finally, g1!

well a bunch of things have been going onnnn and maybe i'll blog briefly on them later. well i guess it's only been two days haha but for exciting news.. i'm FINALLY getting my g1 when i'm almost turning 20 :) i hope i pass on the first try and that i can smile in my driver's license picture haha now i can finally practice driving, have a form of I.D., and not be constantly asked why i don't have my g1 yet :)

25 + 26

Break = more time = more blogging i guess :)

So the 25th was Christmas Day! and it was a mighty goood day :) I went downtown to nathan philips to meet up with jochan, dorothy, curtis, and ambrose because they had planned to just go around and ask people in the area their thoughts about Christmas and trying to share the Gospel with them by talking about the real meaning of Christmas - the day that Christ our Saviour was born into our world! so i guess i haven't done much of this before... I've been door to door for surveys and at soup kitchens but i've never approached people in public before and just talk about them. I guess my biggest fear is that i don't know what to say (which is why i need to learn more about His Word and Jo showed me this neat idea where she puts important verses in her Bible so she always knows where to refer when looking for a verse :D) but I went with Jo and Ambrose and they're both more experienced i guess you could say so they did most of the talking but i'm just really thankful that they acknowledged my noobiness... and were really supportive :) in total we talked to four people and they were four really great experiences and I hope that I will continue to pray for these four people. And it always gets me how I complain about it being cold but there were people sleeping on the sidewalks downtown and i cannot even fathom how rough that is >_< but this experience really encouraged me to talk to people if God has given me an opportunity. and to really see the need to spread His love and His Gospel.

after that we went hooome and i had dinner with the neighbours and some other families and then went to watch The Tourist since Irene and i really wanted to watch a movie =P but it wasn't a very good movie .... =(

then Sunday we had CHURCH and baby dedication was so cute! haha and today the message was about forgiveness. interestingly this came back up at the end of the day :) (thanks bernard for the talk!) and then we ate korean food, went skating downtown with some church people and it was really coooold but i got to talk to tang, julie, and lise more so i'm happy :) and then my toes froze haha so i got some starbucks. and went back to fairview... shopped for 1.5 hours then went home :) and went to neighbours agaaaain this is the part of the blog where it's not that interesting... haha um yes it was a fun day! thank you God! :)

community

so today i had a really good day :) 4pm church service today and the speaker was so funny yet really taught in a good way too. the topic was on JOY and how many things may be able to make you happy but if you don't feel joyful, those same material things will not make you happy. he talked about ipad a lot haha so if you have an ipad and you like it and it can make you happy! but then when you don't have anymore joy even an ipad won't make you happy, it can't make it better. but if you have joy, many things can make you happy but having nothing, you can still be happy :) if that makes sense... so ultimately material objects may bring you temporary happiness but without JOY in the LORD, it's pointless because ultimately knowing Him and having faith in Him gives us joy :). Also thought it was kind of cool how ENJOY actually means 'to GIVE joy' similarly to how encourage is 'to give encouragement'.

anyways afterwards we went to minh and karen's house for fellowship and we were talking a lot about community. and i think i've personally struggled with community a lot... because i was new to ntcbc, everyone already knew each other from when they were younger growing up in the church or other people were just more outgoing so i felt out of the loop; going to loo, i didn't know many brothers and sisters more personally at ccf so i never got invited to a lot of things so i felt kind of left out a lot too; and then with a lot of friendships i felt like i cared more about other people than they cared about me and it was rough because many people say that a good relationship is double-sided and just ALL over the place i felt like i was disconnected and nobody cared... but then i realized i just expected most people to come to me... that if they cared they would come talk to me because that's showing love.. but i forgot that i myself wasn't putting that much effort in as well. and with some friends i felt really upset that they weren't putting as much effort into the friendship and always being too busy for me and a lot of the times i felt like just giving up on them completely and forgetting about it... but today karen shared her thoughts on community and being committed to a church (specifically but it also applied to any group or even person). it really strengthened my thoughts on community esp since i felt also really out of the loop with josiah because i was in waterloo most of the term. but anyways karen talked about how she also wanted to leave the church because after she had come back from university she felt like she wasn't "part" of the community anymore and it was very hard because you just feel left out. but she felt like she had grown up in this church and she had to go back as her responsibility to help the church grow after it raised her up as well. i guess this is a more specific case but what i got out of it is that if everyone just left when they felt there were issues with something or they didn't enjoy something in the church, then sooner or later that church would just deteriorate and no one would help build them up. I guess more simply, if there's a problem, don't just run from it but try to fix it? this was in the context that it's not a major issue like majorly bad doctrine or if you felt God was actually calling you to another church.. but someone brought up how this is part of carrying the CROSS, to commit yourself to one Church, to go serve there and to build each other up, and to put effort into it even when times seem tough for you because we are doing this for Him and for His GLORY. I do not do justice to the "speech" she made haha but it just made it so much clearer that you can't just expect people to come to you all the time. and it's not because people don't care about you but people are imperfect beings and they can't always be there like God is. it also encouraged me to face these issues i have with community and try to put in more effort and to not simply give up on people :) okay long post but it was a really good night of sharing and hearing how God has been working in other people and learning a lot too!

저는 집에 갔어요 !

Korean was my last exam and I don't know if the title of my blog post is CORRECT BUT I'M HOME :D

it's super nice to be back and sorry for the people who still have exams but you are almooost done! :) i like just sitting in my room even though i don't have plans with people. i haven't gotten to taste home cooking yet though. probably tomorrow! i can't wait to see the people that i haven't seen for so long :) and watching people get baptised today made it an even more joyous occasion. Something did happen today though that kind of hurt me =S but i know that regardless of who it is that hurts us, we must still show love to them. I've realized I guess through seeing it happen with other people and myself that it's easy to develop grudges or to talk badly about the person who hurt us and concentrate on downplaying that person rather than why it wasn't a nice thing to say.. but i think most of the time it's just pride, not wanting to admit your own weaknesses, flaws, and errors.

I think personally for me, I actively think about ways to give. But where I fall short, and i fall very very very SUPER DUPER EXTRA short, is when I feel like it's not done back onto me. "Do as you would like others done onto you" but I always felt like it was never reciprocated. and that's where i super duper failed! it's because i do not know humility, i'm too prideful and think i deserve anything at all... if God thought like me after He sent His SON, then He would just be soooo upset because of our consistent failures to love and draw close to Him, our highs and lows in our faith, our hypocrisy, all our shortcomings... but He's not because he is an awesome awesome God whose love is unconditional :) it would also just be impossible to ever reciprocate His grace... I need to re-focus on Him and let Him be the source of my love. to be more like Christ who came to this earth to be our Saviour and knowing there was no way we could ever reciprocate his good deed for us yet He did it anyway. and i can't do it alone! I'll need His strength to not fall into those traps! :)

ENVS200: Ecology

so i have been forced to take this ecology course this term and it has tons and tons of readings and learning some pretty cool things about nature and ecology and my knowledge grew! and all these things just point me to how great God truly is! all these webs and interactions that work our perfectly.... it blows my mind. just toooo perfect! even though ecosystems are complex and hard to understand and each one is contextual.. they all work out in a finely tuned balance that seems too good to be just random. If we take stats into account, we could say that the p-value that what we observed in the world is just part of random chance is very small! or that the observed data is significant enough to say that it isn't just random... well just from what i learnt in ecology anyway =P

(my ecology and stats exams are on two consecutive days - my studying has partially paid off haha but i really struggled with explaining the p-value.. gotta work harder!)

exam time!!!

dumdumdummmm. today christine and i got a study room in dc and that was when i began my studying for exam time! i'm not too panicked yet because i think i have enough time.. so i better use my time well T_T but it kind of feels.. exciting hahah and i can't wait til this is over and i can go hoome! and we also started listening to some Christmas music haha and i heard this song at creekside the past sunday and its simplicity really hit me :)

hide!

i think i'm getting too good at putting on masks... am i falling into the same hole again or is it a legit concern? >__> am i just a hypocrite or ??