birthday toasts

couple hours late on this, but whatevs

i was so blessed while celebrating your birthdays… sounds weird but yea…

Happy birthday to two of my dear friends, John Kim and Eunice Chung…

jewnice + swords = dangerous

here’s to john, a brother, friend, roommate, baller, president, who i’ve known for 7+ years and will deal with my gayness for the rest of this year (hopefully more)

here’s to eunice, for never giving up on friendship when i may be the worst friend in the world.

here’s to friends, because they shape us and define our lives more than we will ever realize.

here’s to life; the gift of life so undeserved

may not seem so at times, but i hope you two realize how much you mean to me

happy birthday again, and here’s to many more

cheers yo

an excerpt…

from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller

“If I were to play you a recording of a garbage truck backing up, with a jackhammer or something in the distance, that wouldn’t be music.  That would just be noise, right?  I mean you wouldn’t exactly get those noises stuck in your head and be humming them a week later.”
“Right,” I said, wondering if I’d swallowed some of the plastic wrapper around the star crunch.
“But music is different,” Steve continued.  “Music obeys form and structure.  There are scales and harmonics; there are principles a musician adheres to, in order to make music.  If he doesn’t, it’s just noise.  It’s the same with story.  If you don’t obey certain principles, the story doesn’t make sense.  Without story, experiences are just random.”
“Experiences are random,” I repeated.
“Noise,” Ben said.
“Noise,” I repeated.
“That’s brilliant, right?” I asked Ben.
“Probably,” Ben said.
“Are we still taking about the movie?” Steve asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben said after a moment of silence.

currently reading

worthlessssssurvey

1. Where is your cell phone? to my left.

2. Your hair? holy crap i have hair now….

3. Your mother? almost became a korean celebrity

4. Your father? loves me and loves golf

5. Your favorite food? peking duck, sushi, chipotle, korean food

6. Your dream last night? cant remember……

7. Your favorite drink? gatorade lemon lime

8. Your dream/goal? love god love man

9. What room are you in? bedroom dawg

10. Your hobby? basketball guitar all sports chillin

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? on the moon

13. Where were you last night? home

14. Something that you aren’t? not cool

15. Muffins? and milk

16. Wish list item? massage

17. Where did you grow up? korea/england

18. Last thing you did? open the window

19. What are you wearing? my marathon shorts, and a red nike T that says ALL OUT

20. Your TV? john’s tv is nice…

21. Your pets? my wilson evolution basketball.

22. Friends? love em to death

23. Your life? need goals, lack of ambition is killing me

24. Your mood? chillin

25. Missing someone? my homies, u know who u are

26. Vehicle? honda accord for the win; if you haven’t been in it you’re not my friend yet

27. Something you’re not wearing? a bra

28. Your favorite store? Charlottesville Kroger… $2.19 milk?!?!?! AWESOME

29. Your favorite color? white

30. When was the last time you laughed? couple minutes ago

31. Last time you cried? last week

32. Your best friend? i say ali

33. One place that I go to over and over? AFC

34. One person who emails me regularly? SAM LEE IN CHINA

35. Favorite place to eat? chipotle

I would like to take this time to give an opportunity for you guys to be worthless like me and do this survey.

I holler at……. chris jun, lynn, hw, eunice.. and since im missing a lot of ppl…

just do it if u see it…

blinds and lights

blinds down. good for sleeping at night.

not sure if you guys do this too, but ever since i was little,
i always did this thing with blinds, to minimize the amount of light coming in to my room.
during the day, i would shift the blinds up rather than down, because in daytime, light comes from above.
but during the night, i would shift the blinds down, because at night lights come from under (i.e. streetlights).

does that make sense?
maybe its just me being ocd, or maybe you guys do this too and i never knew.
or maybe its just maybeline….

in lieu of my physics midterm tomorrow, i’ve decided to write about something physic-y

*i read this the other day about light entering your room from the outside:

the daylight illuminating the wall of your room actually forms a jumble of overlapping images from that which is outside the window…
so the light on your wall is basically an upside down projection of the scene outside your window (just very fuzzy)

it’s kind of like a pinhole camera.

so if you squeezed your window into a very small hole, the light in your wall will focus into an image. how cool is that?

people actually take amazing photographs like that… (go to google images and type “pinhole photography” and be blown away)

So after i read about this light from the outside coming into your room and creating an image in your wall, i couldn’t help but be a little amazed…

the thought of images and scenes entering into my space without my consent?

the thought of how rooms and houses are created to keep the outside, outside, and the inside, inside and how it doesn’t really work that way?

the outside coming in through the smallest of holes, to impose itself on us in our most protected areas?

sounds a lot like God’s love doesn’t it?

there’s absolutely nothing like discovering this relentless love…

we search in all the wrong places, just to come back to where we started to realize that what we were looking for was always there

gonna end with a quote just to confuse you guys

“what you’re looking for is what is looking”

something old…

*i was flipping through my notebook and i found this little blurb i wrote.

5/10/09

“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”

it’s not about being smarter than your peers,
or even just having everything figured out.
but it’s about the understanding of who God is,
and what your identity is in God.

that’s wisdom.

and i’m talking about wisdom beyond this world.

we often go through difficult times
and ask God for wisdom and discernment…

but maybe all God wants for us is to simply
give.
up.

to give up any of our understanding of things
even our so-called “wisdom” from our past experiences
and to simply get to know more of who He is…

the book of Job ends with God.
God simply shows up.  reveals himself to Job.
he doesn’t give explanations for everything that happened
but he just. shows. up.

and job understands.

it’s about time to go back…

have you been looking in all the wrong places?
you know where to go. what’s holding you back?

p.s. check out these albums:

David Crowder – Church Music
JayZ – Blueprint 3

trampoline

“I am far more interested in jumping than I am in arguing about whose trampoline is better.  You rarely defend the things you love.  You enjoy them and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you.” – Rob Bell

and a summer draws to a close…

Classes start for me tomorrow, which means that tonight is the last night of the summer.

it seems so surreal that summer has come to an end… it seriously went by so fast it’s kind of ridiculous..

i haven’t really done much this summer other than beach week, hangout with people, retreat, urban hands…

but i guess three months goes by so fast when you’re just chillin

am I excited for classes? no.

am I excited for new things to happen? yes.

not really sure how this semester’s going to play out…

it’s officially my “second year” at UVa, so i’m not a noob anymore…

my goals for the year?

hmm… to invest time wisely…  honestly there’s so much free time in college its crazy… i think being in a school environment, it’s really easy to get fixated on yourself, and yourself only… to focus on your own achievements, own grades, own struggles, own growth… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing… but when we focus on ourselves too much, we blind ourselves to so much more thats going around us… i was praying the other day and i kept having this prayer to have a selfless heart like jesus… to see what he saw, to go where he went, to pray what he prayed… to invest in things that matter… and people matter…

and to take steps of faith you know?  to find peace, despite not knowing where things are headed, how things are going to turn out… to find comfort in knowing that we don’t have to have everything figured out…

here we gooo

Post Urban Hands Entry

this is really late, but hey i finally had some time to put my thoughts together.

i didn’t want to have just another missions experience recollection about the things we did and blah blah but to place the attention on and to remind us of what god’s trying to do…  bear with me and hear me out…

first and foremost the trip was refreshing…

God took me back to the place where he first showed me what it meant to serve his people, and reminded me that Jesus’s message is the same as it was 2000 years ago… to love god and to love man… to look after the hungry and poor…

I felt God slowly work in me… i felt like over this past year, partly due to some broken relationships i’ve had,  i had grown so cold towards loving other people…  but god really moved this mountain within my heart, and allowed me to lead my team in doing various service projects…

we did a bunch of different service projects, but probably the one that i was most blessed with was the one at Washington Parks and People.

WP&P seeks out to restore/preserve parks in the DC area… through WPP we had the chance to help clean out and weed Marvin Gaye Park…

Marvin Gaye Park wasn’t just an ordinary park though…  well first of all, this park  the place where Marvin Gaye first started off his music caree… but more importantly, the park used to be an entrenched heroine market… kids and teenagers in the area would grow up to violence, robbery, drugs, and crime… there would be needles laying aorund all over the place, and as one person described, it was pretty much a “McDonalds drive-thru for heroine.”

and this is what happened over 15 years:

“Where there once had been an entrenched heroin market, there is now a community farmers’ market. Where young people once passed the time stealing cars, you’ve created outdoor classrooms and two miles of breathtaking trail. In a place once strewn with trash, you planted over 2000 trees and plants. Where people once felt insecure and unsafe, they now feel a sense of community and of peace”

i dont know about you guys, but for me, it was so encouraging to hear and be part of a community practically being resurrected to life from the dead.

and I think that’s what happens when people come together and realize what Jesus’ message was about.  even the hardest of hearts change.  communities come to life.  mountains move.  nations tremble.  God’s restoration plan doesn’t stop within each of us, but this gospel is for all creation… the church is put in this world for a reason. the church shouldn’t exist for itself. our fellowships in our schools for a reason.  we are to be salt and light to this world.

while we were worshipping at the church, we sang and we prayed for god to move mountains… and the best thing was that we were able to see that right before our eyes and experience god work through us to move mountains…

(from pabe) Mark 1:14-18, Matthew 28:16-20.  these are the passages at the beginning and the end of Jesus’ ministry.  his message is the same.  and is still the same today as it was 2000 years ago.  and it is simple.  follow me, and i will make you fishers of man.

URBAN HANDS 09

-yes i’m going. heres the story that led up to it.

so the other day i’ve been thinking about how we as humans are so prone to getting too comfortable in our surroundings…  i’ve seen it in my life, and i tend to settle too much with these “okay” things and miss out on so much more…

a lot of my entries in the past kinda reflect on this yearning that i’ve always had for something greater, something more than what i see and feel, something beyond the ordinary life.

and this summer, dwarfed by the comfort of this place i call home called northern virginia, i’ve lost sight of what it means to come out of my comfort zone

i can recall specific moments in my life where i had to make conscious decisions to go out of my way to do something… trips… favors… approaching someone… saying no… saying yes…yels…

and i think that’s what god does when you ask him to take you out of your comfortzone

he gives you opportunities for you to make the decision yourself

it sounds daunting but what i’ve learned from my experiences is that he provides you with everything you need, whether you see it right now or not

so basically i came into this summer, with no plans, no job, hoping just to relax and just spend time wiht people and visit places… and i would sleep late, wake up late, be in the cycle of just straight bumming

dont get me wrong, i’ve enjoyed summer for the most part, i love the feeling of being able to sleep in until whenever… but theres really something about being stuck in comfort… it kinda rots you… your heart becomes hardened to the new things that god wants to show you

i remember being a little bitter this summer about how life is so boring right now, how god isn’t doing anything new in my life, but i think i’ve finally found why i’ve been feeling this way… i need to break out of  this box i’ve caged myself in…

and the thing about god is that he knows just the right time to provide something.

this past week somehow i was able to hop on as a leader onto the Urban Hands team that my church is sending…

and i think it’s just what i need.  i went to Urban Hands exactly 4 years ago, it was my first “missions trip” ever.  this was before mexico, before china, before college… just to kinda go back to the place where god first showed me what it meant to really love his people… i think it’s gonna be really good.  refreshing. i can already feel it

*Urban Hands is pretty much like a week long retreat in D.C. wiht all these other churches in the area, designed for students to do a bunch of service projects in the area…   pray for strength, wisdom, and for god to show us new things..

if you read down to here you are a rockstar… if you pray for me you are a double rockstar…

take it easy guys.  i’ll come back with stories.

we must cross the river

consistently inconsistent

golf has become a pretty big part of my life this summer…  i’ve been going to the range here and there to get some pointers from my dad…  i’ve been watching the golf channel randomly and not get bored… also had the chance to see tiger in person at the AT&T National up at the Congressional… and the other day i went to Fairfax National with my pastor and a friend…(they got a sweet deal going on there… $29 for 18 holes + lunch…mmm…)  i won the front nine, pabe killed it in the back nine and he won overall… but most importantly the weather was on point so we had a great time…

while we were golfing my pastor said something thats been kinda ringing in my head these past couple of days.

“we are such fickle beings…”

pabe was talking about it in terms of how we can suck for a couple of holes, but how 1 good shot can turn a crappy mood upside down… same goes for how our moods can go from happy to sad in a matter of seconds…

and its not just in golf or sports either… how many times have you had an experience that left you saying under your breath— “that just ruined my day”

i feel like we’re such conditional beings in terms of our attitudes… so inconsistent

we’re so dependent on outside things to dictate our mood

does that make us slaves?

for me, whenever i catch myself in my fickleness i feel like so childish

wait not even a child, more like a baby

babies lack this thing that is called object permanence… i like to call it the peek-a-boo effect… when you cover your face as you’re peekabooing a baby, the baby actually thinks that you dissappeared. vanished.  and the baby cries…

it’s kinda like that i guess… like the baby, we’re so quick to forget.  i’m so quick to forget.

so sad how 1 bad thing can make us forget a 100 good things…

so sad how 1 wrong done to us can ruin a perfect day

i need that object permanence…

to know that somewhere out there the sun is always shining