Volume Deux

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Late Night, Wednesday July 14, 2004

12:45am

Doode... they sell M&M's in 8 ounce cups!

Let me say that again: They sell M&M's in CUPS!!!

Awesome! :p

And on that note, volume deux of the bwa-bushka diaries begins.

8:59pm | Thursday, July 15, 2004

This group is a unique blend of twelve personalities that has meshed with such intricate precision, that when you sit down for evening devotional and look around, you just know that you're a part of something special... especially considering the fact that we're from 2 different states and have only been together for two and a half weeks. Usually by this point, a group of twelve has some interpersonal issues... but we seem to have been able to avert that thus far... which is borderline incredible.

Earlier this week, I drew a picture of a large fish with sharp teeth... and I signed it. ^_-

Thursday, July 15, 2004

7:02pm

Less than one full week of teaching remains ahead of us. And on the ninth day, we actually hit some substance in connecting with our students. Our class participated in a writing exercise dealing with why we went to church, what we learn, and what we believe, with regards to religion. We got some really good papers, in spite of the bad grammar. We have two or three P.K.'s in our class, and a handful of additional M.K.'s as well. I feel like today was the first time we made any form of breakthru with our kids... let's see where it goes from here.

Today was game day, and the water balloon fight got crazy, first between myself and Christine and Hanmi, then spreading to the rest of the crew. Steal the bacon was pretty fun as well... our team won in overtime ^_^

Quote of the day:

Rich in response to Ray's comment about how the little kids might get seriously injured around the see-saws: "That's nature's way of weeding out the weak."

Honorable mention:

"Dude, you can give them points until Jesus comes back and they won't care..." - Pastor Jimmy to Ray on how to motivate the 5 year-olds to pay attention in class.

Late Night, Sunday, July 18, 2004

12:19am

It's been a packed weekend... so let's do some backtracking.

Friday, July 16, 2004

Friday evening was spent at the Consulate General's - a very odd experience. 12 folks on a mission trip being fed caviar and tea. The consulate told us to "please feel at home... I hope you don't feel too awkward". Pastor Jimmy sarcastically retorted, "Oh no, not at all!" - and everyone knew he was being sarcastic - except the consulate, who simply replied "Oh good!". The entire experience was quite interesting... the Russian president apparently stays here when he comes to town.

On the drive back home, the guys' car learned that Jihae (one of Dae's students, and the daughter of one of the consulates) was to accompany us on the fishing trip. You can go ahead and file that one in the "things that make you go 'hmmmm' category.

Quote of the day:

Mike and Rich to Danny: "Hey Danny, do you remember 'Life Goes On?'"

Danny: "Oh yeah... that show... with that one Corky dude."

... ... [momentary puzzled look on Mike and Rich's faces] ... ...

Mike and Rich: "Noooo... Tupac!"

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Saturday started at 5:30am, and was spent completely outdoors - fishing and picnicing. Jihae accompanied us on the excursion, as expected - a whole other story unto itself which this blog will not delve into. We (well... most of us) caught a good number of fish which was great... but we didn't actually end up eating any of them. A large number of us got sun-burned in the process, and we spent about 2 hours drifting around looking for a good site to eat lunch at... but it was all fun nonetheless. We spent the evening back in the dorms with cucumber slices plastered onto our faces :p It was a very long day which I honestly feel was the most physically demanding of our trip thus far.

I also spent a large portion of the trip mulling over the anonymous message I got on Thursday night... whether or not that person truly meant any of the things that they said... mulling over who could possibly have written it... and most importantly... whether I should allow that to affect my involvement with the college group for the coming year.

Our evening devotion was on the topic of worship... and honestly was quite involving... Old Testament worship versus New Testament worship... keeping the Sabbath... does it have to be in a church... does it have to be on Sunday... what makes for TRUE worship?

Quote of the Day:

"Heem duhl oh... heem duhl oh..." - Elder Cho (the ping-pong master) at the dinner table, after we had plate-fulls of Uzbekastan style fried rice sprung upon us after a long day...

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Today we departed at 6:30am to attend church in Nakhodka, which is a 3-and-a-half hour bus ride from our home base in Vladivostok. Worship service was predominantly in Russian, aside from Pastor Jimmy's sermon. It was great when PJ received notice that he had to preach the sermon 30 minutes before we arrived at the church. He was initially told that the sermon had to be in Korean... which would've been a 5 minute message - including translation. The scene was a huge contrast from the more informal setting we experienced the previous Sunday in Ussyrsk... very conservative in nature... stained glass windows, a full choir, a large tapestry of Jesus on the back wall... and thus, we scrapped our "Testify" routine for "All Heavens Declare".

We then headed for the beach, where we paddled on boats, got our clothes wet, and where Mike almost got mauled by a boat. We got delayed in the parking lot because of a stupid Toyota that had trapped our bus into its parking spot. We lifted the neighboring car and nudged it over a few feet... we then managed to maneuver our way out in reverse. Dae's dad exacted revenge by removing the air from one of its tires - "hardcore OG stuff" - which later got him a tongue-lashing on by the missionary ladies.

The drive back was NEVERending, although the dinner (shosileek) more than made up for it. Today was also my first experience with a hole-in-the-ground toilet. :p I'm in the process of re-writing our students' writing assignments about their religious beliefs, and boy... it's tough. More than anything it's hard to tell what idea they're actually trying to get across, but aside from that it's not too bad. But at the moment I'm a bit brain-dead so it's gonna have to wait until after breakfast.

There's so much going on and so little time to put it all down... but alas, it's time for bed.

Monday, July 19, 2004

11:11pm | someone to love

In the end, everybody wants something that they can come home to.

• • •

Every Sunday morning, I wake up at 6:44am, drag myself out of bed, turn into the shower, get dressed, and check the news on the internet.

I'll pack up my laptop, hop into my car and make my way down Mopac for 22 minutes. Often times, I'm the first one to arrive at church, at around 7:45am, where I'll make sure the sound equipment is turned on and working properly, set up the computers, etc etc etc.

I'll spend the better part of the next hour working on the PowerPoint presentation for the day's worship service, while simultaneously tweaking the sound levels for our four-piece band, making sure they don't shatter the glass (or infant eardrums) with the noise levels.

Praise setup ends at around 9am, after which the rest of the praise team spends a few moments winding down in prayer with Pastor Charles, greeting and meeting (and eating) in the parlor room. Often times there is special music that practices during that time slot, which forces me to miss this precious downtime.

The next few moments are spent in quiet as I try to calm myself down for the 9:30am start. I've won the lottery if I have ten minutes to pray quietly and collect my thoughts before the start of worship.

If there's any reason that I'm not looking forward to returning to Austin, it's because I've been able to skip the above 5 paragraphs of my Sunday morning routine for that past month... and it feels refreshing. That's all. I don't dread returning to Acts because of its shortcomings. Acts is my family, and has been since 1995. I'm not sure how much longer that will last, but I have always been fully intent on taking full ownership of and loving the church while God blesses me with the opportunity to be around.

This past Saturday night, the twelve of us sat and discussed the topic of "worship" extensively. One of the topics that eventually made its rounds was "How often do you come out of Sunday worship feeling like you genuinely met God?" My answer was 75-80 percent. That's because at least one Sunday out of the month, the frantic schedule that I've outlined above invariably takes my mind completely out of the game. I mean, when you're scrambling to establish order in the sanctuary and are running around like a rat with its head cut off, often times you can't help but feel like you're anywhere but here. Anyone that maintains a front-line or a strong back-line position during worship service probably feels the same way. Many times, I leave church on Sunday feeling like my heart was never really there... at least not the way you would like on a Sunday morning. Serving the body in such an involving capacity is no doubt rewarding (and for myself, personally very enjoyable - most of the time), but it takes a lot out of you.

If I had to answer it again, I'd put that number at around 50-60%. This is why I started visiting Austin Stone on occasion this past Spring... because I can't count the number of times that I left church on Sunday morning feeling that I was too frazzled to really worship God with my full heart and mind and soul. If you don't know how I feel, allow me to let you do what I do for a month. You'll understand soon enough.

When I'm spending my last week in America before the mission trip preparing for our departure, and I get a number of worship-service responsibilities thrown onto my already crowded plate that have to do only with improving the visual presentation quality of our quote-unquote "worship experience" (when I personally feel that we're already a bit presentation-heavy, and not heavy enough in other areas), you can imagine my frustration. When I'm trying to prepare myself for our month-long trip to Russia, that's not the kind of stuff I enjoy having tossed on top of me.

So I hope you can imagine my frustration. That's where I was coming from when I wrote the journal entry that caused a small fire in my mailbox. I hope nobody really believes that I, in my sane moments, believe that our church has fallen so far off the edge of our map. I fully understand that the church is composed of real people, sinners and imperfect human beings. I'm sure we've all written something in a journal that wasn't truly representative of your cool-headed thoughts and feelings on a subject.

This trip for us has been a long discipleship in progress... and we are in the process, being forced to ask the hard questions that people in their "Sunday Christian" comfort zones tend to shy away from. What is worship? What is missions? Why does the church feel worship is something that happens only on Sunday morning? And why does the church feel that missions something that you have to go to another country (or even another city) to encounter? Do the problems that plague modern-day Christianity stem somewhat from the fact that we're trying to institute "Christianity" in a classroom setting, whereas Jesus and his disciples put his teachings to work in their everyday lives?

We are upon our final week of teaching... and it's not even a full week at that. If ever our bubble burst on this trip, it was at the end of tonight's devotional (which was on the topic of love) when we were throwing out prayer topics... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... yeah. It took a loooong time for people to even volunteer to pray for anything. It was the awkwardest silence... people unwilling to pray out loud... on a friggin mission trip. This triggered a side discussion on team unity (or lack thereof), perhaps partially due to the comfort of our settings. That discussions is still going on as I type this... We've made the decision to perform "Always" for either Thursday's campfire (which, incidentally is going to have to be in the afternoon, since it doesn't get dark until around 10pm here) or Friday's graduation ceremony. I'm also gonna have to get online to hunt down a copy of "Pomp and Circumstance" for the ceremony... which may prove to be difficult on a dial-up connection.

In the end... everybody wants something (or someone) that they can come home to.

Quote(s) of the Day:

"When wives get angry, they get historical." - Pastor Jimmy, during the discussion on the topic of biblical love.

"Let's just draw straws and leave it up to God!" - Rich, on figuring out how to pick a teacher to give the graduation speech.

"You wanna give him a full body massage? WHAT! I have a towel!! - Ray to Hanmi while removing knots from Pastor Jimmy's shoulders.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

9:46pm | someone to love II

During our 4 hour drive back from Nakhodka, there was about a two hour stretch where we saw beaches... we saw people... we saw stores, we saw gas stations. We saw strip clubs, we saw restaurants, we saw ample amounts of modern-day civilization. There was one thing we didn't see anything of.

A church.

We didn't see a single church. Not one.

When the walls fell on the Soviet Union twelve years ago, there were people that wanted to get to know Christ, such as Lydia, one of the locals that is among us for this month. What a lot of these people found was that after the ashes of the old Republic settled, there weren't any churches for them to go to. Instead of being filled by the spirit of God, many of the people here are filling themselves with western filth.

The heart breaking reality for much of this nation is that the workers are truly few.

• • •

Most of our classes (the ones that you can actually call "classes") should have wrapped up with all 10 units of our curriculum by now. Tomorrow is supposed to be primarily a review day for final exams on Thursday morn. Tanya has rallied up the class to do a "body worship" (read: dance) to "Lean on Me", and the early looks are impressive. We've started on "Always" and it doesn't sound half bad for just one hour under our collective belts.

The weather today was insanely hot. Our classrooms have no air conditioning, and our upstairs location quickly turned into a sauna. I enjoy the sunshine we are now getting, but this heat has gotten real insane, real fast.

The iTunes music store seems to work from my laptop. I managed to purchase "Pomp and Circumstance" over the dial-up connection here (took 20 minutes). There are new iPods that were apparently announced today. Vlade may join the Lakers, Fish has left for Golden State, and I have now washed my jeans for the 2nd time this trip.

Quote(s) of the Day:

"I'm like a lighter".

"I think it's like a virus".

- both quotes by Mike Kim, in response to whether he sees himself as a flare or a torch, spiritually speaking, and what Jesus' ministry was similar to, respectively. Honorable Mention:

Some of the team started poking fun at Pastor Jimmy by calling him "Jimminy Cricket". He hated it... but Danny retorted:

"Hey, it's better than being known as a sissy, man!"

Pastor Jimmy shook his head and replied, "Okay, stop the violence right now".

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

7:09pm | "UHHHMPH"

Quote of the Day:

"Dude! I kept thinking, 'is there a sock in my pocket?!?'"

• • •

Mike Kim is basically working with one arm these days. In his rush to get to morning devotional, he jumped into his pants and ran to the education building... which was followed by class... which was followed by acapella practice... which was followed by dinner. The weather today was pretty hot, and he was wondering why he kept sweating so profusely from the waist-down.

At 6:45pm, during dinner (chicken wings!!! wheeee!!!!), he rolled his pants up and saw silver. He realized that he was still wearing his shorts underneath.

Pastor Jimmy and Hannah Lee almost died in synchronocity when he said, "dude, I kept thinking, 'is there a SOCK in my pocket?!?'"

Wha~at the?!! HUH???

Like... could he not just have checked to see if there was indeed a sock in his pocket? Which begs the question... why and how on earth would a sock get in his pocket??? (he actually answered this but I don't wanna even get into that one...) And all it would have taken to figure this out was one trip to the restroom all day.

"I was rolling my pants up and I saw silver..."

Pastor Jimmy: "Dude man, that is UHHHMPH!"

• • •

Honorable mention:

Mike struck again while ranking his love languages:

"...next would be touch... and then words of... shoot... if I have touch, I don't need words of affirmation!"

... ... ...

(when he said it, it just came out with such an incredibly high degree of wrong-ness that only Mike can achieve on a consistent basis)

• • •

Today was our review day. After lunch, I shared my story of what I believe in, in terms of religion. If I ever have time, maybe I'll type it up here. I wrote it in the same vein that we has the students write last week. I have no idea if it made any impact whatsoever on any of the kids... but perhaps that's not for me to gauge.

• • •

A decent portion of this evening was spent practicing "nome noises"... ... ... Don't ask.

• • •

Tonight's devotional was about the Cambridge Seven.

They say that guys only really hear about 30% of what is said to them.

Conversely, they say that only about 30% of what girls say is worth listening to. :p

Thursday, July 22, 2004

This evening we had dinner out at a restaurant on Soobin Han's parents. The live band (the 2-person crew) was pretty funny... the female singer konked out after a couple of songs... but doode... she could sing. We had shosileek (for the 4th time?), pork rib chops, then hit the "Hocus Pocus" casino ship for some ice cream and coffee. Soobin's mother is fairly young, and had very sharp ears (she heard my complaints about the service at the restaurant when I thought I had muttered it under my breath, and made sure that the waitress stepped up).

Allow me to comment once again that we are being fed incredibly graciously... and I don't just mean spiritually fed. I mean, we are eating some GOOD food up here. Totally not what you'd associate with the stereotypical "mission trip". At this point, it's been almost three weeks since we got here, and everytime I sit down for a meal, I still say to myself, "I can't believe we're eating like this."

Some of the coffee-side discussion with their parents were on the topic of safety in the area, and the way people get mugged here... the father made a point that in America, if you get mugged at gunpoint, if you give up your wallet, then that's it - the vandals will usually just take that and leave you alone. Around here, it's not so simple... even if you surrender your wallet and your cash, you'll still get physically messed up. And they don't use guns... they just use knives and the like. They were an interesting couple to chat with... high school sweethearts, the girl waited for the guy to finally propose... and waited... and waited... and waited... and day-dreamed Korean drama-esque scenarios in which she would finally get proposed to... and waited... and waited... and finally... hehe.

Earlier in the day, we had the feet-washing ceremony in the sanctuary, which turned out boat-loads better than we expected from such a rowdy bunch. There were plenty of tears - of joy, of sadness, and of frustration. As for what we did afterwards... let's just say that you shouldn't have a bonfire in 90+ degree heat - and you don't need a 6-foot fire for s'mores. I think some of us honestly thought we would burn to death... :p

Quote of the day:

"Now I know what it feels like to be black." - Danny, on board the Hocus Pocus casino ship, after we put on an Asian dog-and-pony show to the Russian natives while walking up the stairs.

Friday, July 23, 2004

4:16pm | the beginning of the end

English camp wrapped up today with graduation. It was also what the missionaries called the hottest day ever... I think I sweat less in the sauna. I suppose it didn't help that I stayed up until 5am the night before... :p The day ended early after lunch, and most of us took the opportunity to recoup some energy before departing for our 11-hour train ride tonight. Man... seeing what our kids managed to put together in such a short time was awesome. The made us cards, we sung "Always", they gave us gifts, and even sung me and Paul a song on the piano with accompaniment on the sax (!). It was a touching morning of goodbyes, see-you-laters, and everything else that you would expect on the last day of a camp like this.

After this weekend we are in for the stretch run. We spend the day Saturday in Havarosk, sandwiched between two overnight 11-hour train rides. It'll be a great opportunity for us to meditate over what we've learned on this trip... to think about how we've grown... and to think about how our lives are going to be changed. I can't believe we've made it all the way through! We debrief on Monday, then fly out the next day for LA.

Where do the twelve of us go from here? How will we impact our minitries (GNC and Acts) back home? Perhaps only time will tell.

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