Isaiah 40:3

The prophet Isaiah actually says "make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God."

Do you really?

"If you say you want something but haven't done systematic work to achieve your goal in the last 14 days, you're deluding yourself."
-Ramit S.

New Zealand Part 1

I posted more pictures from the first three days of a trip to New Zealand on Flickr.

Enjoy!

What Satan looks like.

"And Satan entered into Judas who was called Iscariot, belonging to the number of the twelve. And he went away and discussed with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Him to them. They were glad and agreed to give him money." - Luke 22:3-5

What is striking about this passage is that Judas, now possessed by Satan, looks like any other normal human being would. He's capable of rational (you know what I mean) discussion and doesn't have a demon face with ash colored eye sockets the size of baseballs. In fact, the chief priests don't seem to be able to tell at all.

Let's be sure that our eyes are not the only instrument of discernment that we have.

"Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth." - John 17:17

Got back from retreat, going back home tomorrow, and my camera broke.

I'm sure I'll have more things to say after I get some time to reflect, but for now, I'm just thinking about how precious EBCT is to me. The closer I'm getting to my time of departure, the more I don't want to leave. What crazy time it is right now.

Friends and family visiting rampage comes to an end. English camp begins.

It turns out to be just a family visiting rampage. Two cousins, two uncles and one aunt. It went like this:

Event One: Uncle and Two Cousins

I spent Saturday with my uncle (mom's older brother) driving to and back from Taichung (2.5 hour drive) to visit two cousins. On the car ride, we got to talk about future plans and my uncle shared a bunch of his own experiences with different people in different contexts: co-workers, wife, kids,... even telemarketers. Many times, when I talk with my relatives, I realize afterward that I could have responded or carried the conversation in a much less superficial way. This was one of those times.

Event Two: Aunt and Uncle

For the last two days, I was with the aunt and uncle I mentioned a few posts ago. It was an interesting time filled with... driving around. I must have hit my head 20 or 30 times dozing off in the backseat while the car went 'round curves in the mountains. Believe it or not, we hiked at a place called LALA MOUNTAIN where I saw...


a butterfly in the parking lot.


a fuzzy bee.


a mini forest on the ground.


a mini flower.


adventurous mushrooms on a rotting branch.


some thing on a thing.


The place was called "giant wood area."


My aunt and uncle are familiar with many of the touristy and local sightseeing areas. At night, we lived at a nice hostel and in the morning we went biking.

On Tuesday, I asked them about their future plans since they retired recently. They talked about their responsibility in raising their grandchildren and about pursuing hobbies. Then, my uncle mentioned something out of the blue: "I think it's good - when people become old - to have a faith." Needless to say, I had much to say about that. But I wanted to hear him out. It seems that, more than anything, he believes faith functions solely as a source of peace for the elderly.

I've tried to confront them with the problem of sin many times in many ways and received the same response: unbelief. Whenever I mention sin, my uncle talks about how religious leaders are very persuasive and manipulative people - even when I point out the stark contrast of the life of Jesus to that of all other "holy" men and so called gods of other religions. Jesus spoke offensively, he made huge crazy claims of deity, and he came to die for us. When I made this clear along with the uniqueness of salvation by faith and not works, my uncle plead not guilty by making it seem like Jesus had ulterior motives and that it is unlikely that he is God.

Subsequently, he started his spiel about how some things are just "unknown" to him to which I responded by explaining natural revelation through creation (this lead to a separate discussion on evolution) and moral laws (this lead to a separate discussion on the existence of absolutes).

In the end, as we were getting close to EBCT where I was supposed to be dropped off, I decided to talk about God's judgment. I never had the opportunity to bring it up in previous conversations, so I wanted to warn them at this point. My uncle brushed off the idea of heaven and hell and categorized them as "unknown." This is where we said our temporary (hopefully) goodbyes and parted ways. I told them that I hope we would have more opportunities to talk in the future and they were on their way after some handshakes and hugs.

My uncle and aunt are two, more or less, happy-go-lucky type people so, though there was a 3 hour long serious discussion, there was no real personal offense taken/given though I know the gospel offended them.

It's times like these that I feel - even more so than usual - that I don't deserve my salvation. Praise the Lord.


PS English camp is starting in 4 hours. Please pray for my personal devotion to the Lord during this time away from home. Pray for this extended period of time with all the teachers at my school - that perhaps I would have the opportunity to talk about non-superficial things, namely, eternal things. Teacher Jason in particular, claims to be in a pastoral role or leadership role for a youth group, but "Gary" from way long ago said that he felt Jason does not REALLY believe in what he says he believes. I'm curious and I want to find time to get to know Jason. Pray for humility and wisdom.

Laundry with Matthew Lui and Bernard Liang

Today, I acquired a large quantity of apparel from our moisture reducing high-temperature, intensely rotating household appliance. I then attempted to introduce creases along strategic areas of the fabric so as to reduce the overall volume of the before mentioned items and increase storage efficiency. Lastly, I reallocated the items and categorically distributed them in a systematic fashion to optimize future search inquiries for desired apparel.


In other words, I took clothes out of the dryer, folded them and put them in my drawers.


“In other words, hold my hand.”
-Matt Lui

I got into graduate school.

According to my older post about blawgging (double "g" is the correct spelling, trust me) priorities, prayer requests are first.

I'm admitted to grad school, but keep on praying for me to faithful to the Lord. It's certain that I'll be living at home now, so pray for my time at home (I haven't lived there for 5 years!) to be God-honoring in terms of my relationship with my parents and sister and also my stewardship of the word in both learning and proclaiming. I know the prayer request is general, but the closer I get to leaving this job as an English teacher, the more I realize, I need to take the basics seriously. My primary responsibility is to share the gospel as clearly as possible, to as many as possible remembering the foolishness of preaching. I practically live at church, so there is a constant reminder of these things right now. This big transition needs big prayers.


More news. My accountability partner and friend Jack is now in the military. For those that arent' that familiar with the EBCTers, he's the really tall guy. In fact, he was 0.8cm away from being relieved from military duty. The point: he's been gone for 3 days and I'm already forgetting to pray for him. Pray for my awful trust in the Lord and awful care about my brothers. Being away from the body must be spiritually tough.

I used to visit him at the library near his home where he was studying for his college entrance exam. Students typically study like crazy for this. Leo, for example, doesn't call anything below 6 or 7 hours a day of studying, real studying, for this exam. We usually went out to lunch. Some really good and simple food we had one time:


On one of my visits, we visited Dino, a sister from EBCT, at her workplace. She works at a convenience store and lives close to where Jack lived and studied. It's about an hour away from EBCT:


Please continue to pray for the relative/friend visiting rampage that is going to begin after I finish work, because I can't save people.

Explanation of the first picture in this post:
Check if your video card supports this: rotate desktop 90 degrees. It's a way to increase blog (or anything skinny, resolution-wise) reading efficiency. More context. Less white space. Use Ctrl +/- to control text size. Firefox 3 supports concurrent image resizing too.

There is a new format for Blawg.
Features:

• Simplified header
• News graphic on top
• Cluttered sidebar

My workplace is having a farewell party

…but not exclusively for me. Two teachers won’t be teaching starting next semester (my co-worker Steve and I). A few of the foreign teachers will be going to a KTV place (karaoke-ish place) along with all of the Chinese teachers on July 2nd (the last day of the semester).

Looking back, I wish I could have gotten to know more of my co-workers on a deeper level. Even so, I’m glad for all the learning experiences I’ve had in building relationships with a few of them. Since the 3 months of apologetic sessions with “Gary” last year, things have been awkward with him. I still see him when I walk through his classroom with my kids twice a week, but since he doesn't want to have any discussion about God, I’ve had a hard time coming up with things to talk about with him. I should work on my social skills for the glory of God! He – and most of the other foreign teachers – are employed at other schools as well, and have much less time to hang out and chat than I do. I still pray for him every now and then, but I forget most of the time. That tells you about my heart. In any case, I really want to at least commit to praying for him these next few weeks before I finish.

One of the other foreign teachers I’ve got to chat a bit with is a really funny guy, Jason, from New Zealand who has a family and is apparently leading some youth ministry at a nearby church. The school I work at owns/rents two separate spaces: one designed for kindergarten kids in the morning/afternoon and one for the elementary school kids in the afternoon/night. I’ve only chatted with Jason (he teaches kindergarten and elementary school kids) personally the few times I substituted for some of the kindergarten teachers at the other building space. If he ends up going to the summer camp for our school, I might have more personal time to chat with him. Pray for me/him!

Also, I’ve been meeting up with a few Chinese teachers that wanted to learn English on a weekly basis. We started off really well. We did self-introductions and I was able to explain why I was in Taiwan and share the gospel. Most of them were bewildered at my motivations. As the weeks wore on, I was able to explain to them my views on several topics and tie it back to the gospel, but recently I’ve nearly completely stopped praying for them and it’s just been a time of teaching them English. That was foolish. Please pray for me to be focused on their real needs and for the last meeting or two to be God-centered and God glorifying.

Since I started thinking about how effectively I’ve used my time with my co-workers to talk about eternal things, I begin to understand how I must be learning as much as I can about how to actively build friendships with the people around me however different they might be and be praying and preparing myself for being a good witness at any future places that I might be placed in. I must know that these places are sovereignly chosen before time, by my God for me to be a salt and light in.

And last and definitely of least importance, Coke floats on Sprite.


Goodnight!

Small posts or big and comprehensive multi-part posts?

Which one do you like and why? Please comment for your own good! Thanks!

Solutions or partial solutions to random problems.

1. I have too much stuff to do and I don't know what to do.
If there is one concept to learn, it is time arbitrage: same amounts of time are valued differently (in terms of productivity). In simple terms, do tasks that require thinking when you're awake (morning?) and do mindless tasks later, when you are tired. In detail, visit study hacks.

2. I need some headphones, John. What do I get?
Goodcans is a website written by some solid can loving people. Nothing but real good advice here. I'd also tack on the JVC HA-FX33 (~$15) for best earbuds under $50. Enjoy.

3. I need a camera, John. What do I get?
DPReview is the king of camera reviews. Learn from them.

4. How do I take better photos?
combridgeincolour is a seriously good website for beginning and advanced users alike.

5. I'm procrastinating John, what do I do?
Get MeeTimer. It will rock you. Expect an upcoming post that includes the best Mozilla plug ins I've found and why.

Goodnight.

My aunt and uncle from 2 blog-posts ago.

(picture is dated. 1/19)

I had lunch with them last Friday and we talked about my future plans. It might have been a polite gesture, but they expressed their concern about my job hunt in the states. My aunt talked about how many kids just sit around home after they graduate from college - her message was not to be lazy. I shared that I consider stewardship of time to be important and, as a result, I strive to work hard but also that, as a Christian, I trust in a sovereign Lord to provide.

I realize that I haven't talked much about these two dear relatives of mine. I've met up with them (mostly their initiative!!) nearly a dozen times this past year. Both are very hospitable and like to talk - my aunt especially. At one point, she even asked if I could hang out just to share the gospel with her. She also asked me if it was too weird for her to check out EBCT since the congregation is young. After sharing with both her and my uncle about sin and its consequences one night, they refused to believe that God would punish people who have never heard of Jesus. Though they are hardened against the gospel and choose to trust in their own made-up God, they are far more willing to listen compared with how they were two years ago when I came to Taiwan with the Winter Team.

My uncle, who I think is a theist now, is becoming more attracted to the practical outworking of the Christian worldview. I know that in sharing the gospel, it would help to be able to communicate what grace, justice, joy, faith, a transformed life etc. looks like, so I hope to be able to show them and explain to them the gospel through as many contexts as possible. Please pray for their hearts to be softened and that I would be a good steward of my time and the gospel as I find more opportunities to talk to these folks.

I also hope to hang out and talk with one of my cousins, though he is slightly older than me. He is a graduate student at a university in Hsinchu (~1.5 hours away from Taipei). My aunt and uncle have been urging both of us to meet up and it really is about time I made it a priority. He has a girlfriend who professes to be Christian, but she might have some misunderstandings. He is also full of questions and doubts about the gospel, so pray for both of them and me as I get to meet up with my cousin!

Ah, the importance of paying much closer attention to what we have heard.

Blog refocus.

I have a feeling that my blog posts are really random. I was thinking, that its primary goal should be to give you a better idea of what my life here in Taiwan is like for the purpose of giving context to the prayer requests I ask for. I don't even know if that has been achieved so in light of my lack of direction, I want to at least start with priorities:

Blawg Order of Priorities:

1. Updating you on stuff to pray for
2. Updating you on what I’m learning
3. Updating you on useful gadgets/widgets/information

Ideally, I would also update you about certain things continually so you can see progression and temporal context as well, but let's not get our hopes too high. You can pray that I would at least be reflective and self-examining continually, even if it isn't displayed through this blog. I am truly thankful for your labor through prayers.

Wisdom comes from scriptures, my friend.

I’m a really foolish and young Christian, but in the course of praying for wisdom because of passages like Proverbs 2:2-5

Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
Incline your heart to understanding;
For if you cry for discernment,
Lift your voice for understanding;
If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
And discover the knowledge of God.

I’ve at least found – clearly – where it comes from. I just needed to read on. Prov 2:6.

For the LORD gives wisdom;
From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

Pray for my times in the word: that my mind and heart would be devoted to God, that I would be humbly learning and that God would grant me knowledge and understanding and for faith to trust His promises.

One more thing. This is way overdue as well, but go watch Ironman. You probably won't regret it.

Woke up. Summer team appeared.

This picture is long overdue, but better now than in the summer. Speaking of summer, this morning I woke up to the summer team arriving at our apartment. Seems like yesterday that some of them were here. Pray that I will joyfully serve them.

I spent yesterday night and some of the other recent nights this past week or two working on my application to San Jose State's Biomedical Devices program. They are the only university in the SF bay area that has a fall application deadline a few months before school begins. I've decided to go if I get in and to apply for jobs if I don't. Pray for me to be faithful with whatever the Lord decides to give me.

If you're looking to apply for a graduate school program that offers a choice between a thesis and a project, I found this to be helpful in making my decision: Thesis vs. Project

Update on my relatives:
I haven't visited them recently. As the time draws near, I really want to prioritize spending some time with them since I don't know when I'm ever going to have such an opportunity again.


Neither of them identify themselves as even mildly religious, but they are usually open and easy to talk with about anything. They live a very comfortable and healthy upper-middle class life which was achieved through hard-work and have two well behaving and academically/socially capable children (both of which are older than me). They are morally respectable by this world's standards, are good communicators, trustworthy in general, and have a relatively good relationship with each other and their children. Recently, they took a few months off work and have been spending time traveling and just relaxing. Though they seem to have everything, they really have nothing! Please pray especially for this aunt and uncle that I see more often: that the Lord would humble them and save them.


I didn't exactly catch it in action. This is actually a dead and dried mosquito, but I wanted to give you a picture to contrast with a mosquito that had a meal.


This one is alive. I just tapped it lightly while it was flying, drunk, through the air and it fell down. I snapped a photo while it was dizzy. Then I poked it to death.

The end.

Happy Mother's Day

Mom, I don't know if you're going to check your e-mail, but I know you check this blog.

Please click the picture to see it full-size.

Special Delivery

The analogy: Just because a husband says "I love you" to his wife doesn't mean the message is getting across.

The point: Just because I speak the gospel, doesn't mean I communicate the gospel.

The application for me: Start communicating the gospel.

A glimpse into my work life:
I have one of the most rowdy classes at my school. You can't tell from the pictures, but trust me.
...it could be my fault.


The kids get super excited or sad over test scores. Most of them are only in first grade!





Sometimes they try to impress me.


We're playing a game. I feel like there are a lot more indoor games in Taiwan because of the relatively small available space.


This girl had very little interest in learning English last semester. This semester, she's a learning machine.


Me? I'm a weekly report writing machine.

There are countless examples of what prompted me to think more about how to share the gospel. Interacting with children is one of them. Some people are just massively different than me and I must devote more attention and effort into learning how to communicate and how to get to the point where I am able to effectively communicate with them. Pray for me.

How to simultaneously avoid receiving glory, depend on God, and be a good witness.

Excerpts from Philippians 2

"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,
but with humility regard one another
as more important than yourselves."

"...it is God who is at work in you,
both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

"Do all things without grumbling or disputing;"

How I identify selfishness/empty conceit (when I consider myself more important than others) in myself:

1. I'm annoyed when I've sacrificed time over and over again to help someone and he/she acts like it's my job to help them.
2. I'm annoyed when I think people think I'm lazy.
3. I'm annoyed when I have my day all "perfectly" planned out and along comes an opportunity to serve a brother instead of fulfilling my schedule.

What is really happening:

1. I'm assuming time is mine. I'm assuming it isn't my job to help people and regard them as more important than myself.
2. I'm assuming that I have something to be prideful about when I'm willing to and able to help people.
3. I'm grumbling just like the world instead of rejoicing at opportunity; I'm fueled by pride and praise rather than by God's example of love which He extends to me despite the fact that I didn't honor Him as God or give thanks.

By the way, there is now a post about

me at thephosfour

Thoughts during EBCB’s 10 year celebration.

Big Church vs. Small Church.

One of the biggest differences between EBCB and EBCT is the size, but the difference is more than numbers. Being at a small church helps me realize that I lack love for the brethren. When I’m put in an environment where I get to be with people that are roughly my age (if not exactly), go to my school (and, thus, have similar intellectual capacities), and grew up in my state (making them nearly culturally identical with me), it’s not that hard to hang out with them. I don’t disagree or misunderstand people that are nearly identical to me very easily. In fact, I can enjoy being with them, while being selfish in many ways. Unknowingly. Well. Now I know. It’s amazing how the gospel unites people though.


I’m too American to notice my idols in America.

Mark Driscoll has a thought.


Your post-college life doesn’t just materialize on your next-semester schedule.

I don’t know if there are any college students reading this, but, besides being a much needed reminder for me, this is probably for you, since you’re the only ones that might profit from an immature person like me. Two things:

1. Get into the habit of having consistent personal devotion time with your heavenly Father. I’m serious. It’s possible to get into small groups, Friday night fellowship, and corporate worship on Sundays (even serving on various committees and attending prayer meetings) and not prioritize your relationship with the Lord. Don’t get me wrong, these things are absolutely precious, but when it gets down to it, how’s your personal relationship with Him? Do you think you need Him more than anything else?
2. Be prayerful about your future, but also get on it and take action. If you still have some ways to go in college (freshman/sophomore), learn how to study. Are you an engineer with a lot of problem-sets? Do you need to write papers? Are you in desperate need of more time? (Disclaimer: Last three links are from a secular blog. Don't sacrifice your personal devotion time) If you’re close to being a junior or are a junior, you need to decide whether or not you want to get a job after you graduate and whether you want to do more schooling right after college NOW. That may determine if you are going to be doing research and preparing for tests or getting an internship. If all else fails, talk to JM.

Let's not forget your postly-serving of pictures.




These things are ridiculous:


These people are ridiculous:


Imaginary dialogue:
J: Are you a glutton?
S:


The loc himself.


Richard and facial-hair-man.


Brian and I.


Two fobs.


Nick and I.


And, finally, the jumping pictures of me and James (complete with unibrows and charlie chaplain mustaches):

Close-up:

Apex:

Close-up:

Home. (3/24-3/28)

I know. I’m such a fickle blogger. Here are pictures from my first week in the states. Praise God, it was an answered prayer for a wonderfully meaningful time with my family.

Tuesday:
The week started out with spending a day with my mom and sister just hanging out in and around Berkeley. We had salad-sandwich-soup for lunch. Such places do not exist in Taiwan. Not that it’s super important, but knowing a variety of places to eat and hang out is useful when you want to spend time with people. I’m pretty pathetic.


My sister grew.




I didn't realize how colorful California is until now.


Mom and sister. Two of my favorite people in the world. Hearst Mining. One of my favorite buildings at Cal. Wow.

Thursday:
My dad took a day off of work for a family outing. I don’t remember him ever doing that. We hung out at the beach in Santa Cruz and ate a seafood lunch on the pier and drove up the scenic highway 1 to half moon bay where we cut across the peninsula to Burlingame for some Crepevine. Sometime during the night when we were talking about trials and temptations (the two words are sometimes not distinguished in the Chinese translations of the Bible!), I was greatly encouraged when my mom mentioned that after dropping me off at school everyday during high school, she would pray that I wouldn’t fall into temptation. Ah, what a mom! Please pray for my sister as well as myself that we would love the Lord and so not be tempted by things of this world!












Single child family photos.

Friday:
Hung out with Daniel Chung and his friends from church in SD and got a good slap in the face. As we hiked up to mission peak, we took some shortcuts that were, more or less, clearly labeled in a way to prevent hikers from entering (“…NO ENTRY”). We were stopped by the police and he asked for our names and IDs. Sure scared me. I’m going to tattoo Romans 13 on my eyelids. I’m SUCH a rebellious sinner.






Including, but not limited to, humbling the proud, supplying sorrow and displaying a kindness that leads to repentance without regret, regenerating the soul, renewing the mind, atoning for hell-deserving sins, defeating death, and eternally securing salvation.


As similar of a shot of Mt. Everest as I'm ever going to capture.


Looking southwest. My home is down there somewhere to the left.


It looks like we can see the curvature of the Earth, but it's just the wide-angle lens. I know. Disappointing.


Had dinner with Jon Tsai, Daniel Chung, Yisan, and Jean before heading up to Berkeley.

10 Year post coming up. Stay tuned. On second thought, take a bathroom break. Who knows how long it might take me to make another post.