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Hi there, my name is Zoey Kim. (by the way, my Korean name is Jee Su Kim if you want to speak some Korean, you can call me by it) So, I am origianlly from SOUTH Korea, but, I have been living outside of my contury since August, 2000. Last four years, I have been wandering around from Canade to Brisil, and back to Canada and then to Korea, again to Canada and to Mexico…and then here again to America. Packing and unpacking every three to six months, now I became a “Moving” expert. Surprisingly, I am still unpacking….. I am married to a humble worshipper, David(Dae Young), two years ago and have a 11 month old son, Shion(Zion). My husband is also studying at SWBTS and he is in M. Div program. Before I came to Texas, I had been working for Youth With A Mission (YWAM) – Korean Ministry both in Canada and here in USA. Ah-ha! That is why I have been moving around so often. But, I’ll tell you what, it’s been a blessing for me to visit and to live in different areas and countries to do what God wants me to do. Any way, here I am now hoping that I don’t have to move again(!) at least for two to three years and that I learn what God wants me to learn. Bless all of you guys and let’s praise The Lord!
Posted by admin on Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged with Biography, Zoey Kim
So My name is Kurt Dempsey, I am the youth and education minister in the Church that I serve. i have a lovely wife who i have been with since high school (her name is samantha) and we have 3 children Randi (she is 7) Davis (he is 5 and spoiled rotten) and Luke (he was born on July 3 of 07) so we are a good size family. Before i was a believer in Jesus i was a dope head i guess you could say, i spent all my time trying to get money to get high, mainly pot but i would do anything that came my way. living in a small town without any police you thought you could do anything you wanted. I was raised in a home that Jesus was spoke about, we even went to sunday school sometimes?! The Lord delivered me in about august of 02 it was a long process, my brother in law got killed in a car accident and a friend of mine who is a baptist minister basicly told me that i was going to hell so i started to examine my life and now here i am. The only other thing that i can say is how amazing it is that God has given me the abbility to attend at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
“ I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
I am Ashley Sidaras and this is my favorite verse in the Bible. Why, you might ask? I love to reflect on this verse because it is a daily reminded that it is not I who am living, but Christ who lives within my heart. I have acknowledged and accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior of my life. Now that I am a part of is reflection of His love and grace, I am reminded by this verse to live as Christ would. I am also reminded that it His will that is to be done and not my own and I am to bring glory to His name through all that I am. If you could not tell by now, I am a Christian, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I am an undergraduate student attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I grew up in south Florida, moved to Ohio a few years ago, and am now living in Texas, hopefully fulfilling God’s will for my life. I plan to be a career missionary after I graduate, in what specific field, I am not sure yet. I have a heart for counseling others in their times of trouble, reaching out to those in distress, and experiencing new cultures. I come from a background of many nationalities and therefore have a heart for visiting new places and meeting new people. I pray that within this next semester of blogging, I would be an encouragement and witness to those in need. Until next time, God Bless!
Hello Folks! My name is Christy and I am an “Artsy Fartsy” music major in the College at Southwestern Seminary (This means that one day I will probably be living in a cardboard box)! I am originally from Houston Texas and the oldest of five very noisy children. Having been home educated from day one, I have been extremely blessed to learn about God and His plan of Redemption from a young age. Being homeschooled gave me the liberty to focus on the things that interested me, namely: Music, History, Science and having an ungodly amount of fun. My family and I conducted this process of education in the car, on the trampoline, at the kitchen table and in the emergency room waiting area (This was due to the activities that my family was involved with such as BMX, Choir, Motorcycle racing and life in general). My Parents had very unconventional ways of teaching, such as: stopping at every Historical Marker that was spotted, singing for the homeless and elderly through our choir, reading the classics, and deciding that changing the oil in the car was a science lesson. Anything and everything imaginable was turned into a “Learning Experience” (Aristotle would have been proud). I love my noisy home and crazy family so much that I was very reluctant to leave and come to school. But after some prodding from God, my parents and my current roommate, I came to school to seek the Will of God and to further my education. After I graduate I will hopefully go to the mission field to proclaim the love and grace of Jesus to the lost and dying. Soli Deo Gloria!
Hey everyone,
My name is Katie. I grew up in Maryland and then moved to South Carolina when I was in 8th grade. Now, I am attenting the College at Southwestern with a major in humanities with a homemaking concentration. The homemaking really caught my interest. I am not sure what I want to do with this major, but I do know that God called me here and there is a reason for that. God is very important in my life. I have two wonderful older sisters who are married and have children. I grew up in a christian family and that is a blessing from God.
I was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, but grew up in the university town of Cambridge. My upbringing was a somewhat unorthodox one, as before my parents divorced, every couple of years my family would travel to India to restock the family jewelry business. This unusual part of my history had a big impact on me; we stayed for months at a time, traveling and visiting friends made on previous stays: truly immersing ourselves in that way of life. The generosity of the people (the many “aunties” and “uncles”), the beauty of the country and culture and the sometimes shocking reality of the bleakness of living in a third-world country left a lasting impression on me.
For the first fifteen years of my life my mother was a committed Buddhist. My brother and I grew up with the sounds of my mother’s chanting morning and evening resonating through the house. My Mum later re-married my Step-dad who is from Morocco and is Muslim. She dabbled in Islam for the first few years of their marriage, but has settled on a kind of all encompassing Spiritualism.
My father moved to Spain after their divorce and is a committed atheist. He still believes that given one week and the opportunity, he could knock my “silly ideas about God” on the head. He has all but forgotten his previous life in England, starting a new family and even adopting a somewhat frustrating Spanish accent 
. He believes in the wind on the lake near his house in Banyoles and (at age 52) that he will inevitably become a rockstar/moviestar/superstar anytime now.
I love all my family very much and have roots in Italy I have yet to explore. Music has forever been an important part of my life and I’ve always been a bit of a performer. I love soul, gospel and hiphop in particular. I attended a music school in London before coming here and loved it. Been writing songs since I was 13 or 14, although only some of them I’ll admit to having penned . Check out my music myspace
I’ve been with my boyfriend for about two years now, the first year an a half of which was long-distance which was challenging! But, God blessed us with a longstanding love and shared love of Him. He isn’t American, but is actually from Zimbabwe which started a passion in me for the warmth of the Zimbabwean culture and (along with my other studies) I’m learning Shona, which is the national language. We have exciting plans of moving to Zimbabwe and seeking to make a real change there in whatever way God would have us do.
I’m currently part of the worship team at Celebration International Church, which despite the name has around fifty Zimbabwean members and “that sweet white-british girl”:). My church has such an incredible heart though, and such a feeling of family to it. It’s a pleasure to serve God in such a fellowship. We are about to move and launch a big drive to expand which is exciting.
To some up, my life has been and continues to be a very an international affair. The one constant in my life is God. The one thing I am sure of is God. I’m loving learning so much about myself here at Seminary, but I’m loving even more learning how incredible and magnificent our Lord is.
Well, I’m just going to be pretty straight forward with you guys and let you know that my life thus far has not been filled with some of the most absurd or crazy things that you have ever heard. I’m not sure though, there may have been some things that are… interesting. I guess the best place for me to start with this would be the beginning.
My mother birthed me into this world on October 3, 1988. I was by far the most precious baby that anyone had ever laid their eyes on… I promise you that. Ok, maybe I’m a liar. I was fat… a very fat baby with a full head of hair. But ultimately, I was still a miracle. Obviously I do not remember much about being born, other than the fact that it actually happened. Bobby and Penny Earls are my parents, and I love them very very much. I have one brother named Josh and one sister name Jessie. I am the youngest of the group, which of course means, I usually get what I want. Because of that, I am very spoiled and I know it. Hopefully my experience here at college will help me overcome my “spoiledness”. Anyway, back to my biography.
I grew up in a very small town in North Carolina called Icard. I lived in this town for a little over 15 years of my life. I made my childhood friends there, I went to elementary, middle, and most of my high school career there. The majorities of my memories of life were created in that town. I am a pastor’s son. I grew up in a southern baptist church. Basically, there is not much that I can say about my life in North Carolina other than the fact that I spent ALOT of time with friends. Having friends has always been a huge deal in my life. My dad led the church there over many triumphs, helped them through problems, conflicts, and struggles. If there is one thing that I know about my dad, it is that he loves God, and he loves the church. Not one single person on this earth can persuade me differently. I was very much involved with the youth group through middle school and my first years of high school. I went on all the youth camps, went to church every sunday and set that “example” for the younger ones. Now let me be very serious, and very honest. I was human then, as I am now. I had my struggles, my sins, my problems with my spiritual life. Luckily, I was blessed with those around me who loved and cared about me enough to reach out and help me. I loved my life in N.C. I was convinced that I would spend the rest of my life there. But God had different plans in mind…
In the summer of 2005, my family went on our usual trip to the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC was being held in Nashville, TN that year. As always, we enjoyed the trip very much. Unfortunately, our trip had to be cut short because my dad had to be back for an important church financial meeting. We returned on a Thursday. That Friday was the day of the meeting. That Friday officially has been noted as the worst day in my life thus far. Throughout the day, I discovered that some punk skateboarder had ripped off the jaguar on the front of my mom’s jaguar. I think it’s safe to say that she freaked… royally. Later that day, I literally watched a man on a Mo-Ped flip and crush his face in the church parking lot. We had also returned to find vandalism done to the church building. Things were just not going very well. Ah, but it doesn’t stop there. My dad returned later that night after the meeting with his head hung low. I didn’t ask him any questions; I just let him pass by. I was about to go get something to eat with my girlfriend until my mom stopped me and told me something that rattled my life. It was a statement which I will never forget. “Jordy, I need you to show your dad as much support as you can.” mom said. I replied, “Umm, what is it?” “Son, they have asked your dad to leave…” I stood there and just stared at my mom blankly. Then… it hit me. I freaked out. I did not know what to think, or do. I was so filled with anger and bitterness that I almost ran out of my house with one goal in mind, to tear those people apart. But I didn’t. I fell on my face at my front door and started to cry. My girlfriend was confused about what was going on. My mom finally came into the room and told me more about what had been said. Allow me to put their reason for dismissing my dad from a church he served faithfully for 15 years. They needed to save money. The church could not afford to pay all the members of the staff salaries. It’s funny how they chose the senior pastor. To make a long story short, I was mad and I had no care for that committee. I just lived my life out the best that I could with the little time I had left, considering they gave us 2 months to get out, and yes, they put it that way. Now, I do not want to give off a bitter expression. Yes, it still upsets me to think about it sometimes, but I have moved on with what God has called me to do.
My family ended up moving to Birmingham, AL. I immediately got involved in the youth group at the church there. We did many exciting things and many memories are held there as well. I don’t think i really have the room to just go on about that though. I have already written a short novel for you guys… gosh. I led worship there for the youth group. I started writing songs and producing them. I believe that the Alabama experience was a major growing process in my spiritual walk. You can listen to my songs
here.
Now I am here, at The College at Southwestern. I am really excited about what God has in store for me. I hope that this college experience will take me a long, long way.
Every time I give one of these things in person or in print I feel like Dr. Evil recounting his life in Austin Powers, very dumb and out of place, so heres to all the awkward moments past and future.
Born March 6th 1988, shortly after Guns N Roses put out there multi-platinum Appetite for Destruction(not that the release of this album affects me at all except for the fact that its a cool collection of songs). My parents are Martha and David, still married to this day, I have an older sister, Jessica. She has a son, my nephew, Blain,(this guy is better at Halo 2 than I am) he always asks those questions that are the hardest to answer to a 6 yr old, considering I am now thoroughly annoyed that I just got owned in Halo, I now I have to explain to him what happens to us when we get shot in the head. But for the most part I love my family very much, though they are not saved.(but they’ll say different)
I grew up in a small town called Blanco, which is spanish means “white.” Named by general Santa Anna who crossed the river in route to the Alamo, and saw that the river contained nothing but white rocks, thus Blanco came to be. With 2,000 people to its name, it’s hardly any thing else than what it is, a small farming and small business town that pulls itself up by its own boot straps and isn’t afraid to get dirty. Well, as the boundary of San Antonio creep forward towards our town, more and more people come in that are not so rural and simple, so I like to think of our town as were small town morals meets city smart and culture, although that may not be true a lot of the time, thats still what I like to think, cause you know, all truth is relative, right?
I went through jr. high more anti-social than George Bush at a gay parade. Through that I nursed a nice resentment towards everyone around me and it was through that resentment I fell deep into depression and self-pity. Looking back at it now, it was childish and worthless, but at the time, it was my world and what I delt with day in and day out. In that depression I attempted suicide a total of 3 times. After the 3rd unsuccessful try(thank God) I just kinda stopped caring.
So skip with me to the summer before my freshman year of high school, a rather cute girl happens to invite me to the old Baptist church in town to a youth service wednesday night, so I guess the mind of my adolescent self puts girl+conversation=good so I agree and I show up not looking for a life changing experience but, through Gods plan he does. I couldn’t tell you what was said or anything like that, all I know that my heart was broken, or put back together, depending on which analogy you prefer. So the moral up until this point is simple; if your hurting, which makes up a good chunk of us, God knows, he cares, he hurts for you and with you. If you pray, and repent, he will heal you.
So I find myself in a pretty good spot in my life, I’m serving in the youth ministry, i finally have a very close group of friends, whom I’m still very good friends with still. I am playing in the praise band and basically loving the life God made for me then. Corse all of us know that if your on a mountain, there’s nothing left for you but to go back down, and thats exactly what happened. My best friend, David Gillis was our guitar player in the band and was one of the 4 people that spent most of their free time at the church, that group consisted of David, his older brother Paul, Todd, and myself. I might also add that all of us made the bulk of the band minus out youth pastor who was only absent because he actual had a life. But one night after band practice David had confessed to us that he had been in sin and was repenting and was asking our forgiveness. We’ll after a time of prayer and encouragement we went our way, I asked if it would be cool to spend the night at his house to play some music and halo and he agreed. Well we got there, got hungry and went back into town to grab some Subway, coming back home was the last bit of time I had to spend with David before the kingdom.
I must pause to add that when i get to this part in my story, the movie switches from Austin Powers to the epic Forest Gump, I can just photoshop my self in as Forest talkin’ bout Bubba. Which is in no way an insult to David or his family because I think that anyone who knows that much about shrimp is amazing…Anyways
January 2nd, 2005 was the day David died. I never thought that death would be so…different. You build your life around someone, then that person doesn’t exist. What does one do? It’s like waking up to see your missing your left foot. At first it’s more shock and confusion than pain. David was a good driver, always safe, but when the roads are that slick, being a good driver only means that you know when you’ve lost control. So as the tires lost track and we spun into a tree, hard. The tree guided us in the direction of the river that was near by. As we drifted inevitably towards the river we try our hardest to get out, but the doors are jammed. We nose dive into the river, flipping upside down with the nose of the car barely out of the water. As the car filled with water quite quickly, we scramble to get loose and out. After we established that the doors are not working as they should, I do the only thing i thought to do, I start kicking the windshield, as soon as I get a hole, i go to take my last breath to swim out, only to be constricted by the seat belt still attached. I yell “Seat belt!” and at that moment I see Davids hand reach over and press the release, I swim out.
To make a longer story semi-short, David died right after that, we found him curled in the backseat. He looked asleep. Moments like these are too rare to ruin with words that do not do it justice. You can learn more about him and that night
here.
After Davids death I often ponder death and reality, but thats a whole other train of thought.
Shortly after Davids death I finished school, I stayed in Blanco for an extra year, helping out the church and the youth group, then God called me to Ft. Worth to this college, and thats were I join some wonderful people in worship and service. I just pray that all the blessings I’ve received here help someone somewhere down the road in my ministry.
So for the ADD people, I was depressed, now I’m not. I was lost, now I’m found, My friend died, so will I, and I’m in school and I love it.
Severe repercussions for all those tempted to “compliment” me by referring to the similarities between me and Thomas Aquinas. Here is a short introduction from Christian History magazine.
Thomas Aquinas
The brilliant “dumb ox”
“In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for divine truth to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them as it were, by God himself who cannot lie.”
No one claimed Thomas Aquinas got famous on his looks. He was colossally fat, suffered from edema (dropsy), and one huge eye dwarfed his other. Nor was he a particularly dynamic, charismatic figure. Introspective and silent most of the time, when he did speak, it was often completely unrelated to the conversation. His classmates in college called him “the dumb ox.” Today, recognized as the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, he is called “the doctor of angels.” (Click here to read more…)
“The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed.”
~ Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
