I've almost reached my first checkpoint, which occurs on Monday, November 15th. Thank you so much to everyone for your support. God is taking care of getting me to Calcutta!

It's the Cat's Fault!

In the past twenty-four hours, I've spent about twelve hours sleeping. About three of those hours were because Sasha (Ian's adorable cat) decided she wanted to cuddle up with me, encouraging me to stay in bed longer in the morning, and take another nap instead of reading in the afternoon. As far as I'm concerned, it was time well spent.

Beach Volleyball

I got to play beach volleyball with people from Church this morning. They play regularly, so were much better than me. I still had a great time though. My team was really good about keeping me involved by giving me advice and setting up balls for me to hit. It was such a boost to my confidence when I got a good hit in, or a series of serves that resulted in a catch-up run. Weather permitting, I'll go play again next weekend!

Is Seven Weeks a Bad Hide and Seek Time When You're the Seeker?

Ok, I need to qualify this a bit. First, I wasn't seeking so much as assuming it didn't exist. Second, it wasn't hiding so much as sitting next to the fridge in the kitchen at work. However, it did take me seven weeks of working at Toyon before I noticed that we had filtered water.

Kid's Club III

I got to Kid's Club a bit late today. They were just finishing up their game, and about to start singing when I arrived. The first song was "A la la la, la la la le lujah." The kids started liking it progressively more with each verse:

1. Shake a friend's hand.
2. Scratch a friend's back.
3. Give a high five.
4. Pinch a friend's cheek.
5. Give a small poke.
6. Mess up a friend's hair.

I may have the verses in the wrong order, but that was the basic idea. The kids really loved it, even the older ones that usually don't like "little kid songs."

Instead of a talk this week, they played a quiz game. They were in two teams, each with a designated "leader" (adult). The leader's job was really to be a score keeper, in the form of "chubby bunny." One team was considerably better than the other, and won 4 - 8.

The real eye opener this week was that I got to take two boys home afterwards. It answered my question about how poor people manage to live in Santa Barbara. The first kid lived in what looked to be a very small, over crowded apartment building. The second one lived in a run down trailer park. I'd never been in a trailer park before, and although I never even got out of my truck, there was a clear separation from the rest of Santa Barbara - rich, affluent Santa Barbara. I am once again stunned at how blind I can be to poverty in America, while living so close to it.

Home Group #7

Last night at home group we studied Matthew 26:47-68; 27:11-26. There were a lot of things that struck me, but I'll restrict myself to the one that hit me closest to home.

Peter had just told Jesus that he would follow Him absolutely, even to death. He's very stubborn about following through on that. When the soldiers come to take Jesus away, Peter is right there to give His own life protecting Jesus. Peter draws his sword and attacks against overwhelming odds. He is truly putting his heart into it. Then the response comes, not from the enemy soldiers, but from Jesus, "Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." That rebuke must have really hurt. It was an absolutely correct rebuke, but it led to Peter losing some of his passion. Just a short time later you see an entirely different Peter deny Jesus three times. He no longer has the conviction to stand with Jesus to his own death.

Here's why this really hit home for me. Towards the end of LAUP I was confronted with the fact that when I had tried to help a specific team member, I really hadn't been all that helpful. In fact, I had hurt them substancially through my actions. It would have been one thing for me to realize I was ineffective, but it was entirely another thing to realize I had caused harm while pouring myself out trying to help. My response was the same as Peter's: I gave up. I believed the lie that it was better to stop trying to love, because at least then I wouldn't hurt anyone. Fortunately I was able to confess this to my team (eventually) and receive God's healing.

Seeing that Peter fell into the same trap helped me come to a greater understanding of my own failures, as well as receive more healing. God is good.

Congratulations!

Drew, one of the members of my home group (Reason #2) has been clean of drugs and alcohol for nine months as of today. Praise God!

Not the Way to Live

I was talking to my boss this morning. He didn't come into work this weekend. If you read my last post, then you know that neither did I. The difference is that this was the first time he's taken a day off in about three weeks. On top of that, he was working 12+ hour days. That's getting pretty extreme, even by my standards as a Mudder. I'm not condemning him for doing that. If anything, I'll condemn our American standard that makes it "ok" to work those sorts of hours. I really hope that I never end up putting myself though that just to meet some deadline at work. If something is going to be keeping me that busy, it better be God.

LA Visit

I was down in LA this weekend visiting people. I had a really great time, and wish I could have spent a lot more time with a lot more people. If you didn't get to see me, I'm sorry. I'll try to find a two day period with more than 49 hours next time.

Seeing as I'm headed to India, it was really great to talk to Rose and Jon about their experiences in India last summer. It added both to my excitement, and to my uneasiness. More and more I'm realizing how challenging those four months will be. I suspect that realization will have a dramatic jump once I actually get there.

Sunday morning, before I left Inglewood to head back to Santa Barbara, I noticed something unexpected about myself. I was nervous being a racial minority. Since I had gotten used to it at Harambee this summer, I didn't expect it. I have a few theories as to what may have caused this. At Harambee I was almost always with someone else from my team. People in the neighborhood seemed used to the idea that white guys were around helping out at Harambee, so I didn't feel so out of place. Finally, after all of the stories I've heard from Jon about Inglewood, Harambee just feels like a safer place. Whatever the roots of this really are, I'm sure these feelings will intensify while I'm in Calcutta. God has a lot to teach me about myself.

Vote for Pedro!

Seriously, we've got a Pedro running for State Assembly in Santa Barbara. I'm not registered to vote in Santa Barbara, but if I was, he'd probably get my vote.

(For those of you that don't understand this post, it's because you haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite.)

Kid's Club II

I went to kids club again today. For whatever reason I was exceptionally happy to be there. I could feel my face stuck in a giant (probably dorky looking) smile the whole time. It was great!

Today the game was musical pieces of paper. It's a lot like musical chairs, except they had to dance around while the music was going, and then touch a piece of paper taped to the ground with their foot when the music stopped. They did allow multiple kids to share the same paper. The real problem was that there was nothing causing a direction of motion. This became particularly obvious once there was only one sheet of paper left and everyone was trying to dance on top of it. In the end I think about a dozen kids were declared winners.

After the game we went inside and enjoyed some songs with motions and a kid friendly talk. I thought the place was crowded last week, but there were even more kids there this week. Somehow everyone managed to squeeze together on the floor. The speaker of the week talked about Jesus choosing disciples. She put two scenarios out there. In the first, Jesus chose really exceptional disciples. One was strong, another popular, a third was smart, etc. In the second scenario, Jesus chooses some smelly fisherman, a guy that just sits under trees reading, a tax collector that everyone hates, etc. About that time I went to go help get the pizza dinner ready. Thus I didn't get to hear the rest of the talk, and was left wondering which group of disciples Jesus would want. Maybe I can find a book with the answer in it.

Afterwards I talked with Nancy (one of the leaders) about my future involvement. I'm planning to keep helping out while I'm in Santa Barbara, but she doesn't want to put me in certain roles because the kids will get attached quickly and it will be hard for them when I leave so soon. I certainly saw that this summer at Harambee. It looks like I may get involved planning a big Christmas thing they do every year for that neighborhood. I'm already looking forward to going to Kid's Club again next week.

Home Group #6

No, there aren't five other posts about my Home Group. This is the first post, but it is about my sixth Home Group session.

Last night we studied Matthew 26:30-46. It was a really great time with a good discussion and a lot of great sharing. It really impacted me to realize that Jesus knew his disciples would fall away, yet he still placed trust in them when he brought them to the garden to keep watch. I've had difficulty in the past understanding what Paul meant when he says that love always trusts (1 Corinthians 13). I always had this counter example of the parent that suspects their kid is using drugs. Trusting their kid when they say, "I'm not" just doesn't seem like the loving thing for a parent to do. Here's what I realized about Jesus' model of trust versus my example. It comes down to a question of who it hurts if the trust is misplaced. Jesus takes the hit when his disciples don't stay awake, and as they fall away. For the parent, it is their kid that will be hurt by misplaced trust. Jesus calls us to trust others over looking out for ourselves. That is the love that Jesus models.

Our study ended at about 9:30, and then I got talking with the other people. This happens every week, and usually I leave between 10:00 and 10:30. This time, I really lost track of time and was there until almost midnight. It was certainly time well spent, but I really shouldn't do that to myself on a regular basis. Speaking of which... Good night!

Blessing Upon Blessing

Last Sunday night I had dinner with a bunch of people from Church. Out of a dozen or so people, there were two people I had talked to before, and only once each. Basically it was a bunch of people I didn't know.

I was so blessed by many of the conversations I had. I got talking to a guy (college age) who has a dream of making as much money as possible, living on a modest amount, and using the rest in creative ways to build the kingdom. I suggested that he read Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. I guess I've only read a couple chapters of it, but those two chapters were certainly good... and I will read it. It's on my required reading list while I'm in Calcutta.

I got talking to a girl (college student and recent Christian) about my experiences at Harambee this summer. It was really great to talk in depth about that again. I was actually getting choked up telling her about some of it. That hasn't happened to in months! It was great to feel that passion in myself again.

On top of all of that, there was a guy (a bit older than me, but still pretty young) that overheard me talking about going to Calcutta with someone else. He started listening in, and about the first thing he said was, "Can I help support you financially?" Wow, God is providing for me out of nowhere!

There were plenty of other good conversations too, as well as some tasty food. It was a wonderful night.

Nothing Gets You Going on a Monday Morning Quite Like a Hot Cup of Humility

When I got to work this morning, I received the following email:

"You're wasting my time... If you don't understand... come see me in my office."

I edited it down a bit, but that's what it said. It was really a
pretty boneheaded thing that I'd done, and I really should have
realized it before I did it... a second time. I did it the first time
because I decided I understood a certain compiler warning enough to
ignore it, and that it wasn't worth other peoples' time for me to ask
them. It turned out I didn't actually understand the warning, and I
wasted far more of someone else's time when they had to track it down
and fix it twice.

I swapped a few emails with the guy, and he asked for a few more
specifics about how it happened. I could have easily bent the truth
and saved some face. I chose honesty instead. Contrary the hostility I
felt in the first email, he was actually very helpful and
understanding. He made sure that I understood exactly what those
warnings meant, and how to avoid similar problems in the future.

Jesus Didn't Want Me at Church on Time

I left for Church about ten minutes before the service. That's enough time to get there, but it is pushing it a bit. On my way there, I saw three kids in a driveway. Two of one was on his back, on the ground covering his face. The other two were on top of him throwing punches.

I started to park on the side of the street, only to notice a "No Parking" sign right in front of me. I turned the first corner, parked, got out of the car, and ran back to where they were. They were gone. All three of them. There were two kids around, but I didn't remember exactly which driveway it was, nor did I ever see any of the kids faces. Neither of the kids I saw looked like they had been beaten up. Unsure of what to do, I just went on to Church, arriving late.

Looking back on it I wonder a few things:

1) Why were the kids gone? Did they realize I was coming back because I started to park next to them? If so, maybe Jesus used me to stop them without even confronting them. If not, did someone else see them and stop them in the minute it took me to park and get back there?

2) Should I have just stopped and gotten out immediately, even though it wasn't a legal parking spot? If I had the opportunity again, I think I would. I don't think it would have blocked traffic. Being there only a short time, it is unlikely that I would have been towed. Even if I was towed, I think it would have been worth it to help the kid on the bottom.

3) Should I have tried harder before leaving? I could have confronted the kids that I saw. It seems likely that the two kids I saw were the ones beating up the third kid.

4) If I had the opportunity to confront them in the act, what would I have done? I think I would have first told them sternly to cut it out. If they didn't listen, I'm fairly confident that I was big enough relative to them to have physically stopped them.


If you had been driving by, what would you have done?

This Just Out

I just sent out my support letter for my trip to Calcutta. I sent it to a lot of people, but I'm sure I still missed someone that would have liked one. If you would like to support me and don't get a copy in the mail within the next week or so, please just email me and I'll be happy to mail you a copy, along with a response card and return envelope.

Here is the letter itself:

Dear Friends and Family,

As many of you know, I graduated from Harvey Mudd College last May and spent the summer at the Los Angeles Urban Project (LAUP). At LAUP, I was working with a summer program for children in a poor, Black and Latino neighborhood. My experiences there were among the most amazing of my life, and caused me to reevaluate just about everything. One of the most powerful things I experienced at LAUP was God’s love for the poor. It is topic mentioned throughout the Bible, yet has become very easy to forget about.

I know that God wants me to have additional experiences with urban poverty. To that end, I made a personal commitment to put myself back into a situation of poverty, so that I may continue to experience God's love for the poor, as well as investigate where God may be taking me in life.

I have been accepted, and I am currently preparing for a trip to Calcutta, India in February of 2005 with an organization called Word Made Flesh (www.wordmadeflesh.org). I will be a member of a six person team serving among the poor. I will be in Calcutta for four months, long enough to immerse me in many of the realities of life in Calcutta without being able to escape into my American comfort zone. I will experience some of the most extreme urban poverty anywhere in the world. Just the thought of it is both exciting and scary to me. Even a year ago I wouldn't have considered this trip. God has done an amazing work in my heart to bring me to this point.

To make this trip I will require a great amount of support both financially and in prayer. Please consider if and how God is leading you to partner with me. Whether or not you choose to support me financially, please consider supporting me through prayer. This will be a very intense four months for me, and I will need to rely on God more deeply than I ever have before.

My total budget is $4800, and I need to raise it by January 15th. If you choose to support me financially, I have enclosed an envelope and a response card. All donations are tax deductible. Checks should be made out to “Word Made Flesh” and my name should not appear anywhere on the check. Make sure to include the response card so that they will know that you are supporting me.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your loving support,
Philip

Whoops!

A few minutes ago, while driving back to my apartment, I was in at a stop light. I was in the right hand lane, behind one other vehicle (henceforth "vehicle A"). The light turned green, and I followed vehicle A through the intersection. It was only then that I noticed a familiar clicking sound. "That's odd," I thought to myself, "Why is my right turn signal on?"

"...Oh, I meant to turn there!"

Kid's Club

I went to a local ministry run through my Church called "Kid's Club." They meet from about 4:45 - 6:00 every Thursday afternoon, plus they periodically do other things like the movie night they announced today. Ages ranged from grade school to middle school, although the middle schoolers were very much the minority. It's in one of the ethnic minority neighborhoods in Santa Barbara which really gave it a Harambee sort of feel.

The first thing we did was divide the kids up for a game of human knot. A few of the older kids whined about it, but still joined in. Some of the younger kids weren't very good at keeping their hand holds. It also adds an interesting dynamic to the game when the sizes of bodies are varied. Big kids trying to maneuver around little kids adds challenge.

After the games we went back inside. There was quite a bit of mud nearby, and one of the boys slipped and fell in it. He felt pretty embarrassed about it, even though not many people seemed to notice, and he didn't get too much on him.

We all crowded into a living room that was barely big enough, and sang kid songs (i.e. ones with motions). After that there was a message given by a local junior high teacher. He talked about temptation using the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert, as well as multiple examples from some of his students (kept anonymous of course). He talked about God's word as a sword to fight off temptation, then used a sword (labeled "Word of God") to pop balloons (labeled Gossip, Cheating, Stealing, etc.)

About that time, one of the junior high kids (sitting in the back of course) did something that really pissed the speaker off. He yelled at the kid, told him to get out, and not to come back. The kid looked a little bit stunned, but got up and started to leave. One of the other leaders jumped in and said she would take the punishment for him. Ah, the beauty of it! It caught all of us off guard, and served as a really great example of Jesus' sacrifice.

After the message it was time for pizza. I noticed that one of the kids was sitting off at the side by himself, not eating pizza. He was the same guy that slipped in the Mudd earlier. I went over and talked to him. He was still feeling really embarrassed about slipping in the mud. I told him a story that I was "lucky" enough to have about when I was at work and got ink on my shirt almost first thing in the morning (It was only last week). I related how that made me act (awkwardly trying to cover it up whenever I wasn't at my desk) to how he was avoiding people. I made the point that people probably noticed the cover up more than the blemish. I asked him to go hang out with the other kids, and in a little while he did. It was so wonderful having that moment of connection with him. That alone made my whole time there worthwhile.

I had a great time! It was so nice to get out there investing in kids again. I'll definitely be going back again next Thursday.

I'm also waiting to get some information from the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission and what opportunities they have for me to serve there. It's good to know I won't be going idle while I'm in Santa Barbara.

ASCII Art Can Be Functional!

The following comment will be helpful to anyone trying to understand the code I just wrote:

  //
  //                |
  //                +
  //                |\
  //                | \
  //                |  \
  //                +   \---------\
  //                |              \
  //                |               \
  //                |                \
  //                +--------+--------+---
  //

The actual graph has labels and stuff on it that I removed. It took me way too long to get this to format remotely correctly. It still didn't take as long as it's taking my code to compile...

Second Post

Ok, everyone seems to have a first post, new blog, or testing sort of post as their first post. I didn't want to do that, but it still seemed practical to have something to use as a marker for when my blog started. This should work.

Top Ten Reasons I Love Santa Barbara Community Church:

Santa Barbara Community Church (SBCC) is the Church I've been attending for the past month or so since arriving in Santa Barbara. Here's a sort of roughly ordered, incomplete list of why I love SBCC so much:


10. They support Harambee - They support a lot of other ministries too. It just really caught my attention when I found out that they support a place I love so dearly.


9. Young adults group - SBCC has a college minister who is currently working on starting up a group for those of us who are a bit past college. This was something I really didn't expect to find anywhere, but here it is. When we had our first brainstorming meeting with about a dozen of us, we all expressed similar desires: First, a group that brings together people in a similar stage of life to support each other. Second, the group shouldn't be a meat market. There were other things expressed too, but both of those pretty much applied to everyone.


8. Afternoon services - No, I don't like the afternoon service because I'm lazy. I'd actually prefer a morning service based on how I like to structure my day. The reason I like this is really the underlying reason for it. SBCC rents their space from another Church. Never mind the fact that they have a congregation of over 1000, where is it written that a Church needs their own space. By renting space from another Church it allows SBCC to use a lot more of their money for ministry and outreach.


7. Opportunities to Serve - SBCC provides opportunities for people to get involved in serving the community around them. More than that, they really encourage people to get involved in them. I can't remember a single Sunday when there wasn't some opportunity to serve announced. Thus far I've helped out with a Habitat for Humanity project and on Thursday I'm going to go help out with "Kid's Club" in the late afternoon / early evening. I'm planning to give the Rescue Mission a try too.


6. Communion preparation - "A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself." (1 Corinthians 11:28-29) I've seen communion done many different ways in many different Churches, and I can see advantages and disadvantages to each. SBCC doesn't have any particular order to when you go up. When you're ready, you just get up, get in line, and go take communion. It probably takes longer, but this way there isn't a need to just go when the time comes. You can (and I usually do) just sit and pray to prepare yourself before you partake. This really helps me to focus myself on Jesus and His sacrifice that made it possible for me to take communion.


5. Praying in community - Every Tuesday morning at 6:45am 50 - 100 people gather to pray together. That sort of dedication to prayer is so important both for the Church community, and for each individual in the body. I am so privileged to be part of it.


4. Integration of solid teachings with the Bible studies - Each week at home group we study a specific Bible passage. Then, we come to Church on Sunday and hear teaching on that same passage. I never realized how much it helps to be familiar with a passage when you hear teaching on it. It's not like I was hearing passages for the first time with other sermons, but the passages weren't fresh in my mind either. Pretty much every week the Pastor nails topics that I had been thinking about because of having studied the same passage the week before.


3. Emphasis on community - The Church is quite large, so you don't get to know people just by coming on Sundays. Every week they have the information about joining a Home Group in the bulletin. Every week I've had someone new ask me if I am in a Home Group. The first week (when I wasn't yet in one), he invited me to join the one he was in, and when it turned out it was on my one bad night, he introduced me to the person in charge of Home Groups to help me find one that worked well for me. They periodically have community (or subsets thereof) dinners to help people get to know each other. Community is important to this Church, and the whole body shares that vision.


2. My Home Group - Every Tuesday night I get to go worship, pray, study the Bible, and share my life with these amazing people. God gave me a wonderfully supportive group of Christians for my time in Santa Barbara. The people are such a change from college Bible studies, and I love it. In terms of age, there is everything from college seniors at Westmont to young Grandparents. There are both singles and couples. They guy that really impresses me is Drew. He has been a Christian for about 9-months, and clean for about 8-months. By clean, I mean that for many years he was a meth addict. He is now living at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission until he finishes their program. He is so sincere about his deep love of God. When he prays for God to protect him from himself, he knows what that means in a way I don't think I really do. Oh, such a great group!


1. God brought me to SBCC and prepared it for me - When inquiring about Churches in the area, the two recommendations I got were both for SBCC, which gave me a strong incentive to check it out. On the first Sunday I went there, they announced that they were starting up a new session of Home Groups and Tuesday morning prayer meetings that week. My timing isn't that incredible, only God's timing is.