LA Bucket List time

I have no idea when I'll be moving to Hawaii. All I know is that it will be when I finish raising my support. It could be in a year or two. It could be in a month. Who knows? Well... God does. :)

But there always is that possibility that it will be very soon. So I want to take advantage of all the perks of being a Southern California resident. It's time I start checking things off of my LA Bucket List. To do that, I should probably create an LA Bucket List. :-D

So here it is, the start of Gen's LA Bucket List (not all of these are gonna be easy... some may be impossible haha):
- Watch the Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall
- Get into Club 33
- Grab dessert at Syrup
- Check out the Grammy Museum
- Attend a play at Mark Taper
- Eat at the House of Blues
- Visit Pepperdine's campus
- Dine at Encounter
- Attend a service at Rock Harbor Church
- Have a quiet time at the beach
- Fly out of Long Beach airport

Any other ideas?

A farewell letter

Dear Florida,
It's been a great run. I never expected 37 days together to go by so fast... I had an absolute blast. It mostly wasn't due to you- it really was about the awesome people I got to meet at New Staff Training, and the awesome Christian Theology and Bible Study Methods classes I got to take, and the spiritual growth I got to go through as God really revealed so much more about Himself to me (often in rather painful ways...). Yeah... you had very little to do with it. But you did offer beautiful lakes, awesome wildlife, Disney World, and help preparing me for the humid heat I'll face in Hawaii. And, if nothing else, you can claim that you were the setting for 5 profoundly life-changing weeks for me... that God truly used our 5 weeks together to bring me into both a greater realization of how desperately I need saving and a deeper understanding of His indescribably, vastly, incomprehensibly perfect nature which happens to completely fill that need. So thanks for being used in that way.

I wouldn't be surprised if I got to see you again... After all, the international headquarters for the organization I work with is in your very heart- Orlando. I will miss a lot of the fun times we had together. But I can't say I will miss you. It'll be good to see you again, but I won't miss you... I think you and I just wouldn't work out- we're not compatible. I think you're more built for people who love intolerable humidity and heat, and lizards running around everywhere. It's not you- it's me. I hope you're not too hurt.

Still, I can sincerely sign this as
Gratefully,
Gen

Honolulu I am coming back again...

On May 8th, I went to my littlest sister's dance recital. She was AWESOME- jazz, hiphop, contemporary, tap, ballet... she rocked them all! But my favorite dance that she did was a beaaaautiful hula to "Honolulu I Am Coming Back Again." In case you're not familiar with it, it's a nostalgic song whose chorus says:

I seem to hear the Pali calling me
I seem to hear the surf at Waikiki
And from Pacific Heights I seem to see the lights
Of a city that is very dear to me

I seem to see the waving sugar cane
The coco palms all nodding in the rain
In fancy I am led Back to dear old Diamond Head
Honolulu, I am coming back again
Honolulu, I am coming back again

Well, at the time, I had just come back from my awesome week-long vision trip to Honolulu three and a half weeks prior. I felt really called to do ministry there, but since I hadn't been given my assignment yet, I was thinking to myself, "I sure hope the song applies to me!" Well, like I said in my previous post, I can now say to the capital city of Hawaii, "Honolulu, I am coming back again" :) It will definitely be an intense adjustment once my support gets raised and I actually move over there. Ministry there's not easy. Life there is surprisingly not easy. The move will be hard. But I'm so excited for what God has in store for me there. And a lot of that excitement comes from what I experienced during my vision trip. Here are some highlights...

I just love the staff team. Shaun, the director (the shaggy one), has been a friend of mine for a while now and it was great getting to stay at his place all week and get to know him a lot better. Tricia (2nd from right) won't be there anymore after 5 years of helping lead the movement, but she was sooo encouraging to me on this entire journey of figuring out whether I was supposed to go to Hawaii or not. Ed and Lynee (bookends) had just reported to UH and eagerly showed me around campus and were also very encouraging all week. Jamie (2nd from left) wasn't there yet when I went but she just got to report a few weeks ago, and she's been fun to get excited about Hawaii with. And Kent (next to Shaun), who is the director at the movement in Hilo on the Big Island, is a wise man whose insight I just soaked up as I got to have dinner with him and the other guys one night.



The students are great! It's still a baby movement... very small, but intimate. I got to go their equivalent of a weekly meeting, which was very casual- sitting on the ground outside a building. And I even got to join in the leadership team's end-of-the-year meeting where the current leaders AND next year's leaders got together to cast some vision for next year. They're so eager and excited to do God's work at UH and it was an honor getting to know them and join in this meeting.





Justin, a really good buddy of mine from USC (we were in AGO together) is from Honolulu and is currently living there, planning to stay for another year or so. We got to hang out and catch up one afternoon, and it was so refreshing to spend time with my brother. If I get to report to campus within the year, I am very excited to have him be a part of my life out there!



Let's be honest- it's a beautiful place. I got to spend a day away from the team, away from campus, away from the city, just exploring the island by myself and spending time with the Lord to see what He would say to me about my future. It was a hard afternoon of wrestling with God on a lot of things, really coming to the realization that, should He call me there, I would be leaving so much behind in LA. But in the end, it was such a needed time to process with Him, and I got to do it in some spectacular settings :)





So there you go... just a glimpse into what my week out there looked like. It was a busy week, and it was almost an information/emotional overload. But in the end, it made me feel more called to go, and now that it's been confirmed that Honolulu is my placement, I'm so much more ready to just be all out excited for this next chapter of my life! It's all in His hands... It's His work, His calling, His blessing.

I love it.

Where are you??

That's what a lot of people have been asking me these last couple of months... With all the madness of a busy end of the semester, and a month and a half full of travels and transition since, then, my answer to that question has been different on an almost-weekly basis.

So I feel bad that I haven't blogged in a month and a half... especially since there's been so much to report. I haven't blogged about the wedding in Houston, Phoenix, Stockton, and Dana Point that I've been to. Or about my week-long vision trip to Hawaii where I worked with the Cru team at UH. Or about giving my last talk at a USC Cru weekly meeting (during which I cried!). I hope to be able to blog about some of the things I've missed, and soon. But for now, here's what's going with me right now:

I'm at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida (suburb of Orlando). I got here on June 15th, and will be here until July 18th, going through Campus Crusade's New Staff Training, making the transition from intern to full-time staff. The first week was on vision and direction, the last two weeks have been a condensed, concentrated graduate level seminary classes, and the next two weeks involve a lot of concrete training for the work we will be doing. It's been a great time of meeting the 120 or so other new staff from around the country, learning a LOT, growing a lot, and trying to survive the heat and humidity.

At the end of week 2 of NST, I also received my official placement for where I will be going after I finish raising my support. It's now solidly on paper that, if the Lord wills, and should the finances I need to raise come in, I will be moving to Honolulu to work with the University of Hawaii CCC staff team!

SO excited to be at New Staff Training, SO excited about Hawaii, SO excited about all God is doing in my life, SO excited that God is leading USC in an awesome direction (and that I'll hopefully get to hear about it from friends this coming school year). God is good.

I need a new "Why Am I Here?" for my profile

The USC Class of 2010 just graduated today. The school year is officially over. And so is my 2nd (and final) year as an intern at USC. I don't know what to make of it.

Super excited about New Staff Training in Orlando (June 15-July 18). But that's about all I know. 6 and a half years is a long time to be at one school. I guess you can't really expect to know exactly how to feel at the end of something like that, huh?

But I can wholeheartedly say "PRAISE GOD!!!" for an indescribably amazing time here.

7 Non-Negotiables

This past weekend was the CCC Pacific Southwest Region's Staff Conference. The main speaker was a guy named Dennis Rainey, and on Saturday morning, he gave a great talk called "The Seven Non-Negotiables for the Christian Faith". The seven points are simple, yet profound. Just wanted to share them :)

1) Seek God, not sin. (Amos 5:4,6,14. Why does the Bible command seeking God? Because we are prone to wander)

2) Fear God, not man. ("What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us... the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like." -A. W. Tozer)

3) Love God, not the world. ("The essential task of all people is to set their loves in order" -J. R. R. Tolkien)

4) Believe God, not the deceiver. (Satan's mission is to move us from faith to unbelief)

5) Obey God, not your appetite. ("The great doors of opportunity swing on hinges called obedience")

6) Serve God, not self. (Total surrender is all that is acceptable, and life is found in it)

7) Worship God, not comfort. (Nowhere is worship more important than when you suffer... celebrate and rejoice in the Lord in the good and the bad)

Vida Estudiantil

Back to DR posts!

This is what ministry looked like at UASD...

First, this is the entryway to the campus. We were encouraged by Jeremiah Kepner, one of the staff people from Northern Arizona University, to check ourselves everyday before passing through those gates, to ensure that we were being Spirit-filled and Spirit-led going into ministry.

Once we got to campus, we went over to the English Immersion Program. Though we didn't go into the building itself, we met students as they came out for break, and spent breaks and their after-class times with them.

On one of the days, we got to lead the first Vida Estudiantil (DR's CCC) meeting in the Arts department- until this point, Vida Estudiantil was only having their gatherings in the Humanities dept. During this meeting, Christina shared her powerful and personal testimony,

Chris shared his equally powerful testimony,

and Bree gave a lesson on assurance of salvation, with Lori, our trusted interpreter and staff person from NAU, piggy-backing off of her to share the Gospel with the group,

Before the students came out for their breaks, we would spend time praying in small groups to prepare us for the day ahead. Good stuff!

During a certain break on Wednesday (I think), I looked up and noticed that the tree/bench area where we almost always hung out was completely surrounded with people having conversations, and upon closer inspection, I discovered that every single conversation was a Gospel conversations- our students (and even some of the Dominican Cru students) had Knowing God Personally booklets and Bibles out and were sharing Christ with Dominicans left and right. What a great moment!

Christina blended right in with the Dominican students, and they would often speak Spanish to her, assuming she was from the DR. Doesn't she fit right in? I guess the cardinal and gold shirt that says "FIGHT ON" is a bit of a giveaway...

These are some of the Dominican students involved with and helping lead Vida Estudiantil. Most of them came to Christ through the Summer Project that was there last summer!

Back row, L to R: Nick, me, Elvis (no joke, birth name), Gerard, other Nick, David (not a Christian... yet)

Front row, L to R: Sonia (another team member often mistaken for Dominican), Starliner (no joke, birth name)

It was so cool getting to meet them and even getting to do evangelism with them and watching them share the Gospel in Spanish with their fellow Dominican students!

These are the students I became closest with during our time in the DR. Sonia, Kristen, Chris and I got to share the Gospel at length with them, and had phenomenal conversations with them. We don't know quite where they are spiritually, in terms of decisions, but they really seemed to understand and appreciate what the Gospel said! They were very sad to see us go, and we were very sad to leave them.
L to R: me, Flor, Chris, Rafael, Sonia, Liliana