Many friends, some just done with finals, came to celebrate Christmas together with ISM at the Lipman Room. We ate well, met new people and reconnected with our friends. We listened to a message about the meaning of Christmas and played a gift exchange game. What a packed night! Check out the pictures.
As is our normal tradition, ISM celebrated the end of the final exam period with our annual Christmas party. We had a lot of good food at our potluck… I particularly enjoyed Jisup’s chili (though I always seem to enjoy chili), Jame’s sweet rice ball dessert, and of course, more chili. (Jisup and Sara, my wife will not be thanking you for this delicious dish!)
After that, we had a message by Chul that showed an awfully clean and cute version of the Nativity… I think the people were lego figures, so it was a sanitized, kids’ version. The stable looked too clean. But he talked about the message of Christmas and how we need to have room for Jesus in our own hearts… (the podcast will be up soon for those who missed the Bible study but want to hear it)
But as you probably figured out, the highlight was our annual gift exchange. We had a lot of people show up and actually ran out of gifts, though many brought extras too. It was crazy. There was an AM/FM/CD player radio that was quite popular. A label maker as well. But of course, very few people got exactly what they wanted because of the crazy gift exchange game. 2 things to note: (1) “This is so fun” made its way back to ISM… twice. I can brag that I won each time on those challenges! And (2) The arm wrestling challenge was hilarious… The biggest surprise of the night? Billy is stronger than I thought… I thought Joe would beat him for sure, but they were pretty evenly matched for 1 minute. It was great to watch!
If you missed it, join us for our other Christmas activities… or we’ll see you next year!
The graduate students in
ISM joined the on-campus college groups from our church (Gracepoint Fellowship Church) for an unprecedented Christmas caroling time on campus. After our Friday Forum, we all gathered at the Valley Life Science Building lawn with our tiny LED lights and cell phones in hand to sing Christmas carols together. Before we sang, Daniel, who led the time, asked us to raise our LED light or cell phone when he called the year in which we came out to our church or our fellowship group. He started with 1991 (right?) and went up to 2008 this year. As the year progressed, the number of lights increased. This was a powerful imagery that we, as a church, can be a bright light to the world, though we might be a small light individually.
Do you hear what I hear? Well, you probably don’t. As December has arrived, I am hearing the songs of Christmas in my head. Christmas has always been a magical time for me ever since I came to the United States because people just seemed nicer around the time of Christmas. However, I didn’t understand the true significance of this holiday until I became Christian in college just a few years back. The love of God culminates in the birth of Jesus, in the form of a human body. (If you don’t know the full story, come to our Bible study to find out more.) It’s amazing! So, now, I celebrate Christmas by singing well-known Christmas songs in a much more meaningful way. What is your favorite Christmas song?
The theme of this post is "eating," one of the most universal, highly valued, and well practiced activities here in ISM. In the season of Thanksgiving, we give thanks to God by appreciating His abundant provision in the form of food and fellowship around the dining table. 
We hosted Thanksgiving meals one after another, starting out with the English Class Thanksgiving meal, to the post-Thanksgiving Celebration dinner, to a home-style potluck dinner at Chul & Sharon’s place, 
and to the hot pot dinner hosted by Jesse, Joe and Eliah. Though I could not make it to all of them due to my family engagement, I can experience the joy of these dinners by looking at these pictures. If you missed all the dinners because you were diligently working away in your lab, I have a good news for you. You will have a second chance at Christmas. Don’t miss it!
For many international students, cooking turkey for an American Holiday like Thanksgiving can be a daunting challenge. I just wanted to pass on this great recipe from Dishgracepoint, which is a blog that includes a lot of good recipe ideas for groups of people. The recipe even includes suggestions, Q&A, and various options on how to make your Thanksgiving turkey much better… and all of the people eating your turkey even more thankful.
Today is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to all of our mothers!!! This past year, we had two new mothers: Jina and Sara. So it’s no longer just Sharon anymore!
And for the rest of us, we (hopefully) called our mothers, sent them nice gifts (one couple sent one of these cute fruit baskets!), and mailed them a card. But as you may have noticed from our ISM homepage, we had a Mother’s Day card making night 2 weeks ago. So instead of wasting time trying to find the perfect card at Safeway or Walgreen’s, we made cards that were much cuter and meaningful to our moms. One person lamented that it is impossible to find good Mother’s Day cards that are not overly sentimental, majorly tacky (with inappropriate humor), and from sons. It is strange that all of the good cards are from daughters. I wonder what this says about us men?
So instead of buying cards, even the brothers made cards. Yes, the guys participated in crafts. And it was fun. Some brothers confessed to having no creativity and just copied the sample templates (cough *Peter* cough). Other brothers had cards that were prettier than the ones made by some sisters. But either way, it was far more meaningful. Thank you sisters for allowing us to participate as well.
I just hope everyone who made cards that night remembered to mail them…