This summer I’ll be taking a break from my counseling classes. However, I intend not to stop learning. One thing that I enjoyed from my classes was that they forced me to read. This summer I plan on reading two books. The first is titled “CrossTalk Where Life & Scripture Meet” by Micahel R Emlet. This book was recommended to me by my counseling course TA. We learned about giving homework assignments in our counseling course. The purpose of the homework is to have the person study a passage of scripture that relates to the issue they are going through. It should expose their heart and show them an applicable aspect of God and how he works in such situations. I made a comment about how I feel like it is difficult for me to do this even though I’ve read through the Bible multiple times. It’s one thing to read the Bible and another to know how to apply various passages to various situations that people go through. My TA told me that this is a great book and resource to aid me in this aspect of my ministry. Thus, I shall read this book and learn.

The next book is “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metaxas. Last year I read the book “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I read the introduction about the author and just fell in love with Bonhoeffer. That brief snippet of his life and what he did enthralled me. Almost a month ago, a blogger that I follow, Tim Challies, did a review on this book claiming it was one of his top 10 biographies. I decided this summer that I’d read one “Christian” book and another book. I choose a biography and picked Bonhoeffer over John Calvin. Maybe next year Calvin.

Combined the books are 721 pages long. I’m a slow reader. Hopefully, while the Starcraft2 Beta is offline I’ll be able to crank through these books. I plan on writing book reviews for these so hopefully you’ll see them soon.

I read this article about multitasking the other day. (It’s a good read for our attention deficit generation.) It talked about the cost of multitasking and what it is doing to our brains. One anecdote really caught my attention.

Recently, she was baking peanut butter cookies for Teacher Appreciation Day when her phone chimed in the living room. She answered a text, then became lost in Facebook, forgot about the cookies and burned them. She started a new batch, but heard the phone again, got lost in messaging, and burned those too. Out of ingredients and shamed, she bought cookies at the store.

Last night I was watching Day[9], my favorite Starcraft2 commentator, who has an incredible series – Day[9] Dailies in which he analyzes high level Starcraft play and breaks it down for us n00bs as well as teaches people how to get better. Last night it was on multitasking – mental checklists. Being good at Starcraft is all about being able to do multiple things. We are finite beings only capable of doing one thing at a time so the ability to do that one thing really fast gives you a lead. In this daily, Day[9] showed us that it’s not about doing things really fast, or in the Starcraft world, having really high APM, but it’s about remembering to do the right things and doing them well. He breaks it down into a mental check list of 3 things. Do these three things and you will be a good Starcraft player. (If you want to know what these three things are, I advise you to watch the video here.)

The issue isn’t being able to do things really fast. It’s not even (necessarily) information overload. The issue is that we forget our mental checklist, or the priorities on our mental checklist is wrong when we’re inundated with information. Go back up to that anecdote I posted from the NYTimes article. The keyword is she forgot. It’s not that multitasking caused her to burn the cookies. The issue is that she forgot to check the cookies while on facebook and txting. If she were constantly saying to herself “Are the cookies done yet? Are the cookies done yet?” she probably wouldn’t have forgotten the cookies.

The issue does arise when we have so many things to keep track of. Those three basic things in Starcraft 2 start out as easy but soon contain many subpoints as the game progresses. Likewise, at work, the list of things to do may not be incredibly simple to be contained in a nice simple list that fits in memory. This is where Starcraft 2 and work diverge. You don’t need to be doing 300 APM at work. People will think you’re crazy for spamming your keyboard and it’s impossible to do 300 APM for 8 hours (granted if you’re going that fast you’ll probably finish your work in well under 8 hours). You have time so WRITE IT DOWN and I yell that in all caps for my own benefit. I don’t need to keep everything in memory. I can set up timers to remind myself of certain things. I can use pencil and paper (old school tech ftw!) to keep track of what I was doing and what I need to do. Hopefully this will help me keep track of everything that I need to do. The ability to multitask in Starcraft can help me multitask at work better.

SIDE NOTE before I end this now long blog post: We had a course at work almost two years back about how to use Outlook to help organize or make our work more efficient. Outlook is actually capable of doing everything I just mentioned but the problem is people never really use it as such. It truly is a powerful productivity tool and goes much beyond simple emailing.

This year, I have more vacation time so I spent it to go home for Thanksgiving. A number of people who came to my house last year asked if I was doing the Thanksgiving dinner again. I had to decline them and say I was going home. When I got home, I found out that our Thanksgiving dinner is going to be more than just my family. We invited some extended family but also some friends from church who don’t have any family in the area.

Then I realized, this is where I get it. My parents model hospitality as we open our home to people in need and feel left out. That first year I was so happy to be spending Thanksgiving w/ my friend’s family. It’s difficult when you’re alone and everyone else is spending time w/ their family. I also realized this is the perfect time to picture the family of Christ. We may not be blood relatives but I can spend Thanksgiving, a family time, with my spiritual family. Last year when I organized and planned a Thanksgiving dinner on campus for CRH, we were a family not by our blood but by the blood of Jesus. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to spend with your physical family but it’s also an incredible time to include your spiritual family, esp. those who don’t have a physical family, and picture the body of Christ.

Sunday and Saturday were completely different experiences at their house. The girls were easy and fun to be with on Saturday. On Sunday they were cranky, irritable, fussy, and needy. I marveled at Yang-hee’s ability to placate them and manage to feed them dinner. Everyone was fed, changed, and in bed, and no one died. If I was left w/ all four of them, I wouldn’t know what to do. So many different needs, urgencies, and fires to attend, I’d lose my mind. I could handle one of them; just give me Elijah and I’d be alright (except for maybe the changing diapers part) or Elizabeth who can tell me what she wants. But all four at one time, that’s a feat. I definitely like kids and still think I’d like 3-4 but I’d like to have them one at time, if that’s ok with you God.

“Where’s my wallet?”
“Wait, I think it’s in my pants’ pocket.”
“Wait, where’s my phone?”
“…”

I ran downstairs and the washer was already done. I opened the door and sure enough my wallet was in my pants’ pocket. And sure enough my phone was in the other pocket. I took it out – all nice and squeaky clean – and powered off. I tried turning it on to no avail. It was dead.

I went back upstairs and lamented my phone’s fate on Twitter and Facebook. One of my friends suggested putting my phone in a bag of uncooked rice. The rice will pull out the moisture. I had nothing to lose so I filled up a ziplock bag of rice and stuck my phone in it.

Later that day I took out my phone. It seemed that some moisture had vacated the screen. I plugged it in and it wouldn’t power on. Perhaps a little longer would help. I stuck it back in the bag of rice. Last night I took it out again. Seemed like more moisture left and it looked alright. I plugged it in and … still no good. Alas, my phone was gone.

Then this morning, I decided to try it one more time. I plugged it in not expected anything and … the screen went on! I took out the battery and plugged it in. It started charging the battery. Soon my battery was charged and I could turn it on. I was able to activate it with Verizon. My phone was back alive!

Who would have thought that a bag of rice could actually save my phone. This wasn’t one of those, oh no! I dropped it in a puddle. This thing was in the washing machine for a good 30 minutes, detergent and all. It was soaked and wet through and through but now it works. There is still some moisture on the internal screen, not enough to distort the image but noticeable.

I’m glad to have my phone back but I guess that means I don’t have an excuse to get a new fancy android phone next month.

This past Sunday we had our first CRH meeting. As we were praying together, I looked around the room. Most of them I knew when they were freshmen. Some of new leaders were freshmen in small groups that I led. I guess it finally set in. I’ve started to become part of the “Old Guard”.

This humbles me. No way would I put myself in a category with ‘The Greats of Old’. They gave so much more, sacrificed so much more. I hold up a candle to their torch. I wish they were still around and involved to set the example, not me. But this is how life works. People come, and people go. We’re in the business of disciple training – train someone to train someone else.

Lord, help me to point them to you, just as my leaders did.

Over my 4 years of doing this thing called ‘worship leading’, I realize it’s not all about musical ability. Sure, it always helps but worship leading is not primarily about musical ability but it is about spiritual ability. When I started, it was horrible. I would dread playing guitar for small group. I was so scared they were going to quit coming to small group b/c I was so bad. So what I did was I learned a few “utility” songs. I probably only played 6 songs or so that year and I call them ‘utility’ songs because they can fit into a number of different occasions. No matter what Bible Study was on, I could fit one of them in. Sure there are plenty of other good songs that might have worked better w/ the Bible Study but these songs worked just as well. These songs have become my staple not b/c they’re awesome songs but b/c they are spiritually useful. It’s not about picking the best sounding song but a song that spiritually resonates and reflects and applies to what we talked about.

Pastor CJ Mahaney says it so much better here: Tuneless Pastors Leading Worship? There are alot of things I don’t do well; singing and musical skills are up there. Man may look at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart. It can be excellent on the outside but it must has spiritual power behind it. People won’t be moved by my guitar playing but it is not beyond what God can use to work in people through my Bible Studies.

When I came to college, I basically stopped seeing the dentist. The first time I went when I started working had easily been 3 to 4 years since my previous exam. A periodontal exam revealed there was much inflammation and bacteria around my teeth and I had early to moderate gum disease. We scheduled a deep cleaning to clear out the bacteria. Afterwards, my gums were clean and my teeth looked much better and healthier. The total price tag after insurance to me was over $400.

Periodontal disease is preventable by purchasing floss for $1/mo and spending 3 minutes a day to floss. This minor investment would have saved my $400 and even more if it had advanced and required surgery. My dentist, hygienist, and mom always told me to floss. I never listened to them. However, attach a $400 bill and now you have my attention. I now habitually floss.

If you want to prevent something, attaching a large bill is a good deterrent. If I only had to pay a $10 copay for the procedure, I probably would not have been as serious about it as I was. The market is a good influencer to change people’s behavior. As proven by Safeway, a good way to drive down healthcare costs is to give financial incentives to people to become healthy. The majority of health problems are preventable. We can decrease the cost of healthcare by increasing and encouraging health prevention.

I think the best time I made it was for small group last year. I made it for our last sharing of first semester. My ravenous small group devoured all of it and my coservants and I didn’t get much of it. Being the clever (and selfish) small group leader that I am, I saved a batch for us to eat later on in the week. I don’t know if it was really that I prepared and cooked it that well or it was just the people that I was with but I think that was the best batch of Kalbi I’ve made.

With my roommate starting his cooking ministry, perhaps I shall continue to expand my Korean palette and increase my repertoire. Perhaps he can start with just teaching me Korean since my biggest problem is going to the store and not knowing or pronouncing the name of what I need to buy. At least one of the ladies at Green Onion spoke English to me after receive blank stares when she spoke to me in Korean.