Back to 8th Grade

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of giving a presentation to an 8th grade math class. The woman who teaches the class goes to my church. The whole idea of it came out of the fact that 8th graders often find much of algebra stupid because it seems like there is no good use for it.

Basically what I did was go in and share with them a bit about a project I am working on. This included pictures, videos, and most importantly, a math problem that I actually solved for this project. It was a much more complicated problem than anything they had done before, but every concept in it was one that they had already learned such as systems of equations, the Pythagorean theorem, FOILing, and a finale of the quadratic equation.

I had a great time, and they were very excited and involved as I went through a problem that seemed nearly impossible to them. I basically went through the whole thing on adrenaline, and then kind of crashed energy wise an hour after getting back to work. It was, without a doubt, worth it.

Tidbits from February

Lest any of you think that I (or my blog) have died, I wanted to get one post up here during February. Basically this is just a compilation of things going on in my life.

• Perspectives continues to go well. It is quite a bit of work, but is absolutely worth it. If missions is important to you, I highly recommend trying to take it. Chances are that there is a location near you.
• In home group we are currently studying Genesis as part of a study of the Pentateuch. While studying Genesis 2-3, I was struck by the fact that the passage seems to always lead to cross-gender bickering -- which in itself demonstrates the fall. Why do we tend to focus on chapter 3 so much more than chapter 2?
• We finally filled the third room in our apartment, the one Mark vacated back in November. It was the master bedroom, and we now have a young, Christian, married couple living in it. It is certainly different than an apartment full of bachelors, but thus far it has worked out quite well.
• I have decided that I really need to start getting myself to bed "on time" more consistently. On that note, goodnight!

Prayer

A major topic last week in Perspectives was prayer. I want to share a few things about it that particularly stuck with me. First, something that the speaker said:

The quickest way to kill a prayer meeting, is for one person to say a long, meaningful, theologically profound, and poetic prayer. After that, everyone else will be too intimidated to pray. Lots of short, one-sentence prayers that build on each other work much better to bring a group together in prayer.

I cannot recall exactly how many times I have heard people say that they are too intimidated to pray with other people. Even when I have convinced someone like that to come to a prayer meeting, they often come away feeling like the experience just confirmed that their fear that they aren't good enough at praying to pray in groups.

Second, this is a quote taken out of one of the readings. Specifically, it is from "Prayer: Rebelling Against the Status Quo" by David Wells.

To pray declares that God and his world are at cross-purposes; to "sleep," or "faint," or "lose heart" is to act as if they are not. Why, then, do we pray so little for our local church? Is it really that our technique is bad, our wills weak, or our imaginations listless? I don't believe so. there is plenty of strong-willed and lively discussion -- which in part or in whole may be justified -- about the mediocrity of the preaching, the emptiness of the worship, the superficiality of the fellowship, and the ineffectiveness of the evangelism. So, why, then, don't we pray as persistently as we talk? The answer, quite simply, is that we don't believe it will make any difference. We accept, however despairingly, that the situation is unchangeable, that what is will always be. This is not a problem about the practice of prayer, but rather about its nature. Or, more precisely, it is about the nature of God and his relationship to this world.

Unlike the widow in the parable, we find it is easy to come to terms with the unjust and fallen world around us -- even when it intrudes into Christian institutions. It is not always that we are unaware of what is happening, but simply that we feel completely impotent to change anything. That impotence leads us, however unwillingly, to strike a truce with what is wrong.

Are you guilty of that? I know I am. I doubt there has been a single community I have ever been in for which I failed to spend a lot of time thinking about the shortcomings. Often I have even spent a great deal of time expressing these feelings to at least one other person. Yet how much do have I spent praying for God to bring about change? Usually very little if any. How would our Churches change if we really put as much effort into prayer as we put into our complaints? How would this world change if we traded all of our complaints for prayers?

Perspectives

On Tuesday I begin taking Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. It is a 16 week class, complete with homework and tests, all about Christian Missions. I have been aware of it since sometime in college, but have never had a good opportunity to take it. Now it has come to Santa Barbara, so I jumped at the chance to take it.

The first week was quite good. I cannot do the topics justice in just a few sentences, but here is one of the thoughts that really struck me: In the Bible, God's blessing and God's purpose are almost always found together in the lives of followers. Often we have a tendency to divorce these things. On one side, this leads to a "health and wealth" gospel. On the other, it leads to seeking out the things of God on our own strength, and letting the pursuit of the things of God become more important than the pursuit of God himself.

Passing on my Childhood

One of the things my family always does around Christmas is to decorate gingerbread cookies. Last year, since I knew I wasn't going to be home in time to do it with my family, I did it on my own with friends from Church. This year I made them again, and decorated them with two different groups.

The first I did with the Palladinos. At four and six years old respectively, Diego and Sierra were old enough to enjoy it, but it was quite an adventure. I think that they ate more candy than they put on the cookies -- and it would be a mistake to say that any of their cookies were low on candy. Their results weren't fancy, but they seemed very proud of their creations.

The second group was with the Kennedys. At fourth grade and sixth grade, Amanda and Tarin were capable of doing a bit more sophisticated patterns on the cookies. A substantially percentage of their candy ended up on the cookies. I think this was largely due to the fact that they felt they needed excuses to eat the candy. For instance, if two chocolate chips were stuck together, or if a cinnamon candy was the wrong shape or size for their purpose, or making sure that a thick layer of frosting didn't harden on the knife.

Early on, Amanda and Tarin got into a competitive spirit about how many cookies each had decorated. I had made three giant angel cookies (over twice the size of the next largest cookie shape). Amanda was the first to decorate one, and informed Tarin that it counted as three cookies, thus putting her well in the lead. Tarin was quick to counter with a point that Amanda agreed to: "No, it needs to count as one cookie so that when Mom tells us we can only have one..."

Gift Exchange

Last night my home group had a Christmas dinner. As part of it we did a white elephant gift exchange. The first gift opened was the holiday edition of Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It has some useful advice in it such as "How to get rid of carolers" (answer the door wearing a towel). As things got more and more frantic in the gift exchange, the joke came about that one of the tips in the guide was "How to survive a gift exchange and end up with the gift you want." I ended up with the guide, and I have a feeling this won't be the last gift exchange the book ends up in this Christmas...

And so this is Christmas?

Yesterday I was driving somewhere, enjoying the warm weather with my windows down, while listening to Christmas music. Something about that just didn't seem to fit. I guess that's just part of Southern California.

Thanksgiving Finale

After all of the chaos and stress of having my return flight canceled, I would have thought that the story was over. Now, I could mention the extra opportunities this gave me, like the extra two days with my aunt, uncle, and cousins -- or getting to enjoy a dinner with Liz and Dan. That stuff, however, probably isn't all that interesting to read about, so I'll skip ahead to other things.

After getting a few days of snow in Seattle on Sunday and Monday, it warmed up enough for the snow to start melting, so that it could freeze over again as ice all over the roads. While this may be normal in Minnesota, in Seattle they have more trouble dealing with it. The news Tuesday morning recommended that people stay home if at all possible, or, if that was not possible, to allow as much as four hours for a normal commute, time which we did not have. Fortunately we got lucky and the thirty minute drive only took us an hour.

Once at the airport I checked in, and they informed me that although I had a reservation, there was no seat available for my flight from Seattle to LA. Somehow that didn't surprise me too much. I asked what else they had available, and the women cautiously started to suggest something. The way she was saying it prepared me for the worst. I began to mentally prepare myself for a long day at the airport, if not a few more days in Seattle. What she said surprised me:

"If you don't mind, we could put you on the direct flight to Santa Barbara. It will get you in at around 11am instead of 3:30pm."

It stunned me. I gladly accepted and then began to wonder how she possibly could have thought that I would have preferred two flights with a two hour layover in LA. As much as I love airports, and LAX in particular...

The rest of the trip was comparatively smooth.

An Inconvenient Snowfall

As stated in my last post, I am in Seattle a bit longer than I had expected to be. Some of us were planning to go to a showing of An Inconvenient Truth tonight. I've been wanting to see it, and it seemed like the opportunity was there.

Well, tonight it started to snow, so we've decided that the truth is, it is too inconvenient for us to go see the movie. Instead of seeing the movie, we are going to practice the message of the movie by not driving to go see it.

Thanksgiving Surprises

This year for Thanksgiving I flew to Seattle where my Aunt and Uncle were hosting my parents. By design, my parents were unaware that I was going to be joining them. To make it a little more exciting, I haven't been with my parents for Thanksgiving since 1999 when I was in High School. It certainly took some doing, but the surprise element was successful, and it was pure joy the moment that I revealed myself to my Mom in particular.

I was, however, on the other end of a surprise too. About an hour before I left for the airport to fly up to Seattle, I printed out my itinerary from a flight reminder email (Does travel actually slip some people's minds?). It was at this time that I noticed my itinerary was a bit different than it had been when I bought the tickets. See if you can spot the error:

Wednesday:
SBA -> LAX
LAX -> SEA

Sunday:
LAX -> SBA

My return flight from Seattle to LA was missing! They did, however, still have my flight from LA to Santa Barbara. All I needed to do was get from Seattle to LA on my own... I started hoping that this was just an error in the email that was sent, and called up Orbitz, where I had purchased the tickets. The women on the phone was polite, and told me that she needed to call up American Airlines, where the ticket package was from. I soon envisioned that the following was going on:

Me - On hold with Orbitz.
Orbitz - On hold with American Airlines.
American Airlines - On hold with Alaska Airlines (the operator of the actual flight).
Alaska Airlines - Looking up the information.

Eventually they got back to me and informed me that my flight had been canceled. I thought that it was considerate of them not to trouble me with little details like that, nor automatically schedule me into another flight with the potential to conflict with my schedule. In any case they were helpful enough to inform me of the few options available on the day before Thanksgiving. The two choices closest to my original date were leaving Saturday morning, or Tuesday morning...

To those in Santa Barbara, see you on Tuesday.