Harvest

So last Saturday, I went down to San Jose with three other guys from Crossroads (the CF I go too). Met up with Jerry, some graduated senior and got some Mexican food for lunch. Did I tell you guys I love burritos? Yeah, and I had one filled with oodles of cheese. Sticky and salty and absolutely heaven.

And then we stopped by Alvin's house in Saratoga. Which is absolutely gorgeous. Both the house and the place.
Don't you agree with me? The picture doesn't show, but his driveway's long enough to fit around 8 cars length wise. Grace's not too impressed. Apparently, the houses in her Philly neighbourhood were mostly like this. The kids from her school have field trips to Italy and Spain. Wah lao! Look at me, 11 years of Malaysian schooling and I've only been to Taman Negara. That was a nice trip though, made possible only through Miss Ooi Hoay Chin, may she rest in peace.

I brought textbooks along to study but well...err...you know la how it goes...*ahem* So Roger and Faith played basket ball and Alvin and I played ping-pong. Alvin had wonderful cork paddles, light and deadly. Unfortunately, they were the square ones that pen-holders use; which was rather odd given that Alvin, like me, natively uses a shakehands grip. But heck, put two guys with a passion for ping-pong together and grip differences becomes very much a non-issue. Recently, Yiding and I watched a Japanese movie called Ping Pong.


Its based on a manga (yay!), but seriously, Japanese people make quirky movies. And its main characters are named Peco and Smile. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Go Wikipedia or something. Darn, those kids must have gotten teased hella lot.
It was a bit unreal at times, but not too much. Which was good. Perhaps, it would have been fun if it had been fashioned after Shaolin Soccer though - imagine one of the characters executing a shot that would leave the table smashed to smithereens o.O But anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so Smile and Peco are peculiar in that they've played with each other since young (owh, that sounds so wrong xp) with Smile being a chopper and Peco being an aggressive top spinner. For the most part, Peco gets owned (theoretically, he self destructs). I loop, and Yiding chops, and I get owned too. Well, Peco does win in the end, so theres hope for redemption.

I do believe I have been digressing.

I actually went to San Jose to get to this rally by Harvest Crusade. Ok, I guess I went there to watch Kutless; the rally really was secondary. 'twas held at the HP pavillion. A fairly big place.
We arrived there like two and a half hours before the event was scheduled to start and there were lines going around the building already.
And I actually studied while waiting in the line, while standing up, while leaning against the wall, while slowly inching forward and even when I got inside the pavillion and found seats. What was fascinating was, given that the pastor heading the crusade was a guy named Greg Laurie, there were quite a few people standing by the droves of people with signs reading "Laurie leads to hell". I particularly remember this awesomely buff guy going around pointing out the "faults" in Laurie's doctrine, quoting many a Bible verse with great ease. I use quote marks 'cause I didn't actually stay long enough to listen and evaluate his argument since I was more interested in studying then. I'm pretty certain it was at the very least coherent, judging by the crowd he attracted. I guess one wouldn't be able to differentiate both sides without going through thorough examinations of doctrine and interpretation. It struck me that these would be how battles would be fought in the last days, between people with vast knowledge and deep understading. Where will I stand then, I wonder.

For once, I'm glad I failed - to convince Grace to come along with me that is. It wasn't about the volume that was blasted out from the amplifiers by the first band, since the succeeding two didn't soften down by much. These were the first performers of the day.
Seventh Day Slumber. Very (previously) angsty people. Apparently, the lead singer was one heck of a screwed up guy. Things got so bad that he tried killing himself with a cocaine overdose. He didn't die, but he found God while in the ambulance. He shared his life story with us at the end of his performance, and to me - that really salvaged his performance. I use "salvage" because his band's songs mainly consisted of a lot of shrieking (from both voices and guitars). Hey, I'm not at all averse to pumping the volume up and rocking out; but personally, that didn't cut it for me. Perhaps it was the live setting though. Even Kutless sounded way more rock-ish than I was used to hearing on iTunes. But it was totally awesome. I do believe I got myself hoarse screaming out the lyrics to "Shut Me Out". I love that song. Sorry, Ian, 'twas dark and I didn't bring along a proper camera with good optical zoom; so yeah, I don't have good pictures of the guys. Yet, my favorite performance that night was by Jeremy Camp. He's so good. Yeah.

I guess the pavillion was moderately big. It was nearly full and there were only about 16.5k people there. Most of whom, had come to listen to the "diabolical" Greg Laurie. Pretty basic sermon about the prodigal son. I like it that he didn't gloss over the more unpleasant parts of living ife as a Christian though. I guess you shouldn't go crusades in search of deep theology. But what was amazing was the altercall. As you might have observed, the floor has pretty much been empty in all my pictures. 'twas quite disappointed at the start though, 'cause my friends and I wanted to be down there jumping up and down while the bands were rocking. We kinda surmised that since all the expensive and sophisticated AV equipment was down there, they just wanted to keep the people away and their equipment safe. But lo, that was where Greg called the masses down for the altercall.So it seemed, 217 churches from over San Jose had been responsible for helping to make that night happen. It must have been quite a nightmare planning all the logistics of it. Of course, I'm sure they all had support from their local Christian community. And heck, it might not have been perfect, but the night was really free from glitches. These people pulled it off. Congregations of 217 churches tithing, planning and praying. Say, you ever wondered what an answered prayer looks like?

How about this.

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Pictures tell a thousand words, and words express things pictures never could, but video owns 'em both ^^