100-day (behk-il)

today we had gideon's 100-day (behk-il) party. pastor bae led a time of worship and said a blessing-prayer for gideon. thank you to everyone who came and thank you for the presents.

sf giants game

last night i finally got to go to a sf giants game. my friend royce got free tickets. like everyone says the ballpark was beautiful.

church growth

someone from houston told me how k.j. choi (pga golfer) recently started attending a korean church in houston. soon afterward the church doubled in size. my "source" said that people just want to be able to say that they attend the same church as k.j. choi.

on the one hand, i think that's a really stupid motivation to attend a church. on the other hand, i believe that the church is trying to reach stupid people.

some pastors try very hard to NOT show favoritism to celebrities/famous people and rich people. while others use those people to attract more people into their doors. i don't think either approach is right or wrong, just something i'm thinking about.

my brother gets to meet famous people...

my older brother works for an asian-american entertainment company (imaginasian). he gets to travel all over the world and meet many celebrities. i usually don't care that much but his company just hired josh "the babyface assassin" barnett to do commentary for pancrase fights that they will begin to air. josh barnett is one of the best heavyweight fighters alive today. so my brother had dinner with him last night & will continue to meet w/him in the future.

stressful day

suhee had a minor surgery today to remove some "membrane" from her uterus. they think it might have been part of the placenta from gideon's birth. the surgery seems to have gone well. thank you to those of you who have been praying for us.

lately i've been feeling so stressed out. mostly because of today's surgery, & partly because of the headache of preparing to move. i've been working as the "resident manager" of my apartment. up until recently, working w/the larger management company has gone smoothly. everyone there has been super-polite and competent at what they do. then last week, one very incompetent person from the company tried to blame me for something that she failed to get done. she was so rude, & i felt so disrespected. the following day she kind of apologized to me in front of the guy in charge of the company (who also happens to be her dad). it's funny how one bad experience makes me think of the whole company in a negative light. (i guess that's how many people feel about church.) but it's weird how that one small experience got me so angry. sometimes it's hard to be "big", & so easy to be "small & petty".

last night i showed an empty apartment unit to a couple that just came from russia. i proudly told him how my wife did her first year of college at moscow state university (very prestigious in russia & eastern europe). he one-upped me by telling me that he is a professor from there. he is here in california to teach astrophysics at uc berkeley.

daniel & michelle's wedding

on monday (labor day) two of our church members got married (daniel koo & michelle chang). i was so honored to officiate the wedding. i even wore my minister's robe to look more formal. it really was a beautiful wedding & a beautiful moment when the couple exchanged their vows. during the vows the bride cried, which caused others to get choked up too.

one of the groomsmen is a product developer for shutterfly.com. i was excited to meet him because i am a huge fan & user of shutterfly. he told me about a new poster/picture collage product that he is working on, & he told me that he would send me some free promotionals. definitely someone i want to keep in touch with :>

here is one of my "collections" (publicly shared online photo album) from shutterfly: gideonchu.shutterfly.com