International Graduate Student Ministry – Gracepoint Berkeley

We kicked off our semester series on Abraham’s Journey at our Graduate Student Welcome Night. In the call of Abraham by God, we see something counterintuitive: God blesses Abraham so that he can be a source of blessing to the nations. We often think that our personal happiness is the most important thing in life. But from the Bible, we see that blessing really isn’t about our own self-centered agendas—it’s all about being a source of blessing to others around us. That’s how God made us to be.

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Graduate Student Welcome Night was the biggest event of the year! We started with a delicious BBQ dinner, followed by some great music, a fun video, and a thought-provoking message. Did we forget to mention that we had a LOT of fun in the process?

And in case you were wondering what ice breakers we played, the funniest one was called “table boxing”. Imagine trying to open a gift wrapped box while wearing oven mitts. If you can’t, then you can see why this game was hilarious. Many people fumbled with their boxes for a long time.

If you missed GSWN, don’t worry. You can check out the pictures… and if you still want to know more about ISM, feel free to check out our weekly Bible studies! We still have great food, music, and a thought provoking message there too.

Thanks webmod for the recap of the night. I was almost reliving it as I was reading. There is a brief hiatus of posting pictures due to a technical difficulty, so I will put some pictures here.

Team 1 is  1derful.                                                 Yummy Pizza!

New friends + pizza- what more can you want?    How about ice cream?

The 2 towers. Wesley is measuring which tower is the tallest. The last picture shows preparation of ice-cream sundaes, a refreshing snack after some tower building.

On the way to English class, I was trying to remember how many years that International Student Ministry has been holding our English Class: Effective Communication for Success. Maybe it’s age or  the fact that every year is so filled with great memories but I had to check my pictures to count the number of years we have been conducting the English class. This year we have many firsts: Sharon is not the only certified TESOL teacher, but also Carolyn. Thanks to her, the material has been refined and expanded. Sara is a PhD student in English- how fitting! We also have two teachers, Alex and Eebeen, from our visiting scholars ministry, part of the Praxis group of Gracepoint Fellowship Church. This year, in addition to our session at Barrows Hall, we are holding another session at the UC Village Community Center.

The first Sunday at Barrows Hall, we had 47 new students from all over the world: Turkey, Israel, Chile, France, Japan, Korea, China, and more. In my group, in addition to me teaching English and word stress, I learned about English courses in other countries, how prevalent British English is, and the popular culture in other countries. In Israel, they start learning English in third grade. I am learning as well.

It’s that time of year again that we at Gracepoint Berkeley gear up for New Student Welcome Night. Many of you know that ISM is hosting Graduate Student Welcome Night, which is ISM’s biggest event of the year. What you might not know is that ISM’s undergraduate partners in ministry (Acts2Fellowship, Kairos, and Koinonia) are hosting two New Student Welcome Nights at Pauley Ballroom on campus. For those of you who see our flyer and think, “I don’t really want to go to Graduate Student Welcome Night because I am still an undergrad”, this is the place for you. (In fact, Kairos 3 is headed up by ISM alumni and is geared for international undergraduate students!)

Check out the New Student Welcome Night website if you have a chance! For those of you who are undergraduate students, we highly recommend these events. And for those of us who are a little older, we hope to see you on Friday!

Last Friday, we had approximately 80 people join us for Pizza, Ice Cream, and Games… in what is now our annual “PIG Night”. How can such a random assortment of things make an activity? Good question. First we started off with some delicious pizza, soda, and mingling. (Okay, it was a lot of mingling) We then played a series of games, starting with an ice-breaker called “Your Favorite Group”. We broke into random groupings of people and shared our names, fields of study, and favorite something. (food, Olympic Sport, etc.)

We then moved into our team competition. First, teams had to come up with a name and cheer. And then the hard part (a la Wesley) was that each team needed to make a flag and choose a mascot too. All in 15 minutes. It was stressful but creative as we had team names like “ONE-derful”, “Panda 11″, “F-1″ and “Day Eight”. The teams then played Pictionary with words such as environmentalist, catnap, and backstroke. Finally, we gave each team the following:

• 2 straws
• 4 marshmallows
• 10 pieces of dry spaghetti
• 2 paper plates
• 1 paper cup
• 1 page of newspaper
• 6 feet of thin masking tape

And then we had to build the tallest tower out of it. The top team built a 79″ (that’s 6′7″) tower. Downright amazing. Then we topped off the tower making with ice cream sundaes with Dreyer’s ice cream. (Thanks Joe!) It was a cool and refreshing treat.

I was also thankful to have people from Kairos and the Visiting Scholars Ministry of Praxis come and support our event. As there were so many people, and I was running the game time with Wesley, there was no way that we could have set everything up and had a good time without the support of people from Gracepoint Fellowship Church.

So Pizza, Ice Cream, and Games. If you missed it, we hope you can join us next year!

Summer 2008 was winding down, so ISM celebrated the end of summer with a nice, relaxing picnic at Live Oak Park in North Berkeley. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, and a lot of fun together. How did we have fun? Glad you asked. We played a team game where some older ISM staff members got soaked. And then we played hours of basketball, volleyball, soccer, and frisbee. Check out the photos!

At ISM we like to throw in some pizza, ice cream, fun games and great company to create our very own tradition. So what happens when we mix all these things together? We get PIG (Pizza, Ice Cream, Games) NIGHT!

Here are some photos of our second annual PIG Night. It was a great time to get to know fellow graduate students, especially for those who were new to UC Berkeley AND are an international graduate student.

We played a group game where we broke into random groupings of people as an icebreaker. Then we had teams come up with a name, cheer, flag, and mascot. And to top it all off, we made teams build towers out of some random materials. Just check out the photos!

Yes, it was great to watch the opening ceremony with BCSSA people. After our graduate student bible study on the UC Berkeley campus, our people (International Student Ministry) hurriedly joined the gathering at Sun HongKong restaurant where BCSSA people already crowded.

Though I am not a Chinese, when the national anthem of China resounded in the bird-nest stadium, when President Hu JinTao declared the opening of the Olympic games, when the Olympic torch in the main stadium finally received the flame that went around the globe, I could not but think about the difficult history that China went through for the past 100 years, which almost brought me to tears. As president Hu JinTao said, Chinese people have been preparing for this Olympics for a hundred years. A century of sorrow, shame, and confusion has passed. Westerners are no longer people whom they should feel intimidated about. China is truly coming out to the world as a nation of center. I wonder why God put me in Gracepoint Fellowship Church where a majority of the congregation members are ABC (American Born Chinese). May the LORD richly bless this nation and use her for his kingdom’s purpose as a final push!

San Francisco is fun place to be when you get to hang out with friends together. On Saturday, we took some of our new friends, who just came from China, to the City. We took two minivans with 13 people. We hit many tourist areas: Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Park, Legion of Honor, Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street, and Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a day of beautiful weather: sunny day, mild temperature, except a little bit windy in the wharf. We ended our trip in the Fisherman’s Wharf by enjoying a bowl of clam chowder in a bread bowl for dinner. Throughout the trip, we got to know one another better by chatting away. Check out the photo album for this event to share a little bit of our fun time together. If you are new to the Bay Area and want to make some new friends in ISM, please contact us. We’d love to make new friends and hang out in San Francisco.

This Friday will be another historic moment in the history of International Student Ministry because we will collaborate with Berkeley Chinese Students and Scholars Association (BCSSA) to co-host the broadcast of Olympics 2008 that is happening in China. Right after our Friday Bible Study, we will be watching the re-run of the event aired by NBC 11 at 7:30pm. And the Olympics 2008 is definitely a historic moment for China, as it hosts this international event for the first time. It’s all very exciting. And I look forward to all the exciting sports events in the days ahead. My favorite sports are women’s volleyball, ping pong, and soccer (football). What are yours?

Friday Forum Bible Study from the Gospel of Luke

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