TEAM USA!!!!!!

I'm sure you have all heard or seen by now the AMAZING US match against Algeria in the World Cup. I was lucky enough to catch a fair share of it because I was at the gym early and got to watch some of it (interspersed with Wimbledon of course). But it was also boring for me so I stayed with Wimbledon and got to watch one of my favorite players, Andy Roddick, WIN his match and advance to the next round!! That was actually really cool and I'm super glad I got to see him play :)


After his second round match with Frenchman Micheal Llodra

But the World Cup match was still 0-0 and not terribly exciting for me (not the biggest futbol fan...) so I left the gym, showered and went to Cafe 84 which is right across from the gym on campus to do my Quiet Time there. Well, they had the game on and there was only about 7 minutes left so I decided to watch it because, hey, it's Team USA. There were about 10 people there watching the game, one of whom was wearing a Landon Donovan jersey and was about to burst with every good or bad play we did. But you know what happened next. During injury time (which I found out what it was later) Landon Donovan scored the winning goal in the 92nd minute!!!



GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say I was screaming and clapping and everyone else was too and it was way fun to be able to watch it with some fans who were genuinely interested too!!

Basically Donovan is a stud and I may or may not name my first born son (or daughter) after him.....



and here are some amazing futbol fans from South Africa - I love the kid in the pic below, I can only hope that if God grants me children, they too will dress like crazy people for USA and USC :)





AND not only was the World Cup match awesome and amazing (first time we finished first in our group since 1930!!) but Wimbledon was going crAAAzy too!! In the first round on Tuesday a couple of unknowns, John Isner from the US and Nicolas Mahut from France played. I only hoped Isner would win because he is American. Well, win he did, but not in any fashion that anyone would have guessed. Their epic match went five sets, with the fifth set lasting 8 hours and 11 minutes, for a grand total of ELEVEN HOURS AND FIVE MINUTES!!! Longest match in tennis history - longer than all the time it took Serena Williams to advance through SIX ROUNDS last year!! It started Tuesday, then had to break because was getting too dark to play. They resumed play again on Wednesday, only to have to stop early again due to darkness. They finally finished on Thursday, with Isner pulling out the win and now everyone from here to China knows who he is! The final score was 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68 - probably a score not likely ever to be seen again!


Isner is also a tiny 6'9'' so it was a long way for him to fall to the ground in happiness :)


Isner obviously happy to be done with the match, while Monsieur Mahut does not look happy at all...can't really blame the guy, he was prolly about to fall over

Sadly his talent was not to take him through the 2nd round because he lost today in straight sets to Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands. Well, that is understandable seeing as how his arm prolly should have fallen off during his match! He was behind schedule too because the match took so stinkin' long so instead of a 2 day reprieve he got less than 24 hours. He took an ice bath, massaged his arm and struggled to eat some pasta just to rejuvenate himself. Andy Roddick even brought him and his coach takeout Tuesday or Wednesday night - gotta love that guy :)

Hope you're having a great Friday and remember to root for Team USA as we play Ghana tomorrow at 11:30am!!!

Law and Order: SVU

Ok, so again it's been a long time since I've updated this, and I'm sorry, my schedule is going bonkers this summer. And I shan't speak about the USC sanctions, not yet at least. I talked about them a lot all this past weekend (not my choice, but the fact that I keep up with USC news makes people think I'm the expert to go to, which I kind of am...) and I explained again and again what the sanctions were and why we got them. I'm a little over-talked out about it. The only thing I'll say about it comes from the immortal words of Celine Dion - my heart will fight on.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I chose the title of "SVU" for this post, and if you weren't wondering before, well, by now you probably are b/c I just said it. Well, I finally watched an episode of "SVU" last night, the first time I've seen a new episode in a long time because we just hooked up our converter box recently so I went all last year and this year with no new "SVU" episodes. Frightening, I know, but somehow I got through it.

Although it got me thinking. Perhaps I like the show too much. Why would I ask this you might wonder? Well, about a month-ish ago a friend of mine went on a blind date. Naturally it was exciting and she told me when she'd probably get back to her place and I expected that I'd receive a text letting me know how it all went. She said she'd be done by 10pm. Well, 10pm came and went. As did 10:15...10:25...by 10:30 I was freaked out of my mind. I wanted to call her and make sure she was okay, because hey, you never know about guys you just met, they could be homicidal killers. But I didn't know if that would annoy her (or her possible strangler) so I thought about texting her to see if she was okay, but then again, how would I know it was she who texted me back? If she was indeed in danger of being killed, how easy would it be for the guy to calmly take her phone as she is tied up and simply text me back saying she's fine and would be back later?? Yes, this seriously went through my mind. After talking to my brother and another friend about my predicament, I resolved to text her and if she didn't respond, or let me know she was back then I'd call her again after 11pm. Well, thankfully I texted her and she texted me right back, and I knew it was her because of her style of texting - WHEW!!! bullet was dodged *there*.

But weirdly enough, when I told my siblings this, they all said that I watch "SVU" way, way, WAY too much if that was my thought process. I still say that I was just being a concerned citizen, looking out for the needs of others, and thinking through possible scenarios. What do you think?


In honor of the World Cup, here is Landon Donovan's ESPN commercial - gosh I love these things!!

Oops again...

Okay, I'm sorry, these days are going by faster than I would like!! Last night was our first summer Christian Challenge meeting and it was a small group with some staff and students going over the Sovereignty of God, and I think it went really well!! The rest of the schedule for the summer is as follows:

June 10: Prayer - the importance of it, the significance of what Jesus taught about it, patience with it

June 17: Service - Of all the kinds of people Jesus could have come to earth and He chose to come as a servant, and how important that is for each one of us

June 24: fun night

July 1: Worth of the Individual - Jesus talking to the woman at the well when in those days it was not cool for men to talk to women, esp. alone, the lepers that society shunned but Jesus loved, tax collectors, prostitutes, Jesus gave them all His time, didn't reject them or get freaked out at non-believers, also the disciples themselves, how they were "nobodies" to the world (fishermen, not the intellectual Pharisees) but He chose them anyways

July 8: Selection - how Jesus was continually looking for the One in the Many to invest His life in, multitudes (hundreds) --> several (70) --> 12 disciples --> 3 (John, James and Peter) --> 1 (John)

July 15: Called to live an upside-down way of life - how becoming like Jesus means the things you value are opposite of what the world/culture says to value and live for

July 22: Expect resistance - Jesus did not receive a welcoming parade in His hometown, He came to make war, not peace, and if you're truly going to follow Him, you can expect some people to not be over the moon about it

July 29: fun night

whew!! It should be a great summer so I'll let you know how it's going!

Hope you have a GREAT Friday and rest of your weekend!

I heart ESPN commercials, and this one is one of my favs :)

Oops, I blame the summer time...

So I am so sorry I have not written in a while, I blame summer and the absence of my normal schedule, but really the blame lies with me :) I just need to make a schedule and stick to it. I've actually slept in almost every day till about 8am or sometimes even later - wow. I don't know what time "sleeping in" is for you, but anything past 8am is like "woah now..." so that's been alternately nice, just to relax and sleep in, but also annoying because then my whole day seems to be a bit off and not as productive as I would like. As I said, I just need to go to bed earlier (not 1am...) and wake up earlier!

This past weekend was really fun, with things I was doing every day! Friday afternoon and evening I went to Costa Mesa to drop off some things for my boss because he is at Project Impact (that summer discipleship training program I've been blessed to do twice!). So I hung out there for a bit because I love that place (they're staying at Vanguard University) and I have SO MANY memories from there from 2 years ago when I was staff there :) I can't go over there without a gigantic smile on my face, just all the memories and people I fell in love with over there, just loverly...... :) here's a few pics for a flashback!


This is when we went to Little Ethiopia for a world prayer night, and the food was DELICIOUS!!


on our tour of Hollywood, and we were at a lookout point for the Hollywood sign, and this is a pic of everyone who wore sunglasses that day - oh yeah...


This was 4th of July, and while I was practicing my skateboarding skillz, they got hold of my camera and took OVER FIFTY pictures...all like this...it was pretty hilarious going through it later though!!

So that was Friday afternoon, and the students had not arrived yet, that came on Saturday, but it was all the leaders and about half of them are from USC! So then I left them and ventured over to Main Street in Huntington Beach to look at Huntington Surf & Sport and Jack's Surfboards because they were having a mondo sale and I just had to check it out, no really, I did! My mission was to find a long wetsuit and find out what size I am, which I DID so that was tres exciting!! Now all I need is to find one :)


This one could work...


...or I could get this one and really be subtle as I'm out on those waves :)

Then Saturday I wen to a Bachelorette party for one of my best friends from high school, Katelin, and it was a crAAAzy party let me tell you! We ate, made wedding dresses out of toilet paper, made Katelin stuff jumbo marsh mellows into her face if she got a question about her fiance wrong, and the other stuff we did, well, I can't really disclose that...it was fun though! I was a dork and forgot to bring my camera so I think Katelin is putting pictures up on her blog tomorrow and I'll snag some :)

Then Sunday was a great time at church and then over to Playa Del Rey to hang with my sister Heidi, brother Mark and some other friends of ours. It was good food and good company, so all in all delicious times!!

Whew! I think that was everything, oh, except for yesterday, when I had a mini-bbq with two friends of mine because one of them is house-sitting for mutual friends of ours, and I don't think he likes being alone all the time, so we had ribs and steak and garlic bread and bbq flavored chips and corn (well, they had corn, I hate the stuff) and I think that was all, oh, and watermelon too :) So it was a fun night!!

Hope your weekends were great and somewhat relaxing and tomorrow I'll let you know the schedule I came up with for summer Christian Challenge, so stay tuned :)



and here is the funny of the day:

Desire v. Effort

I was just re-reading one of my books this morning, The Training of the Twelve, which, incidentally, is an awesome book. It's pretty long (545 pages, still little over 100 to go till I'm done) and some of the wording is hard to get through because it was written in the 1800's, but it is FANTASTIC. The author, A. B. Bruce, goes through the gospels and discusses all the events in them and explains them more fully. It's been really great for me because I've been able to understand them more and get a deeper meaning of how they impacted the times and how revolutionary Jesus truly was. The following excerpt comes from chapter 9, "The Galilean Crisis" in which Bruce was talking about John 6:66-71, where many people decided to leave Jesus right then and there, and Jesus asks His disciples whether they too are going to leave. Peter speaks for them (as he always seemed to do!) and said where would they go, because they knew that Jesus was the true Son of God. Bruce says this about the confidence the 12 disciples had in Jesus to not follow the crowds and fall away too:

"Such implicit confidence as the twelve had in Jesus is possible only through intimate knowledge; for one cannot thus trust a stranger. All, therefore, who desire to get the benefit of this trust, must be willing to spend time and take trouble to get into the heart of the Gospel story, and of its great Subject. The sure anchorage is not attainable by a listless, random reading of the evangelic narratives, but by close careful, prayerful study, pursued it may be for years...Those who grudge the trouble are in imminent danger of the fate which befell the ignorant multitude, being liable to be thrown into panic by every new infidel book, or be scandalized by every strange utterance of the Object of faith."

You're only as close to God as you want to be. Do you truly desire a close relationship with God, or are you okay with doing some good things but still maintain absolute control on your life? I am not asking this to be accusatory, I have to ask this of myself often. It's easy to play the card and sit in church and wax eloquent about God, but do you really *know* Him? Because it takes effort and discipline and energy, but there is no better pursuit in life. If you take the time and truly get to know Him, then you will not regret it. As Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."


If a close relationship with God is a sincere desire of yours, what steps are you taking to get closer to Him today?

Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

Daniel Days

One of my favorite people of the Bible is Daniel. Why you ask? For the simple fact that he is a stud. My favorite passage of his book is ch. 6:1-4 because I was stuck on those 4 verses for about 3 weeks two summers ago, right at the beginning of my time doing Project Impact in summer '08. Here they are:

"It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent."

How could I have been stuck on those verses for about 3 weeks? Well, I just couldn't get past them! I was so impressed and challenged by how Daniel conducted himself that I couldn't stop reading and re-reading that passage. It says that Daniel "so distinguished himself" among the others working "by his exceptional qualities." Now, it doesn't say what those qualities were, but we can make educated guesses right? One of the things I love about this is that it gives you great advice for being a leader. His exceptional qualities might have been diligence, faithfulness, initiative-taking, communicative skills, interpersonal skills, etc. PLUS, at the end it says he was trustworthy and "neither corrupt nor negligent." Basically he conducted himself in such a manner that he set himself apart from the daily pack because he made sure he not only did his job but he did it with excellence. And of course, just like what happens today, people got jealous because he was doing so well. Have you ever had that happen to you? You're trying to do the right thing or you're putting a lot of effort into a presentation or just your daily work, and some people label you as a "goody two-shoes" because the norm for American culture is "how much can I not do and still slide by?"

Daniel didn't care that none of the other people weren't doing work to the same caliber as him. He didn't let it phase him that he would stand out and cause some friction with his co-workers. He did it because that is what we are called to do if you've given your life over to Jesus Christ. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." It doesn't say "most things you do" or "just your family/work stuff" but in ALL things, to glorify God in how you do them. How do we do that? By doing our work with excellence, being pro-active, getting the job done, communicating well with the people above and below us, being faithful and diligent, creative and wise, in other words, by being like Daniel.

He gave us an example to follow if we truly want to do our work with excellence. I think one of the reasons it got to me so much is that I was just about to be one of three staff for 19 college students for a whole summer and needless to say I was a bit overwhelmed. But reading this passage over and over gave me some qualities to cultivate and goals to have in order to make sure that no matter what happened, I did my job with excellence.

Ever since I studied the book of Daniel 2 years ago, he still challenges me and encourages me every time I read him. Are there things you could work on to do your work with more excellence? Or even in relationships? Anything you can do to become more faithful/diligent/communicative/observant/etc today? I know for me one thing I can work on is being more diligent with planning the summer Christian Challenge schedule for the next 10 weeks. I have an idea, and now I need to hammer it out. I'll let you know how that goes!




And now for a completely different note, here is the funny of the day:

Need some encouragement?

So I was going to post this on Wednesday, but I had to re-cap the weekend so here is the encouragement you'll need to get through the very last day of the week. I am putting up videos of a guy named Louis Zamperini who I had never heard of until the fall. I heard him speak and this guy is quickly becoming one of my heroes!!

He is from Torrance, CA and now lives in the Hollywood Hills. He is a sprightly 93 years old and still sharp as a tack. He got into trouble a lot growing up but by the time he was in high school he realized he was a fast runner and he entered the Olympics in 1936!! He didn't fare so well though, because he ate too much while he was there! He said that during that time it was hard to have a full meal seeing as how the Depression was going on, and then he comes to these Olympic games and there is food everywhere! He gained about 10 pounds I think and while he finished last in his race, he caught the eye of a Mr. Adolf Hitler! Even though Louis was going to finish last, he wanted to finish well and he apparently gunned it and had a strong finish, so that when he was done Hitler asked for him *by name* to meet him. When they shook hands and met face-to-face, Hitler simply said he was the "boy with the fast finish." Yeah, he shook Hitler's hand AND even stole a Nazi flag, because, hey why not right?

Then he goes to USC and becomes a life-long Trojan, graduates and enters World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific and on a rescue mission his plane was shot down and he and two others were stuck in a raft for over 40 days with no food or water besides the occasional rain. After 40-some days, one of the guys didn't make it, and then they get rescued/captured by the Japanese. He then endures 2 years of beatings, experimentation and starvation and he only gets out once the war is over. He comes back to the US as a national hero, decorated in war, marries a socialite and all is well, until he goes to sleep every night and has nightmares about his POW imprisonment. He and his wife almost get a divorce, but then she went to this event by a little-known guy by the name of Billy Graham. She becomes a Christian and decides she wants to stay in the marriage. This gets Louis' attention, and he goes to the same event and becomes a Christian too and then a year later he flew back to Japan to visit his old captors, who are now in prison, and he hugs and forgives each one of them to their faces!! WOAH!! There was a short video done about his life by CBS during the winter Olympics of 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Louis was one of the torch-bearers and he ran through the streets and even re-visited his old POW camp - it is quite powerful!!

It was so cool to see the power of Christ in one's life and how He can literally change your heart and help you do things you never thought you would, like forgiving those who tortured you and being able to let go of that bitterness. One of the girls in my small group found his video on youtube and it's only 30-ish min so you can't really watch it at work, but it's definitely something to watch when you have the time - there are 4 videos total and I highly highly *highly* recommend you watch them if you haven't already seen them!









This guy is a living and true hero, and you can't help but be inspired at how God saved him time and time again and helped him survive his experiences!! They are trying to make his life into a movie, and have been for quite some time, even starting in the '50's and again in the '60's and then the '90's, but they always want to gloss over Louis' conversion once he got back and Louis won't allow it to be made otherwise, seeing as how that is the whole point of his life now! He won't take any amount of money to have a movie of his life that is not an accurate depiction of what went on, and I hope someday those bigwigs in Hollywood will put aside their biases and make this incredible story because you can't help but get wrapped up in it!!

Hope this was encouraging to you and hope you have a great weekend!!