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Tmblweed
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Name: Jason
Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 12/27/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: sleeping, eating, serving God through church activities, going to Thailand for short-term or mid-term missions
Expertise: math (haha...yeah, right...)
Occupation: R&D for Kumon
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Tmblweed89
ICQ:  17415851
Member Since:
2/21/2003
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| What's Important vs. What's UrgentSorry, it's been about a month since I've wrote a quality entry. But there's been a reason behind this. I've purposely haven't made any comment about the church building, until the official decision came out, because...
...honestly, I'm not the biggest supporter of the idea.
And I never was.
There. I said it.
But I don't care. I really don't. Even though I'm not enthusiastic about the idea, it's not like I'm going to go around bad-mouthing the idea or trying to cause trouble about it. In fact, I purposely decided not to write anything until the official decision came out, because I want to respect the decision of our church leaders.
But you have know why I don't really care either way.
And for you to know that, you have to know why I'm dead-tired exhausted now and feel like I'm about to puke or faint, while I write this:
Around 8:45PM last night, I got word that this 72-year-old guy from church had been sent to the ER, because of "spots" seen on his CAT scan earlier that morning, and the doctors had thought that it could be another tumor. A few of us from my fellowship as well as the English Congregation hustled down to the ER.
I didn't get home until 4AM.
He's got no family. A 72-year-old man all by himself. No wife, no kids. His parents have long passed away. One brother died 2 years ago. Another lives in Alaska. His cousin drove over from Mar Vista, but they're not extremely close. So, he's all by himself.
But as we hung around in his small hospital room from around 9PM until 2AM, we talked so much. The 5 of us (including his cousin) were cracking jokes and telling stories. He talked about him being a football coach, a teacher, about being on the Czech border, almost being sent to fight the Germans. He talked about the first time he saw me and thought to himself, "He's like the Pillsbury Doughboy!" (to which I almost started crying! hahahaha...) We talked about church and we wondered about the future of the congregation. Cindy talked about her boyfriend and how he's traveling to different countries to support missionaries through his gift of photography. I talked about Kumon (hahahahahaha....no surprise there!)....
At 4AM, I was soooooo tired. I'm sure we all were! (And I still am! hehe...)
But this is what fellowship really is: It's being there for people, especially in the worst of times.
This is going to sound conceited, but in reality, it almost broke my heart:
Throughout the night, he kept thanking us over and over. He said, "I've been to hospitals for so many years now. I usually go by myself; I come by myself, and I leave by myself. I'm so used to it, and it's no big deal. This is the first time that I've had so many people come and care about me!!"
It broke my heart because I thought to myself, "How long has it been that we've barely seen him, even though he's come to church so many times? How heart-breaking and personally convicting it is to see this 72-year-old man's eyes light up even at 3AM because this is the first time that he's seen people want to be with him and he won't stop laughing and grinning and joking?"
And that's what hit me the most:
Honestly, I don't care about getting a new church building right away.
I don't even care about getting a new English pastor right away.
How sad it would be if we got a new building and got a new pastor, but in the pursuit of those two things, we had lost focus about the people?
Right before the VBS graduation last year, I was very upset with the GAP teens who were helping out with VBS. The older AWANA/VBS kids were going absolutely crazy and were ticking off the teens. And I'm not saying that I wasn't sympathetic to the GAP teens for getting upset at the AWANA kids. After all, the kids were going absolutely crazy.
But what hurt the most is that in the pursuit to "be efficient" or to "have order," it was easy for us to overlook the needs of the kids. We saw them as "kids who should listen & obey" instead of "kids that we want to get to know more and walk alongside them instead of above them" (To be fair to the GAP teens, I acted the same way they did at their age...heh...) And it showed. Instead of lecturing them, we yelled at them. Instead of patiently pointing out their wrong, we vented at them.
We put circumstances over the people.
If the new building is a good move, then I'm cool with that.
If the new building isn't a good move, I'm cool with that, as well.
If it takes us two weeks to find an English pastor, I'm cool with that.
If it takes us another two years to find an English pastor, I'm cool with that, as well.
I don't care about circumstances anymore. They're utterly unimportant.
It's the people.
And it's especially those who are the loneliest, those who are the the saddest, those who are the ones that nobody would naturally want to hang around with.
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| ROOFFLLL(Updated: Monday, 6/15)
I didn't realize how wrong this sounded until somebody pointed it out to me...
Hehehe...I need to take care of some stuff right now, but I'll blog about it later.
And no, it's not as disgusting as it sounds. But I didn't even think about how horrible it sounded until somebody pointed it out to me. hehehehe...
Oops, sorry for the delay in updates. Went to San Luis Obispo for my sister's graduation, so I haven't had time to update.
Anyways, so me and T went to 3rd Street that morning, and we went to American Eagle. I bought a bunch of t-shirts, she bought a bunch of underwear. We packed it up and went to another event, and I had to leave early, so I just messaged her that she forgot her stuff in my car.
Yeah, not as exciting as you thought it would be, huh? heh...
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| How Cool Kumon Is...
In case you wondered if Kumon is cool or not...
Hugh Jackman Taking His Son To the Kumon Center (pics)
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| Competition & Christians (Part 3)So, I know that almost half a year ago, I wrote 2 entries on sportsmanship. (See here and here)
Those entries dealt with the question more of, "Is there a right or wrong way for Christian athletes to act?"
In light of what happened this past weekend, I think there should be a focus of "Is there a right or wrong way for Christian fans to act?"
This past weekend, our church played in the championship round for the intra-Chinese church basketball league. And due to the playoffs, the last two teams standing were us (ranked #1) and CBMC-Rizen (ranked #2). Of course, since CBMC is the hosting church of this league, they brought a bajillion fans with them.
Right off the bat, things didn't go ideally. I think that within the first 10 minutes, we had been called on 4 or 5 team fouls. To be fair, we did commit fouls, as well as I think the refs were calling more fouls on us than the other team. But, that's not the main point, anyways.
The other team's fans were really pumped up. Most of them seemed to be college students, all of them probably from Hong Kong. (You can tell from the way they look and dress. hehe...) And to be fair, they were extremeley enthusiastic about the possibility of winning.
Which is pretty cool.
Until things got sorta nasty.
Both teams wanted to win. So there were fouls all over the place and both teams were playing hard. I mean, really hard. But there's nothing wrong with that.
Until Eric got his 4th foul. And the CBMC-Rezin's fans smelled blood in the water.
As the highest scorer on our team, they knew that if Eric fouled out, they would have a significantly greater chance of winning the game. So, when the next whistle was blown and we were called out on a foul, they started cheering and I couldn't figure out why, until Aaron started wagging their fingers at them and said, "Now, now...he hasn't fouled out yet."
Oh. They were cheering because they thought that Eric had fouled out.
Hm. Not so cool...
And then later on, when Eric was fouled, he had to take his free shots, of course. When shooting his first shot, he missed. And almost the entire CBMC fans in the stands literally erupted in cheers.
I mean, I was shocked speechless.
Who does that kind of thing? And I don't think I was the only one; I think that we were all shocked.
Of course, to be fair, it totally pissed off his mom most of all. And she was seriously simmering and pissed off like crazy. So when it was CBMC's turn to make free shots and they missed, she totally stood up by herself and started mocking the fans and yelling out if they liked it if it when it happened to them.
So, here's the question:
As Christian sports fans, should we act differently as non-Christians sports fans?
And then it dove-tails into a secondary, follow-up question:
If so, should we act differently at "Christian events" than at non-Christian events"?
Because here's the thing that struck me:
I was furious at CBMC's fans, because I thought to myself, "This isn't how Christians ought to be treating each other! If we claim to be the same family of God, how can we be cheering at another Christian's failure?"
And then the thought popped into my mind: "Does it really matter who the opposing team is?"
Because I remember watching the NBA Playoffs a few weeks back. And of course, the Playoffs make everybody crazy. If there's a visiting team visiting your town, you go nuts. And I remember that there had been some guy on the visiting team (I forget who) who had fouled out. And the stadium started playing the song, and alllllllll the fans in the stands started pointing and singing along:
"Nah nah nah nah...Nah nah nah nah...Hey, hey, heeeyyy...GOOOOOD BYEEEE..."
At the time it didn't really mean anything to me.
But for some reason, it made me look back and wonder: "How is it that I can get offended when Christians act ungraciously towards other Christians, but I don't think anything of Christians acting ungraciously in 'non-Christian' settings? If either CBMC started singing that at us last week, I think I would have gone over there and yelled at them in crappy Cantonese. And if we had started singing that at them last week, I would've hoped that either they would've come over and yelled at us or Reverend Lau would've started smacking us around for being so stupid. heh.
But would we ever think twice or even feel any regret about doing it to non-Christians?
So, I'm not being judgmental and haughtily saying that alllll Christians need to act a certain way, or anything like that. And I'm not saying that this should be a blanket statement for all fans, because not all fans are Christians.
I'm just saying that it was something that challeneged me as an interesting food for thought. 
Your thoughts are always welcomed.
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