Church

Don't worry, even though the title has the word "hope" in it, this entry has nothing to do with President Obama. In either case, sorry for the break in blogging, I've been preoccupied pondering about what lies in store for me in 2009. I had a battle plan all worked out for this year, but half of the goals in it are already void as the situation on the ground has already changed that quickly. As they say though, one of the first casualties of war is the battle plan. The Art of War also says, "just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions."

Anyway, while I was away from California, the church which I attend in San Jose started a 4-week series entitled, "Miracles." My mom usually listens to those sermons as well, and she asked if I had heard it yet as it was amazing. I hadn't and life went on. When I got back to California, I had lunch with one of my church friends, and he asked if I had heard that sermon, and he implored me to listen to it. I finally got around to listening to it tonight, and I have to say it was an awesome way to start 2009. Despite all the horrible news around us, it's a nice change to hear good news. The sermons are archived here, and there's a video version, and an audio version.

Here's the abstract:

There's one line in the sermon that really stood out (and I'm paraphrasing): "You ask, what happens if I get my hopes up, and nothing happens? You should be asking, what happens if I get my hopes up, and something does happen?"

I'll be the first to admit for my battle plan to work out, it's going to involve a few miracles, a bit of faith, and a bit of bravery. Anyway, I'm going to mark down some milestones as a note to myself should things work out. Jan 22, 2009 - Operation Delicious Victory. Jan 26, 2009 - Operation Valour.

I have to say I'm a bit excited about how 2009 is going to unfold. One last thought that someone conveyed to me recently, when you finally succeed in your goals, all of those past failures will suddenly matter a lot less.

This last Saturday, I went paintballing at TNT Paintball with my church. We brought a group of 18 people, and another group of 10 people fought alongside. When we arrived to the paintball field, we saw a lot of pro paintballers who brought a lot of their own equipment. We're talking about modified guns with improved accuracy and range, body armour, elaborate air systems, etc. When the teams were divided, our side had two people with their own guns, while the other team had at least five. This was going to be a battle of the pros vs joes. Looks like we were going to be outgunned, but I love being the underdog. Naturally, a few people were a bit intimidated by our competition, but that quickly got disspelled when you show that the enemy is not invincible.

By the way, if you were there paintballing, please leave comments on this blog entry.

On the first game, we played on the urban assault field, and we got slaughtered simply because we didn't know the field. We had a rematch on the field, and we won.

Bunker To Bunker

The next field we played on was the Grog's Nest which consists of forts linked by bridges, and 60 man-made bunkers. I thought I was going to hate this field because it reminded me of speedball courses with the man-made bunkers, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The objective was to take a flag from the center fort, and deliver it to the enemy base.

The strategy we had was to grab as much real estate as possible in the first minute of the battle, in order to capture strategic locations. Doug ran to center immediately, grabbed the flag, and hid the flag behind me. I ran up the left flank of the map. My objective was to be the tip of the spear which leads the assault. I had to pave the way clear for our flag runner, so he could safely deliver the flag to the enemy base. I picked off 8 people who were unfortunate enough to get in my way. Eventually, I was eliminated, but Adam, our trusty flag runner was able to make it to the other end with barely any resistence. Adam made a great flag runner because he was able to hang back and survive through entire games. Doug and I were usually the shock forces who aggressively rushed against the enemy. Lucas also was a trusty last line of defence. He was able to survive long enough to launch a late game offensive. He was our rock. Anyway, on this field, both sides were able to pick up a point, so we were still tied.

An appropriate subtitle for this blog entry would be, "Why Chan Grew A Beard." Lets begin. Immediately after the Young Adults Camp at Nanoose Bay, we switched gears to Kids Camp. Doug and I volunteered to work as counselors for the week because they didn't have enough male counselors, and our contribution allowed an extra 10 kids to come to camp.

Going from Young Adults Camp to Kids Camp is quite the change. A lot of the freedoms and privacy that you enjoy as an adult is instantly stripped away when you have to watch 5 kids 24/7. The hardest thing to get used to was the bed times. During Young Adults Camp, we were sleeping at around 2:00am-3:00am because we were playing video games all night. The first night at Kids Camp, I was horrified to find that bed time was at 8:30pm! It wasn't even dark out yet! Our cabin had a sunroof, and sunlight was still pouring into the room at that time! The other thing that I didn't grow accustomed to was having kids poke you in the face at 6:00am asking if you could take them to the washroom. Doug could probably relate, except he was woken up with a football to the eyeball.

Most of the other counselors were 14-16 years old, so I think Doug and I got the toughest campers to deal with because we were the oldest and most mature. The leadership claimed this wasn't intentional, but I think it was. For example, both of us was assigned an ADD kid. Doug's kids were known as the most rowdy kids. My kids had the worst hygiene (more on that later). We were taking care of 5 kids while most counselors had 3-4 kids.

Last weekend, I was up at Nanoose Bay Pentecostal Camp for the first ever Young Adults Camp. This was organized by Pastor Doug Slack from my church, and it was a great success. About 60+ people were at the camp which isn't bad at all for a first time.

I went up Thursday morning with Doug to help get things set up. The weather wasn't exactly cooperating. We had torrential downpours of rain when we passed through Nanaimo. We arrived at Nanoose Bay (home of a Canadian military base complete with a torpedo test range) shortly after noon. We checked in, and opened up the lodge which was where the services would be held.

The lodge was gross because we were probably the first ones to use it in a long time. Lots of dirt, spider webs, random insects, and water from a leaky roof. We gave the room the extreme makeover and turned it into a coffee lounge. By the end, we spent 4 hours sweeping, vacuuming, moving furniture, etc.

This coffee lounge was complete with a $4800 coffee machine that Doug borrowed. In addition, we had a certified Starbucks employee running the machines during service. I don't drink coffee, so I don't quite understand why a coffee machine could be that expensive. My theory is that the thing is either made of gold, or there's magic gnomes inside the machine that makes the coffee for you. In either case, it was quite amusing watching Doug accidentally making a double strength espresso and being completely buzzed after it.

Well, I'm off to the Young Adults camp at Nanoose Bay Camp this weekend. In addition, I've been drafted as a counselor for the Kid's Camp in the following week, so I'm going to be away for 10 days.

The draft was interesting. On Monday, my Youth Pastor calls me up and asks if I could be a camp counselor for Kid's Camp because they were desperate for volunteers. Unfortunately, he knew that I was unemployed, so it's pretty hard to lie about being busy.

There was one problem though, all counselors were required to pass a criminal record check. And no, the problem isn't that I have a criminal record. The problem was that a check would require at least 5 business days before it was complete, so it was unlikely that the check could be completed before the camp started.

We were trying to figure out how we could resolve this, and then it hit me. I remembered that Yahoo had already started a background check on me in early June, so they should have some documentation showing that my background was clean. I got off the phone and contacted Yahoo about this. Then, the strangest coincidence happened.

This last weekend, I was at History Maker in Chilliwack; this is the annual youth convention for our church's district of British Columbia. Normally it's held in Kamloops, but this year it was in Chilliwack because the majority of its participants are from the lower mainland, and having it in Chilliwack would reduce the travel time.

The start of the trip was interesting. I had just gotten back from California, and my plane landed in Victoria at 12:30am because of a delayed flight by Horizon Air. I got to bed by around 2:00am. I woke up, unpacked and repacked, then we were off to History Maker. This year I was a chaperone for History Maker instead of a youth; I suddenly felt very old.

The ferry trip to the mainland was pretty slow going as ferries were arriving and departing late. We managed to catch the 5:00pm ferry. Once we got onto the otherside, the ship slowed down and waited because there was too much traffic at the terminal, so our arrival was delayed. Once we landed, the drive to Chilliwack wasn't too bad; I was expecting it to be far worse considering it was a long weekend.

When we arrived in Chilliwack and got out of the van, my first thought was.... ugh, what is that smell? There was a lot of agriculture around, so the smell of manure was very prevalent.

For the weekend, we would be sleeping at a church with no showers, so that was going to be interesting. Lets just say, washing my gargantuan head in a sink is not easy.

Anyway, onto History Maker which started on Saturday night. There were over 3,000 people at the venue. It featured bands such as Amanda Falk, Leeland, Desperation Band, and the main event, Starfield. I really liked the line-up that they had this year; good solid rock.

The speakers they had this year were really good. I really enjoyed Reggie Dabbs who preached very well, and taught us all how to be a bit more black. Out of all the speakers that I've ever heard at History Maker, Reggie was probably the best.

This year's theme was revolution, and there was a lot of talk about how we can change the world and fight injustice. Reggie talked about the Scottish revolutionaries who fought against injustice (fighting the British), and ultimately won independence for Scotland. He talked about the story after William Wallace dies (see the movie Braveheart to learn more about William Wallace). Basically, Robert The Bruce screws over William Wallace and hands him over to the British. In exchange, the British gives a bunch of land to the Bruce family. Robert The Bruce's son becomes king, and continues the fight that William Wallace started. King Robert The Bruce wishes that he had joined William Wallace instead of screwing him over.

Well, yesterday I was out paintballing with my youth group at Stormin Norman's. Before the day started, I was having a few second thoughts like.... man, its been a few years since I've last played, what if I'm not as good anymore. There was also a noobie that everyone was wanting to hunt down to settle some scores, and I thought, it would be really embarassing to get shot down by this person.

When we got to the paintball field, we surveyed our potential competition. We had a group of 10, and there was another party consisting mostly of kids and a few parents. There was also one pro paintballer who had his own gear and uniform. We got out to the field, and it was going to be a 10 vs 10 battle for the afternoon. The teams were divided and from my church group, we had myself, Pastor Doug Slack, and my brother. We also got the pro paintballer, one parent, and the rest kids. The other team had seven people from the church group, and the rest kids plus a parent. Originally, I thought the teams were going to be unbalanced because the other team had more able bodied men and women; this didn't prove to be a problem.

The scenario of the day was attack and defend. The attacker's objective is to attack the defender's base, and take down the base flag. The defender's objective is to prevent the attackers from obtaining the flag for 10 or 15 minutes.

Game 1

My team started as the defender. Our strategy was to send three people outside of the base to harass the enemy and buy everyone some time. Everyone else was tasked to defend the base. When the game started, I dashed out of the right side of the base. I stealthily got behind enemy lines, and started my attack run up a hill and took out four attackers. They never saw it coming because I was shooting them from behind. By midgame, I took out another two attackers on a hill, but then another three attackers showed up. I take another one out, but the ref tells us to stop firing. Apparently I was shooting at my own team mates. I thought this was an enemy because he was facing our base like an attacker.

This friendly fire confusion happened because by the time I took out the two attackers on the hill, they were the last of the attacking force. The rest of the defenders rushed up the hill that I was shooting at. We were shooting each other because there were no enemies left, and the referees didn't realize this, and they hadn't stopped the game. The referees are supposed to end the game when one side runs out of players. We completely dominated that game.

Play of the Day

The play of the day comes from Game 4 where Doug and I were attacking the enemy base. This is the play of the day not because of how many kills we got, but it's the strategy that was in play.

At the beginning of the game, we cleared the right side of the enemy base, and we were going to the center of the field to prepare to capture their flag.



As we went to the center of the field, I noticed that all of our attackers to the left had been eliminated, and the defenders were rushing up from the left hand side. If we didn't take them out, we would have been encircled and they'd have clear shots at us from behind. So, I rushed to the left side to hold off the enemy while Doug took on the base defenders. I managed to eliminate two defenders immediately, because they weren't expecting me. I moved further down to the left, I found another two defenders huddled behind a bunker. I couldn't pick them off, but I was keeping them pinned down, and they couldn't move against Doug.

Meanwhile, Doug entered the enemy base and neutralized the guards in the tower fort, and blew away all of the defenders, and bagged the flag for the win. The crazy thing is, the tower guys didn't even warn their teammates that someone had entered the base, and that's how Doug managed to get the element of surprise.

Anyway, the strategy was great because two of us were able to handle eight defenders. That is some serious force multipliers there.