Religion

Let's Go

I was running some errands today, and I put in a CD I hadn’t listened to in quite some time–Mark Schultz‘ self-titled album.  I listened again to a song called "Let’s Go" that’s been an inspiration to me ever since I joined the service early last year (you can hear the song on Mark’s web site).  It reminded me of why I decided to let go of a comfortable suburban life in order to live and work abroad serving my country.  I love this song.  It’s really about missionaries serving overseas, but it describes the decisions you often make when you decide to make a drastic change in your life–like moving to another country.  It has such a great message, and it captures a lot of the thoughts and feelings I went through when I decided to join the service.  Here’s the lyrics (copyright Mark Schultz music):

"Let’s Go" by Mark Schultz

You gotta nice job in an office on the seventh floor
Oh but you’re looking out the window
And you’re thinking that there’s something more
You clear your head
You close your eyes
But something deep inside you cries

Chorus:
Let’s go, let’s go to the great unknown
Find the one that rolled away the stone
Let’s go to the foreign shore
Find a way to give like we never gave before
Let’s go, going far and wide
Pack your bag and leave it all behind
What are we waiting for
Let’s go

Back home through the middle of the parking lot
You give away the car
Give away the money that you’ve got
Neighbors will talk
And oh they should
Saying something ain’t right
In the neighborhood

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We were very busy, and the time passed by too quickly, as you  can probably tell from the delay in blog postings.  My cousin Wade came for a visit, so I didn’t have much time to spend on the computer.  He’s a saint for helping me rebuilding my computer.  I upgraded the hard drive, RAM, and the power supply, so it now performs as it should have all along.  It turns out that the culprit was the power supply.  When I last updated about 3 years ago I did not change the power supply.  I upgraded from a 550MB Duron microprocessor to a 2.4GHz P4 chip, but I didn’t change out the power supply.  It never did run right.  Now it does, thanks to cuz’.

While Wade was here we visited the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center located next to Dulles International Airport.  It’s an extension of the Air & Space Museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  We also went down to the National Mall and visited the Museum of American History, the National Archives, and the Air & Space Museum.  I had never visited the first two museums, so it was a treat for me to see them for the first time (I never tour the Mall anymore).  We also did a “Lord of the Rings” marathon, watching most of the extended versions of all three LOTR movies.  It’s absolutely mind numbing after about 8 hours.  If you sit and watch all three movies, it will take you about 12 hours to do it.  Definitely not for the faint of heart.  I thoroughly enjoyed it though because I consider the trilogy three of the finest movies ever produced.  They are masterpieces.

On Christmas Eve we searched frantically for dinner.  We arrived home too late to cook and decided to order take-out food.  I contacted at least 5 restaurants until I found a Thai restaurant open.  Lesson learned–don’t try to go out to eat after 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve!  The selection is grim.  We spent Christmas day with Wade’s Aunt Joann, whom I’ve also adopted as my aunt.  She prepared a delicious Christmas dinner and decorated her home for the holidays, putting us all in a festive mood.  Our son was the hit of the party though as we spent much of the time following him around, making sure that he didn’t break anything or fall down the stairs.  We usually spend Christmas with my parents, but because our short time in the Washington, D.C. area we weren’t able to make it home for the holidays.  We have no Christmas or decorations at home other than a single stocking that holds the Christmas cards we receive.  Not too festive, methinks.  Still, it’s nice to have a chance to take a break from the rigamarole of Korean class and briefly enjoy the holidays.