Gracepoint Training School and G-Live!

Next Friday, 2/13, we will be starting our GTS and G-Live practices! Remember to sign up for the course you plan on taking. If you have any questions as to which class you should take, you can read the descriptions on the signup page, or you can ask your staff.

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley (Gym)
Time: 7:00PM
Dates: 2/13 - 5/1
Fee: $5 for Course 101, Course 101x
$10 for Sk1, SK2, Church 101
Deadline is 2/8/09 so don't forget to sign up soon!

Guest Speaker: Dr. Craig Hazen

Hey everyone,
We'll be having a special talk this Friday with Dr. Craig Hazen who's a professor at Biola University. He'll be talking about Christianity in a World of Religions. Join us this Friday in 155/145 Dwinelle at 7PM! Also, if you want to come to the all-day training event with Dr. Hazen, make sure you sign up online on the signups page here. Also, note the new times for the Sunday service, which will start at 11:15AM right after the prayer meeting starting at 10:00AM.

Welcome back!

Welcome back everybody. I know it's been a very very long time since the blog has been last updated and I apologize for that. I think most people are back by now and I hope everybody had a restful break. Well, this posting will be the very first posting of year 2009. Coincidentally, today is actually a very special day. Not only is it Inauguration day of the very first African-American President of USA, and not only is it the very first day of the Spring semester, but also it is the Tuesday before the annual Winter Retreat which will be happening this weekend. Hope to see many of you guys there.

Good luck on Finals!

Study hard and good luck on your finals.

Events to come in January...

Please sign up for the following events ASAP:

Winter Retreat 2009
Fri-Sun, 1/23-1/25 (first weekend after school starts). This is the spiritual highlight of our whole year so please do sign up now and get the early bird discount if you sign up and pay before 12/31/08.

Koinonia Snow Trip 2009
Sat, 1/17 (right before school starts). This is a one day snow trip. It's a really fun time to sled, tube, build a snowman, tackle (mainly for brothers), just bury your leader in the snow (everybody). There's no sign up link for this, but if you are interested let us know.

GLive Tech and Arts Camp
Mon-Fri, 1/12-1/16. This is an incredible opportunity to get trained in video work, Photoshop, scriptwriting, and much more by the best at our church, in preparation for this spring's GracepointLive, our huge multimedia and theatrical production! Don't worry, you will still get to act on stage.

January 2009 is going to be an exciting month.

Gift Exchange!

Hey everyone!
This Friday we'll be having our Christmas Gift Exchange!!! Remember to bring a gift somewhere in the range of $5-10. We'll be combining with HG 3 (Ben and Helen) to have a fun time of giving and receiving gifts, with challenges and other fun twists. We'll be at the YWCA after Bible Study! Study hard for your finals and see you this Friday!

Update

Hey everyone,
It's been a while since our last post and a lot has happened since then. We've had our Thanksgiving Celebration which was a blast where we got to see all the different groups perform and eat great food afterwards. This Friday is our RSF night before finals begin which are just around the corner. Hopefully you guys are studying hard and will be able to make it. Also, make sure to mark your calendars for the Snow Trip on January 17 and the Winter Retreat on January 23-25 of 2009. There's a lot going on in January so make sure you keep that blue calendar handy! If you want to look at the videos of the various performances, they're posted on other home group's blogs as well as Dis-gracepoint. HG RED and 8 will be in charge of setup/takedown tomorrow for our Friday Night Bible Study so the guys should head over to Dana house by 5:45PM. We'll be grabbing dinner together between setup and Bible Study.

If you head over to HG 4's blog, they have links to a few of the highlights from TC.

Turkey recipes

Tom Kim, who is currently serving as a staff intern for A2F, is the maintainer for this awesome blog called dishgracepoint. He posts some of his secret recipes to some amazingly tasty dishes. As Thanksgiving is fast approaching, I think this post would come in handy.

More Than a Face + Thanksgiving Retreat

Hey everyone!

More Than A Face

In case you didn't know, our very own Vivian and Kathy will be giving the "More Than a Face" talk this Wednesday 11/12/08 at 8pm at the Norton Hall Main Lounge in Unit 3. It's a talk that was developed a while ago which exposes how media affects women, in aspects such as self-image, etc. If you're free and want to hear this talk, be there to support them!

Thanksgiving Retreat

This Saturday is Thanksgiving Retreat so if you haven't signed up already, do so now!! There's a link on the sidebar. We'll be spending the day hearing encouraging sharing from various members of our church about all the things God has been doing and just all that we have to be thankful for.

Koinonia Berkeley Zip-up Hoodies

We will be taking pre-orders. Do it NOW before it's too late. Deadline is this Friday (11.7.08)Front

Sleeve (the koinonia might not be there)

Koinonia Berkeley Freshmen at the Suhs

This past Friday after our Bible study, Stephen and Suzanne Suh (the directors of Koinonia, Berkeley), invited the Freshmen over to their place. It was a great time of getting to know each other and sharing in laughter and fun with shaved ice. We played the blanket name game (I don't know the official game), where you have two teams and a blanket raised up in between them. Then from each team, you send one person to sit in front of of the blanket. As soon as the blanket falls you the person who says the other person's name first wins. Just click on the image below to see some of the pictures we took.
Here's also a short clip of that blanket game.



It would be very difficult to tell from the video, but Brian and Brandon (they are twins) exchanged jackets to confuse the other team. I must say, that is genius.

We also played the electricity game. You can see Chris Gilling is very proud that his team won that round.

Special Event :: Gone!

Special Event: GONE
Thursday, Nov 6 @ 7PM - First Pres (Dana & Channing)

Join us for a special joint event hosted by a2f, Kairos, and Koinonia! There will be live music, sharing from different members of our group, and more! Invite your friends!

Koinonia HG 6 and HG 8 BBQ...and Christine's birthday

This past Thursday we joined Koinonia HG 6 for some awesome BBQ. It was a great time to meet some new people and also see some old familiar faces as well. The food was definitely an upgrade from the DC food. After the BBQ there was a short but sweet surprise party for Christine.


I have no idea what they are doing there. But if you're wondering who Christine is, she's the only one not doing that weird hand gesture.

Ghirardelli Pictures!

Two Fridays ago, we teamed up with homegroup 4 to take a trip to the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory. We had some really good ice cream! Our mouths watered as we looked at all the beautiful chocolate arrangements too!



Isaiah Kang . . . no matter how many times we tell him not to be greedy . . .

Home group 8 trying to pose that we're number one. Not sure if its clear at all what we're doing!

Ha ha, why is Brian in the front by himself?



Did I mention we had a lot of ice cream?

Ewwww . . . Jin Kim . . .

October Birthdays

Somehow, October seems to be a month dedicated to endless Birthday celebrations! Not that I'm complaining, but there sure has been a lot of Birthday surprises. I think the October babies included: Cyndi, Jackie, Elizabeth, Megan, Alex's which is today & then Christine's tomorrow & Vivian's at the end of the month! Happy Birthday to each of you. The pictures above are some ummm . . . errr . . . "interesting" pictures we took at Jackie & Elizabeth's birthday.

Girls' Sleepover 10/3/08

We had a great time at our girls' sleepover a couple weeks ago. We teamed up with HG 4 (Hannah's group) & HG 6 (Joanna's group). We told some hilarious stories, ate a lot of food & watched our past performances from G-Live (a performance we put on every 2 years at Gracepoint Fellowship Church). Our favorite was watching our very own John Chung sing & dance acting as a lawyer & Irene Youm acting as good old Sally, the secretary who gets John to turn back to his old dreams as a young Christian. We'll be having G-Live again this upcoming spring - looking forward to it! Here's some more fun pictures:

Guest Speakers

Hey everyone!
There are going to be two guest speakers on campus tonight to discuss some philosophical questions as well as some apologetics. They'll be meeting in Wheeler tonight at 7PM but knowing most of these campus wide talks, it's best to come early for good seats (or just seats for that matter). For more information on Michael Ramsden you can visit here and for Os Guinness visit this page.

Topics: Mike Ramsden – Is Faith Delusional?; Os Guinness – A Thinker’s Quest for Meaning
Location: Wheeler Auditorium, Berkeley
Date: 10/9/08, Thursday
Time: 7pm, followed by 30 min of Q&A

Pictures!

Hey guys,
As most of you have probably noticed, we try to take a lot of pictures during our meetings/events/gatherings/activities/etc. And if your wondering where they're all going, we try to post them on our Gracepoint flickr site. You can access the photostream here. You'll be able to see pictures from all our different groups by clicking on the "Collections" button right under the "gracepoint's photostream" at the top of the page. They're organized so that the Collections are usually the different groups and the Sets are the events or places where the pictures were taken. Have a look around at all that's been going on in the past few years!

Tilden Park!

Last Saturday we had a chance to get all the freshmen and seniors together for a nice BBQ and sports time at Tilden Park! All in all, I think we had around 80 people show up to head up the hill to Tilden (with some really nice views on the way up). After arriving, people piled out to play a variety of sports ranging from soccer to volleyball to ultimate frisbee. This was all followed by an awesome feast of burgers and hot dogs and then a few more games afterwards. Then we all piled into the cars again to head down the mountain which was an adventure in and of itself due to closed roads and non-existant detours. Regardless we made it all down safely and enjoyed the Cal vs. Colorado State game at Kip's/Sun Hong Kong. Hope to see you next time!


Left: Christine and Myra BBQ'ing some delicious food, Right: Grabbing the grub


Top: Isaiah leading his group cheer, Bottom: Another group cheer


Top: Irene/Yumi/Christine (Clockwise from top), Bottom: Mini-water fight after the game


If you want to know what's going on here, it requires that you know AMERICAN TAI-CHI!!! This is where Sang lifted John Ko using his straightened arms and lifting up. Ask us for a demonstration!

Frosh/Senior BBQ/Sports Day at Tilden Park!

Hey guys!
We're going to be having a Koinonia-wide all freshmen/senior sports and barbeque day this Saturday, 10AM until 2PM. Don't miss out - it'll be a chance for you to meet fellow freshmen as well as the seniors in Koinonia while enjoying some delicious BBQ. Also, come dressed for sports! (And if you'd rather just hang out, you certainly don't have to play any sports.)

We'll meet at 10AM at Anna Head West Parking Lot (across the street from Crossroads and next to Papamingo's) and head over to the park together. This is open to all freshmen and seniors and you can sign up here.