Kairos W of Gracepoint Fellowship Church

Kairos W’s youngest member, Jessica, turned 18 years old today! Kairos W decided to pay her a quick surprise visit at Stern to celebrate with her. As it was a cold day, we decided to stake out in the car until Jessica arrived from DT meeting. As Jessica made her way up the hill, Crissy went out and intercepted Jessica, creating a diversion, while the rest of us hustled to get out of the car and light up the cake. It was quite windy, but we made it work, and sang Jessica a ‘beautiful’ rendition of Happy Birthday. Our voices carried all the way from the parking lot to Jessica’s room, and her roommates who overheard us hollered, ‘Happy Birthday, Jessica’ from their bedroom window! To end the time, we enjoyed raspberry cake (which we ate over the car trunk), and started a new Kairos W tradition of sharing one thing we each appreciated about the birthday girl!

These are the frames we made for our Compassion Day Visit to Berkeley Pines Care Center. The frames read, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 )

Jennifer, Ming, & Ning display their beautiful frames, crafted with love!

After Bible study, we went out for yummy Fenton’s Ice Cream and celebrated Crissy’s decision to accept Christ at the Winter Retreat! We feasted on some great snacks/desserts and we each shared 1 word to describe our year 2008, and 1 word we hoped would describe our year 2009!

It was a wonderful start to a new semester at Mt. Hermon! There, we spent three days in the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains, and soaked in God’s challenge to us to be true disciples in the upcoming year. For some, it was a brand new call that warranted a brand new decision. During the first message, Pastor Ed taught from Luke 14:15-24, and we saw through that passage that it was often the good things, wealth, accomplishments, romance, –that keep us from turning to God. We think what we have is so great, and that what God has to offer is bland. But the reality is that He is inviting us to a banquet; a banquet of true joy. After all, he is the God of creation–a creation that is teeming with life and variety and abundance. Pastor Ed poured out his heart for us, and indeed it was a banquet for the soul. In addition to great teaching, we enjoyed scrumptious meals, such as pork and beef roasts, baked sweet potatoes, and colorful salads. Over these wonderful meals, we enjoyed fellowship with members of Gracepoint across all of the departments, from all over the bay area.

But perhaps the deepest fellowship we enjoyed were through the personal testimonies that many bravely shared; stories of how God rescued them from a place that they could not free themselves from. We heard from many of the older ones who are now huge blessings and sources of love in our community. It was freeing for many to hear that yes, while sin happens to us all, grace, mercy, forgiveness and redemption can happen to us all as well, if we will let it happen. Through these testimonies many found the strength and courage too, to come out into the light and get the prayer and support they needed to go from unfree to free. And who can forget the praise! Joe Horness, a talented and godly praise leader flew in from Chicago to lead us in worship and prayer. His passion for worship really led us into the presence of God. I guess you could say thats exactly what the whole weekend did: it brought us all to really experience the life-changing presence of God, and fired us up for the year. Jenn, Jessica, Jennifer, Crissy, and I had a grand time! We hope you can join us next year

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pwc0QJtU4DF_gXLLeQJPICQ

Hello Girls! More to come, but I just wanted to post A2f Gold’s “Vamos Alameda” video. Maybe each of you can write a few sentences about your favorite part of TC for this post? =) For your entertainment, click here!

Pictures from Thanksgiving Celebration Preparation (11/14, 11/20, 11/21/08) at Wheeler Hall and the YWCA.

Post-TC dinner at Rick & Sue’s place in Alameda:

(words & pictures contributed by Crissy, sophomore)

I hope everyone is having/had a wonderful thanksgiving break so far! As you all may know, some of us decided to stay for the break, and what else is better than celebrating thanksgiving with the sisters and brothers of Gracepoint!?! Someone brilliantly planned a great potluck dinner for those of us who stayed! So we had just as much fun today as well.

Our very own Kairos W girls decided to contribute to the potluck by making feta cheese + cranberries + walnut salad, brownies, and sweet Korean pancakes! We all started the day off early with Jenn picking us (Ming, Ning, Jenn C., Judy, and Crissy) up from Berkeley.

Jenn C. snacking on a cracker on the way to Alameda

After arriving at Jenn’s house and settling down, we started off the day with some good ol’ hearty BRUNCH! Crissy and Jenn C. worked hard on the blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, Ning cooked up sausage with grilled onions, Judy and Ming made a supreme mix of vegetable Omlette, and Jenn was everywhere helping all of us out! Oh and of course, we couldn’t have made the brunch complete without Carmen’s help in getting the ketchup!!!! Sadly, there are no pictures of our awesome breakfast (although some of the girls might have some in their cameras) since the author of this entry was too busy eating and cooking (hehe).

When we were all done eating our enormous brunch, we decided it was a good idea to take a walk along the seaside of beautiful Alameda. So we all hopped in the car and drove off!

Ming & Judy ready to go take a walk

Thanks for the ride, Carmen!

It was a bit cold in Alameda, but we all managed to have fun and work off some of that heavy breakfast.

Jenn showing us her frisbee skills

Ming, Jenn C., and Judy

Group picture take 1!

Walking back to the car

Group picture take 2!

So after our pleasant walk around beautiful Alameda, we all decided to go over to the place where some of the ISM girls live! They opened their home to us so that we could watch ‘Kung Fu Panda’ on a projector! Some of the girls snacked on some grapes while we watched the movie (sooo good!), and when it was all over, we played Push-On and then King Kong shower!

yay!

After returning from watching ‘Kung Fu Panda’ we headed straight to Jenn’s house and back into the kitchen, where we began another round of cooking. This time, we baked brownies for the potluck and labored over the Korean sweet pancakes. Some of the girls did some Pilates during this as well (got to burn off all that heavy brunch somehow!)

We were all having a good time cooking and eating that time managed to fly ahead without us! We were running a little late, but thanks to Jenn’s 60 mph-on-a-30mph-street-driving we were at Northloop within 3 minutes (this is NOT a joke!). Vamos a la Northloop indeed!

Yes, they ARE doing the Vamos a la Northloop dance. Yeah, I know.

The rest of the day/night can be summarized in three simple words: Food, laughter, and games! Praise God for such an amazing day of giving thanks and just being happy to be in each other’s company!

Judy drawing a portrait of Elise; they became pretty good friends!

Elise with her picture!

Elise adding details to her portrait!

We had a wonderful time at our annual Thanksgiving Retreat at GGBTS in Mill Valley, as church members from various departments shared reflections on the theme, Joy of Salvation.

When we arrived, Praxis ECM (Elderly Care Ministry) took us around to “pick-up” residents who wanted to join us for service. Jessie walked with Bessie to service (which was right down the hall), who at the age of 94 was still insistent that she pick up her own hefty bible and push her way to service with her walker. It was truly an honor to meet her, as she was a missionary in China in the early 1930s for many years. Though she couldn’t recount many details of that experience or of her life to us, there was a resounding look of joy, peace and godliness in her eyes that told the story of her (almost a century-old!) faithfulness in Christ, or Christ’s faithfulness to her. Students combed the halls inviting anyone they saw, bringing anyone who wanted to come. When we entered the service area, we were warmly greeted with Carmelita’s friendly and vibrant Italian “hello” (She’s the woman in in the picture above). We started with praise, singing “Your Love is Deep” and “This is My Father’s House,” and followed with a message from John 14:1-4, in which we talked about heaven and how God has prepared a room, a place, for each of his children, and how God wants to prepare a place for each person, but that we first have to choose to enter into God’s house through Christ. We mingled, we embraced, we laughed. We listened to stories of hardship and resilience, we held the hands of those who could listen but not respond. As we interacted with precious people nearing the end of their lives, all of us were forced to look at the life ahead of us and wonder if we were living in a way we’d be proud of at the end of our journeys. All of us left glowing, and shared how we were impacted by the visit at lunch at Crossroads. All of us were wondering “When are we going back? Connecting with and loving people God’s way and through God’s eyes, always leaves you wanting more. We went to bring some joy and warmth to the elderly there, but as in many instances in trying to love others, we ourselves received much, much more!