More Interviews

Here’s an email I sent to my family after my latest interview:

Subject: Fed Interview
Went really well. I have a second round interview coming up sometime
soon. Will fill you in when I have more details.

Here’s my mom’s reply.

Hi Michael,
I hope that you can get real job !!!!
i pray every day…..

talk to later
with love
from Mom

Turning 22

was good (has been good so far? I guess it is not even halfway over). By far the best birthday surprise/celebration I’ve ever had. I wasn’t expecting nothing, but I try not to build anything just in case things don’t pan out. Regardless, I think even if I had been expecting something, I would have been blown away. Hopefully I’ll post some pictures later, but I’ve never been more grateful. To everyone who wrote me a note, thanks–words of encouragement always mean a lot for me. To all those who helped out and pitched in, you guys are amazing. To the girl who orchestrated it all, you have outdone yourself (and everyone else). I love you all!

Welcome to Miami

Bievenidos a Miami!

We have just arrived in our motel and it is pretty ghettotastic, but definitely sufficient. The floors are tile, and the lighting is Russian Communism circa 1970, but there is blessed A/C. Temperature is about 86 degrees right now and the motel is RIGHT on the beach, which is pretty awesome. It’s pretty muggy, but it actually feels right that it should be…any place that’s this nice and not muggy shouldn’t exist!

The drive was good. Doing shifts worked out pretty well. Nothing majorly scary happened, although we did lose each other a few times. Walkie Talkie’s are the best idea I had for this trip yet. You would think that cell phones would be the same thing, but its not even close.

We stopped by Duke for a little bit and Will Kang entertained us. It was pretty awesome just being able to see him and talk with him. I think it was also comforting to realize that once we graduate, we do not disappear. Existence continues long after college.

If anyone has suggestions for what to do in Miami, let me know.

God’s Grace

With the economy as it is, getting anything is pretty much only by His grace. Why is it only in times like these that we attribute positive events to the grace of God? Aren’t our lives always dictated by the grace of God? Ever good and perfect things comes from God right? Must remember to hold onto this truth even in the good times.

Michael,

I enjoyed our discussion last week and wanted to let you know that we will be moving forward with you in the process. Congratulations. We are still working out the logistics for the next round of interviews, but hope to sort that out by the end of next week. Give me a call at some point next week and we can discuss next steps. Looking forward to speaking with you.

Best,
Steve

Dear Lord. Thank You. Amen.

Resurrection Power

Last week I heard my second message this semester entitled “Resurrection Power.” The first was one by Rick James at Vision and the latest was from Bob Koo, a CU/KCCC alum (class of 2000) who is now a youth pastor, at Large Group. Both covered the same basic idea, which I felt like posting to my blog for some reason. It also turns out that our spring retreat theme will revolve somewhat around this idea too, and I think God is nudging me a little bit.

34 And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
-Mark 8:34-35

Of course most central to Christianity is the gospel message: Christ died on the cross for me to clear the debt of my sins. However, also central to Christianity is the idea of serving others and leading them to Christ as well. Now I don’t like to oversimplify the Gospel or any of its component parts, but part of me as a dork/geek/dweeb/nerd likes the simplicity of a good logical progression. The one behind resurrection power goes something like this:

Jesus died to resurrect us from the dead -> He gives us that same power, to go into dead places and resurrect them -> In order to do this, we must do as Jesus did and DIE -> When we die to ourselves, Jesus will resurrect us again that we might continue to do his works

The thing that hit me when I heard this the first time, and that hit me again when I heard it last Thursday, is not so much the empowerment–that we have been given power and authority to wield the resurrection power–but more the continual call to death. In order to really use resurrection power, we have to die (less of me is more of You). And every time we want to use it, we have to die again.

I think the interesting part is the more you are serving, the more you should be dying, the more you need Jesus to resurrect you. If you’re not dying, you’re not tapping into the power of His resurrection. And its so easy not to die–we all want to live, especially in that safe ambiguous middle place where it seems like we can have both the world and salvation–but the call is to die, and if you’re looking to serve, you have to master that heart.

Delaying Bullets

What’s the point of dodging a bullet if it just hits you later? That’s not really dodging them…that’s just slowing them down.  My thesis meeting is tomorrow and I have done little to no work on it.  Sweet.

In other news, where did Honda get their media people?

Dodging Bullets

Michael,

I am going to have to see you Monday now unfortunately. Can you make 11 am?

Bruce

God smiles on me today.  I got this email at 12:55 PM and my meeting was supposed to be at 2 PM.  I had done about…7 minutes of work on my thesis the entire night.  Was a bit too giddy to work and a bit too tired to get over being giddy.

THANK YOU LORD!

Jube!

Spring study break was pretty amazing, for many many reasons.  I wish I could post them all here, but its 4:41 AM and I am crazy tired.  Huge props to God for letting me survive this day and for blessing me with what happened this evening.  <3 for Jube!, <3 for ATC, <3 for 1204, <3 for KCCC, <3 for God.

FML.

Minasan,

Are you surviving this snow storm? We have our class from 2:40-3:45 as usual. We have the test as we planned.

See you then,
Mamoru Hatakeyama

Resolutions

So part of the impetus to start this blog was a resolution that I made about a week ago to take at least one memorable photo every day for the rest of the semester.  Now, as many of know, my episodic memory is not necessarily the best (this is why I value pictures a lot, and also part of the reason that I detest people who delete photos already taken off of a camera–it’s like they’re deleting my memories).

I thought that just having the photos themselves would be enough, but I realize looking back that I am already forgetting why I took certain photos to begin with.  The memories are already fading!  I think that each photo and its accompanying story needs some sort of memorial, which I hope to do here to some extent (maybe not daily, but the ones that I think are of worth).

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve lost the cable to transfer pictures from my camera to my computer.  I don’t have a SD card reader and the camera I have uses USB to mini flat, which is neither mini usb nor micro usb…it is some weird space-saving and intensely aggravating standard adopted to make my life difficult.  I bit the bullet and bought a pretty nice card reader (because I figured having another one of these cables would be idiotic) for $1.99.  Hopefully the uploads will start as soon as it gets here.

On a side note, anybody have a preferred image hoster?  I sort of don’t like Flickr’s interface.  I’ve heard decent things about imageshack and freeimagehosting.net…