Thanksgiving and Random Things

Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful - and that you remembered to actually be thankful about something! I definitely was thankful for my family and enjoyed the day off as well :). Some of the things I made as pictured below...

Little K

Little K. Somehow, kids are special. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I was working with kids at Sunday School. Well, energetic, crazy, and fidgety as they might be, kids just have a way of melting your heart. So here I find myself asking for you to pray for K. K is your normal kid who loves video games, running around, asking questions, and doing whatever it is that kids like to do. No, nothing is wrong with K. That's not why I'm asking you to pray. I'm asking you to pray because I want to see K grow closer to God, to know Him more fully, and well, because there are a few factors that make it a more "difficult" environment for him. Unlike your average churched kid in America today, K comes from a non-Christian family, and his older siblings appear to be cynical about the existence of God (and vocal about it). But God works in ways that we cannot begin to foresee, and K accepted Christ as Savior this past summer. Now has begun the task of discipling this little kid whose attention span is on the order of a whole 5 minutes. The desire to know God more fully is so clearly evident, the questioning mind of a little kid whose "society" filter has not fully developed, the simple child-like faith. I've been using what I've been learning in my discipleship class to teach K the basics. You see, my hope is that K's faith will grow deeper and stronger. I really want K to come to the point where he is able to defend his faith. But time is so precious and the times I get to work with him come only once a week. Five minutes once a week! So little, and yet so much. Over the course of 3 months, that is an entire hour.

I've been assigning verses for K to memorize. Last week, I asked him to memorize Ephesians 2: 8-9. Well, when I followed up yesterday, he told me his dog ate the reference I'd written down. Your dog ATE it? Yeah, his dog tears papers up. Well, I can believe that. So as I was writing it down again on this week's bulletin, he looks up at me and goes, "are you mad at me?" Um. No. I'm not mad at you. Satisfied, he turned around and got distracted again. I gave him the reference and told him not to let his dog eat it again.

There's something about the way I care about kids like K that is so different from the way I cared about problem sets. It's hard to describe it exactly. It's not that I didn't care about psets in college. In fact, I cared quite a bit. But working with kids and pouring time and energy and thought into them is just different. Somehow, it's more special. Somehow, there are more struggles and more frustrations, but there is just more joy about the whole thing. And it's a good reminder that life is about so much more than problem sets. So will you join me in praying for little K and whoever else God has put on your heart today?


For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

*Note, the initial has been changed to protect privacy

To be like a Search and Rescue Dog

Recently, I read this article on a Bretagne, a search and rescue dog that searched for survivors in the 9/11 aftermath.

Lessons from the Charles

So, I realized that I mentioned the "Charles River Lesson" in my last post, and I've never written down what I learned while walking across the Harvard Bridge. So here goes.

Spanish Again

At one of the places where I volunteer, there are sometimes people who need translators. At the end of the day, I was using my now-limited knowledge of Spanish to call people and remind them of their appointments the following week. The manager overheard me calling people and since the official Spanish translators had left, when a patient walked in (and needed to be seen that day), she asked me to help translate. Fortunately, the patient's relative was able to translate most of the doctor's questions, and by the grace of God we somehow made it through - her translating most things and me stepping in for additional clarifications.

...And the Rest of October - Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes

I ended up baking a few pumpkin-related things the last couple of weeks of October. First, I decided to bake Pumpkin Cheesecake "cupcakes" while skyping with a friend from college.

The batter. It had 3 times as much pumpkin as the recipe called for, hence the really orange color.

Graham crackers pre-mortar+pestle...

The cooled version of "slightly" over mixed cheesecakes. (Apparently, according to the recipe, if you don't over mix the batter and don't open the oven while it's baking, the top won't crack.)

And... my friend received a package a couple of days later. Enjoy your medicine rotation, C! Hope these will help you get through the late nights and constant studying!