PASTOR'S PEN
Welcoming the Newest Members of CUPC’s Leadership
“And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good…” - Romans 8:28
In my last Pastor’s Pen (July, 2008), I alluded
to new ministry leadership opportunities for our congregation. This month, I
would like to share with you more in detail regarding the wonderful leadership
additions to our ministry beginning September, 2008.
This past June, at its regular meeting, the CUPC
session approved that Rev. Diana Nishita Cheifetz would be joining CUPC
as the Parish Associate for Preaching and Christian Spirituality
beginning September, 2008. For those unfamiliar with the term, a Parish
Associate (which is different from an Associate Pastor), as the Book of Order
(G-14.0570) states, is an ordained minister who is serving in non-parish/church
ministry, a member-at-large of presbytery, or is retired, but also seeks to
maintain a relationship with a particular congregation, offering their various
gifts for use in the ministry of that congregation. This parish associate
position is actually not new to CUPC - some of you may remember when Rev.
Gordon Lam was a parish associate, working with the youth, during Rev. David
Nakagawa’s time.
Many of you may remember that Pastor Diana is the
past interim pastor, Jeff Cheifetz’s, wife, but I have known her since my own
seminary days – and we have been friends since. Pastor Diana is currently an
adjunct faculty at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in the area of
Christian Spirituality, and also is a Spiritual Director at the Lloyd Pastoral
Counseling Center (affiliated with the Seminary). As our parish associate, she
will take an active part in our worshipping community, and as her title
suggests, she will be sharing her gift of preaching with us on a regular basis
(roughly once a month). She will also be working with the appropriate individuals/committees
to help continue the development of intentional spiritual nurture and growth
within the congregation. Welcome, Pastor Diana!!
The other person I would like to welcome is
someone many of you may already know: Hiroko Suzuki. She will become our
church intern (with an emphasis on Japanese-speaking ministries) from
September, 2008 for one year. Her internship is in conjunction with her current
seminary studies at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley.
Hiroko has been a member of our congregation
since 2006, and has been very active in the life of the church – especially
with our Japanese-speaking ministries. Her becoming an intern enables her to
devote more of her time and energy doing ministry at CUPC (both Japanese and
English speaking), and gain more experience - as she feels called to ultimately
be involved in ministry toward Japanese-speaking persons as her vocation. The
unique gifts that she brings has already been a great blessing to CUPC, and I
look forward to working with her in this new role for this coming year.
God has indeed been good to us! We welcome both
Pastor Diana and Hiroko to CUPC and look forward to doing God’s work alongside
with them. As they share their gifts with the various developing ministries at
CUPC, I ask you to support them and continue to pray for them – and as you are
able, work together with them.
And as they work with us, and we with them – as
the above verse from the Bible reminds us – let us always remember that it is
our God who is ultimately working together with us all to bring about God’s
work…here in our world, here at CUPC. So as we welcome the new gifts of Pastor
Diana and Hiroko, let us also bring forth our own gifts – and as God works
together with all of us, we can bring good to the ministry of CUPC, good to our
community, and good to God’s reign here on earth!
Peace and blessings,
Pastor Grace Kaori Suzuki
DEACONS' REPORT
As summer begins to wind down for the summer
campers and leaders… the Summer Olympics are about to begin in Beijing. We
welcome back our young missionaries into our midst: one, back from the
Philippines and another from Tokyo and look forward to hearing about their
ministries. We are thankful for their courage to step out in faith and leave
their comfort zone behind to share God’s love with those who greatly need it.
Noticed a few other familiar young faces in service also…. Welcome home
everyone!
The upstairs restroom is now complete and has
already been inaugurated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. We thank our Property
Maintenance Committee and each person in the congregation for their support in
making this possible. The next project is the Children’s Playground. God is
good!\
Let us be in prayer for those in our lives and
our communities. If you have any special prayer requests or needs, please
contact the church office.
COFFEE FELLOWSHIP:
The Deacons would like to thank the individuals
who have contributed to the coffee fellowship during the month of July.
The Deacons are aware that there are those who contribute but do not sign up on
the list. We wish to thank you also.
Jan Der, Co-Moderator
SUMMER CAMP MOMENTS
Hello! I have been coming to CUPC ever since I
was entering the 4th grade, so that means this is my 8th summer at CUPC. I
heard about CUPC by a friend I used to dance hula with. She told me that it was
fun and a summer that I will never forget. I decided to go and she was right.
It was a summer that I could never forget. This is my third year being a leader
at CUPC, as a paid leader.
My very first year being a leader, I was in the
Alpha department. I had Group C, and the kids were wild and crazy and didn’t
listen much. My second year as a leader was probably the best. I had great
campers that listen to the rules and listened to us leaders. I had 5G, and I
kind of split the head leader part. This year I have 5G again. I am the head
leader this year and I feel like I am doing a decent job.
My campers are ... different than the campers I
have had before. I know that these campers have grown up together and are best
friends. I have noticed that the campers are cliquey with everything. For
example, if we are playing Red Rover. They want to be with a person that is
their best friend. So, if I put them in two separate teams, and one team starts
off first, they will call for their best friends first. After a while, when the
opposing team calls for a person they want and the other team likes that person
(as in best friend), then they will call that person back just to be with their
friends. So, on Thursday (July 3, 2008), we played Rod Rover and the
cliquey-ness started again. I decided to change it up a bit and said, “You
can’t call the person that was already called. But you can call them after two
rounds.” I said that because some of the campers were never called in the entire
game in the first round we played. So, we tried it in the second round, but it
didn’t work as much. but the kids that didn't get a chance to go got to go in
that round.
This year I was ‘Leader of the Week’ in Week One.
I was so happy and shocked that I got the chance to be L.O.W. for the first
week in the Omega department. Plus, I have gotten to know most of the leaders.
We grew up together when we were in our groups. For example, there is another
leaders I grew up . We were in 4th grade girls together and I have gotten to
know her so well. I didn’t see her for about 2 years, but when I saw her again,
it felt like I haven’t seen her in ages. We are good friends and I am glad that
I came here and met new people.
Thank you and have a wonderful day!
Rebecca Wong
Hi my name is Alex and my name is Jeff.
(Switch Places)
Jeff: We’ve been going to camp for
12 years now (look at Alex for validity)…
Alex: Part of the reason is
because we have nothing better to do with our summers…
Jeff: But the main reason is, that
we love it here.
Alex: As campers, we used to come
to CUPC excited to see each other because we were separated for the entire
school year.
Jeff: But since we go to high
school together.
Alex: Lowell!!
Jeff: Whoo!!
We see each other 6 days a week.
Alex: But remarkably, we haven’t
killed each other... yet.
Jeff: Every year we come back and
do our same stupid stuff.
Alex: But somehow they let us take
care of your children.
Jeff: Please bear with our goofy
opening, we were working all night over this.
Alex: Wait, if you say the last
three words backwards that you said, “This over night.” Hey “this over night.”
Didn’t you go on and weren’t we supposed to talk about “this over night.”
Jeff: By golly Alex, you’re
right!! And nice segway.
Alex: This week campers 3rd grade
and up got to go on the overnight.
Jeff: Since I take care of the
oldest campers I got to go…
Alex: and since I take care of the
youngest campers, I didn’t.
Jeff: For those of you who don’t
know, the Overnight is a trip for the older campers to the Valley of the Moon
campsite. We stayed there for 2 nights and it was a lot of fun. We had archery,
devotions, water games, microwaved s’mores, hot cocoa, and much more. The
campers and leaders all had a good time. The part I will always remember is putting
shaving cream all over one of my fellow leaders, Christian Feng. We returned on
Friday filthy, but it was worth it. All the kids fell asleep within the first 5
minutes of the bus ride home. It was a peaceful end to a wild week.
Alex: Whoa Jeff, we had fun too.
For example, on Wednesday, we went to the park.
Jeff: Don’t we always go to the
part, Alex.
Alex: Well, uh…On Thursday we went
to the beach. One of our most important rules when we go to the beach is that
the campers can only go up to their ankles in the water, but every year there’s
always at least one camper who is not only wet up to their ankles, but is
drenched from head to toe. And this year was no different because one of my own
campers comes up to me completely soaked, so I took out the towel I always
bring. Then on Friday we went to see a play called “The Magic Library:"
and campers and leaders alike just loved it. When we got back to church, we had
lunch followed by a movie in which the overnight kids joined us in watching.
Jeff: The best thing about this
week was right before the movie started when we found out we both received the
highly coveted Leader of the Week Award.
(Pause and hold up cards)
Alex: Every year at CUPC is a new
experience, and that’s why we keep coming back. We’re looking forward to the
rest of the summer with all of you, and many more summers ahead.
Jeff: No matter where we are in
life, CUPC will always remind us of happy times. We’ve built many friendships
and have learned many new things.
Alex: Thank
Jeff: You.
Alex Kent & Jeffrey Lew
Good morning. This is my third summer at CUPC,
but my first being a paid leader. This past week at camp has been pretty
tiring; but what week at camp isn't ? Monday was the dinosaur egg hunt, and
though I was there with the directors and leaders to bury them, it took me the
longest time to find one. It seemed like the ones I buried were all already
found. Finally we were at an area where one of the watermelons was buried, but
it wasn’t the campers who found it, it was a leader. As we were watching the
kids dig into the dirt piles, one of our leaders noticed she was standing on
something in the dirt that was green… the watermelon. I guess that ruined the
whole purpose of the campers finding the eggs, but they didn’t seem to mind.
They dug the watermelon out with smiles on their faces, and all wanted to hold
it as we walked by the other groups so they could brag about how big our
watermelon was.
For our cookout on Wednesday, we had taco salads.
This day was the most tiring of all. I started the day off with getting burned
from the grill as I was making the fire, and then later having one of my
campers slip and fall in the woods… in dog poop. About 5 minutes later, she
slips and falls again, but not in poop this time. She falls onto a couple branches,
where she got a few cuts on her forehead and I helped bandaged them up. I
thought she would be pretty mad the rest of the day, after all she went
through, but she wasn’t. She acted as if she never had poop on her, and she
never got hurt. She didn’t cry or complain, which was such a big relief for me.
That day was making ice cream for the Omega department, and for Oldest Boys, it
wasn’t such a good one. As they were adding the ingredients for the ice cream,
they had mistaken the salt for sugar… and well, you know the rest. My groups’
ice cream, I’m happy to say, turned out better. We made mocha chocolate cookie
dough, and everyone was asking for thirds.
One Friday, we stayed at church playing games
until the leader talent show. For craft, my group made cookies, and everyone
loved them. Groups A, B, and C were even asking for some. They were assigned
the social hall, and could smell our cookies as they were baking. When it was
time for the leader talent show, I was pretty exited to see what the other group
have come up with. All the leaders worked hard to put on a good show, and it
was. There was dancing, dancing, and more dancing… and the skits put on by a
few of the boys, which included putting whipped cream down Christian Feng’s
pants, shirt, nose, and mouth. And can’t forget about the pudding squeezed all
over his clothes and face. Way to take one for the team.
Later that day was the family picnic. I was in
charge of cooking he hot dogs, and with the help of one of the adults, I must
have cooked like 2 whole packages. I smelled like charcoal for the rest of the
night. At the picnic, the parents were able to see how cookout, ice cream, and
the games are for their kids. Some of them helped make the ice cream, and even
played Kick the Can with other parents and campers. I’m looking forward to the
last 2 weeks of camp, and appreciating the time I have left here at camp with
all the campers, leaders, and directors.
Jillian Yson
Good morning everyone! Somewhere along my name it
should have C.U.P.C. in it because though this is only my 2nd year at camp I
feel like they are already my 2nd family. Okay, okay, enough of this mushy
gushy stuff. Week 5 is coming to an end and next week is our last week of
regular camp. I know it’s cliché but time does fly when we’re having so much
fun.
Monday was our bubble gum contest. Who would’ve
thought being able to chew and blow bubble gum took such skills? Some of my
campers in Group C or also known as “Crayons and some Cookies” can chew twice
as fast as I can and blow a bubble bigger than I’m even capable of.
Wednesday our group made some mean lean teriyaki
burgers. I find it funny how the kids are always wanting more. .. They got a
plate in front of them with a burger that has only a bite taken out and they
are already asking if they can have seconds. But then again I can’t blame them
from wanting more of our mouth watering burgers (=
On Thursday I learned the meaning of not judging
the book by its' cover. Our group made Mocha ice cream but to make things
interesting we decided to add some food coloring in it. Everyone was anxious to
eat the ice cream but when we took off the top their noses scrunched up and
their smiles turned into open jaws. The ice cream looked like mustard among
many other things. The campers looked curious yet disgusted. I heard a few of
them mutter out " Ew I hate mustard... I can't eat that!" The brave
ones took their bites and all they said was “Yummmmm." Before we knew it
everyone wanted seconds and some leaders loved it as well. Though if it didn't
look so bad I’m sure we would’ve all enjoyed the taste of the ice cream much
more. So I guess not everything is what they seem to be.
Friday was a fun filled day at California’s Great
America. Because most of the 1st and 2nd graders were too short to ride the roller
coasters we all ended up going to the water part of the park. Within the 10
minutes I was there, I was pushed under a huge bucket of water that just
happened to tip over when I was underneath it. I never really understood why
the kids loved playing in the water so much but that didn't matter, because all
the smiles I saw and the laughter I heard made it the best day for me.
In the end the campers are like the sour patch
kids candy, they can be a handful at times but they always know how to put a
smile back on your face. This week was exciting and memorable but I hope we can
end week 6 with a bang and make it a summer we can all cherish, because we all
know the best memories are made here at C.U.P.C. camp.
Khulan Erdenebaatar
Hi. This is my 10th summer at CUPC Summer Camp,
2nd as a leader. I have come back every year so that I could see the many
friends that I have made at this camp. We have just finished the sixth and last
week of regular camp. It has been a very tiring six weeks, but is always worth
putting in all of the work to put a smile on all of the camper’s faces. There
have been many challenges that all of the leaders have gone through, but we
have all managed to survive.
This week we had our annual Parent’s Night on
Wednesday. All the groups spent countless hours practicing their skits so they
could do the best job possible. It turns out that all of those countless hours
turned into a great performance by all of the campers that attended. Some of
the more memorable skits were Hairspray by the eighth graders and Music of the
Century by the Oldest Boys. My group’s skit was 007. We were expecting to have
more campers in our skit but some of them were unable to go at the last minute.
We had to cut down on the number of characters and make some of the campers
play two parts. On Thursday, everyone watched the movie Oliver and Company in
the morning. Then everyone went to Milpitas where we all enjoyed the rest of
the day roller skating. Many of the campers had trouble getting around on
roller skates. But by the time we had to leave, you could tell that they had a
great time. On the last day of camp, every group had their own potluck. Our
group had a little bit of shortage because two of the campers that were
supposed to bring main dishes didn’t come that day. That resulted in our group
asking other groups if they had extra food to spare. Then in the afternoon,
everyone enjoyed the rest of the day swimming at Heather Farms. It was a great
day to go swimming because of the hot weather. By the end of the day, everyone
was saying their good-byes to all of their friends.
This has been one of my most memorable summers so
far. I consider this summer a big success as CUPC Summer Camp always is. Being
a leader, I have learned new things about myself as I continue to grow up. On
one hand you didn’t want camp to end and have to go back to school, but on the
other hand you knew there would always be next summer to see all of the campers
and your friends again.
Scott Wong
ARTICLE OF INTEREST
Sexuality In the Presbyterian Church
The congregations of Presbyterian Church (USA)
through their presbyteries, will have a say on the ordination of gays and
lesbians by action taken at the General Assembly in San Jose in June of this
year.
This matter has been tossed about for some time,
but the 2008 General Assembly voted to amend the constitution to delete the
“Fidelity and Chastity” standard found in G-6.010b of the Book of Order.
Instead, to add language that says those who are called to ordained service
pledge themselves to Jesus Christ through witness and understanding of the
scriptures, and through instruction of the Confessions. In so doing, they
declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church.
This proposed amendment will be sent to the
denomination’s 173 presbyteries in 2009 asking them to vote to delete the
current paragraph G-6.016b in the Book of Order which requires the church
officers to live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and
a woman or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any
self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained
and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.”
Three commissioners from CUPC, with our pastor,
will get a chance to vote on the proposed amendment.
My feeling on this crucial matter is very clear.
The church of Jesus Christ is open for all believers, and to continue the
age-old doctrine of exclusion to certain persons because of lifestyles, race,
gender is wrong.
In our church we should be open to all. Those who
are sincerely willing to serve as officers of the church should be given our
blessing with gratitude.
I hope the commissioners from CUPC will reflect
this view by voting for the constitutional amendment. Service to the Church of
Jesus Christ should be gratefully welcomed.
Kathy Reyes
