It’s just a strange day. Started with another morning of struggling to get myself to do things, but instead, ate and went to sleep for the most part (also downloaded VB2005 express for no good reason). Finally dragged myself to the office in the rainy afternoon, only to do nothing at the office. Came back for more sleep and eat and Treasure Hunting, then finally, at long last, did some research work.

I have to say, the day got to a point where I just felt incredibly frustrated and violent… There was this strange desire to throw almost everything against the wall and bang everything as hard as possible…sort of a flashback to how my cousin Solomon used to be… I think I was just very frustrated with everything…the inability to pray, the heavy resistance to reading the Bible, the never ending temptations, the lack of motivation to do any research and marking, the impending visit of my family and my continued annoyance with them, the lack of physical exercise, the millions of tiny little things that I need to do… I just want to escape from life… “Be still, and know that I am God…” — Psalm 46:10

I’m grateful to God for…

• the Mideast ceasefire;
• softening the day with Tony’s visit to my office;
• giving me enough strength to do some research;
• being such a mysterious God, so uncomprehensible, yet requiring a simple faith like a child; and
• the interesting timing between David’s departure and my family’s arrival…

6 hours, 2 cities, 179.8 kilometres. Yes, went to find Wayne again this evening, this time bringing David Lee with me, and CK came as well. It was a great time, first a dinner at Swiss Chalet where we sort of sat there for about an hour after we finished eating…heh…and then spent some time at Wayne’s place and his super comfortable bed. Good to know CK better now, and he’s quite “interesting” to talk to… It’s kind of sad that I won’t see Wayne for a while now…anyway. There was the horrific traffic jam in Milton on the way there, that’s pretty much the only down side (and by the way, what is it with me and traffic jams? 4 legs of travel, 3 with extreme jamming…).

Congratulations, Jackson and Rebecca!

I’m grateful to God for…

• the wonderful time spent with Wayne, David and CK, and His protection during this brief journey;
• another two challenging (and confusing) sermons on guilt and worry;
• making me realize that I need to understand, experience, and embrace His love and grace at a much deeper level;
• such a heartwarming news from Jackson; and
• testing my patience at a new level of difficulty.

What a contrast to yesterday…stayed at home for most of the day, sleeping, eating, puzzling, and falling into sin…yeah, I saw that coming from miles away, yet I couldn’t resist the temptations. I failed, again. Sigh…

I have too many books on my reading list now…

I’m grateful to God for…

• making me realize once again my total weakness and my desperate need to rely on Him;
• pulling me back to Him amidst this sin-filled life;
• a second chance to meet Wayne;
• realizing the enormous depth and value of His word; and
• reminding me to truly be grateful to Him for everything.

8 hours, 4 cities, 269.5 kilometres. That was yesterday’s trip to the Toronto area. First, a drive to Mississauga to find Wayne. The 401 got quite congested in Mississauga, so I took a detour… Once with Wayne, we had a good time with lunch at a seafood restaurant, and after chatting more at his place, I went off to get groceries at around 1.5pm. First to T&T, then to a dumpling place (where I miraculously actually remember where it is, despite only been there once early this year while it’s closed), then off to home. Boy, the drive home was just torturous. Traffic was jammed almost from beginning to end. I’ve never seen jamming beyond Toronto like that. I initially refused to turn on the air con, but after an hour or so, I just couldn’t take it and turned it on. Plus the sun shining down on me, I had a hard time trying to hide my forearm from the sun, and ended up getting sun burns… All in all, that drive home (plus a stop at the service station for a sundae…heh) took 2.5 hours…when normally it would take no more than 90 minutes…yikes. That was hard. And then immediately I’m whisked away (by myself) to the fellowship, and we sat for close to three hours, then refreshment for an hour, and I was just dead tired… Plus, somehow my body was releasing a lot of gas not through my mouth or nose……….so it was weird. Anyway, that was an exhausting day.

I am ashamed that I didn’t come away from the summer camp with more…it seems like everyone else got a lot out of it, and they can share so much of it. And I…just can’t. All I can think about is how everything went crazy immediately after the summer camp ended, and I didn’t have time to process what’s been happening in the camp. So…yeah. And even though serving is the theme of the camp and I have a lot of struggles with the problem of serving as well, I’m still as confused as ever, and I’m not even sure I have the heart to deal with this…

I’m grateful to God for…

• protecting me in this safe trip to Toronto, saving me from a couple of close calls;
• the fellowship with Wayne;
• testing my patience once again to a new limit;
• keeping me up through the fellowship, even though I was so tired; and
• challenging me to trust Him in believing His perfect timing.

The plan for yesterday: 2 emails, 3 blog posts, 4 projects. Things done for yesterday: 1 email. Granted, it was a good email, took a long and difficult time to compose, and I felt a peculiar sense of relief after sending it. But still, I haven’t even come close to achieving my plans…which is kind of sad. The evening proctoring and marking were fun, though… In proctoring, I got the weirdest request ever: a student asked if I have a pencil lead to spare…and it just happens that I put two of them in my pencil just the afternoon, so incredibly, I was actually able to help. The marking went from 10.5pm to 1.5am, by which time I was just totally exhausted. We had a ton of laughs at the marking, though… Unfortunately, we mostly laugh at the students’ ineptitudes… The average turned out to be 64, far lower than most of our predictions, although surprisingly close to Omran’s. And that’s the day. By the way, is it sad that throughout the day, the children’s song performed at the summer camp kept running in my head? “Choose today: will you listen and obey?”

The epiphany I got today is that when I “follow Jesus,” I don’t do it with a gladness of the heart. I do it because it’s the right thing to do, but my heart just wasn’t right. It’s like when they sing “willingly we follow,” this following phrase comes closer to the truth: “grudgingly I follow…”

I’m grateful to God for…

• the amazing coincidence with the pencil lead thing, one little thing that astounds me;
• the sermons on Hebrews by Pastor Tong, which are mindblowing;
• the relief I felt in sending an email to Samuel;
• revealing to me the sad condition of my heart; and
• completing the marking of the final exam last night, so that I get a chance to visit Wayne today.

I was planning to just clean my room the whole day, but…well…with me, usually things don’t go well with my plans. I did clean up my desk a little, but that’s about it. Got called out to lunch with Chen Jie, later came to my place for Scrabble, foosball and table tennis. I find it so hard to talk about serious stuffs with guys… Slept for a short while only to be woken up by an annoying credit card telemarketer. The evening was wasted, basically.

My stack of reading materials is getting higher and higher… Found a series of 130 sermons on the book of Hebrews on the net today, and that added to the reading list… Sigh…I just hope and pray that these readings will actually make a difference in my life, God willing.

I’m grateful to God for…

• teaching me the balance between theology and compassion, and having a right heart;
• this time spent connecting with Chen Jie;
• Samuel’s email, giving me a slight ray of hope;
• a slightly cleaner environment in my room; and
• keeping temptations away from me today.

Pretty much spent the day preparing for two weeks’ worth of supervisor meeting…it was ok, I guess. I didn’t do much, as usual, which isn’t good. But somehow I get away every time…God is too graceful to me. After the meeting, there was a sudden sense of lost, like if I don’t know what to do now. Ended up going home and sleep and stuff. Aside: Yesterday, I had this urge to just throw the phone against the wall… Also, Treasure Hunters is just good to watch…

I really want to spend some time thinking over the messages that I heard during the summer camp, but somehow I’m kind of reluctant to do that. For one, so many distractions around. But really, I’m afraid to take a step up in knowing and following and serving Jesus…I want to, but…

I’m grateful to God for…

• restoring (at least for today) morning devotional time;
• leading me through the work today and rescueing once again from a possibly horrifying supervisor meeting;
• receiving feedbacks from Francis on a lot of things, and giving me a chance to share my burdens;
• listening to me even as I complain to Him over and over again; and
• making me ashamed of my total disregard for my family…

57 hours, 3 cities, 336.8 kilometres complete this summer camp. Day 3 started with waking up at 4am and a walk around the Brock campus (which is pretty small). Went to sleep a bit (with vivid dreams, no less), breakfast at McD’s again, another hard-hitting sermon and after some strange things and lunch, we were done for the camp. Peter followed me all the way on the drive back, which showed pretty good self control…heh.

Came home, really tired, and went to sleep. Amidst the nice relaxing sleep I was having, my mom called and dropped a bomb…apparently she wants to come here to live for three months, and she’s not kidding. That just ruined any sense of serenity that had built up over the last three days…man. I’m still calm and trying not to think about it too much…I still have supervisor meeting to deal with tomorrow, which I still haven’t done anything yet…yikes. God keeps life interesting, isn’t it? Just when I thought I could spend some time to think about things, He hits me with all these things…sigh…

I’m grateful to God for…

• the challenging sermons at the summer camp, asking me to go deeper with Him and follow Him;
• building of friendships among the brothers at the camp;
• His protection in our activities and travels;
• providing a free dryer in the laundry room amidst the busy laundry evening; and
• not being a soft God, a God to whom I cannot bargain with.

(Placeholder for a recap of day 2 of the summer camp…)

(Placeholder for recap of day 1 of the summer camp…)

Second day here at Brock, typing again on Ed’s Blackberry, whizh is
kind od fun. Skipped to a tiring trip to Niagara Falls this
afternoon, to show Peter this wonder that has certainly lost its lure
for the veterans like me… Anyway, more after I come back tomorrow.

So, here I am in Brock University typing away on Ed’s Blackberry. It
was a marvelous day, but typing here is a bit slow, so I’ll update
this thingie later when I get home.

Lord, I can’t stop my addictions to puzzles and violence. I’ve wasted the day to them, and I felt so empty and depressed. Please help me Lord.

I insisted on driving to the summer camp tomorrow (don’t know why), and was very picky on who I want to carry as passengers. I felt very selfish, and sad. It’s not a good day.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the opportunity this weekend to break away from my “normal” life;
• making me realize how selfish I am in everything;
• pulling me out of TA for 350 this term, which must have reduced the workload by a lot;
• the time of exercise this morning that pulled me away from continuing in the temptations; and
• creating an awe in me on the possibility of such an unimaginable close relationship with Him.

Went to school to take over Omran’s office hours…it was interesting, and I mostly talked to Nathan, which was quite enjoyable. Late lunch with Tony was quite enjoyable as well, where Tony once again asked me to calculate the average monthly cost of having a car…heh…and apparently he’s going for it… Came home to find the Grosskurths in the house cleaning and stuff for Alan’s inspection test tomorrow…so now the house is so clean that it’s unrecognizable…maybe I should clean my room as well… And there goes the day of no work done.

Random notes: My eyes get sore really quickly these days…I’m guessing it’s something to do with the glasses; I find myself to be in a bit of spiritual lazyness…; the rain continued on and off through the day, and certainly made it a lot cooler…nice; I think I really got Chen Jie hooked on puzzles…heh; I discovered this “internet scrabble club” thingie…hopefully I won’t be addicted, because quite frankly, after playing two games, I suck; a note about gas prices yesterday…at noon, it was around 103…a few hours later, it jumped to 114…what is up with that?

I’m grateful to God for…

• the cooler weather that comforts;
• opening my eyes to a lot of interesting ideas in my readings today;
• wonderful times spent with Nathan and Tony;
• giving me peace in my heart; and
• continuing to pull me back to His presence, despite all my attempts to run away.

That was a full and incredibly hot day…33 degrees, 46 humidex. Morning meeting with Jim was kind of scary…I really still have no clue what’s going on with the project… Then I accidentally stumbled into Berkant’s second stage thingie. Went home and picked up a package from amazon, which was nice. Just when I got home, received a call from Chen Jie, and we went out for a Chinese buffet lunch. Came back to the office for my office hours while he worked on a cross sum puzzle…heh. Li Zhen came by as well… After office hours, went to National Sports and stuff, then dinner with Ed and Ingrid, then visited Ed’s new place, which was small but kind of nice. We played darts, and then we were home. I didn’t have any afternoon nap, so that was quite a tiring day for me. In the evening, there was this fantastic thunderstorm that I was hoping for…so now it’s supposed to be a bit cooler.

Books on my current reading list (in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names)…

• Your God is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan
• Wild at Heart by John Eldredge
• Prayer by Ole Hallesby
• Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray
• Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson
• The Soul of Boxing by Phil Shirley

I’m grateful to God for…

• leading me through the morning meeting with Jim, thus concluding the course;
• a wonderful time of hanging out with friends for most of the afternoon and evening;
• the upcoming summer camp;
• keeping me sane amidst insane times; and
• helping me survive in the hot weather.