The gathering of ourselves together

I went to a youth conference yesterday. It was a new experience for several reasons. First, since Straitgate doesn't have a youth group, I never really went to such conferences when I was a teen (ouch, it's sad to me to think that I've been a non-teen for over a year now. Life is too short!). Second, the "youth groups" here are not the typical "teen groups" consisting of middle school and high school students, like you find in the States. For instance, the age range of the youth who come regularly in my church is about 16-26. I guess it's mainly composed of the single young people. So it was a little strange for me to be going to a youth conference on the youth side of it, but that didn't keep God from using it in my heart. Here's part of the group from my church:



The day started with some lively worship music. I don't necessarily like taking photos during worship time, but here's part of the band getting ready:

The music was really good! A lot of the songs were new to me, but it was good as always to be able to praise the Lord with other Christians. The guy on the left is and has been the youth pastor of the church where the confraternidad was for 11 or 12 years now. More on that later. I bring up the music for a couple reasons, actually. First, I think when talking about--and more importantly, while singing--music used in worship to God, it's important that God is the one in focus. The musicians, while they should certainly play and sing with all their heart, shouldn't be the primary focus. And whether a musician is rocking out on the organ or the guitar, in my mind the principle is the same; I don't really see it as a traditional/contemporary distinction. In practice, I'm not sure exactly how that always plays out. You're always going to have someone leading music and playing instruments, unless you go without music or sing a capella (and there you still need a leader). I think a lot of times that's an issue of the individual's heart. As a musician, are you playing to God or to the crowd? As a part of the congregation, are you admiring the music, or are you worshipping God? The second reason I mention the music is because it was really good! The musicians were extremely talented--guitarists, bassist, drummer, the keyboardist, and the singers too. I'd say they were better than some professional bands that I've seen in concert. As a firm believer in excellence in what one does, especially for the Lord, I appreciate that, even though it's not the most important thing. It's also kind of cool to see a guy who can play a mean guitar solo, but who also can preach a challenging message that glorifies Christ. It makes it even clearer that his goal is glorifying Christ, not himself.

There's definitely more I want to write about the conference, specifically about how God used it to challenge me in my walk with Him, but I will keep you all in suspense until the next entry. :D

New camera

Hi folks, for better or for worse, I have a new camera. I had to test it out on something or someone right away, and having no better subject to prey on, I took some silly photos of me. At any rate, I should now be able to document my Chilean adventures even better than before. The bad part is that now I have no excuse for not taking pictures. Oh well, life is a tradeoff [see Econ 101]. I promise that my next post will have more meaningful or interesting content than this one. Chao!

loco weekend

This weekend was rather interesting all around. After the 18th (see last post) came the 19th, my birthday and a continuation of Chile's festivities. I had a good day. I slept in and got a hearty "feliz cumpleaños" from my Chilean parents when I woke. I went for a run in the city, as I like to do, and on my return I got a delicious lunch. My stomach was so filled with delicacies that I had to wait until later to eat some of the cake that they had bought for my birthday. I was also able to talk to Dad, Mom, Ruth and Adam, and David and Kelsea throughout the day, so that was a blessing as well. And as usual, it was intriguing to see who on facebook said happy birthday, and how they said it.

In the late afternoon, I went to a fonda (party celebrating the 18th) at a nearby park with my parents here. It was basically just a fair, with food, shows--even a rodeo! We looked around at a lot of the little shops there that sold Chilean crafts and foods, and we ate some kebobs before heading out. Here are some pigs that were being roasted at one of the tents. Yummy!

Sunday was the party after church. It was fun to see everyone dressed in traditional garb and in Chilean flag colors (which happen to be red, white, and blue as well). After the service, we shared a meal together (more about that in a bit!) and those who knew how danced some cueca, the national dance. It was fun to watch, although it made me wish I could do it too! Maybe I´ll get a chance to learn while I´m down here. At any rate, I included a little video at the end of the post so that you can get a taste of the experience. The pictures are of the little kids saying their memory verse, me hanging out with said cute little kids, and some of my friends and me enjoying our meal together.

On Sunday night, right before I went to bed, I started to feel a little bit sick--my stomach was upset, and I felt slightly nauseous. Sure enough, a couple hours later, I woke feeling terrible and knowing I´d better run to the bathroom before I threw up all over my bed. I ended up vomiting all night long and into the morning; I couldn´t even keep a bit of water down. I will spare the details, because it was pretty ugly. Somehow my parents didn´t wake up from it all--I´m happy for them that they didn´t. I literally slept almost the entire day Monday, gradually getting better, to the point where I could take liquids and where the vomiting finally stopped. My oh my, food is so much more enjoyable on the way down than on the way up! I was able to eat a bit of a meal on Monday night, and now I am happy to say that I´m back to normal. My guess is that the culprit was mild food poisoning from something I ate at the Sunday potluck. I definitely don´t want to relive that experience, although it was cool to see how God used it in me to help me focus more on Him. "All things work together for good to those who love God..."

and

to liven things up a bit, here are a couple photos of Dave Rojas almost dying in restricted areas of what is Minnehaha Falls when there is rain in MN. When we visited, it was Minnehaha cliff.

Happy birthday to you... Chile

I just got back from my celebration of the 18th of September--Chile's independence day--and especially since I don't have pictures to document, I have to write a little about it before I hit the hay. First off, I should say that the 18th seems to be a lot bigger party than our 4th of July. As someone said to me tonight, when it falls on a weekday, there are at least a few days of fiesta. When it falls on a weekend, like this year, it's even a bigger party.

I went with my parents María Inés and Rodrigo to a celebration at the home of the family of a niece of Rodrigo´s sister... or something like that. Although there were a few organized activities, most of the time was just hanging out, enjoying the beautiful weather and the good food (and watching people drink a lot of beer. lol). I managed to place third in the gunnysack races in my category. Maybe that´s not such an amazing accomplishment when you take into account that there were only four of us. Oh well.

I also played a little bit of "football," although we didn´t have a real soccer ball. It was fun, but I was probably about the same skill level as the 7-year-old Raimundo, whom we affectionately named "Rey del Mundo" (King of the World). I failed miserably at flying kites; I couldn´t even get the string attached properly. Some other time.

The food was really good. People brought a variety of salads, and there was bread and an abundance of freshly grilled meat. Very tasty indeed! I felt a little sorry for the two Rottweilers who had to sit in their pen lusting after the meat all day long, only to get a little relief when someone would toss them a scrap. We could have fed them one of the little kids present, but that probably would have been a bad idea.

I realize that this entry may be a bit fragmented, but if so, it probably reflects the nature of the day. Perhaps one of the funnier parts of the day was being compelled to dance by some middle-aged women, who then proceeded to teach me how it was done. The funny part was that it wasn´t even a particular type of dance, just boogeying. Is it a bad sign when you need middle-aged women to teach you how to groove?

The conversation of the day was also quite varied. When I arrived, it started out with everyone wondering if this gringo knew any Spanish. My Chilean parents, upon being asked questions about me, said, "Ask him yourself!" Those types of conversations always crack me up a bit. In a similar vein, one of the uncles later began to ask me questions in English. That part was cool. I enjoy it when people try to practice their foreign language skills. The funny part was that it seemed he thought that asking me questions in English would serve to facilitate the conversation, even though I could hardly tell what he was trying to ask me. It was entertaining at the least.

Another short conversation I was a part of made me think a little bit more. To preface it, I´ll just say that it was kind of strange to have the former spouses of both my parents there at the party. I don´t think any extraordinary tension was going on, although it´s certainly sad that the situation arose in the first place. Anyway, I was talking with my Chilean mom and a young guy in his early 30s, who isn´t married but has a 2-year-old daughter (who is absolutely darling :D). They were discussing my buddy´s love life and such, and ending up on the theme of who you can really count on. Here´s the list they came up with: 1) parents and kids and 2) friends. First, the significant absence: lovers or spouses didn´t appear on there list. The reason seemed to be that spouses are people you choose. You decide you love someone enough--and that your lives share a common enough purpose--to marry them. And, sadly but truly in too many cases, you end up saying that you´ll love till death separate you, and then what really separates you is infidelity and divorce. Seeing separated families, even ones that appear "happily" separated on the surface, makes me realize more than ever how important commitment and faithfulness are in a marriage relationship. If I decide to marry a woman, it´s going to be forever. Period. I wish that´s a dream that could hold true for everyone. Then again, the really issue is that people need to know and be satisfied with God. I want to be better at pointing people to Him. Something that did strike me about their list of "people you can count on," though, was friends. According to my amigo, real friends are ones who stick with you no matter what. I actually started thinking about my friendships, and how much better of a friend I want to be. I don´t mean that I want to try to please everyone, or spend all of my time trying to maintain friendships. What I do mean is that I want to be a true friend--a friend who loves at all times, a friend who really cares and is willing to sacrifice for others, a friend who loves others more than himself. Maybe that´s a resolution for this new year of life :)

Perhaps I´ll update some more on this weekend in a few days. Chao for now, fogies.

Boring

is the state of my blog without any photos or other media content. Sorry, I'm still trying to pin down a good new camera here. Maybe I'll start pulling out some recent but not new photos for some asthetic relief, such as the one above--me on a rainy Santiago day. That's all for now, folks.

Dead people don't need organs...

I don't have too much to say tonight, but I just finished watching a moving drama, 7 Pounds, in which (to oversimplify the plot) a man donates his organs to others who really need them. Although some of the movie is overly idealized and romanticized, I was just reminded that I want to be an organ donor. I mean, once I'm gone, I don't really need my parts anymore, if you know what I mean. Better to save someone else's life, in my opinion. Maybe I'll look into that when I'm home over Christmas. We'll see.

The Blink of an Eye

They say life is but a vapor, just a blip on the radar screen
Not the dates on your tombstone, but the dash in between

As I begin this entry, I'll just warn that it's likely to be a bit scatterbrained, since that's kind of my state of mind right now. I'm sitting on my bed feeling guilty for not having studied Algebra Abstracta yet tonight, even though I have a test I'm not ready for at all on Monday. I ended up deciding to organize and look into some things. It ended up with several hours of looking through Northwestern major requirements, buying a new digital camera online (ojalá it actually gets to me :S) from a Chilean store, etc. Although I´ve been perhaps mildly productive tonight, I´ve been anything but mentally organized.

Part of me tells myself it´s not that really important how I do in Algebra Abstracta; then again, I think I would have a different perspective if I ended up failing the course :). Funny how that works. In general, though, I´m still asking myself the question I´ve been asking myself for at least the last year, and in reality longer: why am I a math major? When others ask me, it´s not too hard to answer:
1) Mathematics trains the mind well.
2) Math opens doors.
3) I used to think I was good at math (in the past, this would have looked something like "I´m good at math.")
4) I think in a mathematical way.
5) Math can be used in all sorts of jobs, and as a base for all sorts of graduate schools.

Let´s be honest. Part of why sometimes I don´t like math, is because it´s just plain hard. To understand higher math, for me, requires many hours of intense mental effort. Frankly, that´s just not easy to put in practice. In addition, I don´t always like math that much. I like the pretty butterfly curves I made as a sophomore in high school as I learned about polar coordinates. I like understanding why we use matrices, and how they can be used in computer science algorithms and other everyday applications. I like seeing the enjoyment my Russian freshman math prof got from discussing math. I could honestly say he´s the reason I´m a math major at all. I don´t like spending a year proving the underpinnings of calculus, a.k.a. spending several hours a week in a class that may as well be taught in Chinese as I would understand about the same amount either way.

Perhaps the most serious reason I´m disillusioned with math is that it´s so divorced from almost everything else in my life that I care about. I live day to day using the math skills that I had down pat by sixth grade or so. I´m not using my mathematical knowledge to write clever computer programs, or to optimize anything (more on this later...). Maybe part of it is that I could never be content to live my life wandering the halls of some forsaken mathematics department in some prestigious university, muttering things to myself and coming up with the new greatest ideas in math, or spending my life trying. I have better things to live for. Or maybe that it´s just that I´m too dumb. If so, I´d rather be dumb. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Don´t get me wrong. I´m certainly not against using my math in a very significant way in the real world. There are even math jobs that I would consider considering, like... well, I don´t know like what. Trust me on it. The key phrase here is real world. When am I going to need to know abstract algebra in anything I´ll be interested in doing, let alone real analysis? Good question.

Maybe the problem is really that I like everything. I don´t say that I´m good at everything, because that´s impossible. There´s not time for that. And although I think being something of a Renaissance man may make life more interesting for me, I´m not sure it´s always such a good thing. Even as I write about how I should be studying or math right now, I´m semi-distracted by some inspiring music I´m listening to right now. In the back of my mind are the marathon I want to run in Santiago next April, my little-used 7 juggling balls in the corner that are taunting me to try to conquer them, and my beat-up guitar that I was going to pull out tonight but didn´t get a chance. Looming a little larger in my mind, if a little more distant, are questions about what I really want to focus on with the rest of my undergraduate education. Do I want to scrap my econ minor and just take things I like, like more language courses (or, ironic as it might seem, scrap my Spanish major to take said language courses)? Do I want to pursue some kind of teaching certificate for secondary education? And while I´m at it, do I want to teach? Would I like to teach motivated, gifted students, or students who came from rough backgrounds and really needed someone to inspire them? Do I want to work as a translator? Should I bite the bullet and consider becoming an actuary?

The one looming issue behind all of this is time. On the one hand, I don´t think haste is the way to go in decisions that really matter. On the other hand, I´m probably at least a good 1/4 of the way through my life. I wouldn´t mind going for something more life-changing or world-changing here at some point. Well, I guess a year in Chile might qualify in that category. I´m glad I´m here. But there are a lot of decisions that are waiting to be made, and the problem is that postponing them doesn´t make them go away--it just makes life feel more scattered and disorganized in the meantime.

I really want to learn how to manage time better. I don´t mean having a strict 24-7 schedule that I follow to the letter to make sure that I´m as "productive" as I can be, while missing out on what is truly important in life. What I do mean, is knowing when things matter, and when they don´t, and living a semi-organized life in response to that understanding. Maybe writing a blog post is more important in the grand scheme of things than studying algebra. Maybe sometimes it´s not.

In all of this, I want to make sure that above all I am prioritizing my relationships with God and with the people that He´s put in my life. After all, those are the two things that really matter, according to Jesus. That´s another thing that I´ve been convicted of lately, although it´s the topic of another post sometime. How can I live my life to radically love God and people in a way that brings most glory to Him and changes the world I live in as a result?

These are just a smattering of my thoughts. At any rate, I know that managing time is not necessarily a strength of mine, in general. Maybe in Chile, where time is a little more flexible, I´ll learn how to use it more wisely than I have yet. That would be a mildly ironic but very welcome reality.

a silly little video of the ocean