Dog at a Stream

When is the Chinese New Year's Day in Year 2006?

January 29, 2006 is the first day of the Chinese new year.

There are three ways to name a Chinese year:

1. By an animal (like a mscot).
This year is known as the Year of the Dog.
There are 12 animal names; so by this system, year names are re-cycled every 12 years. More.
2. By its Formal Name (Stem-Branch).
   The new year is the year of bingxu.

   In the 'Stem-Branch' system, the years are named in 60-year cycles, and the Name of the Year is repeated every 60 years.
   2006 is the 7th year in the current 60-year cycle.

3. It is Year 4703 by the Chinese calendar.

Wow...Chinese New Year's. I can't recall the last time in my life when I've anticipated this holiday so much. Being Chinese, I've taken it for granted all my life. My mom has told me when it was and constantly badgered me about eating certain foods and celebrating it properly on the date.

Perhaps if when I was younger, my mother had done something more extraordinary like take me out to see the fireworks in Chinatown or watch the dragon dance in the streets, I would have attached a greater sense of worth or sentiment to it. But we never did and instead I found myself sometimes resenting the fact that she always pushed so hard for us to remember these things.

Ironic how I find myself, at 26, out of the house, living in an Indiana suburb, suddenly craving what I've often spent most of my life pushing away-to be Asian. And for the first time in my life, I'm actually finding ways to proactively express this part of me and seek ways to preserve my God-given culture.

All the talk of cultural awareness, sensitivity, and love for different ethnicities that I've learned as a key value in my time with InterVarsity has finally come full circle. It's taught me that I not only need to love others of different races and cultures, but I also need to love my own. I need to also love myself for my Chinese-ness.

I called my mom up today, excited to ring in the New Year's true to the way Chinese people would normally do it-with food. I bought a nice grouper fish (not my first choice, but hey, this ain't Flushing) and asked my mom how to cook it.

She told me what vegetables to buy, cooking oils, etc. My sister chimed in and also helped to walk me through the process. I cut up some ginger and scallions, poured some cooking wine over the fish, then put salt, soy sauce, and sugar. WOW...it smelled AMAZING. MMMM...

I also bought a nice big, circular chunk of red bean rice cake, a tray of egg custard tarts to bake in the oven, and...some bulgogi. hahahaha...not exactly Chinese, but hey...again, this ain't Flushing. I gotta improvise here.

A bunch of the Keynote single staff will be coming over to celebrate it with me, so I'm uber excited. I'm very thankful for these friends of mine who are willing to try different kinds of foods, more traditional to the Chinese culture, and embrace this part of who I am in Christ.

Sharing food is a HUGE thing for me. It is surely one of my love languages. I love to share food with people. It blesses me so much. So when my friends actually want to share in the food that I eat with me and they like it, it makes me happy :)

So with all that to say, I want to say Happy Chinese New Year's to my asian brothers and sisters out there celebrating!!! I love you all and miss you much! I'm definitely missing New York right now. But be sure that I'm celebrating it in style here in Indiana. Yes, Midwestern style.

Strong's Number: 907

baptiðzw

Original Word		Word Origin
	baptiðzw		from a derivative of (911)
Transliterated Word		Phonetic Spelling
	Baptizo		bap-tid'-zo
Parts of Speech		TDNT
			1:529,92
Definition
	to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge (of vessels sunk) to cleanse by dipping or submerging, to wash, to make clean with water, to wash one's self, bathe to overwhelm Not to be confused with 911, bapto. The clearest example that shows the meaning of baptizo is a text from the Greek poet and physician Nicander, who lived about 200 B.C. It is a recipe for making pickles and is helpful because it uses both words. Nicander says that in order to make a pickle, the vegetable should first be 'dipped' (bapto) into boiling water and then 'baptised' (baptizo) in the vinegar solution. Both verbs concern the immersing of vegetables in a solution. But the first is temporary. The second, the act of baptising the vegetable, produces a permanent change. When used in the New Testament, this word more often refers to our union and identification with Christ than to our water baptism. e.g. Mark 16:16. 'He that believes and is baptised shall be saved'. Christ is saying that mere intellectual assent is not enough. There must be a union with him, a real change, like the vegetable to the pickle! Bible Study Magazine, James Montgomery Boice, May 1989. -Definition taken from www.studylight.org (italics, bold and coloring mine)

I walked in this morning, sleepy eyed, to a building quite barren of people. Lights were on, things were up and running, but there were hardly any people here.

The Keynote women have gone off to their annual retreat down in Nashville, Indiana (that's right, there's a Nashville in Indiana) and so all of us men here have been left behind to occupy the office space ourselves. But, with all the women gone, most of the married men with children have to now stay home to take care of their kids.

What does that mean for the singles??? LOTS AND LOTS OF TIME TO OURSELVES WITHOUT WOMEN! (noisy male sounds spontaneously erupt)

But in all seriousness, I do hope the Keynote women have a fabulous time and that the Lord truly blesses them and fills them with His presence and love. Many of the Keynote women, unfortunately, do stay home almost all of the time. It's hard for them to feel connected to a ministry they barely even see! So, this is a time for them all to come together, fellowship, be refreshed, and affirm each otheras women of God.


blue sky nine has just been going full force in rehearsals and I've just been SUPER exhausted. Last week felt like I was in a rat race, just barely struggling to survive. I was doing well in rehearsals and such but the rest of my life was suffering.

What I mean is that the menial tasks of life were taking a back seat and after a while, it starts to take a toll on you. Things like laundry, eating right, picking up your clothes, and cleaning around the house begin to pile up and then you find yourself spending four to five hours on a Saturday afternoon playing "catch up." I hate that feeling...but with time constraints and the zillions of activities that fill my life it's been increasingly hard recently to keep up with the mundane details of life that make it...well...life.

I'm excited about our Texas tour that will be happening towards the end of February. We'll be right outside Austin, going down to the border of Mexico, and in in Nacogdoches as well. After that we'll be headed to Arizona and then end our first tour at Keynote's golf challenge and vision dinner out in California. Cali! woohoo!

After that we come home and rest for a week before we head out for Albania and Kosovo. Talk about the touring life! We'll be all over the globe this touring season and I am UBER excited about the opportunities that God has given us in the months to come. It is certainly a very exciting time.

And I forgot to mention to you all that I'll be planning a little spiritual vision journey, if you will, to visit Israel, the promised Land. I'll be there for five days with Kevin, bassist for blue sky nine.

We're planning to stay in Tel Aviv and visit Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and hopefully Bethlehem too. We want to visit the Jordan River, but given the tension between the Palestinians there in Israel, that might not be the smartest idea. Pray for our safety!

The rest of the week looks like practicing and refining my music material so when we come back into rehearsal on Monday, I'll hopefully be at full strength. Praise God for His provision and giving me rest and "time off" when I need it. Blessings all

This past week was super exhausting...just not enough sleep, not enough time to rehearse and I'll probably still only get about 6 hours of sleep tonight. I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get ANOTHER root canal. Yes, you heard that right folks, ANOTHER root canal...

Pray for a speedy recovery. I'm going to be hittin' the studio tomorrow to do some recording and I hope that my tooth won't be throbbing so bad I won't be able to play drums. I gotta bring my "A" game tomorrow. Pray that I will for the glory of God.

God is teaching me a lot...will share more when I actually have the time and energy. Celebrated my housemate's birthday yesterday. Mr. Rob Griepentrog. He's 31. Wow. I'll be there soon. Scary.

Night y'all.

Last weekend from Friday 'till this past Monday, my mother and sister visited me here in Carmel. It was a great visit but oh, what an adventurous time...

They were supposed to fly in on Friday night at 10:30p.m. I didn't actually see them come through the gate until 12:30a.m. that night. There was almost a four hour delay in New York's LaGuardia airport because of foggy weather. My sister said people were so fed up that after a while a bunch of folks just laid down on the floor and slept at the gate waiting to board.

When my mother and sister finally got on the plane, they flew to Chicago and then took another connecting flight to Indianapolis. Needless to say, they STILL had problems when they got to Chicago.

There was another delay coming out of Chicago since they had missed their original connecting flight tim and so they didn't touch down in Indianapolis until 12:10a.m.

When they arrived, they had to wait for another plane to leave the gate and so they sat on the runway for an extra 20 minutes.

By the time it was time to get off the plane, my sister said people were literally RUNNING off the plane because they were about to go crazy. People were running so hard that the plane was actually shaking! That's pretty funny. I can imagine how frustrated people were.

Thankfully my good buddy, Rob was with me, as I waited and we had a lot of fun while doing that. Basically, we stuck it to the man by getting free parking at the airport. :)

It's free parkng per half hour, so after we found out that their flight was still waiting to dock at the gate, we went back out to the parking lot, got our ticket stamped, drove my car out of the lot, made a big circle around the airport again, and then came back to park in the lot-FOR FREE! SCORE! STICKING IT TO THE MAN, BABY!

My mom and sis were naseous from all the nasty, stale, airplane air and were also hungry. After I dropped off Rob, we headed for the only restaurant that was open at the time, Steak 'n' Shake. When we got out of the car, it was freezing, but both my mom and sis didn't really care since it was fresh air and they thrilled to breathe it in after hours of being stuck in an airport and on a plane.

We didn't get home until 3 a.m. that night and we just passed out...I had planned for us to visit the children's museum and eat some good food in downtown Indy, but with the flight delay, I didn't really think we had the energy to do that. We all ended up waking at around 1:15p.m. or so in the afternoon.

We had our breakfast, got ready for the day and set out at around 3:30p.m. for downtown. And then the fun began...


On our way down to the Children's Museum we hit a HUGE pothole and my tire instantly burst. The thing just went totally flat and we had to stop right away. There was a huge gash on it and we had to call AAA to bring out a tow truck since I thought we didn't have a spare tire in the car.

"How can you not have a spare tire?" "Trust me mom, I don't. I've looked several times and there isn't one." I was so confident. Then my sister piped in: "Mom, it's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire in the next few minutes! Leave it alone!" Then I came to the page in the car manual that explained how to take the spare tire out of its compartment, located right in between the middle two seats of the mini-van. Doh...

Andrew, my roommate pulled up literally minutes after we made that magical discovery and so did the AAA guy! I felt so bad he came all the way out just to be sent back since we didn't need him anymore, but he was nice enough to check the tire gauge on our spare tire to make sure it had enough air pressure. And he did that for free.

Needless to say, we got it all changed and it was fine. I called up the non-emergency police line though and made sure that they would take care of the pothole. A really nice neighbor who lived right by 49th St. on Meridian, came out to help us and told us that in the last two days she's had at least two cars get flats as a result of that pothole. She also found six hubcaps on a Saturday morning once!

She's tried calling the town hall several times but to no avail. She put an orange cone around it-gone. And she's tried putting signs around it-also gone. So hopefully after this time it would resolve the situation.

After all that, there was no way we could go to the museum and were just too tired to really be up for much else. We just decided to treat Andrew to dinner since he helped us change the tire and then just went to the mall and then headed home.


I really enjoyed the fact that my mom got to see myself in my new life, around new friends, and for her to see how I live now and that I am independent and doing fine without her. I don't say that to be mean, but for her to hopefully realize soon that I'm not her "little boy" anymore and that she needs to have a life of her own.

This is probably something I need to further explain, but long story short, my mother hasn't really lived her own life for a very long time and I really hope she can do that soon once she realizes my sister and I don't "need" her anymore in the sense of being taken care of. We're both autonomous adults, fully capable of taking care of ourselves apart from her but do appreciate her for the things she does but we can no longer be dependent on her, and she can no longer expect us to be dependent on her for our livelihood as well.

Anyways, just thought I'd share that story with you since I found it to be quite entertaining and some story. "It's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire, mom!" Classic. My sister laughed about it right after and so did we. At the time it was pretty sucky, but looking back on it now, it was pretty funny. One of those moments we won't forget for a while.

My father's birthday passed this September and for the first time in a while I was curious to ask him how old he was since I had somewhat forgotten. "63," he said. I was speechless on the phone for a minute and thought about that long and hard. I gasped inside and thought, "my gosh...I don't know how much time he's got left and He doesn't know Jesus yet."

After Thanksgiving I knew that I couldn't afford a plane ticket out to NY to see my mother and sister again. Plus, in light of what I just shared, I thought it more important to make it a point to go see my dad this Christmas.

Weeks before I went I knew that God wanted me to pray. I was so busy with my end of the year ask and other ministry-related things that I never actually got around to sit and pray for him specifically and our time together until a few days before I was going to leave to see him.

It ended up that three nights before I boarded the plane I got really sick and one of the worst coughs I've had in a REALLY long time. Needless to say it was a battle until that day to keep my wits about me and pray for my father and also pray for the Lord to give me the words to say and the right things to share with him to help him make one step further to knowing Christ.

I arrived on Christmas eve and we didn't talk much that night at all. But a friend of his who's been cooking for him on a regular basis cooked up a KILLER dinner and oh my gosh...I've never been so stuffed in my life. It was probably because weeks prior to Christmas I had been on a nutritional diet that consisted of eating six, smaller, healthy meals a day. So coming into Christmas eve gorging myself on amazing Chinese food was quite a shock for my digestive system. Needless to say, my villi were stretched to the max.

Christmas evening wasn't anything spectacular at all. He was pretty tired after we got back from watching "King Kong," and just wanted to relax and watch more of his Chinese soap operas on DVD and vegetate on the couch (something he didn't get to do often at all because of Quizno's).

I went out for a walk, came back in and came across a story that illustrated the reason for Christ's coming to earth. The story was about a man who saw birds flying into his window constantly because they couldn't see the glass that was there and didn't understand that if they tried to peck through the glass or fly into it, they would die.

The story goes that the man tried to keep shooing the birds away from the window with a lit lamp he had and put the lit lamp by a bird feeder that was outside his house. They just couldn't understand and kept injuring themselves on the glass.

"If only I could become a bird and show them what I meant. Then they would get it," he thought to himself. And instantly, after that moment, he had a revelation of why Jesus Christ had to come to earth to show us the way and die on the cross for our sins.

After reading that to my father, he agreed it was a touching story and we started to talking about many different spiritual things. One thing led to another and one of the most poignant points of our conversation was when we touched on the topic of Christ's deity.

My fatherkept saying that Jesus was one of the good teachers like Muhammad and Buddha and others. But I told him that the Jesus in the scriptures does not share His position with any other; that position being on equal with almighty God, the Father, Himself. I was able to use Josh McDowell's argument, "Is Jesus a liar, lord, or lunatic?" and said to him that Jesus simply does not give us that option. For what prophet before Him claimed to actually be God? No one. You can't call Him "a good teacher". He is either who He says He is or a sick, twisted, evil man, the worst, most vile, deceiver ever. Or He was absolutely crazy. Pick one of these as a viable option but don't just call Him a good teacher.

After sharing the story of Jesus healing the paralytic in Luke, I asked my dad what he thought of Jesus now since He did in fact, claim to be God. He was honest and said, "well...I have to say I don't think I believe who He says He is then."

Although that wasn't the answer I was looking for, it certainly was a huge step in his spiritual progress in wrestling with who th person of Jesus really is. So that is a huge praise and I really thank God for that.

But more than that was the deeper issue of why my dad lived the life he did. He couldn't understand why God would let him going through the life experiences he did and why he had the character flaws he had. He was upset at the fact that he was born with a bad temper and has no control over it.

I tried to explain to him that the only hope we have in overcoming these sins and difficulties is salvation in Christ who can release us from these things but didn't get very far.

All this to say, most of what I just shared with you is smoke and mirrors. The underlying heart issue is why my mother and him divorced...this is the one key issue that holds him back and he is still having trouble owning up to the fact that he had a fault in that and is, in essence, blaming God for it.

It was super late by that time and he had to get up at 7a.m. the next morning to open Quizno's (Why, I don't know! His partner's idea...crazy and a waste of time, I thought. Who wants to go to Quizno's the day after Christmas???). I'm really thankful we got to talk because the entire rest of the day he was out cold from being so tired and didn't have any other opportunities to talk with him.

So praise God I got to share with him when I did. The Lord opened that small window of opportunity and I was able to share what God wanted me to share with him and then that window shut right after.

Praise the Lord for His perfect timing and His all-knowing wisdom to orchestrate the times that we have to share with people and then giving us the words to say to those people to help unlock the fears and questions/obstacles they have to knowing Him.

Please continue praying for God to soften his heart and to lift up these heart issues to the Lord. I pray that he will wrestle with these truths and hard things so that he may come to know the Lord, Jesus Christ. Thanks for reading friend. I hope you were encouraged by this story and can go and do the same with whomever it is God is giving you the window of opportunity to share with. Good night!