Yesterday was great
but also tiring. I woke up around 12 after another late night session of doing
nothing useful. Still being tired, i took me about 2 hours to recharge my
batteries to start the day. i had three main agendas, barbecue at dan tam's,
work and dinner. However, because i was so tired i couldn't work and now i am
scared of going to work since i left the place a mess and did not finish my
project. The barbecue was very interesting cause i met a lot of new people.
Most notably was this guy called Simon who was chinese american who grew up in
Logan, Utah. His Dad came from China after being converted to Mormonism only to
get disillusioned with reality. As such Simon seemed quite disillusioned with
religion himself. It showed me the danger in the Mormon and Christian church,
where some missionaries walk 15 miles to gain a convert and put a huge burden
on him without lifting a finger to help him. Words are cheap but actions speak
louder. When evangelizing, it is very easy(sometimes) to present Christianity
in the best light, (it is a phenomenal faith, dont get me wrong here) but when
the convert comes to the church and sees Christians (especially immature
ones) in their everyday life, it is
quite possible for the devil to lure them away. As such i believe that a church
must balance its evangelical efforts with preparing the church to receive and
protect incoming believers. I pray that God will send these incoming believers
into church communities that are ready to recieve them. Perhaps Churches should
have a way of incorporating new believers into the community in a way that will
show the freedom and grace we have in Christ Jesus.
I rested a bit until
Hanna Kim showed up to help me make dinner. Making dinner was tiring but
Hanna's presence made the whole event very enjoyable. She was very easy to talk
to and thus led to many good conversations. The most important topic was had to
do with homosexuality and how one could accept homosexuals while believing that
homosexuality was immoral. I believe that one can accept and love a gay person
even if one thinks their lifestyle is not in God's will. In my opinion, one can
still be close to another without accepting things important to that person. I
for instance, consider God and Christianity to be the most important things in
my life. In fact they are important to me than my temporary life on earth. Yet,
my best friend is not a Christian. He used to be but he became agnostic. I
could have held up Christianity has a friendship seive and claimed that unless
one accepted Christianity, one could not be my friend. A lot of gays do this
with their sexual orientation. They firmly believe that unless one accepted
their gayness, one could not accept them. But this not necessarily true. Jesus
Christ taught that acceptance of a person into one's life is not include
acceptance of one's character or habit. I can have a wife who does not like
soccer or does not share my love for dogs but that would not be a big deal
unless a choose to make it one. The difficulty in this argument comes when one
is trying to change something about you that you hold dear. If I had a friend
that was trying to derail me from the Christian path, I would show him the door
as soon as he started gaining some success. I admit that it would be hard to be
close to one who was unreasonably antagonistic towards God. A homosexual might
make the same point, that most Christians are trying to get them to give up
their homosexuality and as such must be shown the door. In fact, most sinners
including christians themselves face this dilemna when another Christian is
getting them to change a bad habit that they feel good about. In such cases, the
Christian doing the correcting must demonstrate that they do indeed love the
the correctee and have enough wisdom to avoid giving harmful advice. As such
Christians must learn to show love to gays while preaching against
homosexuality. We must have programs that will help people out of their
dependence on having a love affair. Hopefully we can meet the need for love
that a homosexual will have when he gives up his partner so as to be right with
God. Perhaps it would be good to have opposite sex mentors and supporters for
celibate homosexuals who can show them affection without being uncomfortable. I
for instance, can show a lot of love and support for a lesbian though it would
be very challenging to do the same for a gay guy (unless he is masculine and
does not show too much touchy feely affection).
Christians can indeed get along quite well with homosexuals while
preaching against it. This i believe is God's will.
Hanna told me a funny story about
Martins that I will have to talk about later.

Today was on the
whole not a bad day. I woke up late again for church hitting the snooze button
about 6 times. Took a quick shower and went to church. The sermon was good and
talked about making sure u understand that God deserves all the glory. So in order
for one to be used greatly by God, one must learn that we are earthenware
vessels with treasure that God has put in us.
All throughout today
it has been becoming clearer and clearer that leadership is what God is
preparing me for. I do not think i yet possess good leadership skills and am
very content to remain a follower now but I believe that God has given me the
qualities/capacity to become a leader. For instance, i seem to be able to
easily gain the confidence and liking of groups of people that i have been
meeting recently. I understand that this is nothing of my own doing and is
absolutely a gift from God. I have decided that i will make a concerted effort
to develop leadership skills in order to become a good leader. I believe that i
must first learn the role of a servant because the only kind of leader I and
God want me to be is a servant leader be in business, politics or christian
community. I will also volunteer for more leadership oppurtunities in real
world testimonial group.
During soccer today,
i had the oppurtunity to start practicing leadership skills. I ended up with a
team that had a very little individual or team skills. Rami's team tore us up
badly. I tried to direct my team but their skills were too weak too follow
those directions. I was tempted to do two things, one was to keep telling them
what to do specifically which would put more pressure on them and risk making
it less fun for them. The second was to keep quiet about it and just play my
game. I felt neither choice was right. The first one was a selfish manuever and
what i would be doing was to sacrifice everyone else's happiness for my desire
to win the game. The second was less selfish but would leave the team without a
leader which would reduce their fun. The choice I finally made was to keep
encouraging and to keep giving out pointers. This required a lot of patience
and i had to work hard not to show my frustration. In the end though, God
totally rewarded my efforts. First the defence really came together and Matt
had some amazing stops. The offence was also clicking to some extent. I think
on the whole everyone had a lot of fun. I did too. Seeing the whole team come
together and all these newbies really picking up their game made me feel so
proud of them. Marcello's incredible dribbling skills made me relearn some of
my defensive techniques of not going to close to a dribbler. Leadership requires
incredible patience. That is what I learnt today