Hey guys! I'm back with a lot to say. I've had a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head lately. As I said in my last post, the past week or so has been rough and that hasn't changed. I couldn't think of the name of what the Korean's call the typhoon season here, but there it is; 장마 (Jang Ma), and it's aptly named for this period of my time here.
It's interesting how quickly things can change with humans. How inconsistent we are, and how tied we are to our surroundings. I am certainly no different. I did some reflecting today while at the gym and realized that a big part of my downturn in happiness was from where my priorities were placed. When I was focused solely on God I was unshakeable because he is always constant, and I can lean on, and trust in that. Unfortunately when that feeling of comfort starts to set in, so too does a feeling of complacency.
The best metaphor I can think of right now is that God is driving the car of your life, and you say "alright God that's enough, I think I can handle it from here" and immediately take over the wheel and start drifting off the road. Other things start crowding the place in your heart that was once kept for Jesus. Things like relationships, money, work, family, etc. In fact it was kind of ironic today, while I was working out I put on an old Papa Roach album and a song I love "Between Angels and Insects" (profanity warning) came on which has a lot of the same message.
Truly ANYTHING you put above God is an idol. Think about your daily life, what is your idol? Do you think about your husband/wife more than anything else? How about that dream lake house that you want? Is it your kids? "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21) Is God your treasure?
Like I said, I struggle with this. Even more so this past week. In my case my treasure tends to be a multitude of things all swooping in and out. One day it's money, the next it's a relationship, the next it's another fantasy. All of these things bring me away from God little by little, for I should be content with what God has given me. Now you may be sitting there saying "well is it wrong to dream a little?", and you're right I thought about this too. I don't think it's wrong to have a goal, however when does that goal become more important than what God has in mind for you?
Now the next step beyond this gets a little complicated. Ok, so God has a plan for me...does that mean I just sit around and do nothing until He reveals it to me? Well of course not, in fact " Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece" (Proverbs 16:27-29) This is a quote from an older Bible translation (TLB) but was a rather well known saying when I was growing up. Certainly sitting around with a lot of time on our hands does no good, and I've seen this in my own life. I basically built my life and schedule around having free time so I could relax, and it ended up leading me to deeper and deeper sin including binge drinking and overeating.
I can see this happening right now and the change in me is quite recognizable. The students went home for break, and now I don't have anything scheduled at night. I have class during the day, but as soon as that ends I have a month of basically complete free time at my disposal. I can already feel depression stemming from boredom and lack of direction or sense of purpose. In the past this has led to destructive behavior. Luckily I was prepared for this. I knew that there would be highs and lows for the rest of my life, and to not get comfortable during an upswing. I wanted to just focus on God, and that way everything else in my life was a bonus.
Well I failed on that first part, and thus the second part ceased to be. It's amazing what shuffling your priorities a little bit can do. I'm not here saying that I figured it out or anything, merely that I refocused on God and almost instantly my burdens were lifted off me once again. I felt free. I don't need to worry about getting a car because I trust God to take care of me. I don't have to worry about saving for a house because God will provide.
Now this brings me back to the point I was leading to before. Does this mean we shouldn't work? Of course not! That's just inviting sin into our lives. It's pretty clear that God foresaw this too as his work week is a 6 day week, with the Sabbath being a day off. Also, the harder you work, the more you can appreciate your rest time. So the obvious answer is to just put our nose to the grindstone and work right? I would disagree with this as well. Becoming a workaholic is not going to solve our issues either.
I actually finally understood today why people become workaholics, or why people fall in love with sports. A common saying I hear from the hockey players I've played with is "being on the ice is my sanctuary, where all my problems fade away and it's just me and the game". I can actually understand that feeling now having started to put work in at the gym. You see, the work you do is constant. It's inanimate so you can depend on it. It's not like another person that can let you do or hurt you. You can always create more work, it becomes your purpose and your stability. There's a problem at home? Bury yourself in your work. The world is falling apart? Bury yourself in your work. This is actually very akin to alcoholism. Shutting out the world and your problems by occupying your mind for a certain amount of time.
Of course there are different motivations for this . Not everyone uses work to get away from their problems. Some genuinely feel that they are making a difference for others, and they certainly may be. My point here is; isn't that what God is for? "28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”" (Matthew 11:28-30). God WANTS us to give our problems up to Him. To find rest in Him. To find comfort, and peace in Him.
The hard part is actually trusting Him enough to actually do this. It's much easier to just occupy ourselves with whatever is in front of us. Work, sports, relationships, family, the pursuit of riches. Give it a shot one of these days. Pray a sincere prayer to Him to comfort you, and give you peace. I do this quite often these days, and the feeling of serenity that consequently comes over me is staggering. "Prayer is my sanctuary, where all my problems fade away and it's just me and God."
That's all for right now guys. I think I'm starting to let God take control of the car again and put me back on the right track. Give Him control, and allow Him to do the same for you. Thanks for reading! See you next time!
Monday, July 10, 2017
Monday, July 3, 2017
오랜만이에요 (It's been awhile)
Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Although it's break time, I've found myself still busy somehow. I have a lot of new things going on in life so I'll bring you up to date on them.
It's finally summer here, and they weren't lying about the heat. It hasn't hit the sheer high numbers that Chicago can hit, but it's very humid everyday. They also keep talking about typhoon season coming through. Apparently the rain comes and pounds South Korea for about a week. I still haven't seen anything more than a drizzle save for a 15 minute downpour yesterday at church. I believe them that it's coming, but I still haven't seen it. Maybe I should get an umbrella?
The heat is the kind of heat that makes you not want to do anything. You just sit there and sweat. Despite this, I've actually been hitting the gym harder than ever before. I spend anywhere between 2 and 3 hours a day in there typically. This is a very interesting and strange phenomenon for me considering my entire life has pretty much been devoted to staying away from physical exertion lol. Regardless of being the equivalent of a profession athlete earlier in my life, I was never truly in good shape and my game suffered for it.
I attribute this change to prayer. I have been praying for God to change me and help me enjoy working my body out, and boy has he done it. I am really enjoying the gym and the change of mentality that has gone along with it. I'm so grateful for this truly life changing and life saving gift He has given me.
HOWEVER, all this being said, there are still days I struggle with getting there. I lift hard and it's not always a breeze getting in the mindset for that. Knowing you're going to fail before you even start is a very interesting conundrum. Instead of focusing on succeeding, the key is to focus on improving every time you go. What I mean is this; last week I did squats (my program is 5 sets of 10 reps) and my 5 sets looked like this: (10 reps, 9 reps, 8 reps, 7 reps, 5 reps). Today I went in knowing that I physically probably wasn't capable of doing 5 sets of 10 reps, but I did know that I could get at least 2 sets of 10 reps and maybe 3. That was the goal I set and went for. This can be a great metaphor for life itself and building anything really. A business for example doesn't just happen, there are many steps and failures involved. You have to continue to push forward and eventually, you might just reach your goal. Your goal might not even look the same at that point, but that's how we learn and grow.
So back to the struggling part. You know, God puts things in our lives at the right time and sometimes we don't even realize it. On Saturday coming home on the bus I decided to put on my New Testament book on tape (a gift from my boy Matt Gates that is truly the gift that keeps on giving). I listened through the first 20 or so chapters of Matthew and came up with a few questions for my dad who loves Bible trivia and always asks me to come up with questions for him. Well this time I did. My first question was "Since there are 14 generations from Adam to David, and 14 generations from David to the Exile to Babylon, and 14 generations from the Exile to Babylon to Jesus, what is the significance of the Exile to Babylon?". Now my church and I have been through the Old Testament past the point of the Exile so I know what it is, but why is it so significant that it would break up the line of David down to Jesus by an extra 14 generations? Was the punishment that important? Well my dad of course answered well as he is well versed in the Word, and the short answer is that yes it was a punishment that in fact most of Israel never made it back from. A remnant of Judah finally came back to Jerusalem and re-created Israel.
The second question was a little more simple, "When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, the people saw the Spirit of God descend onto Jesus, so did Jesus not have the Spirit before that?". Simple answer is that he was born of the Spirit of God, but that it was an event for the people that showed the trinity on earth together. (Shout out to my Dad's YouTube channel with multiple sermon's that are excellent. If you're at all interested you should go check it out.)
This led my dad to continue onto the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the dessert with the Devil tempting him. The big lesson here is that the Devil will always come tempt you when you are at your weakest. That's a pretty scary thought, and will really test our dedication to the Lord.
I experienced this today without even realizing it. I skipped class today. I used the excuse that I didn't sleep well last night, and that if I went to class I would come back to the dorm and sleep and it would throw my entire schedule off since I had an appointment at 5pm. I knew that I probably wouldn't get to the gym today. What a weak excuse. I could have gone to class and been sleepy and figured it out. I really need to toughen up, but besides that my appointment was canceled and I ended up literally haven't nothing on my docket for the day. I stayed in bed and slept instead of class, and fell into old habits almost immediately. I started watching video games and feeling lazy. I started playing games on my iPad and debating not going to the gym.
This is when I realized that the Devil was trying to derail me. I didn't even realize I was in a weak state at that point, but I was falling into all the old bad habits that I had gotten rid of since coming here. I didn't even really know why, but I immediately started to pray. I asked God to calm my spirit and give me the strength to stay on track.
I wish I could say that I was miraculously swept off my feet onto a cloud to the gym and given energy like never before. That didn't happen haha, but I did go to the gym. Mostly because I realized that if I didn't go today tomorrow would be even more backed up. But that was enough, after I got there the competitive spirit kicked in and I worked as hard as ever.
Things have slowed down here for summer vacation, and without knowing it I sort of became lonely. I have class, but none of the other students really speak English, and we aren't good enough in Korean to carry a long deep conversation together. My roommate and other RA's work 9-5 in the K-PACE center so I'm kind of left on my own. I don't have a car and campus is really empty.
That being said, I don't feel all that lonely, just sometimes it creeps up on me. Not being busy will really do that to you. Instead of regressing into destructive behavior though, this has led me to be more dependent on God. I'm learning everyday how important it is to have Him at the center of your life. No person, or thing can ever fill the void in your heart. You must allow God to be your satisfaction. People, no matter how much they love you or care about you WILL let you down. It's just human nature, we're flawed and sinful people. Therefore looking to someone else or something else to fill that void inside of you will leave you even more empty and searching for something else for fulfillment.
I am constantly being reminded of this, and really doing my best to learn to put the blinders on and only look at God for this purpose. The other bonus of that is interpersonal as opposed to intra-personal. Once you are fulfilled by your relationship with God, other things in life are just a bonus. A nice car, a nice house, a wife and family are all gifts from God that you can appreciate and enjoy, but realize they could be gone tomorrow. Job is a great example of this, and how important your faith is to be your foundation.
I had another dream last night. (Gater if you read this feel free to interpret for me). I was in the middle of a city on the water. I would have to guess the water was the ocean, and the building types were definitely not American, though I can't place what type they would be. In the middle of this lit up and busy city was a gated off area that served as a prison. This prison was made of grass and rock, and had a mountain path leading up to the top. It was just as tall at the top as the buildings that surrounded it. It had string light electricity, so clearly not as advanced technologically as the city that surrounded it, yet it still fit in the landscape.
I had a mission at this prison. The electricity and water had ceased to run, and the people had disappeared. I could feel that they were still there, but maybe hiding due to tough circumstances. Possibly a feeling of self preservation. My mission was to get this prison back up and running. I knew exactly where the transformer was to get the electricity back on, but I had to be sneaky because of the guards (who were nonexistent but maybe hiding?). So I moved quietly and stealthily and quickly up this mountainous prison. The transformer was at the top of the path, and I succeeded in my mission to get the lights back on and water running (don't ask me how both were connected the main idea was the electricity). As SOON as I flipped the switch I knew I had to get out of there ASAP. I could hear prisoners and guards springing back to life, and knew the guards were coming up the path to the top.
Well what do you know? I was on top of a mountain in the middle of a city, and it just so happened I was given a hang glider. I have never ridden a hang glider, nor have I even thought about or seen one in the past few years but there it was nonetheless. So I took off running off the side of the mountain and trusted in the hang glider. In my dream I was praying to God, and knew I was completely trusting Him by using this.
The ride I took on the hang glider was one of the most surreal things I have ever had happen to me. I've had a few of these dreams in the past that seemed more real than reality. I'm not joking when I say that I could fully feel the wind against my body, and smell the water and FEEL my stomach drop as I went up and down on the wind. I went from the mountain prison to one of the near-ish buildings and continued to run across the roof of the building with the plan to jump off and continue on my way. I jumped off that building and the wind took me towards the water where I ended up landing safely. I remember being able to see the city in my mind from an aerial view, and everything was lit up and seemed to be restored to normal working order.
That was it. What a crazy experience. Anyways, I'm looking for a used car. Unfortunately I'm not all that experienced with cars so I'll need a mechanic to go with me and look at whatever car I decide on. Cars seem to be pretty expensive here despite the fact that everyone seems to want a new car, and there are 3 domestic car manufacturers here. Car insurance is also expensive. Gas is also very very expensive. The problem is I need this car to start a part time job in September once I'm eligible (after my initial 6 months probation on a student visa). I've been praying about it and I'm sure God will provide what I need. Maybe that's what the dream was about! He's gonna give me a hang glider to get there! Haha, that would be a wild story to come home with.
In other news I paid the entrance fee for the G12 summit/conference I talked about in my last post. I want to see what it's actually about so that I can first hand pray and decide if this is something good, or that we should be afraid of. Regardless of what happens, I know that God will use everything to His glory either way.
Otherwise there are only 4 weeks left of Korean class for this semester. After that I get about a month off before the K-PACE students come back, and we get to do it all again! It's not looking like I'll have the money to travel like I wanted to, but that's ok. I'll probably end up hitting the gym, and seeing some places domestically here.
Overall I'm still really enjoying my time here. I'm so grateful for all that God has given me. I keep telling people that I literally left everything to come here for next to nothing, completely trusting Him. I had a great job and was almost finished with my MBA back in Chicago when I felt God put it in my heart to come here. I came here with nothing, and he has been sustaining me just as I have asked for in prayer. I look forward to continuing my adventures for the next 8-9 months here.
Thanks everyone for reading! I'll try to post more often! Leave comments or questions if you have them.
It's finally summer here, and they weren't lying about the heat. It hasn't hit the sheer high numbers that Chicago can hit, but it's very humid everyday. They also keep talking about typhoon season coming through. Apparently the rain comes and pounds South Korea for about a week. I still haven't seen anything more than a drizzle save for a 15 minute downpour yesterday at church. I believe them that it's coming, but I still haven't seen it. Maybe I should get an umbrella?
The heat is the kind of heat that makes you not want to do anything. You just sit there and sweat. Despite this, I've actually been hitting the gym harder than ever before. I spend anywhere between 2 and 3 hours a day in there typically. This is a very interesting and strange phenomenon for me considering my entire life has pretty much been devoted to staying away from physical exertion lol. Regardless of being the equivalent of a profession athlete earlier in my life, I was never truly in good shape and my game suffered for it.
I attribute this change to prayer. I have been praying for God to change me and help me enjoy working my body out, and boy has he done it. I am really enjoying the gym and the change of mentality that has gone along with it. I'm so grateful for this truly life changing and life saving gift He has given me.
HOWEVER, all this being said, there are still days I struggle with getting there. I lift hard and it's not always a breeze getting in the mindset for that. Knowing you're going to fail before you even start is a very interesting conundrum. Instead of focusing on succeeding, the key is to focus on improving every time you go. What I mean is this; last week I did squats (my program is 5 sets of 10 reps) and my 5 sets looked like this: (10 reps, 9 reps, 8 reps, 7 reps, 5 reps). Today I went in knowing that I physically probably wasn't capable of doing 5 sets of 10 reps, but I did know that I could get at least 2 sets of 10 reps and maybe 3. That was the goal I set and went for. This can be a great metaphor for life itself and building anything really. A business for example doesn't just happen, there are many steps and failures involved. You have to continue to push forward and eventually, you might just reach your goal. Your goal might not even look the same at that point, but that's how we learn and grow.
So back to the struggling part. You know, God puts things in our lives at the right time and sometimes we don't even realize it. On Saturday coming home on the bus I decided to put on my New Testament book on tape (a gift from my boy Matt Gates that is truly the gift that keeps on giving). I listened through the first 20 or so chapters of Matthew and came up with a few questions for my dad who loves Bible trivia and always asks me to come up with questions for him. Well this time I did. My first question was "Since there are 14 generations from Adam to David, and 14 generations from David to the Exile to Babylon, and 14 generations from the Exile to Babylon to Jesus, what is the significance of the Exile to Babylon?". Now my church and I have been through the Old Testament past the point of the Exile so I know what it is, but why is it so significant that it would break up the line of David down to Jesus by an extra 14 generations? Was the punishment that important? Well my dad of course answered well as he is well versed in the Word, and the short answer is that yes it was a punishment that in fact most of Israel never made it back from. A remnant of Judah finally came back to Jerusalem and re-created Israel.
The second question was a little more simple, "When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, the people saw the Spirit of God descend onto Jesus, so did Jesus not have the Spirit before that?". Simple answer is that he was born of the Spirit of God, but that it was an event for the people that showed the trinity on earth together. (Shout out to my Dad's YouTube channel with multiple sermon's that are excellent. If you're at all interested you should go check it out.)
This led my dad to continue onto the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the dessert with the Devil tempting him. The big lesson here is that the Devil will always come tempt you when you are at your weakest. That's a pretty scary thought, and will really test our dedication to the Lord.
I experienced this today without even realizing it. I skipped class today. I used the excuse that I didn't sleep well last night, and that if I went to class I would come back to the dorm and sleep and it would throw my entire schedule off since I had an appointment at 5pm. I knew that I probably wouldn't get to the gym today. What a weak excuse. I could have gone to class and been sleepy and figured it out. I really need to toughen up, but besides that my appointment was canceled and I ended up literally haven't nothing on my docket for the day. I stayed in bed and slept instead of class, and fell into old habits almost immediately. I started watching video games and feeling lazy. I started playing games on my iPad and debating not going to the gym.
This is when I realized that the Devil was trying to derail me. I didn't even realize I was in a weak state at that point, but I was falling into all the old bad habits that I had gotten rid of since coming here. I didn't even really know why, but I immediately started to pray. I asked God to calm my spirit and give me the strength to stay on track.
I wish I could say that I was miraculously swept off my feet onto a cloud to the gym and given energy like never before. That didn't happen haha, but I did go to the gym. Mostly because I realized that if I didn't go today tomorrow would be even more backed up. But that was enough, after I got there the competitive spirit kicked in and I worked as hard as ever.
Things have slowed down here for summer vacation, and without knowing it I sort of became lonely. I have class, but none of the other students really speak English, and we aren't good enough in Korean to carry a long deep conversation together. My roommate and other RA's work 9-5 in the K-PACE center so I'm kind of left on my own. I don't have a car and campus is really empty.
That being said, I don't feel all that lonely, just sometimes it creeps up on me. Not being busy will really do that to you. Instead of regressing into destructive behavior though, this has led me to be more dependent on God. I'm learning everyday how important it is to have Him at the center of your life. No person, or thing can ever fill the void in your heart. You must allow God to be your satisfaction. People, no matter how much they love you or care about you WILL let you down. It's just human nature, we're flawed and sinful people. Therefore looking to someone else or something else to fill that void inside of you will leave you even more empty and searching for something else for fulfillment.
I am constantly being reminded of this, and really doing my best to learn to put the blinders on and only look at God for this purpose. The other bonus of that is interpersonal as opposed to intra-personal. Once you are fulfilled by your relationship with God, other things in life are just a bonus. A nice car, a nice house, a wife and family are all gifts from God that you can appreciate and enjoy, but realize they could be gone tomorrow. Job is a great example of this, and how important your faith is to be your foundation.
I had another dream last night. (Gater if you read this feel free to interpret for me). I was in the middle of a city on the water. I would have to guess the water was the ocean, and the building types were definitely not American, though I can't place what type they would be. In the middle of this lit up and busy city was a gated off area that served as a prison. This prison was made of grass and rock, and had a mountain path leading up to the top. It was just as tall at the top as the buildings that surrounded it. It had string light electricity, so clearly not as advanced technologically as the city that surrounded it, yet it still fit in the landscape.
I had a mission at this prison. The electricity and water had ceased to run, and the people had disappeared. I could feel that they were still there, but maybe hiding due to tough circumstances. Possibly a feeling of self preservation. My mission was to get this prison back up and running. I knew exactly where the transformer was to get the electricity back on, but I had to be sneaky because of the guards (who were nonexistent but maybe hiding?). So I moved quietly and stealthily and quickly up this mountainous prison. The transformer was at the top of the path, and I succeeded in my mission to get the lights back on and water running (don't ask me how both were connected the main idea was the electricity). As SOON as I flipped the switch I knew I had to get out of there ASAP. I could hear prisoners and guards springing back to life, and knew the guards were coming up the path to the top.
Well what do you know? I was on top of a mountain in the middle of a city, and it just so happened I was given a hang glider. I have never ridden a hang glider, nor have I even thought about or seen one in the past few years but there it was nonetheless. So I took off running off the side of the mountain and trusted in the hang glider. In my dream I was praying to God, and knew I was completely trusting Him by using this.
The ride I took on the hang glider was one of the most surreal things I have ever had happen to me. I've had a few of these dreams in the past that seemed more real than reality. I'm not joking when I say that I could fully feel the wind against my body, and smell the water and FEEL my stomach drop as I went up and down on the wind. I went from the mountain prison to one of the near-ish buildings and continued to run across the roof of the building with the plan to jump off and continue on my way. I jumped off that building and the wind took me towards the water where I ended up landing safely. I remember being able to see the city in my mind from an aerial view, and everything was lit up and seemed to be restored to normal working order.
That was it. What a crazy experience. Anyways, I'm looking for a used car. Unfortunately I'm not all that experienced with cars so I'll need a mechanic to go with me and look at whatever car I decide on. Cars seem to be pretty expensive here despite the fact that everyone seems to want a new car, and there are 3 domestic car manufacturers here. Car insurance is also expensive. Gas is also very very expensive. The problem is I need this car to start a part time job in September once I'm eligible (after my initial 6 months probation on a student visa). I've been praying about it and I'm sure God will provide what I need. Maybe that's what the dream was about! He's gonna give me a hang glider to get there! Haha, that would be a wild story to come home with.
In other news I paid the entrance fee for the G12 summit/conference I talked about in my last post. I want to see what it's actually about so that I can first hand pray and decide if this is something good, or that we should be afraid of. Regardless of what happens, I know that God will use everything to His glory either way.
Otherwise there are only 4 weeks left of Korean class for this semester. After that I get about a month off before the K-PACE students come back, and we get to do it all again! It's not looking like I'll have the money to travel like I wanted to, but that's ok. I'll probably end up hitting the gym, and seeing some places domestically here.
Overall I'm still really enjoying my time here. I'm so grateful for all that God has given me. I keep telling people that I literally left everything to come here for next to nothing, completely trusting Him. I had a great job and was almost finished with my MBA back in Chicago when I felt God put it in my heart to come here. I came here with nothing, and he has been sustaining me just as I have asked for in prayer. I look forward to continuing my adventures for the next 8-9 months here.
Thanks everyone for reading! I'll try to post more often! Leave comments or questions if you have them.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Last Week Before Break!
Yayyyyyyyyyyyy!!! Well, for the students at least, not for me. I still have 5 more weeks in the language program. The language program runs on a different schedule from the school itself, so we have a shorter break by about a month. I'm ok with this, it will keep me busy. I'll be living in the dorm anyway so my life won't be much different except starting this week I won't have any obligations starting from 5pm-bedtime.
Another milestone in my journey here, I just passed the 3 month mark of me being here. I can honestly say that I'm enjoying myself just as much as when I got here. As I said in a previous post things have started to fall into rhythm, but that's fine I'm enjoying everything. I wake up and have breakfast, go to class, come back to the dorm and drop off my books, go to the gym, come back to the dorm and grab a shower and usually a quick nap, then dinner, and off to class with the K-PACE students and back to the dorm to hang out until bed.
The next milestone is in my Korean classes. We are finally starting the level 2 book tomorrow. I didn't think 3 months ago that I would know what I do now, but who really does when they start a journey like this? They said we are going to progress through it rather slowly so I'm interested to see what kind of challenge it poses. We also have a midterm at the end of the week. I have to write and memorize a transcript for the speaking portion. I posted what I wrote and said last time, this time looks to be a bit more difficult.
BTW - I want to throw in a little plug for my dad. He has bought the domain http://praisegodradio.com/ and has been running that for awhile, and he has also started putting out videos on YouTube. Here's a link to his first video, with more to come on that page! Check it out if you have a few minutes.
So, I found out today that my suspicions were confirmed with this G12 summit. I asked a friend here to look into it because I wasn't sure what it is. Turns out it's considered a cult here in Korea. They believe that Jesus was not the last prophet, and that some of their church members are prophets sent from God after Jesus with direct revelation from God himself.
Now this in itself isn't all that bad. I believe that there are prophets of a sort still sent after Jesus. However, the important thing to consider here is that the canon is closed. The Bible has been written. There are no additions to make. That's where things can get fishy. A lot of people want to say that God is still giving his revelation, and will make commentary on current society to give us direction.
This is where people get caught up in their sin. They may have started out with a relationship with God. Then as they saw the power it brought them to make declarations, they slowly because to fall in love with the notoriety it brings. This is a scary thing to have happen, because it gives birth to movements like this that involve many many actual believers. This is why it's important to always be testing spirits to see if they are from God, and to educate yourself with the word. Are these things in line with what God has said in the Bible? If not, then there's a good chance you're being led astray.
Seek God first. Depend on Him. Make Him your rock and trust Him. He will guide you. Forget about the treasure of this world, it all fades. Pray that you can learn to trust Him and grow closer to Him everyday.
I'm not 100% sure why I was sent here. I just know that it was God's will, and I'm living it. Likely, one of my missions is to help this church realize what G12 really is. I think I have the ear of the pastor, and I hope to get a chance to speak with him about G12. Pray that I will be filled with the Holy Spirit so that He will speak through me when I get the chance.
Either way, now all of you know about G12. I'm debating whether or not I'm still going to the summit or not. I think being armed with this new knowledge will help me go and open the eyes of some of our fellow church goers as we are living it. At least I pray this is the case. We will see what God's will is.
That's all for this post! Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any comments or questions! Take care guys, and I'll post again soon!
Another milestone in my journey here, I just passed the 3 month mark of me being here. I can honestly say that I'm enjoying myself just as much as when I got here. As I said in a previous post things have started to fall into rhythm, but that's fine I'm enjoying everything. I wake up and have breakfast, go to class, come back to the dorm and drop off my books, go to the gym, come back to the dorm and grab a shower and usually a quick nap, then dinner, and off to class with the K-PACE students and back to the dorm to hang out until bed.
The next milestone is in my Korean classes. We are finally starting the level 2 book tomorrow. I didn't think 3 months ago that I would know what I do now, but who really does when they start a journey like this? They said we are going to progress through it rather slowly so I'm interested to see what kind of challenge it poses. We also have a midterm at the end of the week. I have to write and memorize a transcript for the speaking portion. I posted what I wrote and said last time, this time looks to be a bit more difficult.
BTW - I want to throw in a little plug for my dad. He has bought the domain http://praisegodradio.com/ and has been running that for awhile, and he has also started putting out videos on YouTube. Here's a link to his first video, with more to come on that page! Check it out if you have a few minutes.
So, I found out today that my suspicions were confirmed with this G12 summit. I asked a friend here to look into it because I wasn't sure what it is. Turns out it's considered a cult here in Korea. They believe that Jesus was not the last prophet, and that some of their church members are prophets sent from God after Jesus with direct revelation from God himself.
Now this in itself isn't all that bad. I believe that there are prophets of a sort still sent after Jesus. However, the important thing to consider here is that the canon is closed. The Bible has been written. There are no additions to make. That's where things can get fishy. A lot of people want to say that God is still giving his revelation, and will make commentary on current society to give us direction.
This is where people get caught up in their sin. They may have started out with a relationship with God. Then as they saw the power it brought them to make declarations, they slowly because to fall in love with the notoriety it brings. This is a scary thing to have happen, because it gives birth to movements like this that involve many many actual believers. This is why it's important to always be testing spirits to see if they are from God, and to educate yourself with the word. Are these things in line with what God has said in the Bible? If not, then there's a good chance you're being led astray.
Seek God first. Depend on Him. Make Him your rock and trust Him. He will guide you. Forget about the treasure of this world, it all fades. Pray that you can learn to trust Him and grow closer to Him everyday.
I'm not 100% sure why I was sent here. I just know that it was God's will, and I'm living it. Likely, one of my missions is to help this church realize what G12 really is. I think I have the ear of the pastor, and I hope to get a chance to speak with him about G12. Pray that I will be filled with the Holy Spirit so that He will speak through me when I get the chance.
Either way, now all of you know about G12. I'm debating whether or not I'm still going to the summit or not. I think being armed with this new knowledge will help me go and open the eyes of some of our fellow church goers as we are living it. At least I pray this is the case. We will see what God's will is.
That's all for this post! Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any comments or questions! Take care guys, and I'll post again soon!
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Elaboration and Updates
Hey guys! So I felt the last post was a good overview of the things that I had been thinking about, but I wanted to elaborate on them lest anyone get any silly ideas. I'll also update you guys on what I've been doing lately (here's a secret, its nothing new).
So the first topic I discussed last post was the global church and how this G12 summit seemed to be pushing that idea. After I posted, I took a quick nap and when I woke up one of my buddies had messaged me and offered to interpret my dream for me. I trust his walk with God very much so I was excited at the proposition. In fact it was the Gator himself, who is studying for his Masters in Theology now and has always been a stalwart pillar of faith for me and my own walk.
Anyways, he made a very interesting point that the monster in my dream was likely not ISIS or of any Islamic relation at all. He suggested that it could be the church itself. I thought this supremely interesting, and immediately I realized he was right. While murder and violence, injustice can seem like an overwhelming obstacle in our lives, the true obstacles will come from inside our own church. This is where the Anti-Christ will rise up from. I hearken back to the words from my last post about who would be ordained to lead this giant church? What man could possibly righteous enough to make decisions of that magnitude for that many people. No good can come of it, but what a great opportunity for evil.
The biggest problem is that these new ideas will be masquerading as good, and from God himself misleading people. We need to make sure that we are ever vigilant, and testing spirits to see if they are from God or not. Both Gator and I have had the same types of thoughts recently, and it's going to be interesting where they lead us going forward. It will definitely be prudent to keep an eye on how the church is progressing, and what new ideas and progressions are being brought in.
To make this a bit more clear, we continued our conversation about our faith. We talked about his particular school and how doctrine is changing at the hands of men to fit the current social changes. To be more specific, he was assigned a paper on the role of women in church leadership positions. This is a super hot topic right now because of all the feminism pushes in America. It seems that despite the recent decline in America's global influence, the rest of the world still follows suit. The push for women to be "equal" is happening all over the world.
As I've said before I do my best to stay out of current social trends and phases because they're largely led by people without brains, and those in large crowds have proven time and time again to also have left their brain at home. "Group think" is very real, and you have to wonder where it's going to lead us. It's really a fascinating thing to watch...from the outside...if it doesn't effect you in the last. Unfortunately it's effecting everyone, and likely negatively. Anyways, I'm not here to discuss feminism, but I am here to talk about women in leadership roles in the church.
The first and last argument is that the Bible itself is explicit about women in the church. Here are the two major verses regarding women as leaders in the church:
Now obviously if you were to use these verses in today's secular society you would be verbally (and possibly literally) crucified. The same thing is happening even in Christian schools. Professors are changing their doctrine to reflect the changes in society instead of the opposite way. Gator provided me with a paper that he had written regarding this subject that was very well written. The paper compared the writings of an Asian man who took the grassroots natural order of the family and applied it to the church. The basic gist was that God is the head of the man, and man is head of the household with the woman being subservient. "3But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." (1 Corinthians 11:3)
The other side of the argument is from libertarians, or feminist libertarians that this is old news and society has changed. Women are now qualified and fully capable of leading businesses, their households, and the church as well.
I think the biggest point to take from all this is that the Bible should not be re-written to satisfy current society. Current society should reflect the Bible. Unfortunately you're never going to get that, but this push to change God's word is pretty scary. Imagine what kind of new "bible" man could write based on the societies that have risen and fallen in history.
Gator confided in me that he would probably get a failing grade for his opinion on this topic because his teacher was a woman and didn't agree. Yet another terrible in justice. What is going on with higher education? Keep in mind this has nothing to do with the equality of women in society, just in regards to the church. Paul also touches on equality as well:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (NIV, Galatians 3:26-29)
Anyways, all this is pointing to the fact that some things are changing, and not necessarily in a good way. The key is to be in God's word everyday so you can reference it when dealing with new and unknown situations. We also must beware of "head knowledge" however, the knowledge and memorization of scripture without a relationship with God to back it up. Interpreting verses from the Bible without the spirit of God as a guide can lead to some horrendous conclusions. You see this a lot in churches. Especially in America (this is based on my personal observations since I've spent most of my life there) there is the tendency to throw money at problems instead of actually doing something about it. Again money is the root of the problem, and it's no wonder the saying is "money is the root of all evil". Even the best hearts turn twisted and black given the desire for money.
While all of this may seem overwhelming, don't fret we have God in our corner. I'm learning to truly trust in Him, and it really takes the burden off of me. Everyday I am happy because I know that He walks with me, and regardless of my circumstances I have eternal life in Him. If you want to talk about God or anything at all, send me an email at cwallin66@gmail.com. I'd be more than happy to talk about my personal experiences, or help in any way I can.
OK moving on! There hasn't really been much new in life lately. I'm at the point where I'm settling into a routine as is human nature I believe. Things are still interesting, but explaining them is beginning to be a bit tedious and I want to spare you guys the details. I eat dak kalbi for breakfast everyday, skip lunch, and have chicken curry bap for dinner. I need to eat these because they're the most calorie dense foods I can find at 8 Ho Gwan. If I eat lunch, I'm not hungry by the time dinner rolls around, plus I workout at lunch so that would create a logistical and physical problem. Things tend to work pretty well this way.
Otherwise there's not much new in class. We have our midterm test next Friday, and that will be interesting. Also, a few of the girls in class have expressed interest in learning English so I'm thinking of setting up some sort of class for them a few times a week. That should be interesting.
I've been hitting the gym almost everyday and it's definitely helping. My face is less red each week, and seeing that progress is legitimately one of the greatest blessings from God. I've been praying for awhile about this, and finally seeing some progress is so wonderful. That's about it guys! I'll be back soon with another post! Thanks for reading.
So the first topic I discussed last post was the global church and how this G12 summit seemed to be pushing that idea. After I posted, I took a quick nap and when I woke up one of my buddies had messaged me and offered to interpret my dream for me. I trust his walk with God very much so I was excited at the proposition. In fact it was the Gator himself, who is studying for his Masters in Theology now and has always been a stalwart pillar of faith for me and my own walk.
Anyways, he made a very interesting point that the monster in my dream was likely not ISIS or of any Islamic relation at all. He suggested that it could be the church itself. I thought this supremely interesting, and immediately I realized he was right. While murder and violence, injustice can seem like an overwhelming obstacle in our lives, the true obstacles will come from inside our own church. This is where the Anti-Christ will rise up from. I hearken back to the words from my last post about who would be ordained to lead this giant church? What man could possibly righteous enough to make decisions of that magnitude for that many people. No good can come of it, but what a great opportunity for evil.
The biggest problem is that these new ideas will be masquerading as good, and from God himself misleading people. We need to make sure that we are ever vigilant, and testing spirits to see if they are from God or not. Both Gator and I have had the same types of thoughts recently, and it's going to be interesting where they lead us going forward. It will definitely be prudent to keep an eye on how the church is progressing, and what new ideas and progressions are being brought in.
To make this a bit more clear, we continued our conversation about our faith. We talked about his particular school and how doctrine is changing at the hands of men to fit the current social changes. To be more specific, he was assigned a paper on the role of women in church leadership positions. This is a super hot topic right now because of all the feminism pushes in America. It seems that despite the recent decline in America's global influence, the rest of the world still follows suit. The push for women to be "equal" is happening all over the world.
As I've said before I do my best to stay out of current social trends and phases because they're largely led by people without brains, and those in large crowds have proven time and time again to also have left their brain at home. "Group think" is very real, and you have to wonder where it's going to lead us. It's really a fascinating thing to watch...from the outside...if it doesn't effect you in the last. Unfortunately it's effecting everyone, and likely negatively. Anyways, I'm not here to discuss feminism, but I am here to talk about women in leadership roles in the church.
The first and last argument is that the Bible itself is explicit about women in the church. Here are the two major verses regarding women as leaders in the church:
As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (NIV, 1 Corinthians 14:33-35)
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (NIV, 1 Timothy 2:11-12)
Now obviously if you were to use these verses in today's secular society you would be verbally (and possibly literally) crucified. The same thing is happening even in Christian schools. Professors are changing their doctrine to reflect the changes in society instead of the opposite way. Gator provided me with a paper that he had written regarding this subject that was very well written. The paper compared the writings of an Asian man who took the grassroots natural order of the family and applied it to the church. The basic gist was that God is the head of the man, and man is head of the household with the woman being subservient. "3But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." (1 Corinthians 11:3)
The other side of the argument is from libertarians, or feminist libertarians that this is old news and society has changed. Women are now qualified and fully capable of leading businesses, their households, and the church as well.
I think the biggest point to take from all this is that the Bible should not be re-written to satisfy current society. Current society should reflect the Bible. Unfortunately you're never going to get that, but this push to change God's word is pretty scary. Imagine what kind of new "bible" man could write based on the societies that have risen and fallen in history.
Gator confided in me that he would probably get a failing grade for his opinion on this topic because his teacher was a woman and didn't agree. Yet another terrible in justice. What is going on with higher education? Keep in mind this has nothing to do with the equality of women in society, just in regards to the church. Paul also touches on equality as well:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (NIV, Galatians 3:26-29)
Anyways, all this is pointing to the fact that some things are changing, and not necessarily in a good way. The key is to be in God's word everyday so you can reference it when dealing with new and unknown situations. We also must beware of "head knowledge" however, the knowledge and memorization of scripture without a relationship with God to back it up. Interpreting verses from the Bible without the spirit of God as a guide can lead to some horrendous conclusions. You see this a lot in churches. Especially in America (this is based on my personal observations since I've spent most of my life there) there is the tendency to throw money at problems instead of actually doing something about it. Again money is the root of the problem, and it's no wonder the saying is "money is the root of all evil". Even the best hearts turn twisted and black given the desire for money.
While all of this may seem overwhelming, don't fret we have God in our corner. I'm learning to truly trust in Him, and it really takes the burden off of me. Everyday I am happy because I know that He walks with me, and regardless of my circumstances I have eternal life in Him. If you want to talk about God or anything at all, send me an email at cwallin66@gmail.com. I'd be more than happy to talk about my personal experiences, or help in any way I can.
OK moving on! There hasn't really been much new in life lately. I'm at the point where I'm settling into a routine as is human nature I believe. Things are still interesting, but explaining them is beginning to be a bit tedious and I want to spare you guys the details. I eat dak kalbi for breakfast everyday, skip lunch, and have chicken curry bap for dinner. I need to eat these because they're the most calorie dense foods I can find at 8 Ho Gwan. If I eat lunch, I'm not hungry by the time dinner rolls around, plus I workout at lunch so that would create a logistical and physical problem. Things tend to work pretty well this way.
Otherwise there's not much new in class. We have our midterm test next Friday, and that will be interesting. Also, a few of the girls in class have expressed interest in learning English so I'm thinking of setting up some sort of class for them a few times a week. That should be interesting.
I've been hitting the gym almost everyday and it's definitely helping. My face is less red each week, and seeing that progress is legitimately one of the greatest blessings from God. I've been praying for awhile about this, and finally seeing some progress is so wonderful. That's about it guys! I'll be back soon with another post! Thanks for reading.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
I'm Baaaaaack!
Hey guys! I'm finally back! Thanks for all the kind and encouraging words during my break. You guys are a big reason why I do this so thank you for reading. The 10 or so days off did well to clear my head and take some weight off my shoulders regarding writing each night. I want to reiterate that I felt things were getting pretty boring because I was doing the same things and eating the same things each day, so descriptions were getting bland. However, I think I'm going to start taking a little different direction with things from now on. As you might have noticed my inner spiritual thoughts started taking the forefront as my blog has progressed the past few months. This is because my relationship with God has grown immensely since I arrived here. I expect this trend to continue and I plan to kick things off with a whopper of a post!
Well! I've had a lot of things going on inside of me lately. First things first, I got back to church again on Sunday. I hadn't been there in about a month due to traveling and issues with a ride. Heavy G has been busy so he has also been going sporadically. The reason this is an issue is because it's almost a 2 hour bus ride to church. One way. I don't know if that sounds fun to anyone, but it's not the ideal way to spend your Sunday. However, I really wanted to get back to God's house this Sunday so I handled the long ride and got myself to church.
My church has been pushing what is called the "G12 Summit" lately. I mistakenly thought this was the global leadership summit when has been going on in America for years, and something I had heard of last year with one of my pastor friends even coming to Chicago (Willow Creek Community Megahugemonstrous Church) for it. I asked him about it, and he corrected me that they were not the same.
I am pretty skeptical about this trend to make everything bigger. So far that's what I gather from this G12 Summit. Apparently it started in Bogota, Columbia. From what I've heard the general idea is that a church designates leaders. Those leaders create small groups of 12 people, and train those small group members to be leaders who then go out and create their own small groups. This continues and the church grows exponentially by factors of 12. Here is their wikipedia description: "The G12 Vision is a Christian evangelism and discipleship strategy to fulfill the Great Commission. It is founded upon the idea that every Christian can mentor and lead twelve people in the Christian faith, following the example of Jesus." Sounds great right?
I'm not so sure. The Bible says to test spirits to see if they are from God or not. The vibe that I'm getting from this is that it's a big show. A magnificent show, but a show nonetheless. The church showed videos from the last 2 years to try and hype up members to go. I should also mention that there is immense pressure to go to this summit, and the cost is not insignificant. I believe tickets themselves are $50, and the total cost per person comes to around $120 including travel and lodging. Apparently they have set the goal for our church at 500 people. That's all fine and great if we didn't only have roughly 200 members. The emphasis is clearly on growth.
I'm not one to pass judgement without seeing it for myself though, so I'm planning on going. From what the videos showed this event is 3 days long completely devoted to worship and praise. That's awesome. There are famous Christian bands booked to play, and also famous pastors to preach. Apparently they are expecting roughly 1,000,000 people at the Seoul location alone! What an incredible number. I assume that people from all over the world will be linked via video conferencing, and people will be worshiping worldwide together! That's the dream right?
I don't agree. This push for a global church is worrying to me. You see a lot of these giant events in America. These pastors travel around and make a killing selling out giant NFL stadiums preaching to people. It seems like a great idea, reach a lot of people, support those who are preaching the word, and everyone is happy. The problem is that these people go to these events, and A) they fail to take any action on what has been preached, B) what is being preached is watered down so there is no action to take, and the worst part C) we are creating demigods out of these men who go around getting rich off the Word of God.
I don't have anything personally against these guys, I'm sure when they started out they didn't strive to make a ton of money off of religion. They probably are just smart businessmen who happened to love God and their decisions led to growth of their church, and popularity for themselves. While this isn't necessarily bad in itself, it leads to the downfall of not only these men but their followers. Think about it, you're a pastor in charge of ministering to a crowd of 50,000 people. What do you become beholden to? Over time it stops being God, and starts being people...and their money. You start preaching a watered down version of the Gospel in order to keep those donations coming in. It becomes about maintaining your lifestyle and popularity instead of reaching people for God.
Ok so bigger is not better in this case, what is the answer? I believe in house churches. This is how Jesus setup his church originally and I think there are many many benefits to this approach. In your typical church these days people come to hear the sermon and leave almost directly after. There's no involvement in each others lives, there's no true love shared with each other. A home church with 10-12 people would be able to get involved with others lives. This would also enable a grass roots movement, people reaching out in their communities to their neighbors. Jesus didn't reach out to righteous people, but to those who were sinners and unbelievers. If we truly want to follow his example, those are the footsteps we need to step in.
This doesn't have to be awkward, as most people might initially think it would be. Invite your neighbors over for dinner, cook for them, serve them. You'll be surprised what conversations can come up over the dinner table. Over time you develop relationships, know what problems these people have in their hearts, and are able to pray for them and minister to them. Especially these days in America where people are so turned off by marketing that walking up to them on the street with a Bible will instantly get you turned away. I admit I do the same thing. A Jehovah's Witness came up to me outside a train station the other day and I watched the video he showed me, but wasn't interested in what he had to say, and I'm a Christian myself. Granted it was more due to the fact that I couldn't talk to him because of the language barrier, but if I were able I didn't have time to get into a discussion about how our beliefs were different yet mostly the same. Anyways I digress.
I also believe that church buildings are an issue. This is also a money issue. Again this is where pastors begin to be beholden to the patrons with money. Churches unfortunately are still businesses, and with overhead and a full time staff, they need money to run. I had some long discussions at my church back in Chicago about this. Our building was in severe disrepair. It's an old school building that they built and turned into a church, however there haven't been any repairs to it in around 40 years. Ceiling panels were falling out, there were leaks, electrical issues just to say the least. They finally got a loan to fix a bunch of things, but there were a lot of complaints from patrons along the lines of "if I bring someone here they will leave after one week because our building is falling apart". We also had discussions about how people are much more likely to be attracted to beautiful buildings such as Catholic churches. Catholic churches tend to have the "wow" factor. While I realize this is a logical approach based on the tendencies of human beings, it completely and utterly robs the power of the cross. If God has touched someone's heart, they will stop at nothing to get the good news. The evidence of this is our persecuted brethren in the Middle East and other countries that don't tolerate Christianity.
I haven't really finished my thoughts on the global church vs house churches but this is a good segue to my next thought. I can go back and add more detail later, I think you get the general idea. The "nice" church building is a side effect of living in a society where we have been safe from war and death for so long that we've forgotten the fear of it. We've forgotten the fear of God, and the love that he shows us on a daily basis. We've become apathetic. Disagree? Watch the news for 30 minutes and see how long it takes you to forget the next time they cover a murder. We are being turned into robots, and while that does have something to do with what I'm talking about that's a discussion for another time.
My thoughts here are with our brothers and sisters in Christ living in fear of their lives daily due to persecution. I prayed to God this week to help me to never forget these brave men and women who are truly putting more on the line daily just to worship God than I may in my entire life. What an incredible and sobering thought. The same pastor I mentioned earlier who came to Chicago for the leadership summit posted an article on FB this week about this very subject. While the global media is covering terrorist attacks like Manchester, the ones against Christians are getting covered up. I'll be brief in the description, but recently in Egypt a caravan of buses carrying Christians going to worship on Sunday was stopped by a group of Muslims. One by one they were asked to get off the bus and denounce their faith in Christ and become Muslim. One by one they refused and were murdered for it. I can't help but think what I would do in this situation. I can only pray that I would look to God for the courage to somehow resist, but likely I would fall in line and be slaughtered in His name. A fate not undeserving of glory. These people are incredible, and we need to be supporting them more directly instead of THROWING CONCERTS AND GLOBAL WORSHIP SUMMITS!! WHY DO WE NEED MONEY FOR BIGGER CHURCHES AND SUPPORTING APATHETIC CHRISTIANS AND CAUSES WHEN OUR OWN ARE DYING DAILY FOR THEIR FAITH?!
I'm sorry, I got a little emotional there. Something came over me, I realize I could just go back and make it all lower case again, but I want to keep it so that you can see my anger. If you know me at all, you know that I'm very even keel, I almost never get upset. However, lately I've been very emotional over this subject, as well as the threat of Islam in general. I've gone through a whole gambit of emotions in the past week or so. Some of which include, anger, depression, self-preserving righteousness, and terror. I've been having dreams lately as well regarding this. I'm not sure what they mean yet though I've been praying for interpretation. Last night was a very vivid one. I was in a school bus driving backwards down the road away from a great evil. The sky was dark and the hills were rolling ever higher up to this monster that had tentacles and was difficult to distinguish otherwise. There was a storm wherever it was, and it was chasing us. Two of my special needs students here in the K-PACE program were driving the bus backwards. This terrified me, but I soon realized that they were very good at it. We were in full military gear with AR-15's and prepared for battle. (Also as a humorous note for some reason Zac Efron was in this bus with us) Don't ask me why this is, I haven't seen him in the news for quite awhile, but my brain must have some reason for it lol. Anyways, we were headed for this underground bunker terrified for our lives, but prepared to fight if we had to. We drove the bus backwards into the bunker and waited. The plan was to allow the monster to follow us into the bunker (That was more like the size of a city) and then sneak out and continue on our way, only fighting if we had to. I guess this bunker was self reliant as we weren't worried about the monster destroying it or any people in there (it seemed pretty empty of people in my dream). That's about all I remember, though I do remember rolling down the windows a few times and my teammates (Zac Efron lol, and some girl) firing their guns into the storm at the monster but doing next to no damage. I do remember specifically that I did not fire my weapon, I seemed to be waiting for the right time.
I woke up and tried to logically add a few things to the dream that was so vivid I still remember it. If the monster could fit in this bunker, why didn't we try to fight it at the mouth of the bunker so as to funnel it in? Why couldn't we trap it in the bunker instead of running away? Anyways I'm pretty sure the monster represented Islam as that's something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Usually before bed, and it was especially intense last night.
If you couldn't tell I'm really F'ing fired up right now. I don't get this way often, but I feel the Holy Spirit rising up inside me, and I have some righteous anger growing. I should go back and let you guys know where this all stemmed from. It started with my first visit to the Buddhist temple in Busan. I had a good conversation there about other religions and what they believe, and that got me interested in Islam being it's a major violent threat in the world right now. I want to know what they believe and why they believe it. I decided to read the Quran.
I honestly could not finish the second chapter before I was completely turned off. I mean, farbeit from me to criticize other religions and beliefs, I'm normally very respectful, but this book is a complete and utter ripoff of the Old Testament, and contains no original spiritual benefit. The book is however full of verses commanding revenge, and violence towards those who are not Muslim. This includes Christians and Jews. I encourage everyone to read it for themselves to be educated, but I almost instantly was turned off. I did my best to go in with an open mind too, reading it as someone would for the first time without any religious bias. I don't know if it was God within me or what, but I just couldn't do it.
Anyways these thoughts started to give birth to current events. I had another conversation about women here in Korea who are getting married to Muslim men. (Apparently the word on the street is that Muslim men are really good in bed). Anyways, when they find out it's not all it's cracked up to be they try to get a divorce. Apparently there are illegal Muslims here in Korea who will go around to the family's house and beat up the wife and her parents and take her back to her husband and say "No divorce". I realize this happens all over the world, and has been in the Middle East for years, but for some reason hearing this at the time that I did sent my justice meter to "RAGE". I can't honestly believe how messed up that is, and how messed up the world is getting. I try to stay out of current events mostly for this reason, because while I'm many things I am obsessive about things being fair. The world right now is neither right nor logical, and it infuriates me that people are furthering the agenda of evil while masquerading as "fairness and goodness and love". I guess the point is I can't turn a blind eye any longer. God is awakening my spirit and has something planned for me.
So here I was for the past week or so in my dorm room feeling helpless and angry, and depressed, and tortured for these people who were being mistreated at the hands of a religion claiming "peace and non-violence". I wanted an eye for an eye, I wanted revenge, I wanted justice. Period. Except it's not period. If it was period I would be no better than them. What would that create? A cycle of anger and hatred, truly only escalating to worse things because of human nature. The thought of I must get revenge plus some so that the other person feels what I feel.
No. That's not what God commands us to do. After wallowing in my own emotions for awhile I realized nothing good would come of my fleshly reactions and I looked to God. I prayed for his guidance. I prayed for protection and courage for our brothers who are persecuted. I prayed for justice for those who are wronged. Ultimately I prayed for how to respond to everything. (Mind you my personal internal battle right now is how to deal with a religion that wants to wipe my kind completely off the earth and makes no qualms about it) but this doesn't have to pertain only to Islam. There are plenty of hateful groups out there masquerading in the name of love and justice and equality right now. Certainly many Muslims either don't take the Quran seriously enough to go out and kill others in the name of Allah, but they also can't be found working against those that do. The Quran commands that Islam be spread, and spread by violence until the whole world is Muslim.
Anyways, on to what I'm going to do. I prayed with how to deal with myself first of all, my own selfish emotions desiring justice in this lifetime, when truly who am I to see that happen? I am neither judge nor jury nor executioner. I see nothing of what God sees. So I realized I need to pray to be as Christlike as humanly possible. I need to respond with love, and that is what I will do. I believe in a greater God, one that sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. One that is all powerful, and that I submit to. I believe in His sovereign plan for my life and I don't know if I will ever even come into contact with what I fear, but if I do I pray that he will give me the courage to do His will. All I can do is pray for the Holy Spirit to give me the words when the time is right. I cannot come up with the right words to speak, only God can change the hearts of those I speak to.
P.S. I've thought of a lot of things to add to my earlier ideas, certainly too much to add to just this post but I'll go ahead and discuss one thing I thought was important. The G12 summit and house churches sound very similar in ideal. You have small groups that get involved with each others lives. Once those people are well versed in their own faith they are strong enough to go out and form their own small groups, thus growing the church and reaching out to others. I believe the problem is the governing body. Just as with government the more people you get involved and the higher the structure the more red tape and issues that come with it. Plus who is ordained to sit atop this global church? Who is this business genius? Or better yet who is this "holy" man? Sounds a lot like the Catholic church to me, but that's for another post at another time. I am all for whatever God wants, and if he shows me that this is the future of the church he is building then I will be the first to get out my shovel and pickaxe and get working. All I'm stating is that at first glance my spirit is not getting a good vibe from this. I hope I'm wrong.
Well! What a first post back! Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed what you read. I will continue to post about things I eat and things I do, but I anticipate my posts being more spiritually based from now on. If that's not for you, then I understand but I pray that one day God moves your heart to Him. Fini!
Well! I've had a lot of things going on inside of me lately. First things first, I got back to church again on Sunday. I hadn't been there in about a month due to traveling and issues with a ride. Heavy G has been busy so he has also been going sporadically. The reason this is an issue is because it's almost a 2 hour bus ride to church. One way. I don't know if that sounds fun to anyone, but it's not the ideal way to spend your Sunday. However, I really wanted to get back to God's house this Sunday so I handled the long ride and got myself to church.
My church has been pushing what is called the "G12 Summit" lately. I mistakenly thought this was the global leadership summit when has been going on in America for years, and something I had heard of last year with one of my pastor friends even coming to Chicago (Willow Creek Community Megahugemonstrous Church) for it. I asked him about it, and he corrected me that they were not the same.
I am pretty skeptical about this trend to make everything bigger. So far that's what I gather from this G12 Summit. Apparently it started in Bogota, Columbia. From what I've heard the general idea is that a church designates leaders. Those leaders create small groups of 12 people, and train those small group members to be leaders who then go out and create their own small groups. This continues and the church grows exponentially by factors of 12. Here is their wikipedia description: "The G12 Vision is a Christian evangelism and discipleship strategy to fulfill the Great Commission. It is founded upon the idea that every Christian can mentor and lead twelve people in the Christian faith, following the example of Jesus." Sounds great right?
I'm not so sure. The Bible says to test spirits to see if they are from God or not. The vibe that I'm getting from this is that it's a big show. A magnificent show, but a show nonetheless. The church showed videos from the last 2 years to try and hype up members to go. I should also mention that there is immense pressure to go to this summit, and the cost is not insignificant. I believe tickets themselves are $50, and the total cost per person comes to around $120 including travel and lodging. Apparently they have set the goal for our church at 500 people. That's all fine and great if we didn't only have roughly 200 members. The emphasis is clearly on growth.
I'm not one to pass judgement without seeing it for myself though, so I'm planning on going. From what the videos showed this event is 3 days long completely devoted to worship and praise. That's awesome. There are famous Christian bands booked to play, and also famous pastors to preach. Apparently they are expecting roughly 1,000,000 people at the Seoul location alone! What an incredible number. I assume that people from all over the world will be linked via video conferencing, and people will be worshiping worldwide together! That's the dream right?
I don't agree. This push for a global church is worrying to me. You see a lot of these giant events in America. These pastors travel around and make a killing selling out giant NFL stadiums preaching to people. It seems like a great idea, reach a lot of people, support those who are preaching the word, and everyone is happy. The problem is that these people go to these events, and A) they fail to take any action on what has been preached, B) what is being preached is watered down so there is no action to take, and the worst part C) we are creating demigods out of these men who go around getting rich off the Word of God.
I don't have anything personally against these guys, I'm sure when they started out they didn't strive to make a ton of money off of religion. They probably are just smart businessmen who happened to love God and their decisions led to growth of their church, and popularity for themselves. While this isn't necessarily bad in itself, it leads to the downfall of not only these men but their followers. Think about it, you're a pastor in charge of ministering to a crowd of 50,000 people. What do you become beholden to? Over time it stops being God, and starts being people...and their money. You start preaching a watered down version of the Gospel in order to keep those donations coming in. It becomes about maintaining your lifestyle and popularity instead of reaching people for God.
There are many examples of these famous evangelists making terrible decisions. Just google evangelists and their private jets. I realize that not everyone lives this way, and maybe there's a man out there who can completely give himself to God while still being prosperous. That would be against the Bible though, as Jesus says "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) On top of this, Paul (who is arguably the greatest human example of how a Christian should live) did NOT make his living off of preaching the Gospel, and was very proud of it. "13Don’t
you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the
temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered
on the altar?
14In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15But
I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the
hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than
allow anyone to deprive me of this boast.
16For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
17If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me.
18What
then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer
it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher
of the gospel." (Corinthians 9:13-18)
The push to make things bigger, and involve more money looks great, but inevitably will lead to evil as Satan can assuredly use good intentions against us when given an opportunity. Ok so bigger is not better in this case, what is the answer? I believe in house churches. This is how Jesus setup his church originally and I think there are many many benefits to this approach. In your typical church these days people come to hear the sermon and leave almost directly after. There's no involvement in each others lives, there's no true love shared with each other. A home church with 10-12 people would be able to get involved with others lives. This would also enable a grass roots movement, people reaching out in their communities to their neighbors. Jesus didn't reach out to righteous people, but to those who were sinners and unbelievers. If we truly want to follow his example, those are the footsteps we need to step in.
This doesn't have to be awkward, as most people might initially think it would be. Invite your neighbors over for dinner, cook for them, serve them. You'll be surprised what conversations can come up over the dinner table. Over time you develop relationships, know what problems these people have in their hearts, and are able to pray for them and minister to them. Especially these days in America where people are so turned off by marketing that walking up to them on the street with a Bible will instantly get you turned away. I admit I do the same thing. A Jehovah's Witness came up to me outside a train station the other day and I watched the video he showed me, but wasn't interested in what he had to say, and I'm a Christian myself. Granted it was more due to the fact that I couldn't talk to him because of the language barrier, but if I were able I didn't have time to get into a discussion about how our beliefs were different yet mostly the same. Anyways I digress.
I also believe that church buildings are an issue. This is also a money issue. Again this is where pastors begin to be beholden to the patrons with money. Churches unfortunately are still businesses, and with overhead and a full time staff, they need money to run. I had some long discussions at my church back in Chicago about this. Our building was in severe disrepair. It's an old school building that they built and turned into a church, however there haven't been any repairs to it in around 40 years. Ceiling panels were falling out, there were leaks, electrical issues just to say the least. They finally got a loan to fix a bunch of things, but there were a lot of complaints from patrons along the lines of "if I bring someone here they will leave after one week because our building is falling apart". We also had discussions about how people are much more likely to be attracted to beautiful buildings such as Catholic churches. Catholic churches tend to have the "wow" factor. While I realize this is a logical approach based on the tendencies of human beings, it completely and utterly robs the power of the cross. If God has touched someone's heart, they will stop at nothing to get the good news. The evidence of this is our persecuted brethren in the Middle East and other countries that don't tolerate Christianity.
I haven't really finished my thoughts on the global church vs house churches but this is a good segue to my next thought. I can go back and add more detail later, I think you get the general idea. The "nice" church building is a side effect of living in a society where we have been safe from war and death for so long that we've forgotten the fear of it. We've forgotten the fear of God, and the love that he shows us on a daily basis. We've become apathetic. Disagree? Watch the news for 30 minutes and see how long it takes you to forget the next time they cover a murder. We are being turned into robots, and while that does have something to do with what I'm talking about that's a discussion for another time.
My thoughts here are with our brothers and sisters in Christ living in fear of their lives daily due to persecution. I prayed to God this week to help me to never forget these brave men and women who are truly putting more on the line daily just to worship God than I may in my entire life. What an incredible and sobering thought. The same pastor I mentioned earlier who came to Chicago for the leadership summit posted an article on FB this week about this very subject. While the global media is covering terrorist attacks like Manchester, the ones against Christians are getting covered up. I'll be brief in the description, but recently in Egypt a caravan of buses carrying Christians going to worship on Sunday was stopped by a group of Muslims. One by one they were asked to get off the bus and denounce their faith in Christ and become Muslim. One by one they refused and were murdered for it. I can't help but think what I would do in this situation. I can only pray that I would look to God for the courage to somehow resist, but likely I would fall in line and be slaughtered in His name. A fate not undeserving of glory. These people are incredible, and we need to be supporting them more directly instead of THROWING CONCERTS AND GLOBAL WORSHIP SUMMITS!! WHY DO WE NEED MONEY FOR BIGGER CHURCHES AND SUPPORTING APATHETIC CHRISTIANS AND CAUSES WHEN OUR OWN ARE DYING DAILY FOR THEIR FAITH?!
I'm sorry, I got a little emotional there. Something came over me, I realize I could just go back and make it all lower case again, but I want to keep it so that you can see my anger. If you know me at all, you know that I'm very even keel, I almost never get upset. However, lately I've been very emotional over this subject, as well as the threat of Islam in general. I've gone through a whole gambit of emotions in the past week or so. Some of which include, anger, depression, self-preserving righteousness, and terror. I've been having dreams lately as well regarding this. I'm not sure what they mean yet though I've been praying for interpretation. Last night was a very vivid one. I was in a school bus driving backwards down the road away from a great evil. The sky was dark and the hills were rolling ever higher up to this monster that had tentacles and was difficult to distinguish otherwise. There was a storm wherever it was, and it was chasing us. Two of my special needs students here in the K-PACE program were driving the bus backwards. This terrified me, but I soon realized that they were very good at it. We were in full military gear with AR-15's and prepared for battle. (Also as a humorous note for some reason Zac Efron was in this bus with us) Don't ask me why this is, I haven't seen him in the news for quite awhile, but my brain must have some reason for it lol. Anyways, we were headed for this underground bunker terrified for our lives, but prepared to fight if we had to. We drove the bus backwards into the bunker and waited. The plan was to allow the monster to follow us into the bunker (That was more like the size of a city) and then sneak out and continue on our way, only fighting if we had to. I guess this bunker was self reliant as we weren't worried about the monster destroying it or any people in there (it seemed pretty empty of people in my dream). That's about all I remember, though I do remember rolling down the windows a few times and my teammates (Zac Efron lol, and some girl) firing their guns into the storm at the monster but doing next to no damage. I do remember specifically that I did not fire my weapon, I seemed to be waiting for the right time.
I woke up and tried to logically add a few things to the dream that was so vivid I still remember it. If the monster could fit in this bunker, why didn't we try to fight it at the mouth of the bunker so as to funnel it in? Why couldn't we trap it in the bunker instead of running away? Anyways I'm pretty sure the monster represented Islam as that's something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Usually before bed, and it was especially intense last night.
If you couldn't tell I'm really F'ing fired up right now. I don't get this way often, but I feel the Holy Spirit rising up inside me, and I have some righteous anger growing. I should go back and let you guys know where this all stemmed from. It started with my first visit to the Buddhist temple in Busan. I had a good conversation there about other religions and what they believe, and that got me interested in Islam being it's a major violent threat in the world right now. I want to know what they believe and why they believe it. I decided to read the Quran.
I honestly could not finish the second chapter before I was completely turned off. I mean, farbeit from me to criticize other religions and beliefs, I'm normally very respectful, but this book is a complete and utter ripoff of the Old Testament, and contains no original spiritual benefit. The book is however full of verses commanding revenge, and violence towards those who are not Muslim. This includes Christians and Jews. I encourage everyone to read it for themselves to be educated, but I almost instantly was turned off. I did my best to go in with an open mind too, reading it as someone would for the first time without any religious bias. I don't know if it was God within me or what, but I just couldn't do it.
Anyways these thoughts started to give birth to current events. I had another conversation about women here in Korea who are getting married to Muslim men. (Apparently the word on the street is that Muslim men are really good in bed). Anyways, when they find out it's not all it's cracked up to be they try to get a divorce. Apparently there are illegal Muslims here in Korea who will go around to the family's house and beat up the wife and her parents and take her back to her husband and say "No divorce". I realize this happens all over the world, and has been in the Middle East for years, but for some reason hearing this at the time that I did sent my justice meter to "RAGE". I can't honestly believe how messed up that is, and how messed up the world is getting. I try to stay out of current events mostly for this reason, because while I'm many things I am obsessive about things being fair. The world right now is neither right nor logical, and it infuriates me that people are furthering the agenda of evil while masquerading as "fairness and goodness and love". I guess the point is I can't turn a blind eye any longer. God is awakening my spirit and has something planned for me.
So here I was for the past week or so in my dorm room feeling helpless and angry, and depressed, and tortured for these people who were being mistreated at the hands of a religion claiming "peace and non-violence". I wanted an eye for an eye, I wanted revenge, I wanted justice. Period. Except it's not period. If it was period I would be no better than them. What would that create? A cycle of anger and hatred, truly only escalating to worse things because of human nature. The thought of I must get revenge plus some so that the other person feels what I feel.
No. That's not what God commands us to do. After wallowing in my own emotions for awhile I realized nothing good would come of my fleshly reactions and I looked to God. I prayed for his guidance. I prayed for protection and courage for our brothers who are persecuted. I prayed for justice for those who are wronged. Ultimately I prayed for how to respond to everything. (Mind you my personal internal battle right now is how to deal with a religion that wants to wipe my kind completely off the earth and makes no qualms about it) but this doesn't have to pertain only to Islam. There are plenty of hateful groups out there masquerading in the name of love and justice and equality right now. Certainly many Muslims either don't take the Quran seriously enough to go out and kill others in the name of Allah, but they also can't be found working against those that do. The Quran commands that Islam be spread, and spread by violence until the whole world is Muslim.
Anyways, on to what I'm going to do. I prayed with how to deal with myself first of all, my own selfish emotions desiring justice in this lifetime, when truly who am I to see that happen? I am neither judge nor jury nor executioner. I see nothing of what God sees. So I realized I need to pray to be as Christlike as humanly possible. I need to respond with love, and that is what I will do. I believe in a greater God, one that sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. One that is all powerful, and that I submit to. I believe in His sovereign plan for my life and I don't know if I will ever even come into contact with what I fear, but if I do I pray that he will give me the courage to do His will. All I can do is pray for the Holy Spirit to give me the words when the time is right. I cannot come up with the right words to speak, only God can change the hearts of those I speak to.
P.S. I've thought of a lot of things to add to my earlier ideas, certainly too much to add to just this post but I'll go ahead and discuss one thing I thought was important. The G12 summit and house churches sound very similar in ideal. You have small groups that get involved with each others lives. Once those people are well versed in their own faith they are strong enough to go out and form their own small groups, thus growing the church and reaching out to others. I believe the problem is the governing body. Just as with government the more people you get involved and the higher the structure the more red tape and issues that come with it. Plus who is ordained to sit atop this global church? Who is this business genius? Or better yet who is this "holy" man? Sounds a lot like the Catholic church to me, but that's for another post at another time. I am all for whatever God wants, and if he shows me that this is the future of the church he is building then I will be the first to get out my shovel and pickaxe and get working. All I'm stating is that at first glance my spirit is not getting a good vibe from this. I hope I'm wrong.
Well! What a first post back! Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed what you read. I will continue to post about things I eat and things I do, but I anticipate my posts being more spiritually based from now on. If that's not for you, then I understand but I pray that one day God moves your heart to Him. Fini!
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Taking A Break
I'm going to take a short break from blogging. I'm lacking inspiration and I feel the blogs have turned into a daily boring 'I went here and did this' type journal. I appreciate everyone reading and I will post again when the desire returns. Thank you.
Carl
Carl
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Festival Day 1
Today was the first day of the festival here at Daegu University, but first things first let's talk about class. We are reviewing the body, and how to tell a doctor that you're catching a cold. This is a challenging chapter because I didn't retain the knowledge from the first time through very well. This time around however, I'm doing better.
I'm trying to settle into a consistent eating/workout pattern. I want to eat breakfast and dinner (I kind of explained why it's hard to get all 3 meal times consistently here) and workout after class. So far I've been successful and I think I can continue doing this. I'm feeling much better already.
I hit the gym today after class with YJS. I've added some running to my usual lifting routine, and today was an off day for lifting so I just ran. I felt pretty good during and after. I also hope that continues as I ramp up the intensity.
It's really difficult being an ex athlete and getting back into training. I'm sure that may sound silly for someone who has never seriously committed to the gym. You have to understand though that my entire training was tailored for one specific thing. I was never meant to be an all around athlete. I think I was pretty decent at being one despite all my hockey-specific training though.
I'm pretty strong despite never having consistently lifted for more than 3 months or so. I have been very sporadic in my training during my life, and I'm hoping to finally change that now. Pray for me, cause it's one of the hardest things I've had to do. Physically obviously I can take it, but I keep letting things get in my way, and after the initial drive fades I struggle in my head before each workout. Some people say to not even think and just go, that would probably be good advice for me to heed considering once I'm there I always work hard, but getting a big body moving is a tough task.
Anyways after the workout was a nice little nap. I actually grabbed dinner before heading to the K-PACE center for our festival setup. I wasn't sure if there would be food available for us, and if there was how much we would get. I should have waited. They bought a ton of my favorite fried chicken, but I was already full haha, of course.
We spent about 5 hours in front of the K-PACE center just having a good time. Some of the teachers were cooking, some of the students were serving. They drew up a menu and had people sit down and buy food. It was a cheap, and a great way to support the program. They also had a portable karaoke machine setup for anyone who got the urge. Don't worry, I didn't.
Otherwise that was it for today, I'm pretty tired now so I'll be heading to bed. Thanks for reading though and I'll see you tomorrow!
Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 감기가 걸렸어요? (Gam Gi Ga Geollyeosseoyo?) Haha good luck with that one. Even knowing how to pronounce it, it's still a tongue twister. This basically means "Are you coming down with a cold?"
TLDR: I am broken. I am blessed.
I'm trying to settle into a consistent eating/workout pattern. I want to eat breakfast and dinner (I kind of explained why it's hard to get all 3 meal times consistently here) and workout after class. So far I've been successful and I think I can continue doing this. I'm feeling much better already.
I hit the gym today after class with YJS. I've added some running to my usual lifting routine, and today was an off day for lifting so I just ran. I felt pretty good during and after. I also hope that continues as I ramp up the intensity.
It's really difficult being an ex athlete and getting back into training. I'm sure that may sound silly for someone who has never seriously committed to the gym. You have to understand though that my entire training was tailored for one specific thing. I was never meant to be an all around athlete. I think I was pretty decent at being one despite all my hockey-specific training though.
I'm pretty strong despite never having consistently lifted for more than 3 months or so. I have been very sporadic in my training during my life, and I'm hoping to finally change that now. Pray for me, cause it's one of the hardest things I've had to do. Physically obviously I can take it, but I keep letting things get in my way, and after the initial drive fades I struggle in my head before each workout. Some people say to not even think and just go, that would probably be good advice for me to heed considering once I'm there I always work hard, but getting a big body moving is a tough task.
Anyways after the workout was a nice little nap. I actually grabbed dinner before heading to the K-PACE center for our festival setup. I wasn't sure if there would be food available for us, and if there was how much we would get. I should have waited. They bought a ton of my favorite fried chicken, but I was already full haha, of course.
We spent about 5 hours in front of the K-PACE center just having a good time. Some of the teachers were cooking, some of the students were serving. They drew up a menu and had people sit down and buy food. It was a cheap, and a great way to support the program. They also had a portable karaoke machine setup for anyone who got the urge. Don't worry, I didn't.
Otherwise that was it for today, I'm pretty tired now so I'll be heading to bed. Thanks for reading though and I'll see you tomorrow!
Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 감기가 걸렸어요? (Gam Gi Ga Geollyeosseoyo?) Haha good luck with that one. Even knowing how to pronounce it, it's still a tongue twister. This basically means "Are you coming down with a cold?"
TLDR: I am broken. I am blessed.
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