double deuce

A belated birthday post.

I’ve never been the biggest birthday person. The biggest part of birthdays when you’re a kid (and maybe after that too) are, of course, the wrapped boxes with shiny bows on top. And its supposed to be like a bonus when you’re an only child. More toys, no sharing – supposedly a pretty sweet gig. I share this story in my defense of being a not-so-spoiled only child slash not-so-big birthday celebrator. I just don’t think I’ve been trained that well in the art of gift-giving, or really fully experienced the ‘fun’ element of getting gifts. When I was in the fourth grade my best friend’s mom and my own discovered these 5th grade books. Think SAT prep books……..but for the 5th grade. My mom made me give one to my best friend for her birthday. Then, surprise surprise, guess what I got for my birthday two months later. From then on, I learned the practice of “practicality.” My mom knew how it went in giving me presents. She told me if she got me what I wanted, in six months I wouldn’t want it anymore, or it would disappear. So it saved her money and saved me from accumulating more ‘junk.’ Oh, and it didn’t get much better from my dad’s side. My dad thought that my generation of video games were mind-sucking, brain cell killers, so I kicked it old school, Atari-style. With a joystick and pixelated goodness I became the master of games like Pong, Space Invaders, and Centipede.

surf and spend for a good cause

As you know, I’m working with a ministry called Mending Wings Ministries.
An easy way to help this organization is through a new Yahoo!-powered search engine and online shopping mall called GoodSearch.com. (I know, google>yahoo……..but c’mon now, we all have to make our sacrifices)The more people who use this site, the more money will go to those in need. So please spread the word to your friends and family.

Here’s the web site — http://www.goodsearch.com.

And for all your christmas shopping and more: GoodShop.com is a new online shopping mall which donates up to 37 percent of each purchase to your favorite cause! Hundreds of great stores including Target, Gap, Best Buy, ebay, Macy’s and Barnes & Noble have teamed up with GoodShop and every time you place an order, you’ll be supporting your favorite cause.

Just go to www.goodsearch.com and be sure to enter Mending Wings Ministries as the charity you want to support. And, be sure to spread the word!

trippin’ on E

A reoccurring theme in my life lately has been gas….oline. A few weeks ago I became friends with one of the many car dashboard icons — the gas light. In learning how to drive, having the cautious mother that I do, I was always taught never to let the meter fall below the quarter tank mark. For some odd reason, I managed to stay true to that rule, until recently when I started having to fill up more frequently. Watching the dollars and cents escalate so fast and so often at the station was making me a little nauseous. So I started teetering. Became a little more risky and I drove once until my gas light went on, then quickly zoomed to the nearest gas station to fill up.

Well, I met my match while driving my roommate back from Seattle a few weeks ago.

im a sucka for suckafish

I’m such a sucker. From clearance racks, to promo gigs, one thing’s for sure. Not only am I easily entertained, but I am easily persuaded. Bring your pink bowtie pigtailed girl scouts to my door and neither of us leave empty handed. Tell me I get a free gift and I’m sold! If there is any sort of lingering interest in my mind about an item, interaction with a convincing salesman more or less leaves me with less money in my pocket and one more (usually) unneeded accessory.

if we are the body…why are the hands missing?

So, what have I learned so far?

One question that I have been wrestling with, is what does faith look like on the rez? It doesn’t align with many of the images that first pop in my mind.

I guess to answer that I have to think about what faith has looked like throughout my life—most significantly in college. Faith was about building relationships with people, going to church, helping out at a homeless shelter a couple times a quarter, going to a praise night or two, praying that staying up late talking a friend through a tough situation would be sufficient in Gods eyes, enough to score a decent grade on tomorrow’s midterm.

That’s sort of what faith looked like to me in college. But it is ironic that faith becomes most real when it seems to be lacking the most.

weaksauce

I listened to Pastor Earl Palmer’s (of UPC) sermon he preached last week, titled “The Fulfillment that God gives.” I’ve felt pretty emotionally weaksauce lately. I don’t know what it is. I’m living in a new environment in which Satan has a lot of spiritual strongholds (substance abuse, alcoholism, broken families, suicide, the list goes on). I guess I’m starting to feel the effects of living on dry, parched land, so gravely in need of Living Water. I don’t know exactly why God led me here.

invisiblility

c’mon now…after all intervarsity preaches about multi-ethnicity……I fill out the Urbana survey and come to this:

Which of the following terms best describes your ethnicity?

	Asian
	South Asian
	Black/African American
	Hispanic/Latino
	Middle Eastern
	Native American/Alaskan Native/First Nations
	Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander
	White/Caucasian

sigh.

uncharacteristic optimism

So I’m officially graduated. I think the part that comes after graduating from college is turning into that whole ‘adult’ thing. All the graduation cards read “Welcome to the real world!” So therefore I think I need some sort of change in my life in order to commemorate this significant transition, as elusive as it may be.

Not exactly sure how this whole wordpress layout works, but I figure I am an adult now, so I should start doing ‘adult’ things, like…using wordpress. This thing is so complicated I don’t understand how they expect everyday people to use this thing. But, I’m back home now in a sort of limbo between graduating and starting my internship in August, so I have some time on my hands to tackle the confusing-ness.

Yeop. I am officially going to the Yakama Reservation for 10 months or so (August-June) to work with Mending Wings. Basically I’m going to be working with Native American youth, specifically help running a youth group. I figure I can use this blog to chart my journey for the next year or so.

I’m stoked about :

• A completely new and different environment, learning about a culture that I know practically nothing about
• Lots of cross-cultural relationships to be built
• Building relationships with minority, low-income youth. This is one of my passions that God has slowly grown in me, and I am excited and thankful that God has given me this opportunity to explore this passion more deeply, and to get to meet some awesome kids
• The fact that I will be in between two places that are significant to me: Seattle and TC. I don’t exactly know how traveling to either location will work out, but I’m still relatively close, which makes me feel a little bit more at ease.

Despite all the excitement, I’m still hecka (I’m trying to wean this awful word out of my vocab..I have no idea how it got there in the first place) pretty scared. But this whole process of discerning/processing/deciding on whether or not to do Mending Wings has been really good for me. And I was peemypants scared to say yes down to the actual acceptance. I guess there is a lot to be said about fear of the unknown. But its not like I know any more than I did before I decided. Yet somehow I feel a sense of peace. God has totally provided…and continues to provide.

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