My last eleven days have been at Camp Bullis, Texas in Officer Basic Field Training. I can only try to guess the ways I have been changed during those days. I have become more aware of my own capabilities. I have begun to form friendships with colleagues with whom I will probably work many years hence and I have begun to be formed into a soldier. Our average day started with a formation at about 500 and ended somewhere around 1930. The days were hot and nights short during those eleven days and we took only one shower. I probably sweated more than I have in the past three months.

I'm sitting in the San Antonio airport, waiting for one of my classmates from Loma Linda to arrive. I spent the last two days driving across the Southwest. As always, I enjoyed the lonely, harsh beauty of the American west. Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a hurry so I couldn't enjoy any side-trips like I usually like to take when I drive cross-country. I arrived at Fort Sam Houston at 11:00AM this morning, to report for six weeks of the Officer Basic Leadership Course. One interesting part of the road-trip was a stop yesterday afternoon in El Paso. I decided to get my hair cut there and stopped at the first barbershop I could find. The barber ended up being part Pima Indian and part Mexican-American. He had some very interesting perspectives about life and philosophy and some interesting stories to tell about his family. He probably would have called himself a Christian, although some of his beliefs were a bit unorthodox. Except for being in a hurry, I enjoyed the conversation though.

On Sunday, after attending church, I went on a tour of some interesting parts of L.A. with some classmates who know the area well. The highlight of the day was certainly the Getty Center, a museum on a hill in Los Angeles. After a tram-ride from the parking structure to the museum, I was first struck by the architecture. I am not usually a fan of modern architecture but the Getty provided a definite exception. I was also struck by the views of the Los Angeles area. From the Getty you can see the mountains to the East, the Pacific with Catalina Island to the West, and the expanse of L.A. with various landmarks such as downtown and the UCLA campus in between. When we arrive we were greeted by a sign advertising an exhibit called "Imagining Christ." I was at first skeptical, thinking that it would be some kind of heretical new-age thing but this exhibit ended up being the most interesting part of the Getty experience for me. The exhibit consists of art picturing Christ from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The majority of the pieces were amazingly detailed illuminated manuscripts. As I looked in awe at these pieces I imagined the monk in the monastery, painstakingly tracing calligraphy and pictures with perfection. I was thankful to these monks who believed in the truth of the stories these manuscripts told and who contributed to the riches of what is Western Civilization. 

With my first year of med school for the most part finished, I have been reflecting back on the year and having conversations with friends about how this first year has changed us. The most obvious change is, of course, our knowledge of the human body and that is pretty exciting to me. But an experience like medical school changes a person in much deeper ways. When we arrived here we were regularly warned by the deans and by students further along that if we weren't careful many of us would become cynical people who forgot our original altruistic or spiritual reasons for coming to medical school. As usual, I doubted that med school could change me in such a way. But looking back, I think med school has changed my personality and I'm pretty sure that it has not made me a better person. I think that the demands that our coursework puts on our time and energy can encourage a great degree of selfishness to grow in one's personality. I have certainly seen that in myself. Free-time, when I wasn't studying, became so valuable to me that I would rarely think of seeking the Presence of the Lord or of finding ways to serve others. Instead, free-time came to mean watching movies, reading blogs or occasionally working out. I also have thought less about my original ideals that I thought so much about when I entered medical school. Instead of dreaming of a future on the mission-field, I've begun to dream of a higher class rank or the possibility of a more competitive residency. The demands of medical school has encouraged my already perfectionist personality not only to demand more from myself but also to be more critical of those around me. 

Well, it's been a while. I'm finished with all my exams which means I'm basically finished with my first year of medical school. I am very thankful to God for the multitude of ways that He has provided through this year. For the next three weeks I'm up in the hospital shadowing doctors and then off to Texas for my army training. On Saturday I went to Joshua Tree National Park with two friends from the medical school. Joshua Tree is a beautiful and unique place and hopefully I will return there someday for a camping trip. Here are some photos from the adventure for your enjoyment:

This Sunday we were honored at Christ's Church to have Bishop John Guernsey preach and celebrate the liturgy with us. Bishop Guernsey spoke of how in many African churches it is customary to hear testimonies before the sermon and he then proceeded to give his own testimony as his sermon. In many ways I could identify with what he had to say. He talked about growing up in a church where conversion and the power of the Holy Spirit were not emphasized. He talked of the belief he had that there must be something more in this relationship with God and how he eventually found this through a woman at a church he was pastoring who had been filled with the Holy Spirit. After preaching, Bishop Guernsey led the congregation in a prayer of recommitment to Christ and of inviting a greater infilling of the Holy Spirit. I was very impressed with what the Bishop had to say and his obvious gift for preaching. The music also seemed especially good today and I got to sing one of my favorite hymns, "Holy, Holy, Holy."

Okay, I know the title is dorky. But it's the best way I can describe the last two weeks and the first half of next week. It's a bit misleading though considering that here at Loma Linda 50% of the people in the midst of this "feat" are women. At the end of our first year of med school here at Loma Linda we undergo two and a half weeks of exams. Some of these exams are "in-house," many  of them cumulative for the entire year. The other exams we're taking are called "mock-boards." These are national standardized tests where we are compared to med students across the country. I was warned by second-year students that these two and a half weeks would be the worst of our entire lives. I doubted their assessment but I'm coming to think that they're probably correct. It's pretty terrible. If anything can bring on depression, two weeks like this should be able to.... poor quality sleep, near constant anxiety and guilt when you're not studying, poor eating habits, and the social isolation which comes from constantly having your nose in review books. Last night my thumb kept me awake by continually spazzing-out (technically called fasciculations), probably from so much "bubbling-in" answers on multiple choice tests.  No one ever wants to admit it but I've had conversations with friends about whether or not they ever regret having come to medical school. Some do. As for me, I don't think I could do anything else. I think this is where I'm supposed to be. If I wasn't here I think I would always want to be here. The thing about most medical schools is that once you're in, unless you're rich, you are immediately in a degree of student-loan debt so much greater than undergrad that there is basically nothing else you can do.

Last night I was honored to be able to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord with a classmate of mine from the medical school. My classmate, Mina, is of Egyptian decent and is a Coptic Christian. I met him near the beginning of the year and after talking a bit about the Coptic Church he invited me to celebrate Pascha at his church. So last night I headed to Covina, to St. John Coptic Orthodox Church. I was blessed by the nearly five hours of beautiful liturgy celebrating the Resurrection. I had a harder time following along than I did last year when I celebrated Pascha at an Orthodox Church in America parish as only about a quarter to a third of the liturgy was in English. As far as I could tell, elements were used from both the liturgies of St. Basil and St. Gregory. The songs and chants of the night had the intonations which one would hear in the calls to prayer coming from minarets in the Muslim world. I think the foreign musical scale made it harder for me to learn some of the hymns that were chanted many times throughout the night. By the end of the night I had begun to pick up one of the hymns and it was very cool to try singing with the Arabic intonations instead of the Western that I have always heard and sung. The homily was first preached by a Coptic bishop either in Arabic or a Coptic dialect and then was read by a deacon in English. The gospel message was presented as clearly in that homily as I have ever heard it presented in any "gospel" Evangelical church. I will leave you with the words from the chorus of the Coptic Resurrection hymn, "Very Early Sunday Morning," which we sang many times toward the end of the night:

So I get online at my local Starbucks, which is really my home away from home, and I look at my forlorn blog with its increasingly infrequent posts and I feel like I'm somehow abnegating some responsibility. I just haven't had anything I've felt strongly enough about to write about lately. School is starting to get crazy with two and a half weeks of exams coming up at the beginning of May. I went to the Army base at Los Alamitos yesterday and got ACU's, boots, rank and various other things I'll need for my Army training in Texas this summer. I also got my hair buzzed off so I could get my military identification. On the home-front I'm hoping to move into a house with four other guys from the med school next year so we checked out a great house in Loma Linda a few days ago. Church is going great as usual. There's a men's retreat coming up in a few weeks where Archbishop Orombi will be preaching. I had hoped to attend but my exams will unfortunately not allow for that. I finally checked out an Adventist church here in Loma Linda. It's a charismatic church so it's not really a taste of traditional Adventism but I liked it and had a wonderful time there worshiping my Lord. I read a book recently that my mom gave to me. It was interesting and good although I was slightly uncomfortable with certain parts of it. Maybe I'll write a blog about it later. On the lighter side, I was happy to catch my first episode of The Office in a long time a few days ago. Well, there you go. If you actually read through this blather I apologize. Until my next procrastination episode I bid you all Lebe wohl.

Having spent a wonderful four days in Kentucky, I finished out my spring break among friends and family in Battle Ground, Washington. I love going home. I love the town I grew up in. While I was home I lounged around my parent's house, I went out to eat with friends and family, I watched a friend's ice hockey game and I went to a wedding.
As I did these things I thought of a conversation I had with a friend at Asbury Seminary a couple of years ago. We were talking about Tolkien and the philosophy behind his The Lord of the Rings. I liked what my friend, Daniel, had to say about it. He said that the point of The Lord of the Rings was not the adventure. It was not about being out in the world, achieving notoriety or personal greatness. The point was that The Shire was worth fighting and dying for. Those simple Hobbits, going about their simple tasks, living their ordinary lives was the real point of Middle Earth, not the slaying of dragons or taking the Ring to Mt. Doom. The older I get, the more I come to embrace this kind of thinking. It's not that the adventure doesn't appeal to me. But if I didn't have a place to call home. If I didn't have a hometown filled with people I love and people I have a hard time loving, filled with the best and worst memories of my life, filled with all kinds of broken people who God died for, the adventure would be meaningless. So maybe I don't completely agree with Daniel that adventure is not at all the point of The Lord of the Rings. But without the Shire, I think the adventure would have been empty and selfish.