Itsara

There have been a few moments in my life that I would label as truly “Defining Moments”. Growing up in church, I knew all the Sunday School answers, and as I learned more about my faith I could give intellectual assent to certain truths. But in these Defining Moments, something about the way I saw the world changed forever. Some aspect of the Truth moved from my head to my heart - instead of being something I would do if I thought about it, it became something I was. The change in my expectation of Heaven is one such Moment. This is the story of another.

I’m writing this as much for your benefit as for my own, so it will be long because of the details. I have split it into three parts: (I) the background, (II) how the decision came about, and (III) the results of the decision.

I had been a gamer since some time in the early 80’s when Dad brought home our first Apple ][e. I didn’t own a PC until college, but there were plenty of classic games on the Mac and we owned every system Nintendo had ever made, from the NES and the original GameBoy to the GBA and the Gamecube that I owned less than a year ago. I spent most of my freetime playing video or computer games and I even spent a year and a half after college working for Black Isle Studios making Planescape: Torment and testing or designing other titles.

There were times when my love of games approached an addiction, but this story isn’t about addiction. Jesus didn’t ask me to give my games away for my benefit, but for Him. (more…)

There are a lot of little things going on, so I’m going to give them to you all at once.

Thailand Updates

• Cindy has been in contact with some of the staff of Im Jai, and we’re really encouraged by their response. We’ve received volunteer applications from them, and one of their directors wrote that she was very excited to have us come. From what she says, and the questions she asks, it’s just more evidence that this move and the timing of it has been Engineered. Hopefully Cindy or I can give you more details about that soon, but I don’t have access to them right now.
• We will start officially raising support in the coming weeks. I’ll talk more about this later.
• Cindy’s Mom has graciously offered to buy our tickets to Thailand. We currently plan on leaving in late March, after we have our passports and visas taken care of.
• As of yesterday morning, I no longer work for SAIC. I was sadder about this than I expected to be. I’m not sad to leave the job (which was fine, but not what I want to do), but rather the people.
• This Sunday is my last Sunday as worship pastor. I know I’m sad about this.
• Cindy and I are going on a cruise down the coast of Mexico next week (we’re leaving right after church and getting back in time for church the week after). We’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and now that we’re cancelling our credit cards we figure we’ll use the points we’ve been saving up. It also helps that neither of us are working full-time anymore.
• To celebrate no longer working for The Man, we’re going to watch Office Space tomorrow after Cindy and Sean’s soccer game. Wanna come?

Website Updates

• I’ve removed the “First Time Here?” section on the sidebar and replaced it with some static “About This Site” pages. This way I can say more and people can find what they want. Look them over if you haven’t already.
• I finally found a plugin that allows you guys to receive e-mail notifications whenever Itsara is updated (if you want them, of course). You can subscribe and unsubscribe yourself from the “E-mail Notifications” link on the sidebar.

Like I said, Cindy and I will be gone next week, but I’m trying out a feature of WordPress that lets me post into the future. So check back next week because there are some posts that are scheduled to show up (if I did it right, there will be one each on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). It’s the unabdriged story of why I don’t have Nintendo games anymore - and no, it’s not because video games are childish or of the devil. (Note: if you are signed up for e-mail notifications, I don’t think you’ll receive them when these posts get published. It’s some bug related to future posts).

Is there anything you’d like to see on Itsara? Leave a comment and let me know, otherwise I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. Some feature of the site that bugs you? Something you wish the site had? Posts you wish I would write about? Let me know.

Update (Wed, 9:42 pm): The Bit Torrent isn’t working, so Ray has a direct link here. But, as Ray said, be kind.

Ray has managed to get Jamie’s last sermon, “Should Christians try to legislate their morality?”, online in mp3 format. You’ll need to download BitTorrent (basically a fancy download manager) first in order to get it. Once you have that, download the torrent file and BitTorrent should take care of the rest.

I highly recommend all of you to listen to this sermon (if you haven’t heard it, of course). Not because I agree with it and want to advertise my opinion via Jamie, but because Jamie handles today’s touchiest topics with both truth and love simultaneously - something I think we all need to get better at (myself most definitely included). Jamie is careful not to cross the line into telling people how to vote, but rather his purpose is to start thoughtful and loving discussions of these issues. Feel free to discuss this stuff here.

Today’s Internet lesson is brought to you by BitTorrent. BT makes downloading large files super-efficient. A normal download requires you to ask another computer for the file. Then that computer sends you the file in pieces called packets, until you say you have the whole thing. For one person this is fine, but when 100 people are downloading the same file, suddenly there are thousands of packets being uploaded from the same computer causing a bottleneck.

The makers of BitTorrent realized that the average user had tons of upload bandwidth that they hardly use. So the BT client uploads part of the file to another user for every packet that it downloads. It uses bandwidth that would have gone unused anyway, causing a great relief on the part of the original server while still ensuring that you get your whole file.

Back in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at UCSD, we always wore name tags during our Large Group meeting. After the meeting was over we had fun with them, switched them around, stuck 20 people’s nametags onto someone’s back, etc. If you walked around UCSD late Thursday night, you’d likely find a few groups of Christians with one or two who forgot to take their name tag off. It was mildly embarassing, but at least everyone you met felt like they knew you.

I haven’t been to a Large Group since 1999, and I’m now beginning to wonder if I didn’t switch name tags with Matt and forget to take it off in all that time.

And now it is time for The Airing of Grievances! I have been called Andrew (by people who know my brother), Alan (by a near-sighted highschool teacher), Aaron (by Matt’s parents - Aaron was Matt’s old roommate), and David (by my father-in-law - I can’t explain that one). But by far, the name I have been mistakenly called more than any other name is Matt. (more…)

I’m not very emotional (in fact, just a few days ago Jamie said I was “one of the most even-keeled people” he knew), so those of you who saw me today might not have realized this, but today was actually a very hard day for me.

First of all, Jamie began his series on tough questions facing Christians with the current toughest question of all: Should Christians try to legislate their morality? I’ve got so many thoughts about this that could get me into trouble - you don’t even want to know. But the purpose of this blog is not politics or debate (I don’t know if I even have time to start another one devoted to those things, and honestly I don’t know where I would start anyway). That’s not what began my emotional day.

What made it hard was that Jamie started preaching about loving people - acting justly, loving mercy, walking humbly… and he spoke about what is perhaps the closest topic to his heart: the poor. So Jamie was extremely emotional this morning, and so was I because as a Church we run the risk of getting our way at the expense of loving the unloved. My heart was broken for the unloved this morning and torn because there was so much I wanted to say and I didn’t know how or to who. I wrote short pieces in my journal, and that will suffice for now, but I also realized that any real solution has to involve loving the unloved myself.

I have so much to say on the topic that even what was meant to be a single sentence (”It started with Jamie’s sermon”) turned into a barely-contained tirade. Maybe it didn’t seem barely-contained to you, but it is. Trust me. (more…)

Americans are weird about money. We don’t like to let people know how much a gift cost, we won’t say how much we paid for a house, it’s not right to ask someone how much money they make, and we are immediately suspicious of anyone that seems like they’re asking for a handout.

Of course, this is not entirely without reason. The Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts have made even Christians hesitate to pull their wallets out for the kingdom of God. But now that Cindy, Sean, and I are seriously talking about raising support for our work in Thailand, it is bringing up some issues. On the one hand, asking for support seems to be the same as begging, and didn’t God say He would provide everything we need anyway? Why do we need to ask anyone but Him for money? On the other hand, aren’t the generous responses of other people the means by which God will give us that provision? (more…)

In a guest post over at Stones Cry Out, Mark Sides brings up a current debate about whether workers of Christian aid organizations ought to be evangelizing to those they are helping. I’ve got thoughts of my own on that as well, especially just coming from our trip to San Quintín, so I’m going to comment. (more…)

Update (1 pm): Ray has a great photo album of our trip here.

Last night we got back from a four-day trip to San Quintín, Mexico. It’s located on the coast of Baja California about 2 or 3 hours south of Ensenada. We worked with an organization called IDT to build houses for the people there. We also ran a medical clinic at a rehab facility and provided a church service for a pastor in the town. This is Coast Vineyard’s 5th trip to San Quintín, and my third. I’m really going to miss these trips. (more…)

I’ve been rappelling once in Tahoe. I had thought that the scariest part would be after I was over the edge looking at the sharp rocks hundreds of feet below me. Or maybe, going off my last post on fear, the scariest part would be the anticipation before I went over the edge.

As it turned out, the most frightening point for me was somewhere in between. The rope is tied to a rock or tree at the top of the cliff. Once you’re tied in, you keep the rope taut and walk backwards towards the cliff’s edge. At this point, all of your weight is on your own feet with very little on the rope. Slowly, you creep towards the edge, and as the angle of the ground beneath you gradiates from 0 to 90-degrees, you lean back and put more and more of your weight on the rope.

At some point, the gradiation of degrees becomes quite sharp, and you can no longer gradually put your weight on the rope but must do it all at once. At this point you have to put all your trust in the rope and jump, lowering yourself a few feet, so that when you hit the rock again it is with your feet instead of your shoulders or your head. This was the scariest part for me because I didn’t know when to make that jump. If I did it too soon, I’d smash against the rock. If I waited too late, my feet would slip and again I would smash against the rock. That’s what I thought, anyway.

Quitting my job at SAIC feels just like that point in rappelling. Fortunately, just like in rappelling, I have found that fear to be illusory. Once it has been faced, the fear is gone and there is nothing. At 10:00 this morning, I made that jump and put all my weight on The Rope. I have given them my two-weeks notice and as of February 1st I will officially be unemployed.

Did I mention that rappelling is also exhilirating?

I have just received news that Mike and Shannon are officially engaged. Congratulations, guys. This is an awesomely good decision and I’m super-excited for you.

And Mike, congrats on managing to fool her into thinking you weren’t going to do it. I know from experience how hard that can be.

Read the story from Mike’s side and Shannon’s side on their blogs. And drop them a note to congratulate them while you’re at it.