It was a tough day…but it was only tough because I kept procrastinating, procrastinating, and procrastinating. It’s just…man, how can I stop doing this? I didn’t even get to school until noon, and then get stopped by a rest visiting Carlos, lunch, Williams milkshake break, brief visit to Jochen, pseudo Bible study break for dinner, sleep, and now Treasure Hunters, all the while checking constantly on warfish. I have only myself to blame for leaving a huge chunk of this assignment behind and having 4 project proposals to evaluate within the next 12 hours.

Random notes: It was frustrating to read the Bible this morning, probably because I couldn’t concentrate due to surrounding circumstances, also because the scripture goes so deep and I just wasn’t ready to face it; talked to Samuel briefly over msn this morning…he sounded tired, but at least he’s in Taiwan now; the fight to leave the sinful life and head towards holiness is tough, and continues every moment of everyday; I guess I prefer this relaxed lifestyle over the always busy lifestyle, but I was probably too relaxed; I guess it also explains why my funding had been lower than before…but when the cost of everything else is going up, it’s getting tougher and tougher; I used to be very afraid of starting msn conversations, but somehow that has changed…slightly…; there is a fantastic thunderstorm going on right now, hopefully that would cool things down dramatically…; I’ve discovered iTunes radio…hope it doesn’t eat up too much bandwidth…

I’m grateful to God for…

• reconnecting with Kai over msn yesterday;
• giving me a company of people during this stressful day;
• once again calming me down when I try to panic;
• reminding me of His presence over the course of the day; and
• the air conditioning in my room.

I can’t stop the procrastination! Each time I keep saying to myself, alright, I won’t leave it until the end, I won’t leave it until the end, only to promptly leave it until the end. So now I’m faced with a big assignment to write up plus four project proposals to evaluate in a single day tomorrow…sigh… Why do I always do this?

Once again, the cfc sermon cuts so deep…it’s about the issue of anger. And quite frankly, I used to think that I’m this good guy who never get angry…and boy was it an awakening during recent events. So yeah, I have trouble with this. I need to contemplate and pray more about this. Slow to anger…angry at the right thing… A few more notes about today: I was tired the entire morning, so I wasn’t going to stay for the kwcac lunch, but for Li Zhen’s sake (and he’s not even there!), I stayed…; I had an awesome time during the music worship at cfc today (“Praise Him you heavens and all that’s above…” “My Redeemer lives…” “Your grace is enough…”), where I almost cried but didn’t because of all the people around me…oops; I hope Samuel’s alright, haven’t heard from him since he departed to Taiwan; 4 people for the prayer meeting tonight, and it was good, and I’m learning not to “pre-pray” for making the concluding prayer; getting myself all worked up for the Google Picasa and Apple iTunes for nothing; pictures from the zoo are up on my photo album (compressed pictures), or for download (full-size, about 150MB); “Be still and know that I am God…”

I’m grateful to God for…

• the challenging sermon at cfc today;
• a wonderful time of worship at cfc;
• letting me pray to Him, and reminding me the promise of rest that I can find in Jesus;
• stirring me about having a church family to love; and
• providing me with more than enough.

The car hit the 50K milestone yesterday, while on its way back from Toronto, just pass the exit to 427 North, at around 11pm. Now we’re halfway towards the next Millionaire level…

Friday afternoon, I somehow managed to get myself into the Grad House (first time in 1.5 years, apparently) with Carlos and stayed for about an hour and a half. There was just too much alcohol flowing around, I think, and the conversations were kind of…shallow…so, yeah, I probably won’t do that again.

The heat wave continues, hitting 34 degrees today. Yikes.

28 hours, 4 cities, 273.7 kilometres. It was quite serene to stay at Andrew’s place overnight. The morning was spent at the zoo. It was just way too hot…and most of us quit by 2pm, only visited the African and the Indo-Malayan sections of the zoo. Too tiring, I say. I guess the good thing is that I met a few interesting new people, and got reconnected with Paul. Rest of the day was spent resting, avoiding the ourdoors, buying dumplings, having a good dinner, shopping at T&T, and shopping for “cheap” gas (ended up with 104.9… it was 110.9 in Waterloo). Still don’t know why I went, but it was good, I guess.

It’s funny how I’m still in January for my “Bible reading plan.” I guess I didn’t anticipate turning away from speed reading to really slow reading. At this rate, I may finish February by the end of this year, and finishing the entire Bible by 2011… It’s good, though, because I don’t think I’ve ever studied the Bible so deeply before.

I’m grateful to God for…

• providing protection during this trip;
• meeting new friends and reconnecting with Paul, Andrew and Mary;
• giving me occassional flashes of moments where I experienced absolute surety of living in the Lord;
• keeping my body going in the zoo amidst the brutal heat and some great pain in my body; and
• inviting me to come closer and closer to Him.

I had a dream…or really, a nightmare, which sort of showed me that life could have been much much worse than what I have now. I’m just blessed with a nice and quiet place to live, there is no need to move, homework assignments that are manageable, and a car to go to places.

Minorly interesting things happened in the afternoon, and now I’m in Andrew’s place in Toronto! Going to the zoo tomorrow…

I’m grateful to God for…

• calming me down amidst another wave of strong temptations this morning;
• being a God of mercy, and a God who loves me even now;
• helping me greatly with the matroid homework, making it seem plausible now;
• bringing me to Toronto safely; and
• giving me an extraordinary peace after the devotion today.

Today, I find myself to be quite agitated, unable to sit still for the class. I just felt like moving around, doing something with my body, expend some excess energy, even though I was dead tired. It’s just…strange. I wasn’t like that before… In any case, I’m procrastinating on the matroids assignment…sigh…

Just an observation about mccf this evening…the text was Acts 2, the events at Pentecost. It just seems that people are so willing to accept or at least nonresistance to Yiwen’s interpretation of it, which is that what was recorded was some kind of hyperbole to describe God spreading the gospel to all the nations, and the events really never happened. Why couldn’t we just accept the scripture literally? Especially considering that Acts is considered a “history” book… And to consider this section differently just because one thinks that the events recorded are ludicrous while treating the rest of the book a different way is just…I don’t know…strange, that’s all. I guess I should have spoken up more during the Bible study instead of writing things down here… Anyway, we all went to dinner afterwards. Played Connect Four while waiting. I beat both Yiwen and Jeff multiple times, only to be beaten by David…heh.

I’m grateful to God for…

• showing me how my repentance this time around is different from what it used to, hence showing spiritual growth;
• a chance to connect with Chen Jie a little bit;
• good time of fellowship with mccf this evening;
• continuing to remind me that this life that I live is not mine; and
• the friends He has gave me, which is more important than what I would ever imagined.

It was a bizarre and disasterous morning. All I can say is, all throughout yesterday and today, my mind is constantly singing “Your grace is enough…” I’m starting to wonder what does it mean…

The rest of the day was spent on assignment, puzzles, and sleep. More of the latter two than the first one.

I’m grateful to God for…

• showing me how weak I am in resisting temptations, asking me once again to fully depend on Him;
• forgiving me of my transgression;
• giving me an idea on how to start the matroid assignment;
• once again, keeping life interesting and challenging…never a dull moment; and
• showing me that there is truth to His promise that there is always a way out of temptations.

I do realize that most temptations come in the morning, right after I wake up…so I guess there’s an even more urgent need to connect with God immediately after waking up, eh? I’ve been quite sloppy and keep delaying devotional time…so maybe I should get it back to the morning. Today, finally finished studying Psalm 20, and I absolutely love this verse:

Some trust in chariots, some in horses;
But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.

Interesting day it was. I did no work on the research the past week, kept delaying it and delaying it, just didn’t want to do it. Still, I pray to God for His help, and even though I was lazy, He still came through. Once at school at around 9, I reluctantly started the research work, and started to realize something that I glanced over in the past. This led to a minor error which has made progress done in the past month or so meaningless. On one hand, that’s disappointing; but on the other hand, I found something to talk about in the supervisor meeting. So yeah, there it is. Matroid class was boring as usual. Went to Costco with Li Zhen in the afternoon. We hit a minor traffic jam, but I was really calm, and thanking God that He really gave me patience. When we return, however, we see that the other side of the highway was jammed like crazy because of an accident. Then I was thanking God for the impeccable timing that avoided this huge jam. Also thankful that He didn’t put me through this test of extreme patience. The evening was spent on puzzles and sleep…didn’t really want to do any work, despite the looming assignment and project deadlines…

I’m grateful to God for…

• saving me from a possibly disasterous supervisor meeting despite my extreme procrastination;
• the timing of the trip to Costco that avoided a massive traffic jam;
• a good friend in Li Zhen;
• being such a personal King, One who answers us, defends us, helps us, strengthens us, remembers us, and accepts us; and
• humbling me in realizing that so many brothers and sisters are praying for me.

Struggled the whole day trying to mark the assignment. It’s not hard to mark, it’s just tedious…like usual… Of course I’m supposed to be doing research and matroid and stuff, but didn’t get around to doing that. The Bible study was surprisingly nice, I felt. It was unprepared, so we all studied the scripture at the same time, and just discussed our insights. It felt very free, and much more rewarding, I believe. Of course this means that we probably didn’t go as deep as we possibly could, but this is still good. Maybe it works for really small groups, like the 4 people that we had today. In the Bible study, I also wanted to try something else…I wanted to look Francis in the eyes and see if any anger and pain swell up in me. And there were none. And I’m just very grateful to God for making this seemingly impossible transformation possible. I sort of feel ashamed that I didn’t truly forgive Francis earlier, but it’s all in the past, and it’s a new beginning now, I think.

So about my mom’s suggestion that I take a year off… Reasons for not doing it: taking a year off may mean that I most likely have trouble coming back; I have friends here that I want to care for; I’m much more comfortable with the Canadian environment than the Taiwanese environment. Reasons for doing it: I’m really tired of academia; I’m so far from my family that maybe it’s time to heal the gap; the possibility to travel the world. Conclusion? I have no idea.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the healing that He has done in me in dealing with Francis;
• a wonderful time of Bible study this afternoon;
• helping me trudge through the marking today;
• continuing to challenge me to truly humble myself and cast all my worries to Him; and
• really calming me down whenever I start to panic.

I attended the joint prayer and worship meeting of Christian clubs across campus. It was quite a challenging time for me. For one, I’m being around strangers again, with only a couple of familiar faces. Even though I knew all of us are brothers and sisters in Christ, the timid nature of me came out again, having a hard time connecting with them and praying together with them. Also, I see the passion that these people have for Christ, and I feel ashamed for my cold cold heart. Why don’t I have the passion for God that they have? Is there something wrong with me? Or maybe I haven’t grown and experienced enough of God? Another challenge is that the focus of prayers is mostly on other people…the students on campus, the people of the KW community, missionaries in the world, etc. I had a hard time putting sincerety into these prayers, even though Paul specifically told us to first and foremost pray for everyone (1 Timothy 2:1). In any case, I barely connected with James (he’s definitely very passionate about God), had a long conversation with George (whom I still couldn’t figure out his real name), and had a brief chat with Billy (he’s just so fun and energetic, but at the same time so caring and godly). I’m very glad that God had brought me to this meeting to challenge me, and make new friends at the same time.

A few things to contemplate… (a) Mom wants me to take a year off to be with her. Initially I thought that was just crazy. But now…maybe I need this break…but then I would be giving up so much…sigh…I don’t know. (b) Had a brief but very interesting exchange of emails with the Canadian organizer of the WPC team. I actually landed in 5th place for the qualifier among the 39 Canadian contestants, so I think there really is a good chance that I can go to Bulgaria… (c) I’m back to getting addicted to puzzles…but this time, only in moderation…maybe. (d) I’m really an extreme pessimist, am I not? I always think that I’m in such an incredibly bad situation that, even though good things happened, I still maintain this thinking about this tough life that I’m having…

I’m grateful to God for…

• the difficult lesson learned in cfc today;
• the challenges that He gave me in the prayer and worship meeting tonight;
• continuing the peace that He gave me and gradually removing my fears;
• giving me these tough days of trials and tests, which really demanded me to hang on to Him; and
• keeping this desire to seek Him burning.

The cfc sermon this morning is on judging…it was very humourous, but at the same time, man, it cuts so deep… I’m wondering if my judgmental attitude had contributed to the painful events in recent history. I’m wondering if I should contemplate on that, or simply move on and pray that the Lord would give me wisdom to “make the right judgment”…

After cfc, went to kwcac joint service. There’s this send-off party for Pastor Henry after the service, but I was just too tired (both physically tired and tired of the very long first speech), so I skipped it and went home. Didn’t talk to anyone, either. Slept for a long time once home…I don’t know how I was able to sleep so much these days, and my body was too weak to get up even if I was awake…strange.

Two forces are pulling me apart. On one hand, the panic about being so far behind on academic work with a million other things bothering me at the same time. On the other hand, the calming voice of God asking me to just trust Him and let go of everything to Him. It’s so hard, man…so so hard…

I now find it a struggle to open the Bible and read the Word of God. The main reason is that knowing this is indeed the Word of God, the task of wrestling with the scripture, constantly asking for the enlightening from the Holy Spirit, and trying to figure out its deepest meaning to my life are quite challenging. But I know it’s good, and I need it desperately, but often the lazy side of me just doesn’t want to tackle this challenge. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.”

Didn’t do much in the morning except the usual RRRR. Purposely avoided checking email since last night because I was kind of afraid of what I might be reading. After reluctantly finished the day’s devotion, I finally got to it. There, I finally found closure from Francis (and I still don’t know how, but that was the feeling that I had). Also, I found out that because I ranked 6th among Canadian contestantas in the wpc qualifier, there is a good possibility that I may be able to go to Bulgaria this October for the World Puzzle Championship. Fellowship was ok, not so good because I still don’t how to approach Francis in person, but good in the prayer meeting in a sense that Chen Jie and I shared a bit of our personal struggles, and I may have made a new close friend there. Dinner was ok, finally went to Swiss Chalet…heh. After dinner, I was tired, but went to Dooly’s with Ed and Li Zhen anyway. This would be my guilty pleasure, since I still got a ton of work to do… We played darts (which I never played before), but somehow I won 5 games versus 3 games each that they won…so that’s kind of shocking. Sadly, at the end of it, I find myself still shying away from any possible public display of masculinity…heh. Anyway, it’s been an interesting and joyful day, if not suspenseful. Thank you, Lord, for the abundance of blessings today.

I’m grateful to God for…

• somehow bringing Li Zhen to the mccf praise and worship night back in March…I never knew how Tony’s testimony helped him and Penny so much;
• preparing my heart to face today’s challenges;
• the sense of relief in receiving Samuel’s email;
• finally releasing me from holding a grudge against Francis; and
• possibly getting closer to Chen Jie.

It’s quite discomforting to wake up in the morning and say to myself, “man, I’m not ready to face the day.” I know that I need to connect with God, but I’m struggling to do that as well… There’s a lot of unnecessary fear that arose because of this.

I guess when I wrote that first paragraph in the morning, what I didn’t realize is that I would be spending the entire day exchanging emails with Francis. It’s very emotionally draining, but I think it’s all necessary.

I’m grateful to God for…

• being invited to a lunch with Li Zhen and Chen Jie…coincidentally, I was thinking all along that I should take them out for dinner today…;
• repeatedly calming me down and giving me a rational mind while I repeatedly get unnecessarily angry with what Francis wrote;
• reminding me once again to love Francis as a brother in Christ;
• providing me with more than enough sleep for the day; and
• surprising peaceful heart that I’m having right now, after a long and draining day.

O Lord, I’m sorry that I messed up. I felt horrible for repeatedly rejecting the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I find it so hard to let go of my troubles and just depend on You. Lord, please forgive me, and help me release myself from all the guilt. Thank you so much for bringing peace in my heart, and I pray the peace will stay throughout the storm.

I was really tired the entire day, actually. I don’t know why, especially since I slept a lot… Maybe it’s the segmented sleep that was bad… I got really tired of matroid class, it’s like nothing is making any sense right now. Spent the afternoon at home, doing nothing. Evening mccf and dinner was ok, but I’m kind of weary of the constant silliness…

I’m grateful to God for…

• being able to talk to Wayne briefly today to lighten the load…such a joyful man;
• a good time of worship in mccf today, reflecting a lot about recent events;
• having so many people to care for me, like having 5 msn conversations just in the past hour;
• continuing to pursue me; and
• constantly teaching me lessons on waiting for Him.

It’s one of those days where I just felt like doing nothing, and did nothing. I have a lot of issues to think about, and academic stuff just took the back seat for me there. I have to restart wondering what to do with Francis…it’s tough. I slept a lot.

There was a fire alarm in the apartment tonight. It just happens that I was doing the laundry just prior to that (and doing the laundry in the evening is unprecedented for me). It also happens that I ran out of t-shirts and shorts, so I had to temporarily wear these long sleeves and pants. It also happens that it was a bit cold outside, so I was kept warm by the clothes. It also happens that the fire alarm sounded for more than an hour. It’s just too much of a coincidence, eh? I guess I should also mention that I had a wonderful time talking to Omran and Nathan. Boy, Nathan is 29 years old? But he looks like he’s 23…wow.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the continuing peace in my heart despite all the troubles that I’m facing;
• the prayers of many brothers and sisters for me;
• the miracle that kept me warm during the fire alarm;
• releasing sexual tension during sleep again, this time apparently as a reward; and
• pulling me away from self-induced temptations.