03/19/01: Babies, Chef's Instructions

Josh,

I had a great time this past weekend skiing at June Mountain with people
from my young adult group at church and our other friends. However, my
friend Eddie Liu broke his collar bone yesterday. So, please pray for his
recovery and that the Lord would give him the strength to handle this
situation. Thanks for your prayers and for praying for the items that I
mentioned last week!

A friend of mine Theresa Yuan is the VP of Business Development at Flavor
Software. Her company just launched a new MP4 player. MP4 is the next
generation rich media experience (more advanced than MP3). Their Flavor
Player is like having Napster, MTV, a DVD player, and access to the
Internet all wrapped up in one MP4 file. Please download it for free at:

http://www.flavorsoftware.com

For those of you in LA, if you are interested in entrepreneurship and
networking with others who are, I would like to invite you to attend a
monthly entrepreneurial dinner that I'm organizing for the Anderson Alumni
Association. Our guest speaker will be Bob Waldorf, founder and former CEO
of Idea Man, Inc. Bob's talk will be on "The Art of Selling". I'm sure
that you will really enjoy his talk.

Date: Tuesday, March 27th, 2001
Place: Daily Grill
Map: http://www.smartpages.com/home/dailygrill3
Address: 100 N La Cienega Blvd # 120 (Beverly Connection)
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Phone: (310) 659-3100
Time: 7 - 9 PM
Cost: $25 - $30

If you want to come, please RSVP at:

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?QC0BAV736MQK0JNRVCX3TRLJ
______________________________________________

Last week's puzzle is: "A doctor has a brother who is an attorney in
Alabama, but the attorney in Alabama does not have a brother who is a
doctor. How can this be?" Answer: The doctor is a woman.

This week's puzzle (slightly harder) is: "We have a bottle of wine
approximately three-fourths full. We want to leave an amount of wine in
the bottle equal to exactly half of the total capacity of the bottle. How
can we do it without using anything to help us?"

This week's thought provoking question is: "If you could physically
transport yourself to any place in the world at this moment, where would
you go?"

Anna Man and Jenny Feng forwarded the humor and inspirational pieces,
respectively.

Enjoy!

-Josh.
______________________________________________

Babies

A second grader came home from school and said to her mother, "Mom, guess
what? We learned how to make babies today." The mother, more than a
little surprised, tried to keep her cool. "That's interesting," she said,
"How do you make babies?" "It's simple," replied the girl. "You just
change 'y' to 'i' and add 'es'."
_________________________________

Chef's Instructions

Which are you?

A daughter complained to her father about her life and how things were so
hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to
give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one
problem was solved a new one arose.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with
water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In
one he placed carrots, in the second he placed eggs, and the last he placed
ground coffee beans.

He let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

The daughter sucked her teeth and impatiently waited, wondering what he was
doing. In about twenty minutes he and turned off the burners. He fished
the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and
placed them in a bowl. Then he ladled the coffee out and placed it in a
bowl.

Turning to her he asked. "Darling, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.
He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots.
She did and noted that they were soft.
He then asked her to take an egg and break it.
After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee.
She smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

She humbly asked. "What does it mean Father?"

He explained that each of them had faced the same adversity, boiling water,
but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. But after being
subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid
interior.
But after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique however.
After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you," he asked his daughter.
"When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?
Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? "
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

How about you? Are you the carrot that seems hard, but with pain and
adversity do you wilt and become soft and lose your strength?

Are you the egg, which starts off with a malleable heart? Were you a fluid
spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a divorce, or a layoff have you
become hardened and stiff. Your shell looks the same, but are you bitter
and tough with a stiff spirit and heart?

Or are you like the coffee bean? The bean changes the hot water, the thing
that is bringing the pain, to its peak flavor reaches 212 degrees
Fahrenheit. When the water gets the hottest, it just tastes better.

If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better
and make things better around you .

When people talk about you, do your praises to the Lord increase?
When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, does your
worship elevate to another level?

How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

II Corinthians 4:8-9 - We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed;
we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast
down, but not destroyed.

"The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition
and not our circumstances."