Discontent

It’s already nearing that endearing time of the year where it’s time to start figuring out what life and ministry is going to look like next year. It’s always a time of excitement as I dream about what might be ahead for me and how the Lord might use me, but it’s also a time of anxiety and really having to lean into the Lord.

And this time around, it’s also a season of discontentedness.

I loved my time in college getting to experience all of the different things I experienced and doing ministry alongside all of my classmates. I learned a lot about myself, what I’m good at, what I’m not good at, experienced close relationships and what the Lord is doing in different parts of the world. Whether it was East Asia, Madison, Panama City, North Myrtle Beach, or Boston, each place brought different kinds of people and different kinds of ministry.

And I loved my time in East Asia last year. Out of all the things I’ve done in my life, this was probably the experience and the season of my life that brought the most personal growth and taught me the most about myself. I loved the people there and it was a privilege to get to minister to them alongside all of the people serving there long-term.

But I still get the sense that there’s just more that God has in store for me, my relationship with Him, and how He wants to use me. There’s more power through His spirit than I’ve even begun to access. There’s more joy and adventure to being in relationship with Him than I’m currently experiencing. There’s just more out there somewhere.

I could write a book about what it probably looks like to seek each of these things out, but I think more than anything, my “discontentedness” stems from wanting to stay in one place for more than 10 months and to pour out everything I have into that community of people. To invest in those relationships, love and serve people well, develop people and help them to fulfill more of their God-given potential, and to know that I’m going to be there for awhile so that I can be as effective as possible.

This doesn’t mean I want to “settle down” and buy a house, have a two and a half car garage, and re-landscape around my new home because I’m going to be there forever. But I do desire to figure out how to be the best steward I can of the strengths and gifts I’ve been given, to find a place where I can live those out, and to pour all of my energy into utilizing those talents instead of trying to determine where and how to use them. Unfortunately, I’m sure this is something that will take years.

I have no doubt that God gives some people specific callings. I am not one of those people. At least not right now. In some ways I’m jealous of people who know without a doubt what the Lord is asking of them, but this usually requires great sacrifice.

I only know two things: That God is “calling” me to live out a life that will produce the greatest possible eternal impact, and that I’m getting married in April to a girl I have been called to love and minister to the rest of my life. I think that’s one of the main reasons I’m so excited for marriage. She’s not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere, and I get to spend however long the Lord has put us on this earth for loving her with every ounce of energy He’s given me and investing in our partnership and ministry together.

Maybe that’s supposed to be my focus in this season of my life. To love her well, seek hard after the Lord, take things one step at a time, and wait until He appoints to me another task.

Engagement Story

I've promised this to several people and realized that there are others that would like to hear it, so here goes...

On Saturday, August 8th, I woke up to a rainy, dreary day. Amy and I had talked about going to Devil's Lake earlier in the week to do some hiking but it looked like the rain might prevent those plans from working out. But at my gentle prompting, we decided to just go and give it a try. If it didn't clear up we'd just make the most of it.

Well it did end up clearing up (thank God!) just before we pulled into the park and we spent much of the afternoon hiking around the lake. I had mentioned at one point in the afternoon that if we found an area where we could have some quiet and privacy, it would be fun to do lectio divina, a method of reading Scripture where one person reads a specific passage out loud several times as the other processes through what it is saying. (Sounds nerdy, but it's something we'd done several times together prior to this.)

After driving to Parfrey's Glen we decided to stop at a big, open prairie that doubled as a cross-country skiing trail. Since there weren't many people skiing on this humid August day, we had the whole area to ourselves. We searched for awhile for a spot in the shade. At one point, Amy said, "Chris, if we're not going to stop soon and sit down, let's just go to the car and drive home in the air conditioning!" Luckily, we soon found some shade and plopped down on a blanket in the grass.

So what follows is basically the proposal itself. But here's a disclaimer: I knew that I wanted to propose during our little excursion that day, but I had absolutely nothing planned when it came to a location or anything like that. It was all pretty spontaneous but luckily worked out really well seeing as I had no idea this prairie even existed three hours earlier.

We sat down and read through two of my favorite passages. Ephesians 1:4-6 and then Ephesians 5:25-33. I pulled out a journal where I had written out some things from that passage and how it made me want to love her in that way and to continue to pursue a relationship with her that modeled Christ to our family and friends. I then told her that I also wanted her to read the FIRST journal entry from that particular journal...

When she turned to the first page, she saw that it was dated September of 2008 and she immediately began to start balling! What followed was a serious of letters and journal entries from my time in East Asia that I would write whenever I missed her or couldn't talk to her. The journal had been in China on the Great Wall, Singapore, and Malaysia before eventually making its way to her!

She says she still had no idea that anything was coming at this point, but I then proceeded to grab one more small gift that I had for her, wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped the paper and found a much smaller journal. The first page said something like, "Amy, the last chapter of our lives is finally closed and we get to move on to a new one. Some pages might contain some ugly things, but others will be absolutely beautiful, and what's most important is that it's OURS. So if you're up for the adventure, turn the page..."

And in the next page was a box cut out of the rest of the journal with an engagement ring sitting in it! And...she said yes! Technically, there was just a lot of crying for the first several minutes, but she eventually got around to giving me some sort of verbal confirmation! :)

It was a perfect day and we got to take our time and enjoy the moment with no one else around. We drove back to Madison and celebrated at The Great Dane, our favorite restaurant, before we started making calls and telling everyone.

We are planning on getting married on Friday, April 16th at Blackhawk Church in Madison and you can pray for us as we try to figure out what comes after that!

Greek Ministry and Pioneering New Movements

Sorry it's been so long. Then again, I apologize for that just about every time I leave a new post. I won't make any promises to do this more regularly because I'll probably fail to follow through. :)

We're at a point in the semester where I am finally feeling like I know what I should be doing when I step on campus. There are so many different stories and happenings that I could highlight from the past several months, but for now, I'll just jump in at the most recent things.

A couple weeks ago as a form of outreach, our students decided to write out their “stories” and to post them online for everyone to see. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. Over 9,000 DIFFERENT people read at least one story in just the first week they were up and people continue to view them every day. Check out my story here: http://uwsi.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/chris-story/

But what’s even cooler is if you click on some of the other peoples’ stories on the right and hear first-hand how God has been working on campus at the UW-Madison in and through our movement. It probably won’t take long looking through the stories to find someone that decided to follow Jesus sometime in college. I’ve loved reading through many of these and hearing about how God’s worked on campus, many times without us even knowing it…until now!

This past Sunday night, we did our fourth presentation in a fraternity so far this semester. In about 12 minutes before the house meetings, we go in, explain what our organization is all about, what we do on campus, we share the Gospel and an athlete from campus like Chris Maragos or Luke Swan gives their testimony. So far we've been able to share the Gospel with over 130 fraternity men!

I've shared the Gospel many, many times (it's my job!), but there's something terrifying about walking into a Greek fraternity through the sticky residue left from the beer spilled the night before, out into the middle of 30-50 men. It's a completely different culture, both compared to the rest of the campus and because of the many backgrounds and religions of its members, and something I'm still getting the hang of. It scares me every time, but every time it turns out to be very rewarding and the feedback we've gotten has been incredibly positive.

Today, several of us went to UW-Whitewater in an attempt to surface possible leaders to launch a contextualized ministry nationally known as IMPACT, that is directed toward African-American students. On our way down, we had no idea what we would find or how productive the day would be, but through references of people giving us contact information for others they thought might be able to help us out, we were able to sit down and talk to four different believers on campus before we left for the day! We found that there were already several pockets of African-American believers on campus, they just don't know about each other, aren't very well resourced, and often don't really feel like they have a place on campus where they can come together and worship. It was a very fun and encouraging day, and hopefully the beginning steps toward African-American students being an influential presence on campus for the Gospel.

I make no promises, but stay tuned for more posts...

Our BIG God

It's been awhile since I've been on here, but I'm back in the States and have been working on transitioning back into things here and getting ready to serve on campus at the UW. It's been a relatively smooth transition in most ways but it's been really easy to be lazy in my relationship with the Lord. I'll spare you all the details and reasons why I think that's the case.

Support raising for this coming year has also been very difficult. I still have $18,000 or so to raise by...August 11th. Yikes! It's been very difficult to trust the Lord for that in this season but at the same time, I'm seeing glimpses of how God wants to use this in my life if I'm willing to let Him. Again, I won't go into all the details of that right now, but let's just say that even though things are slow, the Lord has still more than provided for my every need, something that I don't take for granted in this economy.

I just started reading through Acts and came to the passage in 2:42-47 that people love to go to in order to set the building blocks for their church or movement. They "devoted themselves to teaching," ate together, prayed together, "gave to anyone as he had need," and "the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Most of the time that I've heard someone speak on this passage or read it myself, it's been in the context of, "If we do this, our ministry will succeed." Well maybe not exactly like that, because we can't put God into a formula, right? But that's usually how it comes across.

But what stood out to me after reading through it this time was the verse immediately preceding it.

"Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." -Acts 2:41

While it's true that God continues to add to their number as they meet together, pray together, and do all of those things, it seems as though He was already "adding to their number" (originally a group of about 120 people, Acts 1:15) before this large community of believers ever started doing anything together.

I should point out that I'm not trying to say that they weren't praying or doing these things before Peter's first Gospel message that 3000 people responded to, in fact it even says in Acts 1 that the disciples met together and prayed constantly.

What I AM trying to point out is that long before this large community started doing all of these other things and attracting people to themselves and to the Gospel that they had just committed themselves to, God, in His power, sovereignty and grace was already doing the heavy lifting.

The love that this community had for each other that manifested itself in praying together, learning together, sharing with one another, and that attracted so many people to the Lord was an act of worship that resulted from seeing how big, and powerful, and mighty to save is the God that they had just dedicated their lives to, not a strategic plan that they came up with on their own in an effort to get God to respond to a formula. They could have easily done all of those same things mindlessly, but without a mighty God and a people who believe Him to be so, nothing would have ever happened.

Now flip back to Exodus 32:27-28 because THIS is cool. (Not what happens in these verses...you'll see.)

What's happening here is that the Israelites have just disobeyed God by setting up the golden calf and 3000 people in the camp are put to death because of their sin.

Does that number look familiar? 3000?

The number of people that were lost at Mt. Sinai is the EXACT same number that were saved in Acts 2 after Peter's first recorded message.

Let's remember that the 3000 that were saved in Acts were Jews that Peter himself blames for crucifying Jesus. One might think that these people should have been put to death instead of being saved, but that didn't happen.

Instead, God "saves" them, as if to say, "Yeah, I know you deserve death just like those Israelites deserved death and got it. You are murderers and hypocrites and have been far from me. But to prove that I am just, that I am good, and that my plans will be carried out regardless of your actions, from now on, those who come to me and ask for forgiveness through Christ will be shown mercy, love, and grace and I will welcome you into my family."

Dang.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who said something to the effect of "the only thing that we as humans add to God's plan for redemption is our sin."

That's humbling.

And if I don't have any control over my own salvation, how in the world is my ability to raise support even remotely in my control? Or my ability to find a job next year? Or my ability to teach and lead students toward a closer relationship with the Lord?

Luckily, I serve a God who is GOOD and who is in control and lets nothing disrupt His plans. I need only to remind myself of that.

-CK

The Hope We Profess

I had lunch for the second time with a student named Jacob today and we talked extensively about The Bridge to Terabithia, the Game Show Network, and how HE would arrange the stage if he had his own game show, among other things...

But I needed this conversation.

Because among those other things was a conversation about why he often feels he has no hope for his future and about the burdens and pressures that all East Asian students face during his season of life.

Jacob is a believer who spent several years in Houston as a child while his dad worked on projects there but has spent the last five or so years in Asia, his family often moving from city to city - somewhere around 10 moves in all, including one to America and a return trip home a few years later.

But he also seems to be one of the saddest, most hopeless people I know. Part of that is his lazy demeanor, but not most of it.

As he listed off all of the problems that he's facing and all of the pressures and burdens that have been put on him, I asked if there's anything that he looks forward to when he wakes up in the morning, or what motivates him to get out of bed.

The short answer - the weekend.

But he also took me back to his final year of high school and described a typical day for me:

6:00am - School starts
5:00pm - 7:00pm - Some kind of test, which they had DAILY
7:00pm - Go home to eat dinner and st-.......(study)
7:15pm - Fall asleep because he's too exhausted to do anything else
3:00am - Wake up to do his homework before class starts again

*Add to that a final test at the end of the year that determines his major, job, and to some extent, social status and well-being for the rest of his life, and repeat for the entire school-year.

--------------------------

I was absolutely blown away. I had heard that the final year of high school before the big test was crazy, but not THIS crazy.

Some students will repeat their final year of high school (with the type of schedule described above) one or two more times in order to try to get a better score and get into a better school or major. It's kind of like the career tests we took in 3rd grade, just for fun, to see what kinds of jobs we might be interested in. At the end we were told something like a policeman, clown, or lawyer, but none of it was for real.

His sister who is in SECOND GRADE goes to bed at midnight every night because it takes her that long to finish all of the homework assigned. Kids don't get to be kids and go run around outside or learn how to play sports or musical instruments, they're pounded into the ground by a severely flawed educational system.

The real tragedy in all of this comes after these students have graduated from high school and taken their final test.

Soon after, students like Jacob realize that college isn't all that it was made out to be and they're STILL under a ton of pressure and have hours and hours of classes each day.

He wakes up and thinks that it is all pointless and that all of the hard work that came before this was for nothing. Jobs are hard to come by, he hates the random foreign language that they stuck him with, and there's not much to look forward to.

After awhile of talking about this kind of stuff, he started asking the questions.

"What gets YOU out of bed in the morning? Why do YOU have hope? Do you have any goals or dreams in life?"

I told him about how, even though I wasn't nearly as busy as he was and still had a lot of fun and good things in my life, that school wasn't all that different for me. You wake up for 18 years of your life and go through the same routine every single day, maybe looking forward to a football game you get to go to or a concert in a month. I told him that it was HARD. Days are monotonous, going through the same thing day in and day out, and for what? I told him I often wondered why there was hope or what my purpose in life was beyond those walls.

And then I told him, that even now as a Christian, here in East Asia, there are still boring days and boring weeks, there's not always something big to look forward to in the immediate future.

Like right now, it's REALLY hard to be here because I know I get to go home in 35 days and I just want to be home and with my family and girlfriend.

But I told him, even then, I believe that there is hope and the possibility of experiencing joy every single day. God is everywhere and we need only to keep our eyes out for Him to experience Him in the smaller details of our lives. I told him that I get out of bed every morning, even if I think it might be a boring day because I truly believe, that EVERY SINGLE DAY, God has something in store for me. A classmate or friend that I can encourage, being able to tell someone about God, loving my family or girlfriend, etc, AND that every day, God wants to change me or to teach me something, and I want to be open to that.

I explained that I had NO IDEA what JOB I'd end up having even a year from now, but that I want 2 things to be true of me at the end of my life.

1) I'd rather have $10 in my bank account when I die and for people to have felt loved by me than to have $10 million and be a successful career person, only to not give a rip about people. I want my life to be about loving people, serving people, giving people food that need food, healing people that have diseases, giving shelter to those that have none, and so on.

2) I want to help people realize their full potential of what God has in store for them. People are talented and gifted in so many different ways and God wants to USE those things and give us purpose and fulfillment in life in the process. Like you, Jacob, it might not seem like there's hope, but God wants to use YOU, and your gifts for language and writing to love people and serve Him and tell others about Him.

Jacob responded, "Wow, that's very inspirational. Like a speech or something. I will try to remember your words."

I'd like to think that Jacob left our two-hour conversation in the coffee shop at least a little bit encouraged and with more hope for his future than he came in with, but who knows.

But if nothing else, I needed to have that conversation even for myself. Maybe it was just as much for me as it was for him.

To remind myself WHY I'm here and why I love and care about these people and to see and hopefully share in their worries and burdens. To be filled with compassion for Jacob and students like him.

To remind myself that EVERY DAY, there is hope, and there's a reason to choose JOY even when my circumstances would dictate otherwise. God wants to do things in and through me every single day. Am I going to let Him or am I going to "take the day off" because I'm looking forward to something else further ahead?

And to remind myself of the vision I feel like God's given me for my own life. I have no idea where that will take me, but I'm excited to be along for the ride!

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." -Hebrews 10:23

-CK

Orphanage Part II

If I'm honest, it's been REALLY hard to focus on what I'm doing here. It's been hard to focus on the Lord throughout the day. It's been hard to focus on anything but ME and my problems and the details of the next year or so of my life. I've tried to spend time with Him, sometimes considerable amounts of time, and sometimes it's been good, but it usually takes ALL of my energy and focus just to remove myself from the worries and distractions that have been burdening me.

So it was REALLY good to spend time with those kids and finally focus on something or someone other than ME.

I could tell that those kids are loved so much by the people that work there, and it was almost impossible to look somewhere and NOT see a child laughing, or smiling, or playing.

I went over to one kid who had a plethora of medical ailments and disabilities and asked his nanny if I could take him out of the stroller he was sitting in by himself and hold him. He immediately clung to me and laid his head on my shoulder as we walked around outside. He would then start to point to places he wanted me to take him since he couldn't work, and we almost always ended up by a slide.

Just going down a 5-foot slide while I held his arms made this kid SO unbelievably happy. I tried to remember the last time I probably looked as happy and full of joy as he did as I helped him go down the slide over and over again.

In that environment, it was impossible to focus on myself or let myself be burdened by the worries (sin) that had been consuming my life.



As I tried to process things throughout the day, I couldn't help but think about what an incredible representation of the Gospel and our relationship with the Father this orphanage is.

Every single one of these kids was at one point abandoned and as good as dead. No one to care for them and no hope for a future.

But someone came for them, they were rescued and not just cured of their physical ailment which once threatened to end their lives, but they're also adopted into families, many of which are from America or in places where they'll have far more opportunities and a chance for a better life than if they'd even been just a "normal" kid.

This blows my mind. Certainly, no one would ever wish what happened to these kids on anyone. Being left or given up by their parents because of their disabilities that made them "unworthy of love," countless surgeries, etc.

But what once threatened their lives, somehow, ironically, will now change their lives for the better, forever. They won't just return to "normalcy," but some family who will love them very well, provide for their every need, and give them a very promising future will come for them and adopt them into their own family, as their own son or daughter.

We are SO unworthy of God's love and grace, yet He came for us, rescued us, and gave to us the righteousness that was His alone.

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." -Ephesians 1:4-6

-CK

Facing the Giants

Cheesy movie, right?...Okay, if I'm honest, I think it's just downright bad. (Don't be offended, I know some of you LOVE it.)

So as it turns out, the most surprising thing I think I've heard ALL YEAR is that one of the students here recently accepted Christ after watching...you guessed it, Facing the Giants. Here. In EAST ASIA!

How that's even possible, I have no idea, other than we have a BIG God that can use ANYthing He pleases to bring glory to Himself!

I mean, Facing the Giants...really!?

New Hope

Hi everyone. Sorry for my long absence. I have clearly failed in my promise to use this thing more. I tried...But I do have something exciting I wanted to tell people about.

This past weekend, some of my friends and I had the opportunity to take a trip to an orphanage called New Hope. This particular orphanage is home to 50-some orphan children, most of whom are between the ages of six months and three years old.

From the minute we walked into this place, I was absolutely blown away. From the founder's story of how they decided to start an orphanage to how clean, organized, and efficient they are at meeting the children's needs, everything was very impressive. I would imagine that many orphanages can be a place of hopelessness and suffering, but that wasn't the case here. As soon as we walked through the doors, we were met with a blast of life, energy, love, and hope.

Before I end up sounding like an inspirational speaker, I'll leave it at that and tell you a little more about our day.

When we first arrived, the husband of the couple that started this organization gave us a short history of how things began and didn't shy away from telling us that he and his wife are Christians and that it was their faith that led them to leave behind their jobs and devote their lives to helping orphans in this country. He explained that something like ten years ago, they visited a different orphanage in a more rural area and couldn't believe their eyes when they found 2-3 kids to a cot, no one there to hold them or change their bedding when they went to the bathroom, and other horrible conditions. As they left, they stopped at the gate to pray, and in tears, decided that they would never come back to an orphanage like that again if it was only going to be for one day and they weren't able to do anything to better the lives of any of the children there.

His wife told him, "I think God wants us to jump into a river, and we're not real sure where it's going or where we'll end up, but I think we need to jump in."

So they returned to the orphanage and asked for a child under six months old with a medical condition that they could treat (his wife is a doctor) and they left with a little baby girl and the intention of treating her medical condition and finding someone to adopt her.

All the while, a beautiful, young, ten year-old Asian girl who speaks fluent English is running around asking when they're going to leave. She found a home alright, and as you probably predicted at the beginning of the story, they ended up adopting her themselves.

But this process began what became The New Hope Foundation, that has several orphanages around East Asia, caring for a total of over 150 young orphans with life-threatening medical conditions from all over East Asia and employing over 270 people. Most orphanages are lucky to have one nanny to every ten children, but New Hope has one nanny to every TWO children. They actually go into other orphanages and find children who meet their criteria and then bring them to the city to care for them.

They also have "special care units" throughout this region where they care for children who likely have less than a week to live. Other orphanages would just let them sit in a room by themselves with no food or care for a week until they die (apparently to try not to prolong their suffering), but NHF takes these children and makes sure they're comfortable and have food to eat if they want it. Sixty percent of those children usually do end up passing away, but that means that FORTY PERCENT that would have otherwise been left for dead are saved and likely later adopted. I could go on and on about this place but I'll let you go to the website yourself. Also check out this website, to see how they have partnered with Steven Curtis Chapman's organization, Show Hope.

The whole time we were being given the tour, I found myself holding back tears. Not because I was sad. Not because we were in a place with almost 60 children without a home. Not even because of some of the horrible medical conditions some of them suffered from. I think I had prepared myself for all of those things. Instead, I found myself being really emotional about how God had used this one couple, and this ONE seemingly "crazy" decision that they made to give everything up and start this from the ground, up, to both save and change hundreds of orphans' lives. What started as a "holy discontent" from the suffering of these children turned into a massive organization that cares for and gives love to hundreds of orphans.

As we played with these kids for the next four hours,

(Sidenote: this might be the only place in the entire world where arm and chest hair is appreciated! One kid, after stroking my arms and trying to pull out chunks of hair pulled out my shirt to, surprise, find even more hair! I proceeded to tell him in his language, "Yes, I am very hairy. Do you have hair?" He then showed me that he didn't have any hair, and pointed to every other kid in the room and told me that they also didn't have body hair.)

I tried to pray for this organization and the kids, but more than anything, the words, "Thank you," kept coming to my lips. Thank You, God, for this organization and for using this ONE couple and their ONE decision to impact so many lives, both in this life and the next.














I want MY life to be used for something significant like this. But what I realized is that nothing significant happens unless significant sacrifices or steps of faith are made. People literally thought this couple was going through a mid-life crisis when they made the decision to do this, and I'm sure even they were scared to give up everything they had and do this, but what seemed like major sacrifices at the time have certainly been rewarded and God has used them in incredible ways.

I'll leave you with part of my journal entry from later that night:

"God, there are so many needs around the world. How can I just sit here and be content to go about my life as usual? I feel like there are so many things I could do with my future but there are also so many people willing to do most of those things. I want to help and serve in ways that You're waiting for someone to step up in! Give me a burning passion for something that's on YOUR heart. I WILL go!

This is what I want my life to be about: Living on the edge with radical faith that leads me to do "crazy" things that no one else would do or care for people that no one else will.

Help me to feed these desires and passions and to live them out. Don't let this die here. There's too much at stake! Show me what your heart burns for that no one else is stepping up to the plate and taking on. Thanks for Your great love and mercy!"

Check back within the next day or two and I will hopefully have another post up with more stories from the orphanage.

-CK

The Party and Death

Today was an interesting day to say the least.

I'd been pretty discouraged being on campus the past few days because not much seems to be happening in the lives of most of the guys I've been meeting with. Several of the freshmen students I was excited about have crazy busy schedules and I basically won't be seeing them until mid-April and it's been hard to figure out what I should be doing when I step on campus.

But the Lord "threw me a bone" today and I had a really good conversation over lunch with a friend named Wise who I've already talked through the Gospel with a few times previous to this. To sum up the conversation, I asked toward the end what would keep him from being a Christian since he believed it and wanted to have a relationship with God. His answer after a few moments of silence, "Speaking truthfully, I will join the Party."

Oh.

But Wise gets it. He understands that faith is more important than success, or an organization, or money, and I highly anticipate that sometime within the next couple weeks if not days, Wise will enter into a relationship with the God of the universe.

After leaving the dining hall from eating with Wise, I walked outside to discover a small crowd gathered outside one of the buildings maybe 100 feet away and our team leader, Rebecca, standing away from the crowd a ways praying and texting people to do the same. One of the construction workers on campus was laying on the ground as some medical workers attempted CPR and a few guards blocked the area off. By the time I came outside, this had been going on for about 30 minutes. After about 45 minutes of hopelessly attempting CPR, they called it quits.
Rebecca and I thought we were well out of the way, but a few minutes later they carried the man right by us with a blanket half covering his body into a fenced off area on campus.

Besides being slightly confused and bewildered at the medical treatment he had received and their manner of dealing with his death, I couldn't help but think as they carried him past us that death is a strange thing.

I know there are probably people reading this who have jobs where they occasionally or frequently deal with death, but I can't think of another time off the top of my head that I'd seen something quite like this. It occurred to me that not 60 minutes earlier I had been talking to one of my friends at lunch about faith and the fragility of life, and this man was still alive going about his day. His situation had changed quite drastically as they carried his deceased body past us.

Disregarding how time does or doesn't work when you pass away, I imagined him in that moment probably learning a lot about eternity and a God that he'd maybe never even heard of but more than likely didn't believe in.

And I thought about how he didn't cease to exist even though his body had stopped working. Life is weird that way; death is strange. It's only the end of the beginning. Our bodies are kind of like a "rental" that we use for a very short while, never knowing how long they're going to last exactly, until we move on to what we were REALLY created for.

And then I thought about a lot of other random things like how our bodies are like cars and you never know if you got a reliable one that gets passed down from generation to generation or a Pinto, but I'll spare you all of those random thoughts.

No conclusion. No bow on top. That's my day.

CK

Hui le

He's back.

The man.

The legend.

Chicken man!!!

FINALLY, several weeks after most people returned to work after the holiday, the man we have affectionately named, "Chicken man," who runs, you guessed it, a chicken stand complete with chicken nuggets, fries, chicken on a stick, etc...is BACK!

We were genuinely concerned for his health and well-being after, night after night, we would check to see if he'd returned and nothing. But alas, I had a gut feeling the night before that he would be around the next day and BAM, there he was.

Needless to say, we feasted on chicken nuggets and fries for dinner tonight.

And now, all is well in East Asia.

Art District

A few days ago, some of my friends and I went to the "art district" in the city. It definitely had a very different vibe to it compared to the rest of the city. First of all, many of the galleries have been built in old government buildings or factories that were used during a certain "revolution" at the end of the 60's and during the early 70's. (Think Badger Ammunition Plant in Baraboo if they decided to redo it and turn it into an art district!)



Along with works from renowned artists all over the world, different forms of art like drawings, paintings, sculptures, open areas with seemingly random collections of junk, animated videos, and interactive art, there was also a......Lebron James gallery. It was pretty lame. It was basically a basketball court and contained some of his different shoes and videos of him playing. Does he even know that he has an ART GALLERY in his name in ASIA!? The American girls I was with didn't even know who he is...

Aside from the amazing hot ham and cheese sandwich I had for lunch at one of the cafes there, by far my most memorable part of the day was walking into what seemed to be a store that was selling postcards, notebooks, etc. When I rounded the corner there turned out to be a pretty small gallery with some different paintings hanging on the walls. But what caught my attention was a wall with just a few framed collections of photographs.

Contained in each of the 10 picture frames were six 3x5 photographs of impoverished families in a small village in East Asia. I can't even begin to describe to you the living conditions that these pictures showed. I don't think I saw a single bed, bathroom, any kind of living area, etc. Only very small, gutted, concrete structures with mud for a roof. Here's some of what I wrote in my journal a couple hours later:

"But what stood out to me from the day was one small wall with just 3x5 pictures in frames of poor children/families in East Asia along with a sentence or two on their story and who they were. The buildings they were living in looked more like abandoned cement cubicles than homes. Most children were orphans or living with one parent who had either a mental or physical disability and couldn't work, and whose other parent had left long ago. Many of the families were being 'supported' by the government, probably living on less than a dollar a day.

My heart just broke for these people and I turned away in the middle of the room with tears welling up in my eyes and just being frustrated because I know that you could fill up thousands of art galleries with similar pictures from all over the world, yet I don't know what I can practically do for them. I'm not rich and I can't help much by just going to them.

There HAS TO be an easier way to allow people to see these needs and then DO SOMETHING to meet them."

A few days removed from writing this, I realize that in the moment, I may have exaggerated my inability to help. I CAN help. Relative to the rest of the world, I AM rich and I have the Best News they could ever hear. But in the moment, seeing how great their need was, I was completely overwhelmed and frustrated by all the needs in the world and my inability to even make a dent no matter how hard I try.

There are EXCELLENT organizations like World Vision and countless others that directly meet the needs of people like this. You can choose to buy a goat for a family, or clean water, or medical supplies for people in refugee camps - you KNOW where your money is going. (www.worldvision.org)

But I've still gotta believe that more can be done - better ways of allowing people to see the needs in the world, ways of allowing people to contribute to causes like these and see with their own eyes how THEIR time and money was able to save lives. Because when you get even a glimpse into the disparity of these kinds of conditions, it hardly seems like enough to just open the checkbook and cut a check to some organization and hope that the money makes it there and has some sort of impact.

I'll be brainstorming.

-CK

Snow!!!

Most of you will probably be envious, but we FINALLY had our first snow a few days ago. Until then, we hadn't had ANY form of precipitation since September. This particular city is always very dry, but even moreso this year with a severe drought happening in the northern part of the country. The government even got so desperate to try and help farmers that they used "cloud seeding" to produce rain.

It didn't last very long and we only got about an inch, but here it is:

Grocery shopping

Just got back from grocery shopping and spent $16. This should last me for a little while. Mostly snacks and stuff:



-Box of orange juice
-"Steak" Cheetos (yeah...that was an accident)
-2 packages of "Donitas" (little chocolate donuts)
-Sliced ham
-Peppers
-Small Package of Bacon
-Just over a dozen eggs
-Pack of Ritz crackers
-Pack of Oreos
-Two pineapples (already peeled!)
-Bottle of Minute Maid OJ

-CK

Culinary Adventures in East Asia

Being in this part of the world, I've had opportunities to experience a lot of different kinds of foods...and places that serve food. I do not, however, always take "advantage" of those opportunities, but I have still expanded my culinary horizons regardless.

In the past 6 months, I have tried several kinds of ethnic foods for the first time. Indian food (loved it!), Malaysian food (terrible...though Malaysia as a whole does food in general very well), Korean food, Thai food, "Middle Eastern" food, and have maintained a pretty steady diet of "street food."

Not that it's ethnic food, but I also bought peppers for the first time ever to make pasta and omelets last week. As part of our Valentine's Day date, Amy and I "made dinner together." (See picture below). Even while in a different country, she's also done a good job of helping to expand my horizons! Don't get me wrong, I'm still a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but there's not a lot of that here, so you do what you have to in order to get by! (Coincidentally, by my calculations, I've lost in the area of about 15 pounds since the end of August.)

Despite losing 15 pounds, a fairly regular staple in my diet first semester was my pack of 8 mini-chocolate donuts, or "Donettes," if you'd prefer. They don't have much for breakfast here, so it's a quick and easy solution and I could benefit from fattening myself up a little. The culinary highlight of the first semester for most of us was the opening of likely the only donut shop in the city, "Daylight Donuts." Apparently it originated in Tulsa in the 50's and has stores all over the world now, and praise the Lord, one of them is a three minute bike-ride down our street. :) Tom and I celebrated Christmas Eve in the best way we could think of...coffee and donuts at Daylight Donuts. There were tons of good donut and coffee shops in Malaysia, Western food chains (KFC's that actually had potato wedges and good chicken!), many different types of foods, etc, so it was a little depressing to come back to a country whose food is pretty monotonous in comparison.

But sometimes more interesting than the food here are the restaurants you go to. The last two times I've been to a place called "The Tube Station" that makes great subs and pizzas and is right across the street from us, I've seen a mouse running around. Unless its name is Ratatouille, it's probably not a good thing (which may or may not have contributed to my digestive issues lately).

We awarded the name "Cockroach Place" to another place we went to fairly often for their Kung Po Chicken. It was very good, cheap, and quick, but one day, one of my roommates found...you guessed it...a dead cockroach in his food. He had nearly finished by this point, but he pointed it out to one of the waitresses and she reluctantly gave him his money back. But did that stop us from going back? No. Especially not Tom. The reality is, that sort of thing probably happens a lot more often than we think here. Even so, when we returned home from Malaysia, we went to go get dinner at Cockroach Place and discovered a pile of bricks in its place. In a cruel twist of fate, Cockroach Place and the building that it was located in had been demolished.

I'll leave it at that. Go enjoy your steak and potatoes...

-CK

Adventures at the Gym

Sorry for the long absence, but I'm back from the break and am hoping to post somewhat more frequently this semester, post more pictures, and include more fun, random stories. In that spirit, let's jump right in.

At the beginning of September, we bought a membership to a gym that was in the process of remodeling but claimed it would open the first week in October. Obviously I use the word "claim," because after pushing back the opening date at least five times, the gym finally opened just before Thanksgiving.

The wait turned out to be worth it. It's actually a really nice gym, it was very cheap to become a member, and working out is something that I love doing for a number of reasons.

Maybe my favorite thing about the gym, however, is the people that work there. None of them speak a lick of English, so it's up to my Mandorin skills to carry on conversations with them, but nonetheless, it's been a lot of fun to get to know them a little bit. As is typical with this country, they always have about double the people working there as are necessary, and I'm not actually sure what one of my better friends there actually does when he works. I'm 90% sure his only job is to walk around, being friendly, and helping people to feel welcome.

One day he invited me to play basketball with the other trainers, so I showed up one Saturday afternoon to play basketball with 10 of the biggest, most athletic guys you'll ever find here! It was a great opportunity to spend time with them and get to know more of them a little bit, though I occasionally made a fool of myself by continuing to play on longer after someone had apparently called a timeout or something. I would get really excited that I had just stolen the ball and would be ready to go on the attack when I would realize that they had all stopped and were looking at me with their hands on their hips, probably thinking, "What in the world is this foreigner doing!?" Still, it's great to be able to have some kind of ministry outside of my "job" and to have some friends outside of my job - even if I can't understand them very well. It's really made me want to learn the language better as we always seem to discuss the same five things every time we see each other and then stare at each other, wishing we were better able to communicate with one another.

The best part of my day of basketball with them was getting to talk to the HUGE, head trainer from the gym. I taught him how to throw a football for awhile and we talked a bit. Previous to this, as men have a tendency to do, we would always just size each other up in the gym and never say a word to each other! He now comes over every time I'm there to see how I'm doing.

One day I made the mistake of telling him I wanted to work on strengthening a particular part of my body. I was already through 3/4 of my workout, but that didn't matter. He proceeded to put me through an intense, hour-long workout. And let's just say they do weightlifting a little different here...you don't lift a certain number of reps and sets, you just keep adding weight and doing a set number of reps over and over until you can't do anymore. And when the trainer tells you to do 8 reps, you WILL do 8 reps, even if you only have the strength to do 2 on your own and he helps with the rest! I was extremely sore for a LONG time and it was hard to even sit up for about a week! Needless to say, I try to look busy whenever he comes around from now on so he doesn't try to put me through another unorthodox workout!

I realize this is an awkward picture. Let me explain...The other day after working out, I asked my friend, the head trainer at the gym I've been talking about, if I could get a picture with him. As we prepared for the picture, he had his arms crossed and was looking as tough as possible, so I figured, "Okay...tough picture it is." Apparently he changed his mind at the last second and neglected to tell me he was going to do so. So as a result, he's smiling, and I look extremely angry. And just for the record, I have lost some weight this year, but I promise it's not as much as it looks like. This guy's just huge! And don't worry Jordan, my muscles haven't gotten any smaller and I could still take you! -CK