Whew!!!!

Well the semester is officially over for USC and while it was a crazy finish, what with end of year events, it was all fun but stinkin' tiring!! We had our last Life group meeting where we ate at Jacks n Joe, a new pancake shop literally across the street from USC. While I am not the biggest pancake fan, I had heard many good things about this place so I decided to give it a whirl.



I was not disappointed! I had the Jack's Banana Pancakes ("3 banana pancakes topped with walnuts - pretend like it's the weekend now") and they were incredibly delicious!! I couldn't finish mine, mostly because their 3 pancakes are stinkin' HUGE, but that suited me just fine because that just meant that I could take them home and have them again! Such yumminess :)

Then we also had our celebrations for the Discipleship Team (DT - mostly for underclassmen who want to focus on the basics of the Christian walk) and the Ministry Team (MT - upperclassmen who wanted more training in how to help others come to know Christ). For the former we had a pool party which was quite fun, as most of the students got in the pool and went crazy! For the latter, we went to a family-fun place where we all played 2 rounds of laser tag (my team won both times...naturally) and go-karting with some mini-golf thrown in for good measure!


Austin gettin' ready to rev up!!


Melinda had quite the good time racing everyone :)

Finally, last but not least, was our end of year celebration honoring our senior students and all of Christian Challenge is invited! This year we went to Pizza Place California which always holds a special place in my heart because that's also where we went my first two years of school, so I have fond memories of that restaurant! Everyone got dressed up too and there were cries of "ooooo!!" and "that's such a pretty dress!" coming from the girls all night :) The guys didn't look too bad either, with their suits and ties, and it was just fun all around!!


picture with some of the classy ladies :)


and now some of the gentlemen...


followed by a photo of my Life group (Charlene, Rebekah, Lauren, myself and Alex). Taylor and Kaila couldn't make it, but it was still a fun time :)

And then, once everything was over, I took a week by myself and went to Lake Arrowhead where my parents graciously allowed me to use their cabin the whole time. It. Was. Amazing, and just what the doctor ordered!! I almost killed myself getting there because it was so stinkin' foggy on the way up, but Jesus got me through it! I was praying to Him literally every other second. Other than that lovely start, the week was glorious and I made 2 dishes that lasted me the whole week (spaghetti bolognese and tuna pasta salad) and I simply read, studied the Word, took long walks with God (when the weather permitted) and worked on some things. It was so great!! And I was apprehensive about spending a whole week alone because while I am an introvert, that doesn't mean that I don't like people! But it was a good week and sometimes I'd go into the village and walk around just so I could be near people :)

And with that, we're all caught up!! Summer Christian Challenge started last week and will continue throughout the summer, so there is that plus other projects to be working on!

I hope this finds you well and I'll be posting shortly! (really!)

Solus Veritas

"Solus Veritas" means "one truth" in Latin. The reason I bring this up is that tonight at USC we are having an event called The Veritas Forum. It started at Harvard in 1992 and has since expanded to universities all across the nation and even globe! It is basically an academic look at Christianity. Officially "Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life. We seek to inspire the shapers of tomorrow's culture to connect their hardest questions with the person and story of Jesus Christ."

"The Veritas Forum was started at Harvard in 1992 by a group of students, faculty, and ministers, led by Kelly Monroe Kullberg, as a response to an emptiness on campus. Universities, they perceived, had stopped addressing the most important questions of life: “What does it mean to be human? Why is there evil and suffering? Is there any meaning in death?” These questions cannot be avoided: in fact, an ongoing UCLA study shows that over 50% of entering freshmen hope to explore and define their beliefs during college. Yet the classroom rarely allows students to engage questions of meaning, purpose or faith.

And, in marginalizing such questions, universities fail to provide students room to develop a coherent worldview, making it difficult for many to integrate their academic knowledge with their lives. Veritas steps into this void, creating a space where people of all religious and cultural backgrounds are welcomed to explore ideas. Veritas encourages students to pursue Truth, connect their academic and vocational life to Christ, and emerge with clarity and hopeful vision for our world." (from veritas.org)

The topics range from "A thinking person's quest for meaning" and "What does it mean to be good? Two scholars, Christian and Secular, share their views" or "Does religion make a difference in academic life? Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Atheist perspectives."

The one tonight is "Same Evidence, Different Conclusions: Why? Is 'objective belief' an oxymoron?" featuring Oxford math professor John Lennox. He is in the same vein as C.S. Lewis because he offers a completely rational, logical and accessible view from Christianity. He has debated many prominent atheists, most notably Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He also has about four degrees after his name, because one Masters and PhD isn't enough :)

Prof. Lennox was also at Stanford, Berkley and UCLA this week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, and I heard from the National Veritas regional coordinator (who also happened to be on the planning team with me for the very first Veritas Forum at USC in 2004 - small world!) that Lennox knocked the ball outta the park all three days! Stanford had 450, Berkely had 800 and UCLA had 1,000 and still had to turn away 200!!! I don't think USC will get 1000, but oh my gosh!! These are questions that people want answers to that are not getting them answered in the classrooms!!

This is the first time Veritas has been at USC in five years, because the last Veritas Forum we had was when I was a senior in college and I was its director! We had it 3 years in a row, from 2004-2006, but after that it never got off the ground. This year we are just doing a one-day event, as opposed to the three-day venture it has been in the past. I LOVE Veritas because it shows a different side to Christianity that people don't normally think about, namely, that there is a purely logical and rational side to it. So many times I feel people take me down a few intellectual pegs when they find out I am a believer in Christ because "that's just hogwash/a crutch to make you feel better/no scientific evidence for it, etc" when really, I have checked out a lot of the major world religions and Christianity is the one that makes the most logical sense to me. There is an abundance of not only scientific, but also historical and archeological evidence for it, not to mention it makes the most sense philosophically to me for those deep questions that people have about the world. If you would like to chat further about that I am totally open, I have had many theological discussions with my friends where we talk about our specific worldviews and what led us to adopt them and they're just that, discussions.

I have heard it many times from speakers that people haven't rejected God, they have simply rejected their concept of Him. In my experience my friends that don't think anything of God have a skewed view of Him, mixed from bad experiences in the past, the media and their friends. That is why I love Veritas because it shows people that Christianity can indeed be logical because all the speakers we get have PhDs, so you know they're a smart bunch!

Our goal is NOT that everyone would convert to Christianity at all, but rather, that seekers, agnostics, atheists, other worldview holders would walk out of the event with a more favorable view of God and Jesus Christ. If someone comes to the event and they could care less about Jesus because He is an irrational fairy tale, yet they leave thinking there might be more to this Jesus guy, then that is a win in my mind! The purpose is not making everyone believe what we believe, but to introduce the topic of Christ into the deep, hard questions of life and see how He fits in. It is meant to be a discussion, not a lecture, and everyone from Christians to Jews to Muslims to Buddhists to atheists are all welcome to come and ask questions. I am so happy for this event to come back to USC!!

Below is a link to a 2 min preview of the topic "Same evidence, different conclusions, why?"

http://johnlennox.org/index.php/en/resource/same_evidence_different_conclusions_how/

Where my title came from...

So I was talking to a girl in my life group the other day about my blog and she asked me where I can up with the title and when I told her she got a good laugh. So I thought I should tell all three of you who read this about it so you can perhaps laugh too :)

"His strength, my strength." I wish I could say I came up with that on my own, but alas I cannot. I was inspired by a stranger at the beach. I was at Huntington Beach over a year ago and as I was walking down the strand, I noticed a guy washing off in those showers they have. I noticed him because not only was he good-looking but he had a cool tattoo on his side. He had this image on his right side:



No, it wasn't purple, but it was this exact shape in the tattoo green, with "His strength, my strength" written underneath and VOILA! the title for this blog was born :)

My friend couldn't believe that some random guy's tattoo was the inspiration, but I told her it was a pretty cool tattoo as far as tattoos go and I really liked the phrase he had! So now you know, hope that was a fun tidbit of information for you!

Living with Purpose

So over spring break we heard from 3 different speakers so I thought I would give each of them a day in which to let you know some things they talked about!

The first guy was Brett Yohn, the Christian Challenge director from the University of Nebraska. He is super awesome and so easy to talk to! He had four tips for living with purpose and the fun thing was that he introduced every one of them with clips from Lord of the Rings!!

In order for us to live with purpose we have to...

1) Enter in, idea of entering into people's lives and not staying content being in our holy huddles. The clip he showed was from Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo brought the ring to the Elf council and everyone was trying to figure out what to do with it when Frodo decides to "enter into" the story of the ring and take it himself. He didn't just sit back and let the others figure out what to do with the ring, but he took it upon himself to get involved in the saga of the ring's fate.

- Brett talked about how living the Christian life is a daily commitment and that we need to leave the confines of our homes and pursue relationships with those around me. He made the analogy of our lives being like a castle, where we could just chill with being by ourselves and be fine, but how we need to let down the drawbridge and enter into people's lives.

-- Genesis 12:1-3, God called Abraham, when he was 75, to uproot himself and his family and way of life and travel to the promised land.
-- Isaiah 49:5-6, "And now the LORD says— he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength— he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
--Psalm 2:8, "Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession."
--John 1:14, Jesus entered into human history and changed the course of this world forever, and if even He did that, and we are called to follow His example, we should get involved with people too!

2) Journey With, clip from Fellowship again, at the end, when Frodo tries to leave without Sam and Sam is determined to go and journey with Frodo no matter where that may lead them.

- Brett's point was that the Christian walk is not an individual sport, it's a team and a community and to find common interests/ground with others. He mentioned that whenever the apostles went out in the New Testament they usually went with teams, not alone. (Acts 3:1-6)

3) Impacted By, clip from The Two Towers, when Frodo and Sam are walking together and Sam asks whether or not people will tell stories about them to their kids and he mentions Frodo as being the hero to the story. Frodo then points out that Sam would be just as great a character as Frodo and how that reveals they both impacted each other.

- Brett talked about how we need to identify with the joys and sorrows of each other, how we need to not give up on each other.

-- 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, how we are called to share with people the message of reconciliation to Christ

- Brett mentioned that a deadly growth-killer is judging others, however, and how living by rules only and judging people is toxic because it leads to guilt and avoidance.

-- John 11:32-35, Jesus was so involved in people's lives that their pain became His pain

4) To Breathe Life Into, clip from Return of the King, when Frodo and Sam are on Mount Doom and Frodo can't go any further, Sam then decides to carry him to the top
- Brett talked about how we need to invest in a life-giving way to others and how we can only breathe out what we breathe in. When we attempt to live in the Spirit of God He will breathe life into us and into the lives of people we are trying to reach for Him.

- One thing I really liked that Brett asked was why don't people enter in, journey with and impact each other? Is it because we don't know about it?? NO! It's because doing these four steps costs too much!

Just because it's always fun to have pictures too, here are a few :)


This is the bus ride over, our seats were red and yellow, and yes, we also watched Aladdin :)


I called this one "the rise of man"


Picture of Lindsay and I as we were at the Garden of the Gods!! :)

Spring break!!

I cannot believe that spring break was only little more than a week ago - it seems so much longer! Christian Challenge went to Colorado Springs and stayed at Glen Eyrie, which is a retreat center owned by the Navigator ministry. It is a beautiful castle surrounded by lovely trees and red rocks.


mmmm, the castle, how I miss it so...

The weather was surprisingly nice too, no snow this time which was a bit sad, but then again it was beautiful regardless! We had three speakers:
- Brett Yohn who is the Challenge director of University of Nebraska
- Jim Peterson who lived in Brazil for over 30 years, has written multiple books, 2 of which I have read and LOVED - The Insider and Living Proof - highly, *highly* recommend you read them because they helped to re-shape my concept of evangelism!!
- Jim Downing, who is a whopping 97 years old and is still going strong for Christ! He was in Pearl Harbor, yes you read that right, he was actually IN Pearl Harbor!! He is now retired but still speaks all around the nation (and world I think) about walking with Christ.


Jim as he spoke to the USC and California Baptist Univ. groups

The conference was long, but it was not exhausting. The schedule has a good amount of free time and so even though the mornings were packed with breakfast (we had crepes one day, CREPES!! the food there was crazy delicious and not at all what you would expect at a retreat center :), then main session followed by a work shop we still had the afternoons free! It was lovely and I am still in the process of re-writing my notes so that I can organize them better because they gave us a notebook, but in order to have them handy by topic I thought I'd re-write them, plus helps me to go over them at the same time so it's a win-win!!

I'll update more tomorrow and this week with updates of things I learned, but for now here are some pictures :)


this is a bird's eye view of the Great Hall where we would have our main sessions. Lots of people as you can see! We maxed out the castle with bringing 350 people :)


This is a pic of Olivia, myself and Makena. Both Olivia and Makena are freshmen, even though I look like I'm the youngster because they are a FOOT taller than me!! Makena said they were just being my bodyguards for the day, so I'll take that :)


Rebekah and I :) she is in my life group and really has the strong desire to grow in her walk with God!!


This is a photo of the USC group on the last day. It had snowed a little bit and we were just about to leave but you can't leave before taking a group photo right?


and of course you need a fun one right? ;)


we also had a large group photo of all 350 of us, and of course the USC-ers in the back had to flash the victory sign :)

and now for the piece de resistance, I will end this post with a video from spring break. The last night we have what is called "Follies" which is basically a funny talent show. This year saw everything from a kazoo choir from Oklahoma State "kazoo-ing" Katy Perry's "Firework" to Spartan cheerleaders from Univ. of Oklahoma (a la Will Ferrell and Cheri O'teri) and a lip-synch to Mulan's "I'll make a man out of you." My personal favorite, however, was a joint effort between the schools. There was a band called the Shnazzy Shoes and the lead singer was USC's very own worship leader, back-up was an Oklahoma State-an and playing the djembe was a guy from OU. Their song? "Metabolism Baby" and it is crazy catchy and everyone was singing it that night! I have since watched it a few times on youtube :) So without further ado, I give you "Metabolism Baby"

It's a Girl Thing

So thankfully my weekend after the Superbowl was pretty awesome and free from my team getting beaten by cheeseheads. My work, Christian Challenge, had a woman's retreat all day Saturday with the option of having the girls sleep over at some of the staff women's places. We called it "It's a Girl Thing" and the theme was all about relationships, specifically woman friendships. Myself and 2 of the other staff women ran around all day Friday like we were chickens with our heads cut off getting everything we needed and cleaning and shopping and sweeping and oh my goodness it was crazy.

Saturday started at 10am for the girls and we were there at 8am to help with all the last minute stuff. Once all the girls arrived we had brunch with delicious egg & sausage casserole, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad and juice!! There were about 30 of us total, including a few of our alums we asked to stop by. Once we were all finished our first of two speakers got there. We asked Mary Ross, a Challenge alum, to share about what friendship is to her and how God has designed it from His Word. She graduated in 2007 and is finishing up her last year at UCLA law school (yes, she's at UCLA but she's a Trojan at heart :) and Mary hit the ball out of the park! She was a very good speaker, had a lot of good examples from her own life and challenged the girls to really take the time to initiate friendships with their peers in college because the old adage is true - once you graduate it's a whole lot harder to make friends!

She talked about how a friend is someone you can laugh with, cry with and wait with. She said that our culture is of the mind to just "have a lot of friends!!" but how true friends are hard to come by and it's worth it to just have a few of those heart friends to live life with. The thing I liked the most was when she said that we really only have 2 kinds of relationships that we can control - our relationship with God and our relationships with friends. We can't control the romantic relationships but we can control the other two! And how those 2 kinds of relationships FAR outlive other tangibles in our lives like what kind of job we have, the kind of house we live in, etc.

She talked about John 15:12-15 where Jesus calls the disciples His friends, and how He has called you and me His friends, how He has invited us into friendship with Him, the Creator of the universe!! Jesus chose to get involved in our lives and we need to choose the same with the relationships that He has given us now.

Then after Mary spoke we decoupaged picture frames!! It was so super much fun and I definitely want to do it again in the future!!


so pretty right? well, I was pleased with it, it came out a lot better than I thought!! We laid out all the frames and it was really cool to see all the different styles of the girls come out in how they decorated their frames!

Then we mingled some more, snacked on veggies, pita chips and hummus, then heard from our second speaker, Stacey Klepzig. She graduated in the early 90's and now has 2 kids and we wanted 2 different ages and stages of our speakers so that the girls could see people putting God's Word into action a few years removed from college and then decades later too! She was fantastic and brought props too! She said that God's design for us as we relate is to give our lives away and ask Him for His heart for people. She talked about some of the obstacles we face in doing that (our lack of prayer, "not enough time," lack of forgiveness, faulty concept of God and/or people among others) and the blessings we get when we decide to open ourselves up to people. It certainly gave me a lot to think about! Then we had mini discussions with the other alumni who were there and it was great to see the girls opening up with each other!! :)

Then more mingling and then it was time for dinner! We all made it together - pork, chicken and veggie kababs, rice pilaf (I was the leader of that team seeing as how I think I was the only one who had ever had it!!) and fatoosh salad!! It was stinkin' delicious and fun to kick back with the girls!!

Then some of the girls left early and we also had fruit salsa and tortilla chips that we made which were dusted with cinnamon sugar - ridiculously good!! Then we made fun headbands or hair clips, and one of our girls brought henna so we got tattoos :)


The flower is mine and the other is Jessyka, one of our freshmen :)


Melinda even got one!! A heart with a flag inside waving the name "Neil" - so cute and hilarious!!!

We left Melinda's place at 10:30pm, then slept and my roomie Erin and I had breakfast with Melinda and the girls who slept over at her place - waffles!! It was a crazy fun weekend but I am also glad to have a night off tonight and recouperate!!

Hope you're having a great Valentine's Day!!!

Superbowl sadness :(

So it has now been one week and a day since the bad guys (aka the Green Bay Packers) won the Superbowl and I am still upset. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it or anything, because I'm sure my boys will be back soon, but it is still annoying. More so because when I came to USC for work the next day I saw no less than 4 Packers jerseys AND a girl wearing a cheesehead!!! She was going into Starbucks and as hilarious as that is, I do have to tip my hat to her for actually wearing that embarrassing thing on her head (it looked really old and beaten up too...)


GROSS. The only good thing is that Clay Matthews now has a ring...


This is me with my friend Jimmy who is a HUGE Packers fan - notice the cheesehead AND jersey - yes his team won the game on the field, but I'd still rather be a Steelers fan than a Packers fan :)