My sister Andrea and bro-in-law Jeremy came to visit Brooke and me this past weekend. We had a great time! Brooke and I wanted them to get to meet some of our friends here in Princeton so we planned a party for Friday night. In the vein of Vivek's 'India night' and Clint's 'Australia night', we hosted 'Swiss night.' The food was awesome and best of all it was a blast hanging out with everyone; there ended up being about sixteen of us through the course of the evening.

After Brooke and I rearranged our apartment, we realized there was now an eight foot wide expanse of wall in our living room with nothing on it. Brooke had the idea of using a ton of black frames - most of which we already had - and some well selected travel photos to really make the wall pop. Below is a really crappy photo of what I hope you will come and see in person one day. The pictures are all shots that we've taken on trips, most of them were trips we were on together. The frames range in size from 4x6 to 20x30. We did most of the prints from online sites such as shutterfly and snapfish. We had to do a couple at a local print shop because they were custom sizes. We absolutely love how it all came together! [Of course you can click on any of the pictures to get the full effect.]

I remember thinking to myself that our summers while I’m in school would probably be pretty calm and laid back. Well, maybe next summer. This summer was as active and eventful as ever. In February we had the idea, “What if I did my summer internship in southern California rather than Jersey?” Amazingly the pieces started falling into place.

First was the internship itself. Dr. Babby, the District Superintendent of the Pacific Southwest District connected me with Pastor Gordon Coulter. He pastors Neighborhood Christian Fellowship in Covina, CA – just east of Los Angeles. Pastor Gordon took a risk on a Princeton student being able to adapt to the vastly different SoCal culture and took me on as an intern. I worked nearly full-time at the church for ten weeks. Most of my time went to the young adult service, youth group, and helping to re-engineer the church’s small group ministry. I had the opportunity to preach three times and teach a couple adult Christian education classes.

The second big piece was finding a student to sub-let our Princeton apartment on one end while also finding a month-to-month loft in downtown LA on the other. A central reason for doing the LA summer thing was to be close to our friends Josh and Kari Jackson, and also because we’ve kicked around ideas of possibly living there down the road. As it turned out we were able to find a pad in Josh and Kari’s building which led to lots of hanging out and sharing life together. We got to see all of the day-by-day developments of baby Stella from a 3 month old to a gleeful 6 month old. We were family this summer: sharing birthdays, trips, meals, and hanging out late into the night.

Third, Brooke was able to transfer from her PF Chang’s in Princeton to the one in Pasadena, a 22-minute metro ride from downtown. This ensured a little more income for us to make this all feasible.

Throw in a couple frequent flyer plane tickets and some ridiculously efficient packing and we were on our way. We wanted to make the most of our time with friends and family (Brooke’s aunt, uncle, and cousins live in Orange County) and experience what Cali has to offer so we tried to leave no rock unturned. Here’s a rundown of some of what we got ourselves into:

• Josh and I hiked 14 miles roundtrip to the summit of Mt. Lowe in the San Gabriels. (Josh's pix)
• Josh and I road tripped over to Phoenix, AZ for a Diamondbacks vs. Astros game. Not only was Josh able to check off another ballpark on his quest to see them all, but in doing so he timed it to see his favorite team play.
• As it turned out, Brooke and I ended up going to either Santa Monica or Venice Beach about once a week when we were in town. Near the end of the summer we got into renting paddles for paddle tennis. It was a blast; Brooke claims it’s her new favorite sport! (My pix)
• The church had a staff retreat one week at Hume Lake, right by Sequoia/Kings Canyon Nat’l Park. While I had hiked through these parks on the PCT a few years back, I hadn’t laid eyes on General Grant and General Sherman - the third and first largest trees in the world respectively. These guys were impressive to say the least. (My pix)
• In early July Brooke and I squeezed in a week with my family in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. It was fun celebrating the 4th together and just being with everyone. It was the eighth consecutive summer we’ve all been able to get together somewhere. And we’re now up to eight nieces and nephews on that side of the family! (My pix + family pic)
• The following weekend Brooke’s family flew in for a get together in Newport Beach. Considering the size and close-knit nature of Brooke’s extended family, these are always exciting times.
• Josh and I had such a blast on our desert road trip to Phoenix that we decided to take it up a notch. We cruised the Pacific Coast Highway up to San Francisco for a Giants vs. Pirates game. Former Cy Young award winner Tim Lincecum pitched an unforgettable 15 strikeout complete game shutout. (Josh's sweet pix)
• Brooke’s Aunt DeeDee and cousin Delaney invited us to join them for a few days in Yosemite Nat’l Park. This experience unquestionably goes down as one of the highlights of the summer for both of us. We climbed to the top of Yosemite Falls, summited Half Dome, floated in the Merced River, had a great time being residents of Camp 4 in the valley, and made some French friends! I thought that this place would be overrated, but it really is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Muir and Ansel were onto something. (previous post and pictures)
• Brooke headed home to the Midwest to spend a few days with her family at the cabin in Pentwater, MI and then attended her 10 year high school reunion in Moline, IL.
• While Brooke and Kari were gone for the reunion, Josh and I hiked 55 miles of the PCT between Big Bear and I-10. (previous post and pictures)
• My final week of the internship was really rough. Brooke and I both helped out as leaders for their annual youth Surf Camp at San Onofre. We hung out with students and got in the water a lot! I logged some serious hours on an 11.5 ft paddleboard. (group pix)
• The day after my internship ended I hopped on a plane for Oregon where I met up with my dad for another PCT hike. With some serious help from Mark and Jess Schmerse, we got on the trail at Elk Lake and hiked north almost to Mt. Hood. We hiked right by Mt. Bachelor, Broken Top, the Three Sisters, the Belknap Crater, Mt. Washington, Three Finger Jack, and glorious Mt. Jefferson. Mark and Jess hiked in and joined us at our final campsite and then the next day the four of us shared one of the most amazing meals of my life. Historic Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood was offering a Farmers Market Brunch Buffet. Can you imagine how good all that fresh stuff tasted coming off of hiking 130 miles of trail for a week?! (my pix - my dad has the good pix of us together)
• We wound down the summer with a relaxing three day stint in Big Bear with Josh, Kari, and Stella as well as one final visit to Trabuco Canyon to see Brooke’s aunt, uncle, and cousins. Over the course of the summer we were also able to reconnect several times with old friends Sam and Rosie Bills and Dwayne and Christin Taylor, as well as make some new friends in Dave and Desiree Johnson - congrats again on baby Emma! (my pix)

Brooke and I learned a lot this summer, and we learned a lot about ourselves. Our setting was about as urban as it gets, living just a few blocks from the central business district and two blocks from the heart of skid row. We learned that while we love public transportation and walking/biking places, we dearly missed greenery, parks, and space. NYC’s Central Park is pure gold. Also both of us read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, this summer. It had a huge impact on us. We tried to take full advantage of having so many farmers markets within blocks of us. As you might imagine I also had a lot of takeaway from my summer internship. If you’re interested in getting the skinny on that I’ll be happy to email you my 12-page final reflection paper ;-)

A final word of thanks. Thanks to Josh and Kari for making the summer happen and for being so generous! Thanks to NCF and Pastor Gordon in particular for taking us in and investing in us. Thanks to Dave Johnson for being a great friend and for that crazy long drive up the mountain. Thanks to Aunt DeeDee for Yosemite and several long hours of hearing us out. And thanks to our parents for providing some awesome respites in the midst of a fast-paced summer. We love you all!

***The first and last photo on this post are Josh's. You'll quickly see at his site, jackatrandom.com, that he has mad skills.

55 miles on the PCT from Big Bear Lake to I-10. In PCT lingo it was mile 265 to 210. We hiked from 9am Thursday morning to Saturday at 1pm. Josh and I had a great time together and we were really stunned by the beauty of this section, despite a long section that was burned out by a recent fire.

The second night we had a campsite on top of a ridge with stunning 360 degree views. After dark we watched shooting stars as well as the moon rise over the mountains. It was amazing.

Dave Johnson, a friend of mine from Neighborhood Christian Fellowship, was incredibly generous and drove us to drop off our car in Cabazon and then up the mountain to Big Bear Lake where we started our hike. Thanks Dave!

Yosemite Nat'l Park is simply amazing. Check out a few more Half Dome pictures here.

My last day of class for the year was Tuesday and our time before heading to LA for the summer is running short, so Brooke and I decided to spend her day off on Wednesday by going into the city. We were in a museum mood so we decided to go to the Metropolitan Art Museum. There were several rooms where I felt almost unworthy to even be there. We were inches away from Picasso’s, Dali’s, Monet’s, Van Gogh’s, etc. It is so expansive that we didn't even set foot in entire wings of the place. They also have a rooftop garden from which you can overlook Central Park and that part of Manhattan. It was a gorgeous day so the views were incredible.

Then we took the subway to the East Village and had lunch at an Indian place aptly named the Taj Mahal. The courses just kept coming, which was remarkable considering how inexpensive it was. The relaxed atmosphere and soothing sitar music were a nice contrast to the hustle and bustle outside. We then took a long circuitous walk through Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, the NYU campus, and Greenwich Village up to Union Square. (I went to mapmyrun.com later and found out it was about four miles of urban sight-seeing.) And this was all before training/busing home and taking in the two hour LOST finale with friends. It was a good day! No question the best part was hanging with Brooke.

You can check out my initial post about P90X here. Since that time I've kept at it and have thoroughly enjoyed the program. In one sense I see it as an accomplishment to finish the 90 day cycle, but in another sense it is an arbitrary marker because I intend to keep at it. I love the workouts and enjoy being fit. The other day I played racquetball, which is quite the cardio workout, and it was striking to me how I wasn't even breathing hard. Despite all the training I did during my high school years for varsity soccer, I think it would be safe to say that I'm in the best shape of my life in a well-rounded sense. I probably could have run farther and faster then, but now I have the well-rounded fitness of strength training, flexibility, and cardio stamina.

Here are some stats:

• I did 62 one hour workouts plus 25 15-minute ab ripper workouts in 90 days. If one follows the plan precisely it calls for 78 one hour workouts and 30 ab ripper's; I did have a life and took trips so I occasionally skipped days.
  
• The first time I did the Chest & Back workout I did a total of 96 pushups and 27 pullups. The last time I did Chest & Back I did a total of 191 pushups and 53 pullups.

You can check out some before and after shots here.

This last term I took a course called the Theology of Karl Barth. As a result of a related conversation with a friend of mine, Kenny Jahng, I posted some thoughts to his blog: Godvertiser.com. 

You can read my feable attempts at channeling Barth's theology here.

A friend recently asked, “What is at stake in Jesus being both fully God and fully man?” 

These were my initial thoughts: 

I’m close to finishing up a course called the Evolution of Trinitarian Doctrine. We have been reading week by week through early church fathers ranging from the 2^nd century to the 4^th century. It is fascinating and illuminating that what we consider today to be “orthodox Christian views” on these questions were very much a work in process. The Chalcedonian creed was kind of the summit of this process…and that wasn’t cemented until the mid-5^th century! 

So this is the question that drove several hundred years of debate in the early church. Seemingly all of the early church heresies were answers to this question that were ruled “out of bounds” by the consensus of the church (Arianism, Sabellianism, Docetism, Gnosticism, Marcionism, etc.). There are still modern day versions of these same heresies that are posited by scholars – all to say that the same questions are being asked and wrestled with. 

Here are some key bullet points worth wrestling with:

• How you come down on Jesus’ God-man-ness will say a lot about your view of what Jesus accomplished and what import (if any) that has on your life, vocation, and salvation. It’s important to realize that the person and the work of Christ are interwoven. In others words, whoever one believes Jesus to be (God-man, just man, just God, etc.) will have direct implications on what one believes him to have accomplished for others. So this would be the soteriological implication of Christology. If Jesus was just a man then he was a great example at best. If Jesus was God-man then his life, death, and resurrection have a bearing on my life in some way. The book of Hebrews plays up the latter view quite a bit.
• How you come down on Jesus’ God-man-ness will say a lot about your relationship to the Scriptures. Many would argue that if you hold the NT scriptures in high esteem then it is clear that Jesus is fully God and fully man. Those that disagree have dramatically different lenses from which they approach the Scriptures.
  
• How you come down on Jesus’ God-man-ness will say a lot about your relationship to 2000 years of Christian tradition. For the most part, those through time that have denied Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man have been stripped of the label of Christian. Whether it was the early Gnostics or Arians, or the more recent Unitarians. Christians aren’t too fond of other people claiming to be Christians when they don’t espouse Jesus as God and man.