January 6, 2004
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HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL! 2004 WOOT WOOT. Another year to extend God’s Kingdom. The Harvest is plentiful but the workers are few…step it up IV. We gotta allow God in every aspect of our lives which includes school and our campus by default. No doubt about that.
GO HERE….. http://urbana.org/_u2003.cfm
Well, well, well…tis been a while since I made a log entry into my xanga. This past year has been absolutely stupendous. If I had the time to list everything God has done this past quarter and year the list would probably go on for a while, maybe forever. I hope everyones breaks have gone well. My Christmas was so awesome. Family, friends and a lot of little rascals were chillin at my house this year for Christmas. It was a blast about 30 of us, wowzers. I had a lot of fun with the crackhead kids which is what I like to call them cuz they are so crazy and funny. However, this year I locked my bedroom door so they couldn’t go in. Due to last years incident I avoided have having history repeat itself. Many of my cousins asked where my room was and I just told them Stephen doesn’t a room, he sleeps with the dog outside. And they believed me, ahhahahah….haha…ahhhhhhhh kids, so funny. Other than that it was just a grand time with family and the most exciting part was the celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Sweetness. This year my parents bought me some colone which is kind of funny. They were like, it might be of some good use, chuckle chuckle hah. All fun and games though. Enough said and done about that.
A day after Christmas I was packing for Urbana…how exciting. I have never been to Chicago, Illinois so I was stoked alone with some uncertainty as to what God had intended for me to hear and respond to. I flew out from the Oakland Airport at 6:30am for Chicago Midway Airport. O, and Greg Ng was there my other brother, hahaha…j/k, we have the same last name and so does Kat Ng from IV too, funny stuff. Anyways, I was all prepared for this trip, got my warm clothes and what not but when I got there there was no snow and it wasn’t even that cold. I was like, man this feels just like Sac town or a cold day in Davis. Shoot, I like over packed then; from what people were telling me about Chicago, they told me you’re gonna be a poscile when you get there. So I listened and packed as if I was going to like Antarctica or something…hecka wack. But I didn’t see any penguins there though, hahaha. My Urbana Team from Sun Grove consisted about 14 people including the leaders and they were: Nancy & Randal, Derek, Emily, Nick, Jenny, Jennifer, Johnathan, Josh, Evangelene, Ted, Mike, Tim and Myself. What an awesome experience and I loved spending everyone moment with them there.
I also got to hang and chillin with my Davis peps at Urbana too. Pure sweetness, and there were a lot of them may I mention. Juke Box and Greg were also in the same dorm building as I was by conincident, wow. Mike Benson was my roommate alone with this hecka awesome dude by the name of John but everyone calls Him Juan. He is from the Navajo Indian Nation and New Mexico area. He was hecka cool to get to know, had some cool converstaions with Him and may I add He is a good guitar player too. Great times of worship as well. I wish I had more time to get to know him other than just the 5 days we were there. Mike, thanks for being my roommate at Urbana, it has allowed me to get to know you better and I am glad it was intended to be that way by God’s will.
I also decided to be a small group leader at Urbana and I tell you the experience was awesome and it stretched me and taught me some new things. I learned better how to facilitate and shepard a bible study and I was better able to trust in the Holy Spirit to guide me when I didn’t feel prepared. My small group was pretty tight, I enjoyed it a lot and the blessings with the choice to serve in this small manner was definately worth it. I too wish I had more time to get to know my group better. The first small group was tight but I think it was very awkward cuz no one really knew each other so it made it hard to talk and interact the first day but it wasn’t bad. It got better progressively. Here is were you develop and establish new relationships with other fellow christians who are from all over the country and sometimes from around the world.
I also got to go to many seminars and I visited many exibits as well. I dont’ want to type everything I saw or liked but one thing I will mention is…the one seminar that I went to allowed me to better understand missions and reaching out to others (particulary of the Hindu) religion. The seminar that I attended was Reaching out to Hindu’s on Campus. it wasn’t that long but it broadened my perspective of where they are coming from and building relationships and friendship rather than just reaching out to them just to witness to them, that doesnt help, cuz then it really doesnt come from the heart and doesn’t really demonstrate that you care cuz the motive is just to witness to them. Its pretty common and straitghtfoward interms of it should be that way for everyone we talk to in our lives. Sometimes, I have found myself to wanna know someone because I want to witness to them but then do I really care for them and want to be there friend, there is a difference. Awesome stuff though. O, I also got some cool book I want to read but I hope I can find time to read them this quarter.
Ok, I think I’ll leave it here for now, cuz I am tired of typing so much and there is just too much to tell and I can’t gather enough word to describe the Urbana experience. Sitll thinking of one word that can describe Urbana, if you got one, let me know…I’ll be thinking of one………………………………………………………………………………………….
