In Community:

April 2019 Newsletter

After a Walk in the Park

by Pastor Dave Bauson

Honey! It’s a bumper crop! Ran through my mind over and over as I brought in my Spring harvest. If you know me very well, you know that I have an amazingly brown thumb. You wouldn’t expect that I would have a bumper crop of any value to harvest. And you’d be right! I excel at growing moss, clover, and the unwanted flowers also known as weeds.

After a beautiful Saturday afternoon walking with Takumi and racing his remote-controlled cars I settled down thinking I’d get a bit of rest. But there was a nagging itch in the back of my mind, remembering the unwanted flowers I noticed growing amidst my azaleas and decorative bushes, and raising their heads high in tufts all over my lawn. My lawn, which belongs on the “Before” side of a lawn care advertisement. And like the Szalinski’s yard in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” my back yard was beginning to look like the Amazon jungle. Takumi’s new four-wheeling remote-control truck can navigate everywhere except the back yard!

So, I spent a good part of the remaining sunshine on my hands and knees clearing the flower beds and some of the lawn of weeds. I know that it takes a lot of care and time to keep a nice-looking lawn and attractive flowers. But somehow the motivation, time, and energy seem to get expended elsewhere. It sure would be great to get an occasional gentle reminder and a bit of motivation when time opens up to straighten things out. Last Saturday was a perfect example: I had enjoyed a walk in the fresh air and sun, but on my return home I had a good look at my front yard.

Then Sunday morning the very next day Kelly Aramaki expressed some things that have been on his mind lately. Questions like “How is the church to live faithfully in light of the many needs we see in our world?” He then read the parable of the Good Samaritan. Most of us know the parable and its meaning for us as believers. We’re supposed to have lives decorated with grace and good works, love for our neighbors — those in need. But somehow the motivation, time, and energy seem to get expended elsewhere.

One of the main purposes of church is to present ourselves before God, giving Him the worship that He deserves. Another purpose is to be instructed in what the Word means; how it applies in our lives and how we are to live. You can add fellowship to the mix, and evangelism as a directive. But worship isn’t supposed to end when we say goodbye for the week and wish each other blessings. Worship happens when we serve Him when we’re “out there”. When we pay attention to the leading of the Spirit as He opens opportunities to glorify Him in service; sometimes individually and sometimes as a group.

How is the plot of land that the Lord has given you to cultivate? Maybe a few bald spots, where the good works He has destined for you need a bit of hands-and-knees participation? Is there some clover creeping up on the attractive flowers, threatening to replace their colorful appeal with a uniform dull green? Are there a few unwanted flowers sticking up where they don’t belong? Surely the Lord has given you some seed to sow where He knows the ground is bare. The Spirit living in you wants you to pour out some refreshment where someone is thirsty. He wants to give some tender love and care where it’s needed — through you.

You’ve left the freshness of church, corporate worship of God, and joy of fellowship — and returned home to meditate on your yard. Consider your regular Sundays, and especially yesterday’s worship, as a gentle reminder from the Lord that you have a life to cultivate to His glory.

ROCK (High School) Update

By Chris Jo & Amy Li

We have much to update you all about since our last Grapevine article, so Chris Jo and Amy Li have tag-teamed this month to share what ROCK has been up to. Thanks for reading and sharing in life with us.

Movie Night @ Chris Jo’s House

As is the tradition (and by tradition, I mean we did it once before), the ROCK group gathered together on February 2nd at the Jo family residence for our annual Korean barbeque feast plus movie night. The event began with the host, Chris Jo, requiring – I mean, encouraging – all the students and leaders to play “Just Dance”. It’s great because you can watch a replay and discover that when you dance you don’t look nearly as cool as you think you look. At first, the ROCK students were able to keep up with the host, but it was later revealed that the host had been dancing on his left leg when in fact he was right legged, at which point, he claimed victory after victory. That last sentence was completely untrue but would have made for a wonderful story that paralleled the movie which was none other than “The Princess Bride”. Dinner was bulgogi, marinated beef, along with banchan, an assortment of Korean side dishes. Each time I eat with our students, I am amazed at how much they can eat and am resigned to the fact that when my own kids are high school students, I’ll need to get a second job in order to feed them. After dinner, we watched the movie and I was pleasantly surprised to see it was enjoyable even for this generation of kids who weren’t even born when it first came out. Even though it seemed impossible, we were able to fit everyone into the media room. Dancing, dinner and movie made for a night filled with laughter, full bellies, and a great time of fellowship.

Iron Chef @ FBC

On the topic of movies, I am a big fan of Pixar movies… well, except for “Cars”. I mean, in this movie, the world is full of cars that live in a world where everything is a car. It makes no sense. They have trucks that act and look like cows but don’t produce milk or graze so why do they act like cows? They have little cars that fly around like bugs but aren’t bugs. They have no hands so who made the cars in the first place? They have no parents so where do they come from? Are the machines that make them also sentient beings? How do some of the cars grow mustaches?! I’m sure these questions will never be answered but nonetheless, I digress. One of my favorite Pixar movies is “Ratatouille”. It is a story about Remi, the rat who aspires to one day be a chef, believing it to be possible based on the motto of his idol, Auguste Gusteau, who says that “anyone can cook”. In the spirit of this movie, we gathered the ROCK students on February 24th to test Auguste Gusteau’s theory with our annual Iron Chef competition.

This year, we had three teams, comprised of people, both young and old.

Team 1: Jonathan “who has two thumbs, has a .300 batting average and cooks like a boss…this guy” Kumai, Sammy “how did I get stuck on this team” Dong, and Chris “let’s use steak in our dish so we can eat steak” Jo.

Team 2:  Abbie “does feeding the judges count as community service credit” Ishimitsu, Stacie “my cooking once put someone in a food coma and not the kind where you feel sleepy” Lee, and Kieran “can’t wear a chef hat because my hair won’t fit” Vu.

Team 3: Alisa “I decided being a judge this year was too risky” Williamson, Hikari “I make macarons in my sleep” Bauson, and Daniel “I graduated from high school but I’m back so I can avenge my last place finish from last year” Wang.

Each team had a thirty-dollar budget to build an entree and dessert around two secret ingredients: potatoes and pineapples. After shopping at the local Safeway, cooking commenced in the FBC kitchen. Surprisingly, conduct in the kitchen was orderly and each team seemed well prepared. It was clear that some students had impressive culinary skills based solely on how they handled the whole pineapple, either dicing the ingredients into perfectly proportional pieces while others had to google “how to cut a pineapple” and still failed miserably.

Team 1 created a main dish of steak and scalloped potatoes with cheddar and bacon, a virgin piña colada and (something that resembled but did not taste like) pineapple coconut pudding. Team 2 made a delicate yet scrumptious potato egg scramble and an elaborately decorated pineapple pie that had to be disassembled to cut slices for the judges’ table but was still impressive. Team 3 made pineapple fried rice and a surprise dessert – what looked like a normal chocolate truffle that was in fact made from mashed potato covered in cacao powder.

The brave judges (El, Jeanne, and Kenji) evaluated the dishes based on several criteria including taste, presentation, creativity and use of the secret ingredients. The difference in the total score was one point between each team with Team 1 barely winning by a razor’s edge. As always, it was a fun event where the group had a chance to grow closer together. The leaders who served as judges displayed a willingness to sacrifice and put their wellbeing on the line, while God provided His protection over them. I already look forward to next year and anticipate the return of Daniel “I’m a sophomore in college but I placed last again, so I am back to avenge my loss” Wang.

Winter Retreat @ Lazy F

From March 1st to 3rd, ROCK students and leaders headed to Lazy F Retreat Center in Ellensburg, WA to hold our annual winter retreat. Even with this year’s crazy Seattle Snowpocalypse, we weren’t tired of snow yet, so we escaped the city, seeking some solitude and time with each other and God in a winter wonderland. The plentiful snow in Ellensburg made for very peaceful surroundings that absorbed every drop of sound, leaving only a calming silence. Like always, we had a small group but this year, we were blessed to have two middle-school students (Hailey C. and Tim D.) joining us, along with the Kurtz family. We also had the honor of having Marty Dong as our speaker for the weekend. For most of the students, it was their first time at Lazy F and it felt like the start of something new.

I wanted to share with you some things I learned about this group from our weekend together:

I am a ruthless dictator when it comes to making people write their names on water bottles, because my pet peeve is half-drunk bottles of water sitting around that are thrown away.
Chris Jo will sacrificially take one for the team by sliding down in the front of inner tube chains to be sprayed by ice shards and come out looking like Grandpa Chris Jo.
Kenji is an absolute beast, balancing three students on his back while doing push-ups.
El is really, really bad at Old Maid. He lost every single round in a game that is completely based on luck (and well, maybe a little manipulation).
Maili, on the other hand, is really, really good at Old Maid (and maybe a little manipulative).
Alisa is a seasoned professional when it comes to inner-tubing, knowing exactly how to get the farthest and go the fastest.
Pastor Mike is a fan of Boom Chicka Pop (Stacie Lee and my favorite popcorn!).
Lyanne is the kind of person you want on your team for Taboo, but only as the guesser and not the clue-giver.
Kieran has a real talent for making up nicknames, i.e., Hikari = Calamari, Isamu = Miso Soup, Sammy = Yams and takes diligent care of his hair.
Nathan C. has a real knack for videography and photography, but also has modeling potential with the hilarious facial expressions he makes when inner tubing.
Isamu can switch from his normally low baritone speaking voice to singing high soprano notes (and is secretly, a fan of Ed Sheeran).
Abbie has some kind of photographic memory when it comes to remembering the names of people on a couch.
Hailey can make really cool (and loud) beats by hitting her fists on tabletops.
Sammy acts humble when it comes to playing instruments, but in reality, she’s so good at the piano that she can play any popular song, on the spot, upon request.
Hikari is one of the only students that doesn’t fall for any of El’s shenanigans and can put him in his place real fast.
Tim has so much energy but believe it or not, has a breaking point. We reached it on Sunday morning where he was the quietest I have ever seen him.
And last but not least, Marty is an awesome storyteller and teacher.

The theme for the weekend revolved around the story of Daniel and trusting God in difficult times. We focused on three aspects: Daniel’s life in exile, Daniel’s friends in the furnace, and Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den. Marty knew how to keep the students engaged, touching on topics that were particularly relevant to some students, i.e., being out of place in a new school, in a new country, or as a Christian among non-Christians. With each session, we sang songs of worship and played games to get to know each other more. We also split off into smaller groups to discuss and dig deeper into what God was teaching us.

The weekend was full of other activities too. We went inner-tubing, played at the recreation center, had snowball fights, and held jam sessions with the piano and guitar. The leaders tried their best to stay up late with the students, but I for one fell asleep on Saturday night in the middle of their riveting game of Truth-or-Truth. At this point, we were all a little delirious and one of the last things I remember hearing as I dozed off was one student asking another, “hey, truth or truth?”. I am proud to say that Chris Jo outlasted all the students and still had plenty of energy the next morning. The man is hardcore.

But in all seriousness, even though I stand by the above individual statements, I was immensely blessed by this year’s group of students and leaders. It is such a privilege to watch them grow closer together as a group and form their own faith. They are curious, thoughtful, joyful, compassionate, and so fun to do life with. Thank you for continuing to pray for us, FBC family!

Outdoors Day @ Greenlake

For our most recent event on March 17th, we planned to take the ROCK group to Franklin Falls to catch a glimpse of the frozen waterfall before it all melted away. However, we decided that the current conditions might be too treacherous and risky, considering the falls sit at the bottom of a known avalanche chute. While some of the students were disappointed, we promised them that we do some training hikes this summer to gauge their interest in hiking, so that hopefully next winter, we can take on this challenge fully prepared!

Instead of hiking, we still were able to spend the afternoon after church, outdoors, enjoying the beautiful spring weather at Greenlake Park. We played volleyball in a circle, a disorganized game of whiffle ball using frisbees as bases and watched Nathan F. and Isamu battle it out over spike ball. The leaders mostly sat in the sun on the picnic blankets, eating our second favorite popcorn and drinking Gatorade, because no one wanted to join Stacie and I in a game of tackle football. After all our energy was spent, some of us walked, some ran, and some drove to nearby Bongo’s Cafe which serves Cuban/Caribbean food, where we enjoyed yummy Yucca fries (with a special sauce) and sandwiches. We were truly thankful for God blessing us with this preview of the spring season after what seemed like an unusually long winter and a beautiful day well spent with our ROCK family.

CYC (College Young Career) Update

by Danny Cohen

Hello FBC family! Last time I wrote, I shared about God’s goodness throughout the start of the year in the College Young Career (CYC) group. After a handful of fellowship events and weekly get-togethers at church, God was thoughtfully knitting together the warm and welcoming “party sweater” at FBC. Just in time for all the cold weather too!

Here we are in the start of the new year and I’m happy to report more joy and growth to this special group of people. We finished our teaching series on the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 -23) and we are now transitioning into a series on Faith. Here’s a report of some of the gatherings we’ve had this year:

Galentines/Girl’s Night as told by Amy Li

If you have never made dumplings from scratch before, I highly recommend it. There’s just something so satisfying and peaceful about gathering around a table of friends and family, falling into a rhythm of carefully folding the edges of the delicate gyoza wrapper around the savory meat filling with your sticky, floury hands, and then repeating the process dozens of times until there are hundreds of plump, finished dumplings. Not only is the work itself rewarding, but the fruit of your labor is oh-so-delicious.

In my opinion, food is a fool-proof recipe for gathering people together in fellowship. Thus, we invited the girls of CYC over to the home of Jennifer Tsuji (and Danny Cohen) for a relaxing night of making real dumplings (and virtual dumplings on the Nintendo Switch game, “Overcooked”), eating real dumplings and other delicious food together, and playing some games. It was a great time to connect with one another in a smaller group setting than usual, especially bridging the gap between our different grades and schools, as well as spending time with some of our young career folk that make up an important part of CYC. We ended the night with full hearts and full bellies and through this night, I personally left reminded of the blessing of community (and dumplings).

Boy’s Night as told by Danny Cohen

If you have never eaten Korean BBQ while playing Super Smash Ultimate before, I highly recommend it. There’s just something so satisfying and electrifying when the aroma of perfectly marinated meat wafts into your nostrils as you deftly send your opponent flying across all 42” inches of the plasma screen. Not only the fact that pork belly combined with thinly sliced brisket is one of the best combinations to ever exist, it perfectly fuels players with the energy needed to compete in or cheer on great games.

I also believe that food is one of the best ways to gather people for fellowship. The boys of CYC all met at the Tsuji residence to bond over some delicious food (provided by the CYC Core team, Mama Cohen, the Chan family, and the Tsuji family) and games. This was an amazing opportunity to invite our friends that don’t normally come out to church and bond with brothers that we normally don’t get to interact with on a week to week basis. God provided a great turnout and I was so thankful to God to see all the smiles and hear everyone “ooh” and “ahh” in unison while playing games together.

God is continuing to build this amazing group of young adults at FBC who represent Christ in many communities throughout Greater Seattle. Thank you all for praying and supporting us all.

Why do we send teams to Yakama?

by Rieko Kato

As a mother and teacher, I wanted to introduce our children to life in a third world setting. In 2004, our family (Gary, Rieko, Mako, Sho and Ken) went to rural Trinidad with a team from FBC which included Mike and Lyanne Kurtz, Jim Lee, Chris Takano, Jack Emerson, Brian Watanabe, Shannon Watanabe, and Julie Fujita. There our team witnessed homes built on garbage dumps and we served within the Muslim and Hindu communities.

Our teammates were extraordinary in many ways. Our God provided different challenges each day for our team. VBS participants grew each day to number well over a hundred children by the final day. Each day there were just enough craft materials for the growing group. Every day was different, with activities ranging from door to door evangelism, to Gospel street dramas performed in front of a Hindu temple.

But Trinidad was so far away. How could we make this type of experience more accessible to the people at FBC? 2005’s follow-up trip to Trinidad fell through. So, we prayed and waited.

We prayed for a place where we could send families, youth and adults to experience and make a positive impact in a poverty culture. Through friends, God pointed us to Sacred Road Ministries that was just starting on the Yakama Reservation. They had no church service and no building but served by repairing homes. As they built trust, this led to meals and a Bible study in the Longhouse. On the Yakama Reservation we saw the results of a proud people who had their land and lifestyle taken from them. Hope was replaced with homicide, homelessness, addiction and the ravages of widespread fetal alcohol syndrome. Sacred Road Ministries slowly built hope and trust in the Yakama community. By partnering with Sacred Road Ministries, we hope our FBC Ohana will gain appreciation of the physical and spiritual needs of our Yakama friends. It is not well known, but the Yakama were the only people in the Valley that would allow Japanese immigrants to lease their land to farm nearly 100 years ago. Are we being called to return this favor 100 years later?

When we collect Christmas gifts or school supplies, we hope we can teach FBC children to give from their hearts. They will not receive thank you notes, nor will they be acknowledged by the Yakama children. We hope they can learn the joy of giving without receiving anything in return, just knowing you were a blessing to someone.

Why should you go? One participant wrote years ago:

“I love the Yakama Rez. And I will return to Yakama. The first time I went, I thought I was going to help them; they helped me more than I could ever repay them. They reminded me what true love is. It’s not Disney princess stories, its service. It’s putting others before myself. Yakama showed me that God is always there, even in the poverty and suffering. He is watching over His children. Yakama opened my eyes to poverty, pain and misery. And still there is hope. There is always hope in Jesus.”

Come and see…

Sacred Road Summer Mission Trip: 2019/07/27 -2019/08/04

This year’s Sacred Road summer mission trip will be July 27 to August 3rd. Please save the date and pray! If you are interested in joining the summer mission team, please contact Rieko Kato.