B.C.Straight

May your plans be interrupted, disrupted, rearranged.
May you find yourselves far outside your comfort zones.
May your waters be stirred and your weaknesses laid bare so that the beauty of God could be made more visible.
May all you lack be used by Him as well as all you have.
May your vulnerability be an act of worship.
May your Christ-centered minds be sharpened, hearts softened, eyes widened, hands opened and wills daily relinquished to Your King.
May you realize the seemingly serendipitous moments in your life have been orchestrated by an all-knowing, plan-having, loving Father.
May your own agendas not get in the way of God’s.
May these cornfields/mountains/ocean surrounding you be a constant reminder of the beautiful, sometimes confusing, truth-unearthing and life-altering season in which God has placed you to grow, become, thrive and catapult you into changing the world.
May your devotion to Jesus be unwavering.
If the moment your own dream dies and God’s dream for your life taking root has not yet arrived, may it soon.
May you with all boldness wave the white flag over your life and offer it to God as His loving channel meeting human needs to His glory.
May you not choose the path of least resistance but of greatest submission to Your Creator.
May every step you take across your campus, every credit hour accrued, every movement you make towards that moment your diploma is placed in your hands be another layer of your surrender to God.
May your cap thrown in the air your last day on your campus be your symbol of a life offered up, a lifetime of servanthood to the SERVANT OF ALL.
AMEN.

Again, I want to apologize to those of you who follow my blog so that you could know best and better how to pray for me, because it has been awhile, again, that I had put anything up.

I used to tell myself that I can still learn all of the lessons that one need to learn without serving with a title, but I’m learn it otherwise. There is just something about the title that has forces me to grow in areas where I would not normally or even thought that I need to grow.

There is something about serving as a servant leader that help expose my sins, the little sins that I don’t even know exist or thought that I have dealt with already. Without going into details, I would like to say this though, God is using this semester, as I am serving as an RA and Global Outreach leader, to kill many sins that I hope I will never have to deal with again. I hope that this will stand true it it stands the test of time, because if so, I would have so much more time devoted to the ministry that God will call me; rather than, killing and dealing with the little sins that I have had to be killing right now.

I’m learning a tons of things in my classes and relationship with people in general. Praise God!

I’m amazed how much I’m falling in love with the Bible simply by learning Greek and Hebrew. Praise God for allowing me to have the opportunity to do so.

I’m excited for the International Retreat that is happening in less than a couple of hours. It is the high lights of many of us. A few hightlights: 1. Worship God with many different cultures and in some cases languages, 2. The talent show makes us laugh until we cry and then the best part is that the next day we have abs…haha., 3. Our dinner from around the world is also one of the biggest highlight, I’m cooking Khmer food this year.

Please pray for me to look at life as a learning process instead of beating myself up for not doing things the right way on the first try because that is pride. Also, please pray that as we drive to Carpenteria, CA for our International Retreat, we will be safe.

I feel really bad for the people who are following me on this blog because I have not been a good sport at keeping up with it. I do apologize. Things are way busier than I had expected to some degree. The one thing that is taking a lot of time is building relationship. I love meeting and hanging out with people but it is time consuming and thus by the time I am thinking about blogging I cannot do it because of homework.

God is teaching me a lot of little lessons that I would not otherwise learned had I not been an RA. Those lessons are small but very important for me to learn for the rest of my life. The biggest lesson that I am learning is that I suck at communicating. I pre thought and talked in my head but when I actually communicate it out loud, it does not come out the way I wanted it to be. For instance, I would say and mean one thing in my head but the people who are listening to me would have a hard time understanding my accent and then perceive and/or understood me the other way.

Please pray for me to become an affective communicator.

Also, there has been a lot going on back home, and it is putting a lot of weight on my shoulders. This year I have talk to my mom for the first time since four years ago, and the last night we talked, she was on skype, so I got to see her and that is causing me to want to go back home. I miss Cambodia. It has been a long time. But I also understand that God has put me here for many reasons thus I need to be here still. The hardest thing for me with my mom is that she is really sick and as a son, I want to take care of here but it is not happening because we are half the world apart.

Please continue to pray for me as I finish up my senior year of college, there is a lot to be done and a lot to try to get ready before I head back home.

Please pray for the wing, pray that each of us men will fall in love with Christ individually before we try to love each other otherwise our love will be fake and consider a gong cymbal (1 Cor. 13).

Although I never actually went to Pre School. For some reason, I feel like this week is Pre School for me because my schedule is not completely settle down yet. A lot more things will be factor in for the rest of the semester. Those factors are already in my schedule, but I have not actually lived it out yet. For example, I will have meetings with my RD Jess Arnds and my head RA Matt Nerdalh. We just had our first Team Time, its where Jess would meet with Matt and I. We read through the Book of Philippians. It was very edifying.

We had dorm chapel today, this means that we meet in our individual dorms. We had coffee and muffins for breakfast. But I also had noodles and an egg because those food does not fill me in.

All of my classes are great classes. I love them so much. I can’t believe that I am here studying. A lot of my friends couldn’t come back and yet here I am. Thank you LORD for providing.

I’m beginning to get a bigger understanding of my languages. But they are still hard but I’m able to translate a lot more and retain information more. God is gracing me with so many grace when come to getting my school work done. Praise you LORD.

Oh, I talked to my birth mom for the first time since 2007 when I left Cambodia to come study in the United States. It was cool how God connected us back. We are scheduled to talk about tomorrow (Saturday Sept. 10, 2011) at 6:00PM her time and that would be 4:00AM my time. I hope my sister will be able to wake up and talk with her too.

I’m really enjoying my time as an RA, it is such a blessing. I’m learning a lot from this service. Things that I don’t think I will learn had I not been an RA. There is just way to much for me to write about, they are all in my journal book, nonetheless I would say this though, being an RA has caused me to do a lot more of my own heart examination and pay closer attention to life then I had ever before. Praise God for allowing me to be here. Please continue to pray for me and my wing if you are reading this blog. I need your support as fellow believers through prayers.

When all is said and done, I know that this is very early to say this but I will say it anyway and that is I will greatly miss this place. I have and I am already especially just at the thought of be being done in less than nine months.

Thank you Jesus!

By now, I should be all settle in but I’m not, there is so many curve balls in life. As WOW has came to an end, I was still not able to rest up because my best friend Lee Davis was visit, I really enjoyed our fellowship. I miss him a lot already.

It was a very hot weekend, but nonetheless the LORD was still in control. We have a pool to cool ourselves off.

My voice is coming back. I almost loss it during WOW week because doing random cheers. It was very fun though.

Classes are going well but very hard. I’m not sure how will I get my work done but even just at the thought of that question, I’m reminded of how God has been faithful throughout my entire life. I could have die when I was a kid on the streets, but He protects and provides for me. Praise Him with me.

I love the college life, I love all of the relationship that God has allowed me to be apart of. There is so much love when His people is united at one place.

I can’t believe WOW is coming to an end, but nonetheless it is to me more of a beginning because it will be a test of my love for them and also to see if I am truly their friends. I hope to still help them and hang out with them.

I’m surprise that I woke up with strengths and joy and alertness because I have been running on four to five hours per night since RA retreat, but at the same time I’m not surprise because my God is BIG.

I squeezed fresh orange juice for my WOWees and had a great time chatting during breakfast.

There are still things for them to do up until dinner and them they would be on their own, meaning that they will not have any schedule events from ASB. I’m hoping to play ultimate spoons in C-DUB tonight.

Also, our returning students are moving in today. It is such a joy to see them. I hope to catch up and learn from them of what the LORD has been teaching them over the summer break.

Today, was the most relaxed day for us Servant Leaders. Most of us took a nap sometime between 11:00-5:00. Although I took an hour nap, I was still very tired. But praise to God for providing me and my friends strengths even as I’m typing this right now.

I ran errands with my RD, Jess Arnds, to get stuff for the Master’s cup. We had a good time chilling.

Kyle R. and I practiced diving for coins that amount to $3.43 before dinner. Looking back, I’m glad that we did that because it allowed me to realized that it is actually harder that I thought it would be.

It was very fun prepping for the Master’s cup. Our theme was Romans/Spartans. We matched in and had tiki torches, spears, helmets and whatever else.

We did very well in the competition, but we missed count dimes for pennys and thus we had to start all over again. Otherwise we would have been in the rank. All in all, we had fun. Since our dorm has only two guys wings, we only had a handful of people to work with. Half of the Servant Leaders are in ASB which means that they can not participate with us because they are judges. This means that all of us participate in at least two or three events unlike other dorms where there were people who were not able to play at all.

Upon finish cleaning up, we CDUBers went to In n’ Out and fellowship there with burgers and fries. It was good. I shared my testimony with the people who were sitting next to me and then told them a couple jokes and pick ups to make them laugh. And then this is my favorite: I told John E., our Egyptian friend to take a piece of ice and go to a girl and to smash it on her head and then to introduce himself and then to ask her name. He did and it was great to watch. We had great laugh and now he made a new friend.

Besides the normal schedule, we went to the beach and spent our whole afternoon there playing frisbee, soccer, volleyball, football, castle building and a great more fellowship and meeting new students.

On my way there I sat next to a couple who are I would say in love and in the process they were overly excited. It remains me of Proverbs 30:18-19, “There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.”

We had a great time during dorm celebration. We played ultimate spoons, this means that we hide spoons all over the places and had to do crazy things before we can get a spoon. We all were sweating so much.

We also spent time talking about the Master’s cup. But before that we played, “I have never” game.

We had a lot of fun at the ice station and the bowling lanes.

For dinner, we went to The Hungry Ninja. It was great. We also played frisbee and prayed as a group.

Lee, my last year roommate, stopped by and we had a great fellowship into the night. I will miss him a lot.