I don't know about you guys, but I've gone to (or been invited to) more farewell dinners/parties this year than ever in my life!!!!! Erica's gig early in May. Andy's dinner in May (although he's still here). Bonnie's thing in July. Jessica's farewell in August. Greg's night of wild hair and hats and Jason's Italian thing tomorrow (8/30). I know I'm prolly missing a few others since I didn't go (or get invited) to a lot of others. There have also been numerous silent departures. Many Lumpers have "moved on" from Lumps, no longer attending the fellowship, but not necessarily leaving the Bay Area. And some have left without the hoopla or fanfare on their way to another city. Lumps is changing dramatically in 2002. The average age may even go down because of the mass departures this year. Old timers, who've been at lumps for more than 3 years are far and few between. Sometimes I wonder what lumps will be like by the end of this year.
By the end of next year, we will also say farewell to several Lumpers, a la weddings. Greg, you win the bet! Okay so three internal Lumps couples will get married by the end of 2003. You win 3-0! I admit it. I didn't think there was any romance in the cold air at Lumps. So we'll say goodbye to a few more Lumpers as they move on to another phase in life. C/A, T/K, O/A. (I know about J/J... but they only count as a half point in my bet with Greg cuz J was never really a Lumper). Marriage! Yikes!
E and S are now the lone unengaged couple. Hurry Up!!!!!! Actually, take your time. I want to save a few of my 2003 Saturdays for non-weddings.
If you just joined us, you can see the past Rants and Rambling entries on http://lumps.blogspot.com (If anyone else feels like recording their thoughts on lumps for posterity and joining the wonderful world of lumps bloggers, lemme know and I’ll get you hooked up.) Did you know that there are at least 23 actively blogging Lumps with personal blogs? Most of ‘em just got blogger accounts over the past year. It’s just another way that our Lumps community shares and communicates with each other. Start blogging today and join in on another dynamic aspect of our community! It’s also a nice way to help pull together the Lumps community who may be scattered away from the bay area. Get to know other Lumps and stay in touch!
Oftentimes I find myself sharing with some Lumps the cool fun things we did in Lumps back in the day. I figure why not share my memories here. Maybe it will be inspiring for someone to organize more cool stuff for future Lumps life. I’ll also share why it was meaningful to me/Lumps. So here we go, in chrono order...
10. Bay to Breakers (Spring ‘99)
About a dozen of us signed up to run the bay-to-breakers race together. I hadn’t done anything like it before, so it was really great to accomplish the physical feat with my brothers and sisters. Nothing can compare to the bonding from a grueling, sweaty experience. We all stayed overnite at Melody’s house and got picked up by Jerry in the wee morning in the church van. Tortillas were thrown around at the start line. It was chilly. The footrace was long (across the city) but fun. I ended up crossing the finish line with Vickie and Johnny in just 90 min. Not too bad! I think I was holding back Vic and Johnny a little. Vic ran the whole race in her Doc Martens and Jeans! Afterwards we all met up at footstock and walked back to church in time for 11:30. Nice and sweaty.
9. Big Basin Camping (Fall ‘99)
This was the first of the annual Kim Yee Lumps camping trips. I think it was my first real time camping. (My almost first time was in a tent during the 94’ Mexico missions trip.) First ever big weekend experience for Lumps. When you’re out in the woods...there isn’t much to do except talk and get to know each other better. I climbed up into a tree with DLu and Mike Lai during the guided nature tour. I still have that picture. Really relaxing and refreshing getting close to nature with your fellowship family. We stopped by a beach on the way back. Johnny threw Michelle into the ocean. Ha Ha.
This year was the first time we didn’t have a Lumps camping trip (at least not yet). The trade-off was due to the increased missions involvement of some of the regular Lumps, a good thiing. Weekend trip experiences have always been incredible times which pulled our fellowship together. It was great getting having it open to the whole group and having it cool for people to invite friends. (That was the very first time I really met Tina N.)
Hopefully someone can fill Kim Y’s shoes and put together another Lumps camping trip.
8. Wildcard: the First Video Scavenger Hunt (Fall ‘99)
This was the first of our wild and crazy scavenger hunt events. I don’t think anyone had ever done anything like this before. I think I originally remembered reading about an idea of something like that on some website. Michelle and Eli (and Millbrae?) put together the task list for the different groups. Some crazy fun stuff on there. Lots of us embarrassed ourselves in the mall playing childhood games. We serenaded couples on Twin Peaks. We reenacted a movie somewhere. (I sprained my ankle in the dark on Twin Peaks as my group did a Blair Witch reenactment...how ironic.) We all stuffed ourselves into a phone booth. (There aren’t too many of those in the Sunset.)
The point of the nite wasn’t to publicly humiliate everyone in crazy dares. Not the main point at least. The nite was designed to be a fun, creative event which would really facilitate team interaction, bonding, and a lot of unforgettable moments. I don’t think anyone who participated will ever forget that nite. Participating in an activity together, particularly if it requires problem solving, really drives a group to communicate with each other on a new level. Like some of our better WildCards, this event was something cool that people couldn’t necessarily do on their own...so it was a unique, fun event to draw people (who would be up for this sorta thing). It was a lot of fun. A lot people recalled it as the best Lumps event for that year.
7. Yosemite Camping (Summer ‘00)
This was the second annual Kim Yee Lumps camping trip. Yosemite. My first time ever. What a great thing it was to experience it with the fellowship. We pitched tents by Camp Curry (I think that’s where it was). We ate the typical Kim Yee camping meals...spaghetti, chicken, instant mashed potatoes, etc. There was some incredible hiking. I went on the advanced track with all guys and Kim’s girl friends. I ended up hiking like 9-10 miles. Somehow along the way...I ended up having an unplanned 2 hour long walk of solitude with God. “Hi God. It’s me, Greg. The nature’s really spectacular here...Where’s the rest of the group? Please deliver me. I want to see the camp again before dark.” Finally I started to head down...and ran into JHo and Owen who went to find me. “Thanks, God.”
The trip provided for a lot of us to get to know each other better...to again hang out and chill, taking in the splendor of God’s creation. At night about a dozen of us laid down in a row with blankets on some wooden platform staring up into the starry sky for about an hour. A really awesome time.
6. Lumps Retreat - “Overflow” (Summer ‘00)
We got our first Lumps retreat together pretty much in just a matter of 2-3 months. We threw the idea out at a planning meeting in May or June for a retreat in August. God really provided for us in supplying a place, since most campsites are booked up a year in advance. Kim Yee gave us the hook-up on a campsite that a church had to pull out of b/c someone was getting married. That campsite was Happy Valley Conference Center. That fabulous place with great hot cinnamon rolls and located right by the infamous Mystery Spot. Jimmy and Bernice were the emcees. A past church intern named John Woo came and was our speaker. We popped balloons in people’s pants. We had a great time trying to figure out the rules of a cool game called “Braveheart.” A couple of girls played some pranks on the guy cabins. Great time getting to know each other in small groups and around the camp fire. We learned and applied what it means to live in the abundance of the Spirit.
5. Lumps Banquet (Early Spring ‘01)
With the celebration of the new year we found that it would be great timing to have a celebration of our fellowship. We got a hook-up to rent out a room at UCSF, set up a bunch of cool decorations (which we got on the cheap at a day-after Christmas sale) and catered in some food. Eli and Michelle were the emcees. We had table games, a few skits, testimonials, and sharing. It was a memorable time to reflect on what God’s done with our fellowship the past year and to eagerly look forward to what was in store for the group in the year to come. (Plus we got to dress up!)
4. Café Nite: Life, Love and Faith (Spring ‘01)
For a special 4th week Lumps Wildcard event, we put on a special evening of coffee, conversation, and creativity. This was the first time we ever attempted to put on an event like this. The hope was to have a non-churchy environment to share creative expressions of faith with our friends. As an entire fellowship, Lumps was hard at work for about a month planning, praying and inviting in preparation for this big event. We set up the sanctuary with the now-so-familiar round café tables and tea lights.
The program consisted of musicians (most of whom were Lumps or friends of Lumps): Pete Chan & CJ, Alice Au, Dchi/James Min, and Roger Hom. Gary and Karissa shared “personal soliloquies” about faith in their lives. Kathleen Li shared some of her paintings and illustrations exemplifying some personal struggles and inner reflections. And we can’t forget eFusion, who delighted us with his lyrical rhymes!
It was exciting for me to see the entire fellowship get united and behind this event. Owen and his kitchen crew served up an impressive drink menu of espressos, smoothies and other great drinks. It was amazing how God blessed the whole night to really flow. A lot of people who weren’t really too familiar with faith had impressed upon them a wide range of sincere, heartfelt expressions which our faith relatable in a lot of new ways.
Recently, some ideas and venues were kicking around for a future café nite later this year. Would anyone be interested in seeing this happen? Would YOU be willing to help pull it together? Send your thoughts to core@lumpsofclay.com and the ball can get rolling!
3. Lumps Wildcard – Iron Chef Nite (Spring ‘01)
Iron Lumps Chefs do Battle! IMO, this was one of the the best Wildcards we ever had (and also the last that Owen/Jana led). It took the formula to create a fun social-outreach event that provided for a lot of creativity, ingenuity, and teamwork. It was also an event that took full advantage of our resources (5 kitchens in close proximity at the church) and would be hard to duplicate elsewhere.
Among the mandatory ingredients were spam and ramen. Teams had a time limit to work in their kitchen spaces and to procure additional ingredients to make their oddball masterpieces. Jason Chang busted out his mini blowtorch to add a melted brown sugar glaze to his groups offerings. A team of judges were both disgusted and delighted with the plethora of creations at the conclusion of the evening. Itup was an unforgettable nite of creative culinary competition.
Anyone wanna do it again? We just need people willing to organize stuff like this for Lumps. Gain inspiration from past events or add your own new creative cognitions to future Lumps events. Just holler that you want to help out!
2. Lumps Wildcard - Clue City Challenge (Spring ‘02)
Another in the series of our cool, cryptic, challenging Lumps Wildcards! Like our other Wildcard events, this one was set-up to be a fun-filled social outreach so that we can invite friends to check out and experience hanging out with Lumps. Relationships are important towards a fellowship experience. We hoped that fun, teambuilding times would foster bonding. Hopefully newbies would like what they experienced with Lumps people and would be interested in checking out more about the fellowship group and growing in faith with us.
This Wildcard was a spin-off of a scavenger hunt/manhunt w/ a twist of that classic board game, Scotland Yard. We sent teams out to scour the city looking for the dastardly wanted criminals – the hoopster Tablehead, the hippie Jumanjiji, the playground bully Earl Blim, the snacking Nguyen Cho, and the laughing Papa O’Caca. Teams of detectives were given clues to their whereabouts, making the purposely randomized teams (of newbies and regular Lumps peeps) to mesh their creative wits together to solve the puzzles. Once they found a henchmen...they had to perform a task to coerce information out of them (like playing Chubby Bunny or shoot some free throws). The teams had an alotted time limit to try to find 5 clues from the 5 city criminals...all for the final challenge – to find the infamous, bald Mr. X!
If there’s ever a sequel to the Clue City Challenge, we need to identify a new chief inspector to organize the man hunt. The last inspector is reportedly tracking Mr. X’s whereabouts to southern California!
1. Lumps Lu-La-Palooza: Secrets of the Lumps-Lumps Sisterhood (Spring ‘02)
An event that was about 3 years and 10 months in the waiting! The first ever big Lumps Ladies Appreciation. An event put on by the brothers to show love to the sisterly half of our fellowship. It was a great time that pulled together a lot of the guys to plan and pitch forth their energies and talents into a cohesive nite of surprises and sweetness for the Lumps ladies.
It took a few weekly planning meetings and some smaller groups of collaborations. An amazing amount of work was accomplished in a couple of weeks by the men! Pear scented postcard invitations were sent out. A now famous elimidate parody video was filmed and edited. A slideshow of Lumps moments was put together. The Jiggy Brothers wrote, performed, and dedicated the song “Just the Few of Us.” For the nite itself, we set-up the Lulapalooza Lounge (i.e. the sanctuary café nite style with flowers and tea lights). The Ladies were given the royal treatment with personal valets and manservants. Jon Fong emceed the evening. Mike Lai put on a how well do you know your Lumps brothers game. We raffled off door prizes or service prizes (and some neato movie posters) to the ladies. After some worship and a message, we presented some custom etched candleholders (or large-sized glass communion cup) with a jasmine bouquet scented candle in the middle.
