..Designing a World of Hope

Hi Everyone!

I am so excited to be sharing with you some of the incredible things that God is doing in and through my life right now! As many of you know, I am currently in my third year at Arizona State University studying Architecture. While this major definitely has been very challenging (understatement of the year!), I really do love learning all about architecture! However, being at a public university, it is easy to see that something is missing. This campus terribly needs Jesus! That’s why it is so good to see ministries on campus being the light in the darkness that this world so desperately needs and I am truly grateful to be a small part of that light. I really am confident that I am where God wants me to be.

All that being said, for the past two years, I have felt a strong desire for more - more of God’s presence, more of His will for my life, and less of mine. I know that I am where He wants me to be, yet I can’t escape this feeling of desiring more. I had felt that this maybe meant I should go into ministry, or, something along those lines. However, I still felt that I was studying architecture for a reason, but I had no idea how architecture and ministry could go hand in hand… but God did!

I am so excited to be telling you all that for this entire summer, I will be serving at Engineering Ministries International as an Intern Architect! EMI is a charitable Christian development organization made up of volunteer architects, engineers, design professionals and building technicians who donate their skills to help children and families around the world step out of poverty and into a world of hope. Since 1982, EMI has designed over 700 projects in over 85 countries! I am so incredibly excited for this amazing opportunity to serve with this awesome ministry (this is actually the true understatement of the year!)!

EMI has seven offices all around the world and this summer; I will be serving in their office in the United Kingdom. The office is in Colchester England and I will be staying close by. As an Intern, I will assist the ministry in whatever projects they need my help with. The main project, however, will be located outside of Monrovia, Liberia. We are going to Liberia for two weeks to design a new technical school (as well as making revisions to the campus) for a ministry called ABC Christian Aid. This is a Christian organization whose goal is to help Africa's orphaned and vulnerable children become godly contributors to their communities and the world. I am so incredibly excited to be going on this trip to help out this amazing ministry!

Here’s where you come in! In order for me to do this internship, I need two things: prayer and money! But, prayer is the most important thing you can do. I believe in a God who listens to our prayers and acts on them. Even if you can’t give any money, please stand with me in prayer! Pray for this entire trip to be completely directed by God. I know that if God is in control, everything else will fall into place! However, I do need money too. In fact, I need $7500 to be able to go and serve on this internship. If God leads you to give, please donate online at www.emiworld.org by clicking “Donate” and putting “Tim Berry-2816” in the “Designation” line by May 10th. Thank you so much for both your prayer and financial support! I really appreciate it!

Also, please continue to check this blog throughout the summer! I will keep it updated with details on how the trip is going and post pictures to it. Please feel free to contact me as well - tim.berry@asu.edu. I would love to answer any questions you have and just talk to you about the upcoming trip!

God Bless!

..The fingerprint of God

.. much like the periodic table, the Fibonacci sequence/golden rectangle clearly shows the fingerprint of God in the design of this world..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjrK96wasDk


Note: To scientists, I'm sure that the periodic table blows their minds, but to me (as a designer), this blows my mindx10!

IHOPU Awakening Webcast

Hey guys, IHOP (International House of Prayer) University is doing a worship night every night since January 1st in the prayer room. They are doing it for as many days as they feel led. It is really sweet. Every night from 6pm - 12am. You can also watch all of the previous days on this page... check it!

IHOPU-Awakening!

(If you don't know anything about IHOP, it is an awesome ministry, check it out for yourself)

Cheers!

..The Great Road-Trip!

Hello again everybody! (And by everybody, I mean the 5 or so people that are going to read this, haha!) It has been so long since I've sat down to write in this blog and so much has happened in my life in that time. Relax.. I'm not going to tell you about it all. I just felt like I should try to blog my thoughts somewhat consistently this semester. So, I figured that I might as well start on the first day of classes talking about the last few weeks or so.

For starters, I'm going into this semester after having enjoyed an awesome break! It wasn't all amazing, but for the most part it was great. I had a bunch of goals to have completed before this semester started, and, well.. let's just say that I have a bunch of goals to complete still. :/ I did finish a few though. For starters, I just finished an application for an summer internship position at EMI World. It's a Christian based non-profit organization that goes to third world countries and builds and designs hospitals, bridges, schools, orphanages, etc. for Christian ministries that can not afford to build them on their own. How cool is that!? It's like a mission trip and an architecture internship all rolled up into one! I think that I have a reasonable shot at getting the internship too! Please pray that I get it! I have a feeling that God is going to do something incredible in my life through this experience!

Back to this semester. I strongly desire to learn a lot in architecture school AND grow spiritually! Last semester, I felt like I barely survived school and didn't grow spiritually much. I want that to change this semester! I know that if I put God first daily, I can truly live up to the calling He has placed on my life! I'm stoked to see what God is going to do through my life this semester! Again, please pray for me! It's very difficult to stay focused on God through the craziness of architecture school!

Here's something random that I just remembered. A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from Snowbowl (ski resort up in Flagstaff) after a long day of snowboarding, and me and my friend were talking about how life is like a road-trip. Let me explain: It's super easy to stay focused on the road and drive safely when you are alert and have someone to talk to/encourage you, but when it's dark out and you are tired and your friend is sleeping, it's so easy to lose focus on the road and veer off to the side. Or, when you get hungry, it is so easy to just pull off to the side of the road to get a snack and take a break from driving. It's the same with life. When you have others around you to encourage you and keep you going it is easy to stay focused on God's plan for your life and to stay on the straight and narrow path. But, when you start to feel drained (i.e. architecture school), it is easy to start to lose focus on God (the road) and focus on other things in your life. It's easy to just hit the pause button on your walk with God and just take a break from it all - just going through the motions without meaning and purpose in your life. But, just as God is with you while you are driving across country on a road-trip at night, He is with you when you start to feel drained and want to take a break. Instead of hitting the 'pause button', just ask God to fill you up. He WILL! Getting back to the analogy, God is like having a portable gas station in your car so that you never have to stop, and can always keep going towards where He has called you to! - BUT HE IS EVEN BETTER! (haha, I'm funny, I know) The analogy didn't even end there, we had taken it a lot farther, but it was kind of ridiculous so I don't want to put it all on here.

I hope that makes sense because it is really encouraging to me to think of this semester as another part of the great road of life that God is leading us through. He will always be there for us and will always help us when we are weary and tired and just want to give up and turn around. But, He won't let go of us that easily! He'll slap us when we fall asleep (not literally) at the wheel and He'll be that friend in the passenger seat to keep us company. He won't be a back seat driver and comment on all of the mistakes you make, because He already forgave you for your past mistakes and future mistakes 2000 years ago. He just wants to encourage you to help you drive better and to stay on track. GOD IS THE ULTIMATE TRAVEL COMPANION ON YOUR ROAD-TRIP!

Anywho, this blog has sorta changed topics dramatically, but I like it. I hope that this analogy hasn't completely confused you, and I pray that you can look over its many errors and my grammatical errors. I really hope that you are encouraged as we all begin this next stage on our great road trip called life! If anyone needs prayer or wants to talk about anything, just email me at tim.berry@asu.edu! I'd be super happy and privileged to hear from you!

Cheers!

Please read this..

This is an article written by a Chinese woman who was forced to have an abortion because of the One Child Policy in China. This totally surprised me and opened my eyes to the horrors of abortion and forced abortion. Please read..

http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/Wujian.html

..Cheese

Beautiful insight from G.K. Chesterton on.. that's right, cheese!

Enjoy..

My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature" is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: "If all the trees were bread and cheese"--which is, indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to "breeze" and "seas" (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say, "Cheese it!" or even "Quite the cheese." The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient--sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.

But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization which holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella--artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese with soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of slight variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.

When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that, instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits--to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits--to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.



..Cheers!

..A little reflection

The Fourth of July has come and gone yet another time during my lifetime. This past Saturday, as I watched the firework show with my family in Gilbert, I remembered the Fourth of July of 2008. Only a year before, I had been with my sister and three of our good friends, in Cali, on the beach, watching fireworks (yes, I haven't had an English class for a few semesters). As I remembered that trip last summer, it was hard to believe that it had only been one year since that trip (although, in one sense, it seemed like yesterday)!

So much has happened in this past year. A lot of things have happened that I didn't think would happen. Some things good, but most not so good (Or, at least not what I had thought was good at the time). I see God's hand through it all (Now, anyways). I feel like God has been shaking me, too see if my foundation was strong. Or, rather, to show me if it was strong, because, of course, He already knew it wasn't.

Last summer, I had just been accepted into the architecture program at ASU. I had a 4.16 GPA and was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been working at Jamba Juice for a little over 2 years and was pretty much the man there. I felt I could get along with almost anyone and that I was a pretty cool dude. I also felt like I could win pretty much any theological discussion with anyone. I felt like I had my priorities straight. I felt like I had everything in order. I was mistaken.

This past year, all of the things that I found my confidence in, have been shaken. I realize now that I did not have my foundation 100% grounded in Christ. It may have been 80% Christ, but it wasn't a firm foundation. I see that now. God has taken me into a new understanding of who I was, who I am, and who I am called to be. He knew it all along, but He had to show me. I needed to change.

The thing I struggle with most is pride. With my GPA, my rank at work, my ability to get along with people, and my ability to win arguments (or so I thought), I felt above other people. I didn't think that I felt that way, but looking back on my life, I realize that I did. I was very arrogant (and am struggling with it).

This past year, God has..

.. taken my 4.0 GPA. Sure, I still have a really good GPA, but I was pretty pround of that 4.0. In the fall I was in the top 15 architecture students in my year out of 80. In the spring, I did not make the same accomplishment. I realize that there are a lot of gifted students in my program that are more gifted than me. I have to work extremely hard to be in the top.

.. given me a job at the one place I told myself (and everyone around me) that I would never get - at In-n-Out Burger. I went from being a manager at Jamba Juice, to being a noob at INO. Not only that, but I had to shave my facial hair (yeah, I miss it). Everyone now thinks that I am 16/17. I went from knowing everything about my job, to knowing nothing about it. I thought that it would be easy for me to get promoted - it hasn't been.

.. shown me that I don't have complete power over my relationships. He has given me many new relationships, and has pulled some away from me. I have been confused by some people in my life, and yet, I realize that I have probably confused some people in my life. I cannot always be there for someone, and they cannot always be there for me. God has shown to me who my really good friends are, and the ones that are not as beneficial to me.

.. taken me through His Word, and shown me that I don't know as much as I think I do. He has given me new friends that can challenge my views on things. I may have the right view on many things, but sometimes I do not know why. I love these talks with friends. I love God working on my heart. I am grateful to Him that He has given me people in my life to challenge me.



Through it all, God has shown me that I really am not all that and a bag of chips. I need Him. I have been through some hard stuff this year (some of which, I will not tell you about). I have been broken. I realize that sometimes He has to break us down, so that He can build us back up how He wants us. He certainly has been doing that with me lately. I needed to get my life back together. To have new purpose and new passion for Him and His Kingdom. To have less of me, and more of Him. I don't want people to see me when they look at me (bleh, not a pretty sight) but to see Jesus in me!

I thank God for teaching me so much this past year! He has shown me that I need to live sold out for Him. To change my priorities. To love on Him with all that I have, and to experience the most beautiful relationship ever. To realize that He is an awesome God all the time! To love others, as much as I love myself. To live up to the calling He has on my life, and to not settle for second best. To swim against the current. To set myself apart from the world. To be humble and not proud.

I have had a great adventure thus far, and am looking forward to what He has in store for me this next stage of my life. I wonder where He will take me this next year, and how much I will grow by the Fourth of July of 2010!

Cheers.