Important WiRe Info for Saturday Morning (12/27)

Check-in Times

• 8:30am  Seniors
• 8:45am  Juniors
• 9:00am  Sophomores
• 9:15am  Freshmen
• Counselors, please arrive as early as possible to help out

1. Drop off your luggage in the parking garage (under the gym).
2. Check in at the table in the Life Center Courtyard (2nd floor) and turn in any missing registration and health forms.
3. Go through health screening.
   IMPORTANT: Make sure your parent/driver waits until you're cleared (don't be/have vomiting, diarrhea, lice, pink eye, high fever, etc.).
4. After you're cleared, go to the Hi Koi room (3rd floor) until it's time to leave.
   Pack a lunch for Saturday.

Merry Christmas! :)

Testimony, Devos and more

Hello HiKoi!

ICYMI:

First off, if you were late to HiKoi because of traffic, I feel you.. sorta. hehe.

We started HiKoi a little late tonight but we got to hear Edwin share about how God has worked in his life during High School and the importance of HiKoi membership (on a side note: BECOME A MEMBER!). Cyrus led us in a time of devotions where we studied Ephesians 5. In preparation for Winter Retreat 2014 (Theme: Time is of the Essence), we prayed over our commitments with a buddy or two, as well as prayed with and for our grades!

Happy Birthday to all those born in December!! We got to celebrate your birthday and see who in HiKoi you would kill, hypothetically of course. After a bunch of announcements regarding WiRe and membership (see below for more details!), we split into our SGs!

If you couldn't make it tonight, we missed you lots! Hope to see you at WiRe! The next time HiKoi meets up again will be in 2015!


ANNOUNCEMENTS: Check out the HiKoi 2014-2015 Facebook Page for details concerning WiRe. We will meet in the courtyard of the Life Center for health screening and registration on SATURDAY, December 27! Make sure you have all your forms turned in, including copies of your immunization record and your insurance card. If you have a fever, head lice, pink eye or athletes foot, you won't be able to go to retreat with us ): SO! Stay healthy!

MEMBERSHIP: forms and $5 dues need to be turned in by January 30th! You have a little over a month to fill out the form, pray with an officer/counselor and pay the $5! :) If you have any questions about membership or feel that you want an officer or counselor to pray with you about it, feel free to ask any officer/counselor! We would love to pray with you! :)

Get to know SiMLeeon! Pop quizzes to be given arbitrarily later!

Dear Hi Koi, 

Always wanted to know more about Simeon Lam and Matt Lee?

Knew it. We gotchu. Here's some help.

1. Best Thing I Ever Ate... 

Simeon: Sashimi! Raw fish is by far the best. Tbh I would eat this every day if I could.

Matt: Banh Cuon Special 1A at Banh Cuon Tay Ho in San Gabriel (RIP). 
ALSO, spaghetti all'amatriciana at La Carbonara in Rome. (I am an incurable sucker for handmade pasta.)
ALSO, truffle gouda at L'affineur Affine in Paris.

2. Best Thing I Ever Read...

Simeon: I don't read at all unless you count Bleacher Report articles hurhur but if I really had to choose it would definitely be The Hunger Games because that's the only book I've read for fun.

Matt: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (Awesome book about awesome person. So awesomely sad.) 

ALSO ,The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (Watch the lecture too! One of my all-time favorite nerds.)  

(These best-I-ever questions will be very difficult for me, I think.)

3. Best Quote I Ever Heard... 

Simeon: "What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player..." - John Wooden

Matt: "Success isn't owned — it's leased. And rent is due every day." - J.J. Watt

ALSO, "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." - Bill Nye

ALSO, "The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them." - Louis C.K. (DON'T look him up, children. Look up, um, C.S. Lewis instead. Yay!)

That's some friggin' chicken soup right there if I ever saw it.

4. If I could do anything I wanted right now...

Simeon: I would go to the Bahamas and live there forever because I never want to take another final again.

Matt: Epic clear-off of my desk with both (BOTH) of my arms and skip out of my office to go play basketball. (i mean..i mean..i love my job!)

5. My #1 Most Played Song Is... 

Simeon: right now its a toss up between Wing$, Rather Be, and Blank Space (don't judge me haha).

Matt: Of all time?! I've had the same Bon Iver Re:stacks alarm on my phone for years so I guess I've listened to that at awful hours every morning. Right now though, I'm really liking Ed Sheeren's Tenerife Sea. (He's pretty good when you..y'know..get over the fact that Ron Weasley sings your favorite song.)

ALSO, if you want hip, James Bay is my new favorite "of course you would" artist. 

6. The last movie, TV show or book that made me cry or tear up was... 

Simeon: I can't cry on books and movies but I cried of laughter during 22 Jump Street :D

Matt: The Pursuit of Happyness. When that dumb little kid says, "You're a good papa." Lost it. I LOST IT. I need to rewatch this...

7. Something I learned the past year... 

Simeon: Don't waste your summer... Be productive and use it to prepare for classes, SAT, drivers ed, etc... anything that you can do instead of being lazy LOL. Uh I also learned that high school goes by really fast and that I really need to use my time wisely haha (get it... WiRe theme) ;) .. oh and last thing. Junior year and sophomore year are TOTALLY different sigh.

Matt: Oh, SO many things I needed to be taught this year. I've always wanted to be an amazingly successful person/engineer/doucher. I valued success a lot, especially manifested in material possessions or crazy experiences. Coming out of college and into an awesome new job, I was so ready to do those things and be that guy. But I think one of the greatest things that God taught me this year was that the sum of those things will never come even close to the value of being kind, of being loving, and of being gracious to the people around me. Looking back at my life, I have experienced too much undeserved kindness to be anything less than kind to another person, received too much undeserved love to look down on or condemn another, and received too much undeserved grace to withhold it from someone who needs it. What would our world look like if we all treated each other undeservedly well? 

Wow, what a thought. So, love people! Be a gwai jai and gwai nui!

Hopefully, this post helped you guys get a better idea of who we are! Definitely ask us to elaborate! (also, ask Simeon to show you his freaky talent.) 

Love forever,

Simeon & Matt

You dropped your pocket

Hello everyone! 

I'm Nelson Kuan, if you guys didn't know, and I'm a senior at Mark Keppel High. My life isn't that interesting, so I'll probably just talk about some random facts about me.

This church actually wasn't the first church I attended. I used to live in Calexico, so the Calexico FCBC branch was where I first went to church. After moving to LA, I started coming to this church, where I got to meet all of you wonderful people! 

I'm a middle child; my older brother's name is Eric, and my little brother's name is Henry. Being a middle child... barely has its pros, but it definitely has its cons. You'd probably understand my point if you are a middle child, so I won't go further into detail haha.

I enjoy playing various musical instruments, including the guitar, double bass (my bae-ss's name is Allison <3), electric bass, piano (although I'm not very good at that), and I also love singing! I'm part of my school's orchestra, and I'm one of two double basses. I'm also part of our church's Youth Choir (and you should definitely join!) as a bass. I have a wide range of music tastes, from classical to pop, but I mostly listen to Christian songs because sometimes a song can be a good reminder of things. If you're ever curious of what kinds of songs I'm listening to, you can definitely ask me and I'll be glad to share. This song, however, has been playing in my playlist for quite sometime now, just because it reminds me of Christ's love for me, no matter my circumstances or failures.

I also enjoy cooking. Although I don't have the expensive ingredients/utensils that professional chefs use, I make-shift with whatever I have and improvise a lot. Oh and I love eating. Yes. 

I'm also very shy, timid, and introverted, which, in many cases, hinders me from doing a lot that I want to do. My grade can probably testify that with the... interesting... things we do at camp. Sometimes I don't know how to get my point across while talking to a group of people, which is why I stutter and panic like I've been born with a disease haha. 

Anyways, I don't know what else to write about, so I'm just gonna throw in some photos from Facebook. 

This is the current senior class (plus a lot of missing people) from camp of 2014

I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I made these mashed potato pancakes with the leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving. 

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read this... post... haha. Hopefully it was entertaining to some degree. And to all you underclassmen, as cliche as this may sound, really place your trust in the Lord because you never know what He may have in store for you. Thanks for reading, and see you Fridays! 

-Nelson Kuan

...who am I? TWOOO FOUUUR SIIIIXX OHHH OOOOOONE!

Dear HiKoi and Friends,

First of all, if you don't understand the title of this blog post, I'm referring to this.  You now have an excuse to watch Les Mis.

I have to confess something that's embarrassing for me to share, but I feel is important for y'alls to know.  I've never been diagnosed, but I fairly confident that I have OCD. I know that might be hard to believe since I'm very messy and disorganized, but OCD can come in different forms.  Essentially OCD is having obsessions and compulsive habits that hinder a person's quality of life.  Perhaps this is all in my head, but I've made a great deal of mistakes in the past mostly due to my several identity crisis's.  So, in an effort to UNVEIL a part of me I rarely talk about, #ShamelessHiKoiThemePlug, here are some embarrassing issues you should know about me.

7 Habits of a Highly In-Effective Person

By Ethan Fung 

1)Compare Yourself to the Next Guy
I think the first time I started noticing my obsessive compulsive behavior was in middle school.  Huntington Middle School had a "Teen Center" which was essentially an after school program with a snack shop, Nintendo 64, and a fooseball table with one missing defender because I broke it.  It was there I was introduced to fooseball with my friend Mark on the first week of 6th grade.  At the time there were two 8th graders who bragged to have never been beaten in a game of fooseball for a whole year.  They were called “Fooseball Kings”.  Mark and I got smashed for the first hour we played against them.  They ended up leaving, but me and Mark kept practicing everyday for the next week till the teen center closed.  A week later we played a total of ten games against the kings. Mark and I won nine.   The kings left after their first win and we never saw them again.

2)Practice til its Perfect
In 8th grade, my dad bought me an acoustic guitar for my birthday.  My brother Aaron had already begun leading in youth worship, and I really wanted to be like him growing up, so somehow I thought playing guitar would make me more like him.  That night my dad taught me three chords, but no matter how hard I pushed down on the strings I couldn't get the chords to ring true.  Even though my fingertips were bruised and shaking, using a starbucks gift card as a "pick", I played trash chords well after my dad went to sleep.  My brother ended up storming into my room at 2AM to stop me.  I didn't sleep very well that night though. I couldn't play the guitar like my brother.

3)Don't Let Anything Go 
#CueFrozenMontage. Ever since middle school I loved the game of volleyball because the concept of the game fascinated me: don't let the ball hit the floor.  For me the game is exciting because of how difficult a task is.  And so I practiced a lot, and had no shame doing everything I could to keep the ball in the air.  Often, I was the last kid working on passing in the gym.  As a result, I suffered a few injuries including a sprained ankle, sprained thumb, and I once cut open my chin diving for a ball.

4)Study Things Even if They're Meaningless
In college, I didn't have a very fast computer, so I couldn't play games like LoL and Starcraft II.  Instead I played a lot of Tetris Battle, and got scary good.  The secret is that you don't want to leave one square column open. That relies on the long tetrimino to clear lines, which might not come.  Always leave a gap that is at least two squares wide, but it's best to leave three, because there are more variation patterns that can result in combos.  You’re pro if you leave a gap four wide.  Shame on you if you already knew this.

5)Never Limit Yourself
For a while I wanted to be a barista.  Which makes no sense given I have a Bachelors Degree.. but I really like coffee.  Specifically making coffee because you can really taste the differences between the expensive kinds if you make it right and drink it black.  I look at coffee as an delicious experiment I have the opportunity to practice every morning.  However, I'm rarely truly satisfied with the cup of coffee I make.  Most of the time it's either too sour or too bitter, and so there are days if I don't stop myself, I'd make two cups and still want to make a third even if I can barely keep my hands still.

6)Lose the Forest in the Trees
In high school, though English was my worse subject I wanted to be a writer.  I never could get my essays in on time, but it wasn't because I was lazy.  It was because every sentence had to be perfect.  I would write one sentence, then read the whole section again to get the context, and if I didn't feel like the sentence fit I'd write a different sentence and reread the whole section once more to see how it sounded.  During my lunch hour, I'd go to my English class to work on my essays because I earnestly wanted to do well, but I never got  A’s on my essays because I would get a whole grade deducted turning them in late.  I had similar tendencies reading. This  still continues.  An example would be this late blog post.

7)Let Sin Define You
(If you haven't caught on, this is the serious one).  I moved to Boston for four years because it was my best option for college, but if I were to be honest it was a scary time in my life.  I was far from anyone I knew, and I was told at FCBC to turn to God if I ever was afraid.  Somehow I thought that meant watching tons of Francis Chan sermons online.  Instead of stepping out and trying new things, I spent my freshman year a hermit watching two or three Francis Chan sermons in a row everyday.  Francis Chan has a particularly challenging style of preaching, but instead of going out and doing something for Christ I spent most of my days lamenting over how sinful I was.  Specifically lamenting that I couldn't find it in myself to do the ten things Francis Chan was challenging me to do that day.

Ever since I was little, my dad always told me to just do my best in life because that's all you can do.  But for several reasons, I thought that if what I was doing wasn’t perfect, then I must not be doing my best.  Perfection was always the standard.  I was always hopeless to attain it, and because of my high expectations I always felt a great deal of shame.  I was always aware that I was sinful and imperfect, and I hated that about me.  On the days I didn't struggle with depression, I was determined to be a different person, only to find that I wasn't.  Even when I was excelling at the things I put my mind to, I could always pick out my flaws, and that justified my continual attention to things even if they had no lasting benefit.  Trying to be Christian was no exception.

When speaking of people who try and fail to do moral things, Paul in Galatians puts it this way.
"For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them.”(3:10)

In other words, those who try to follow God’s law, the ones who attempt to do what is right, the ones who try to be truly good people, but find they are unable, are under a curse.

I was struggling because God's Law has a certain expectation of us.  Put simply, it is to do what is right.  Whether it is to feed the poor, or to forgive someone, or to not covet, etc.  Yet no matter how hard I tried I could never completely do what is right.  I wasn't compassionate enough, loving enough, patient enough, or faithful enough to ever silence the idea that I was a hypocrite and not truly a Christian.  And because of it I felt..cursed.  I was cursed.

Boston was rough.  However, I'm extremely grateful that God brought me to there.  Sure, it was there I began struggling with depression, but it was also there I encountered Christ.  I still remember the cold autumn day I first heard Shane and Shane’s rendition of Before the Throne.  This verse in particular is my favorite:

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because a sinless savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him, and pardon me.
To look on Him, and pardon me.

It took four years for me to come to an understanding of how amazing this truth is. Paul continues in Galatians to explain that Christ became our curse and died (3:13).  Because Jesus died, our curse of being unacceptable before God died as well.  Suddenly, I am free to do what is right without the curse that comes with falling short.  Because He died, I am acceptable to Him, and still worthy to be called His son, even despite my hypocritical actions and failures to live up to that name.  Understanding this truth frees me to be exactly that, a son of God. An heir to the Throne. A righteous man.  Because of Christ, I can be compassionate.  I can be loving.  I can be patient.  I can be faithful.  I can be like Christ, and because of Christ, I will be like Him.

There are a thousand and one things I'll never be no matter how hard I try. I'll never be President of the United States.  I'll never be in the NBA.  I’ll never be the guy who invented flashmobs, and sadly I realize nearly all the identities I've already gained other than the one Christ has given me will eventually fad with time.  Caleb Choi and Tesia Au have already dethroned me as Fooseball King, and it doesn't matter how good of a worship leader I am. There are better worship leaders at FCBC and there will be better I guarantee you.  Sadly one day I'm going to need to retire from worship.  Sucks.

But there are a few identities that I’ll always have forever.  The most important one is of course son of God (because of Christ).   I can rest in the fact that this identity, this work God began in me, will be completed one day soon.  And that’s an identity worth working towards because in our attempts to become like Christ, God meets us with His guarantee that we’ll be like him if that is earnestly what our hearts desire.

He makes us new.  He is making us new. Cue Beautiful Things by Gungor.  #waaaAAAAooooooohhhh

Bring a Friend Night!

ICYMI-

Hi everyone! We're back to HiKoi after a week off for Thanksgiving break! The night started with games led by Naomi. We got into our small groups with a bunch of newspaper and made hats and weapons. After that was done, we had to link arms with the rest of our small group and try to knock the hats off of the other small groups. In the end, we were left with a bunch of newspaper on the floor and dirty hands, but it was a lot of fun. Once we had cleaned up, Ethan led worship where we sang Count Thou Fount of Every Blessing and Beautiful Things. Lastly, we split into small groups. 

WiRe Announcements-

- Theme: Time is of the essence 

 Theme verse: Ephesians 5:15-16 "Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil."

- Early bird registration is no longer available, but still make sure to turn in the papers you were missing to Ashley Jimenez

- Regular registration rates: $100 for members, $105 for non-members

- there is a meeting after church this Sunday

- lunch will be provided for $3

- What you need for registration:

• Money (Checks made out to FCBC)
• Registration and Parent Consent Form (found in the HiKoi facebook group)
• Camp Metoche Forms (3 Pages) (found in the HiKoi facebook group)
• a copy of both sides of your insurance card
• a copy of your immunization record

Edwin lose win lose lose

Hello kids, my name is Edwin and here are some lame facts about me
1. I am 18.
2. I enjoy playing sports
3. I like cheese.
4. I enjoy collecting backpacks.
5. I usually nap in 5th period.
6. I've slept for 17 hours straight.
7. I used to sleep at 10pm everyday from freshman year to sophomore year
8. I was mistaken for being a 6th grader running around a hospital while volunteering.
9. I love japanese and korean food.
10. I slipped and went to the hospital once.
11. here are some derpy photos of me and my grade

WHERES MICAH

hi micah

JOIN HSMT

GO TO WIre

  

Juniors are hot

gameboy SP? 

my family yay

.....

enjoi

DISNEYLAND

yosemite


wow you made it this far heres a baby pic

hm which one is me

don't laugh too late