New Dental Practice

In case you haven't heard, I just bought my own dental practice. It's located in Buena Park, CA.

Check out my new website:

www.andrewyapdds.com

The Resolved Conference 2007

            Two weekends ago, on Feb. 16-19^th, Shirley and I went to the 3^rd annual Resolved Conference, at the Long Beach Performing Arts center. The Resolved Conference is organized by Rick Holland and others from the Grace Community Church. It’s name is derived and inspired by the first word of each of the 70 Resolutions that Jonathan Edwards wrote when he was 19 years old.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/Edwards/index.html?mainframe=/documents/Edwards/j_edwards_resolutions.html

           Edwards went on to be a man used  by God to inspire many people in the Great Awakening of America and the modern missionary movement.

           The conference basically is a challenge to the young people, which is our generation. What if we “resolved” to live our lives for God wholeheartedly? Would the world be a different place?

            This past conference was focused on the Gospel message. The different prominent preachers focused on an aspect of the gospel in their sermons. I really recommend listening to the sermons on your commute or when you have time. I would want to buy the DVD and show it in Clay, but I’m not sure if this will become available since last years’ didn’t ever come out.

You have to sign in, but after that, the downloads are free this year! What a blessing. Here’s the link:

http://www.gracechurch.org/resolved/Audio2007.asp

Enjoy…

Captain Andrew Sparrow (October 31, 2006)

       When you think of Halloween, you think of little kids in cute costumes knocking on your door and saying “Trick or Treat.” For some of you, you probably can’t remember your last “costume” or it was something from the 80’s like a Superman costume or the 90’s like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume.

Well, let’s see, when was the last time I dressed up for Halloween? Hmm…actually, it was 2003 when I dressed up as a nerd in Dental school. That was really believable!

Of course, I don’t believe or celebrate any of the ghost or devilish stuff associated with Halloween, but I’ve participated in the American holiday where you dress up and have fun with it, every so often due to peer pressure in the past couple years.

This year, the office decided to make the theme “Pirates of the Caribbean.” And so, I had Shirley go out and buy me a costume. And I decided to grow my moustache and goatee to make it look more real. (Although the moustache needed about another week to fill out. It's kinda faint in this pic) I even did the eyeliner on my eye.

It turns out this is like the only Jack Sparrow Costume on the market because the other doctors that also dressed up, all had the same ridiculous outfit! We worked half a day, had lunch together, and went bowling! These are my dental assistants in costume at the Cerritos Lanes bowling alley.

Later, that night Shirley decided to try her hand at carving a pumpkin. She decided to make a Mickey Mouse one this year!

All in Good fun. Wonder if I'll dress up again next year.

Clay Fall Retreat 2006

       On Oct. 27-29^th, we had our second Clay retreat of the year. In just 6 short months, this retreat was totally different from our last one. Half the attendees were different, old faces have moved away, and new faces have shown up. This time there was no snow and actually it was kinda hot!

Some things I appreciated about the retreat: I appreciated that people were excited about our theme: Community. I appreciate how a lot of people chipped in to make this retreat a success. I appreciated David going up early to get the key and driving to dump the trash. I appreciated all the time to hang out and get to know new people. I appreciated our open sharing time in which people shared from their heart and with unabashed honesty. I appreciate Mike Huey for leading us to the trail even though one of the highways were closed. I appreciate my small group time where we got to explode ideas, discuss the sermons, and pray for each other. And of course, I appreciated the GOOD FOOD! Thanks Jessica and everyone who helped cook! (The lunch with grilled burgers AND Korean bbq ribs was especially delicious!)

For those of you that didn’t come, you guys missed out! We went hiking and visited the Lake Arrowhead village. Some of us even at Cheesecake covered apples! Of course, who can forget our 3-D Connect Four tournament. Dude, I can’t believe I lost to Grace (the "optometry girl") in the second round!  j/p.

It was a great time of reconnecting with God and His creation, of prayer and worship, and of building community.

Hope more people can join us next time.

You know you’re too old when…

        You know you’re too old when you GET DIZZY ON MAGIC MOUNTAIN RIDES, when you never did before! Dude, I actually got dizzy on Batman…that’s never happened before. I actually thought to myself, these rides are TOO FAST.

So there are rumors that Magic Mountain Los Angeles is going to close down due to bad business and offers to buy the land for housing development, we took the opportunity to go for perhaps the last time on Labor Day Saturday.

We got to ride some old rides like Viper, but some new rides like Tatsu, which tilts your body so your looking down, and is SO Scary when you go on the first drop!

This is the girls on Viper. Ce's looking sick and they just got on the ride!

This is how you first sit down on Tatsu...

Then is tilts back and makes your whole body face to the ground...

And then you go on this crazy track...

It was really really awesome, but I'm still debating whether it was worth the 2.5 hour wait and 1.5 hours of it was in the noon sun.

Sometimes we got bored and made videos, here's us making some scary faces….

Sometimes we pulled pranks on each other, for example…

Shirley wiping off her face oil....

And then sticking it on Kevin's leg wihout him knowing...pretty gross!

Here's some more group shots...

All in all, it was a really fun time! But we knew we were old because we were all sore the next day and it took us another day to recover!