i don't want to be the girl who gave it all, but wasn't treasured. seriously, i didn't know the cultural differences between americans and hong kong people, in regards to relationships, were soooo hugeeeeeee.
GIVE ME STRENGTH TO STOP THE VICIOUS CYCLE. i refuse to be a shabby doll.


had rugby practice today. can't wait till the weekend when i get to go to MENAMU'S SCHOOL TO PLAY!!! SLEEPOVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

anyway, last weekend i went to fallcon/fall conference at Intervarsity's Campus by the Sea at Catalina. it was awesome, and beautiful!! i should be revising for my midterm tomorrow, but what the heck! uploading these is more fun


DUFF MAN

i'm peter

waking up on the dock. sleeping ON it was amaaazing.

taylor and kyle

our sleeping bags!

IN THE MORNING. i wish i could wake up to this everyday

the HIKE





the glorious water fountain






the highest see-saw i've ever been on!!


view from the top!



the journey back!









le fin

i heard about this and thought it'd make a cool movie. plus, the poster/banner is niceeeee

 I can honestly say that this was THE best summer i've ever experienced.
from june 25th to august 10th, i had the most amazing, heartfelt, lovely, unforgettable and life-changing experiences.
Start:
On the plane from HK to Korea to Japan to LA. man that wa slong, we stayed at the korean airport for i think 7 or 8 hours and 'rested' as much as we could.

i sat next to a guy from the army on the way to japan, and it was cool.
 
Nap, wake up to hear MJ and farrah fawcett died, nap more. and then the next few days are my dad's ordination at Agape International Leadership Institute AKA Agape Renewal Center, and then a week or two of classes and big sermons by these people that didn't really affect me.


i was bored to tears most of the time, however i met some cool people as well. but man, it always bugged me to go into the sanctuary and sit there for hours listening and watching that guy talk and do stuff; i'd get headaches a lot of times - more on that later. All in all, though, i don't regret going...because that was where i heard about Operation Conquest from listening to Pastor Jay's invigorating talk about getting the youth on fire - there was stuff about inner healing and how when done as a youth they don't necessarily have to deal with such a big bulk in their adult lives when they serve God. My dad who sat next to me didn't know that i was really interested in going, and i wasn't going to bring it up unless he did but i think i dropped some hints. but finally, it was my mom who told me she wanted me to go and i was in total accord - even though it meant i had to stay an extra 2 weeks in California instead of going back to Hong Kong to 'chill'. but anyway, yes. it was discussed and decided i would go to this 'intensive training'. funnily enough, my dad wasn't too impressed with this training thing, i think, and that was why he didn't push me to go (unlike some other parents i heard about later on haha) because he didn't know how much it'd change me. well, more on that later.


after the classes that my parents and grandma took, we went to UCLA to visit,


and then left to Fremont to stay at my uncle and grandma's home where i got to hang out with my beloved cousins Rachel and Andrew. i met my new aunt in the domain of her new home for the first time after she got married to my uncle and i have to say she is adorable and i love her and i wish her the best living in that new household. anyway, there was much bonding with my cousin rachel and she even brought me out to play tennis with her friends, and invited me everyday to watch her play volleyball which made me feel like her mom in the stands haha. how i wish i coulda played, but alas. instead, i was hit by the ball whilst reading haha. that's ok, though. we also swam a lot in the pool and that was great, and i really miss them now.

this is us...bonding over the computer over my bed on the floor.

i also met up with lauren, my old elementary school buddy and we went shopping, and watched a movie and it was the first time i had waited in line for seats in a movie. what fun!
and after those blissful days, i went down to LA for orientation.
Johnny and Andy picked me up at the airport, and i must say i remember being crabby and raising my voice on the phone when i was like, 'what! where are you?! you said you'd be at southwest! RAAAAAAA pickmeuppickmeuppickmeuppickmeuppickmeup!'. lol sorry, people. i'm working on my attitude. so they dropped me off at UCLA for orientation, after we ate at carl's jr (which i don't think i like very much) and that was 3.5 days of pretty good fun!!
i don't think i took any pictures but i found my orientation counsellor's album of some pics of us and here they are!



dipping our hands into the fountain, and we're not allowed to touch the water again until we graduate or else something superstitious happens. i accidentally dipped it in twice. oops -.- well, by the grace of God i'll see what happens. :P

after orientation was over on the 21st of july, i was stuck with nowhere to go until Operation Conquest (july 27) so they organized it for me to be able to stay with the operation conquest people for the week and it was really amazing. brooke, josh, serge, andy, peterson, mike were really nice to live with and i think they were all better cooks than i am...but it's ok - one day i'll learn!! anyway, after the first dinner, i retreated into my 'cave' (as they called it later haha) and then suddenly BOOM loud music comes out and they start dancing ahaha....i thought it was really funny. i think this was the 'grateful' dance which is really catchy!

funny thing is every morning apparently they'd get up early and worship and pray etc really loudly, but i NEVER heard them even though my room was on the same floor. but yeah, when i woke up they'd be leaving to go to Agape to prepare for the Operation Conquest next week. it's funny because the first day i arrived, the house kind of smelt like dog, and i was like ooohhh no because the furniture was all doggy smelly so the next morning i woke up with a highly irritated nose, but it went away pretty soon. it's fortunate the dog wasn't there anymore. these people really love God and it was an amazing time living with them, because they shared that love with everyone. i can honestly say i love these people, and they've helped me with so much! and provided me with many rice krispy treats :D
one night, we all went out to play basketball with some other friends of theirs and oh my goodness, i was absolutely smashed/confused i had no idea what to do HAHA. it was fun to watch them though, because i was just kind of running around court exercising instead of looking for the ball and blocking people. but it's making me want to play basketball back in hong kong...and i was meant to today, with tessa but then something came up with her mom. oh well!
well anyway that first week was pretty good, but i was kind of homesick but later on i read a reallly good book "hell" and peterson bet me $5 i couldn't finish it by the time he woke up the next day, and i didn't finish it but it's ok because i finished it a bit later that day. and it was an amazing book...and i felt so compelled to tell everyone about it!
fast forwarding to the actual Operation Conquest:
the first 3 days was an Encounter where there were lessons from morning to night and it was basically learning and experiencing God because the holy spirit was there a lot and working really much, and cleaning and healing and just letting us see the cross. but anyway, it was really good and i wish i took more notes. i also went to live in a different dorm from that time on.

i had a roommate for the first 3 days - lubina! she was korean and a bit younger than me, but i forget how much :P

i think this was on our last night when we decided not to get maximum sleep haha.

she was a fun girl, and we prayed together that i'd get the gift of tongues because i really want it but i was never brave enough to just say it or whatever. anyway, she was a great girl. and the next week i did get the gift of tongues when pastor Steve Baker came to talk to us. it was great!!
oh yeah, we broke a bed.

the next day, thursday, was the start of awesome happenings.
we learned soul-winning 1 to 1, one method out of many to evangelize, from pastor james abraham. it's very simple, and straight to the point and it is the gospel. one sad thing is that we didn't really keep in touch with the people we spoke to which kiiind of missed the point a bit. but then later on we started asking for their numbers and asking to keep in touch etc but i just kinda gave my myspace out. anyway, we spent aroudn 2 hours learning the method, and then actually went out to a nearby shopping center to evangelize. i was partnered with the pastor because i was from hong kong, and he liked that. and i was watching him most of the time that day, and a tip he gave me on being confident enough to approach strangers it to try to greet everyone you see anyway! there were a lot of mandarin speaking people, which made it hard because i had to try to say the gospel and stuff in that language on the spot and i realized i didn't know how to pray in mandarin! this one woman at the bakery was very nice about it and just told me to practice more haha.
anyway, at night at the dorms, we would often have these talks that would go kind of late (given we needed to get to Agape at 7am to pray/bible/worship) but it was very fun because johnny, barnabas and alex were so smart and funny. and i really mean it, i'm not just simplifying things because i read 'smart and funny' and felt like i was a 6 year old describing someone...but yeah. and they really loved God.

on friday we went around the malls as well, i think. in the morning. i can't remember where. my partner was ... peterson i think. so that means we went to ONTARIO MILLS. ok that was a pretty fun time. the guys decided to rap in the mall and out of the mall and try to draw a crowd and then preach. kind of like open air preaching. and that...was something.

that night, we learnt a dance that we were going to perform at the rally, by jose torres who is an awesome cool guy who started Ministry Through Arts. he told us his story, about his childhood (man, during the training, we listened to so many stories of people and the complete change in their lives through the grace of God it was amazing), his rise in hollywood, and then his finding God. and it was kind of long, but hearing it and the scriptures he talked about were REALLY good but also REALLY hard to remember so i'm kind of sad. anyway, the dance was to Michael W Smith's "Let it rain" i think it's a live version because there's audience and he's talking in it as well. very powerful.

i'm the tan person in the...gray sweater and blue shorts in the middle :D

the dance starts off with 3 of the guys from miami doing a spoken word piece and that's what's upside down.

on saturday, i think we had a break in the middle of the day?


and then at night we went to Teen Challenge and then Skid Row, where the poor people live. apparently since it was the 1st of the month, there were less people on the streets because they got their welfare check that day and were probably renting a room somewhere for a few days. and then someone said something about how drug dealers went down there more on that day to sell drugs because the people have money that day. it was very sad. and walking around, telling them that we had food to give out, and to come eat with us seemed kind of strange. but when one of the people looked up and was like, 'where?', i just felt so sad and so much love for them. but alex told me that these peopel are pretty picky! it was funny because i had an apple in my bag, and one of the beggars was hungry so i offered it to him but he told me he only ate green apples and mine was red.
they left a present on lawrence's car haha.


we got home around...12:30 or 1am ish
on sunday morning we had classes as usual, but then pastor jay decided to give us 'grace' because he knew we'd been soo tired and it really was INTENSE. so we got the rest of the day off! even though we were meant to be going to santa monica to evangelize. but that's ok, we went on monday instead. but i think he wasn't very happy because there was less people there because it was monday night.
it was still fun, though. apparently the plan was to do open air preaching because we had a space on the 3rd promenade place and a small sound system, but then we got there kinda late so we just split up into groups and went about evangelizing. i was with kristi and aaron and it was a pretty cool group! we met so many different kinds of tourists, like one was from turkey and she was a muslim, and one from france, others from small towns in america...
on tuesday we went to disneyWAY, which is just outside of disneyland and we talked to people there. i was partnered with serge and kevin. serge really pushed us to talk to people who i normally would be too scared to talk to and it went pretty well! but then a lot of people got warnings from security BUT because these security people were christians they had grace on us. but that wasn't the case with many other places with christian security.

on wednesday, i can't really remember what i did.

on thursday, we went to the OC fair, and i think some ppl were like, man we shoulda gone on wednesday because fans of 'Judas Priest / Whitesnake / Pop Evil' would've been there becuase those bands were playing there that day. we went on the day that a country singer was performing haha! well, i met a llama at the fair, and discovered funnel cake!



on friday, we went to huntington beach (instead of venice beach), but we got there really late and had only 1.5 hours to play. but we were kind of meant to be learning how we could evangelize whilst having fun! but instead we all just had fun and i got swallowed by the GIGANTIC waves and i felt like i was a goner but it was really awesome fun. we got there by going caravan style (which we did many times and it was really fun because all around were cars you recognized.)

they buried barnabas and stuff it was cool haha!

after the beach, we had to go back by i think 6 because Jose from MTA was going to finish the dance with us. active, huh? but seriously, in the middle of the MTA session, we had a break and the guys started tossing around a football. so full of energy for the Lord!


these two are sisters and they're one year apart but you can almost hardly tell which one is older! they're awesome!
and the next morning we started late at 9 o clock and had jose come again to coach us. unfortunately, he couldn't make the rally because he didn't know it was at night and had plans that he couldn't miss. :(
i was one of the greeters, along with kristi!



here we are on stage, waiting to give our testimonies and that's pastor jay. the testimonies were so long that i think it took around 2 or 3 hours until we got to do the dance (which i feel might've been better if it was the first thing, but that's ok some people were still quite awed by it even after sitting through so many hours of kids talking about how this training changed their lives!)
afterwards...when we cleaned up and stuff it was time for all the goodbyes as some people were leaving that night or the next morning. it was sad!!


the final big picture! i'll miss them soo much but i'm in contact with most of them still. and hopefully i'll see some of them when i go back to LA for school next month! these were a group of the nicest/funniest/awesomest/on-fire-est people i've ever met and i've learnt so much from them.
that night, me johnny and richard talked for a long time until like i think 3am!! about girls and guys this time haha. very informative...
kristi was a very special one! she's a bit younger than me but she's going to uni this year too at Azusa Pacific and at first i was kind of intimidated by her but in the end we became good firends!

this was at church the next day - the day that i left :(



two of the miami guys. they're 19 but they're itinerant preachers! and in september they're going to just step out of the house without money and stuff and just walk and travel for a few months. i think it's really great!!

benson, who is the 2nd benson i know! he's kind of strange, but it's endearing as you get to know him.
after that, brooke and josh (who drove me to church) and the miami guys went to the army surplus store and it was really interesting...i found some full length coveralls and they were different colors and looked really cool.

and these two just sat like that...like brothers it was really cool and close and just. wow. i always felt a lot of love between all of them because they were so close and comfortable with each other and it was awesome. definitely kind of different from asian culture. or is it? i don't know. maybe it's just God's culture?
that night, johnny took us to SOUPLANTATION yum! and then we went to the bookstore and i bought "The Irresistible Revolution"

this is a suitable end picture because their backs are facing the camera.
well, anyway yep i got back to hong kong on tuesday (i totally skipped monday because of flying through time zones). that afternoon, tessa came over and i think it helped my jetlag. and then i watched UP on thursday with menamu! it was adorable...
yesterday, it was kevin's birthday and we went to eat brunch AT THE BRUNCH CLUB OMG IT WAS SO GOOD and then we split because the guys wanted to arcade, and erika and i needed to buy something but in the end we spent a few too many hours in times square and the guys went home before we knew it!!
whoohooo one month left till school starts! but i still miss operation conquest - and i think most of the people who went do too, as i keep seeing on facebook.