A while back, I stumbled across this article on Luminous Landscape about how to increase your signal to noise ratio when taking digital photos. It's an interesting concept and is quite true. For a proper explanation, check out their article. But in a nutshell, you simply expose your scene such that the histogram is bumped up as far right as possible, without blowing any highlights.

I decided to do a quick test of it for myself and found the results to be quite impressive for my particularly noisy compact point-and-shoot camera.

Here are two 100% crops of the same scene, shot at two different exposure settings:

 

The photo on the left was taken on program auto exposure, while the image on the right was taken on full manual exposure.

With the manual exposure, I opened up the aperture and decreased the shutter speed until the histogram was bumped up to the right-most edge as the Luminous Landscape article suggests. I then imported the photo into The Gimp and adjusted the brightness and contrast levels to produce the image above-right. The levels themselves could probably use a bit of fine tuning, but for only a few minutes of tweaking, the results are considerably better. The resulting image on the right in itself is not completely noise free, but compared to the image on the left, it looks as if they were almost taken by two completely different cameras.

I do realize that they say you should be working RAW mode, and alas, my camera does not sport a RAW mode. But it still seems to work in principal. Not as ideal, but I can visibly see less noise.

With respect to how often I am going to apply this principal, I'm not sure. Because while this method produces very clean pictures, it also requires post-processing to make the images usable afterwards. Moreover, the slower shutter speeds required to do this might make it difficult to use this without a tripod. The photo on the left was shot with a shutter speed of 1/8", while the one on the right was shot with a speed of 1.6". I don't think I can hold my hand that still.

Nevertheless though, if you have the time and chance to, it's definitely a good idea to "expose right."

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Retiring my name tag, for the next 8 months. I don't actually know how useful the name tag is though, as I don't normally wear it in a visible location.

At any rate, it's the end of the term. I helped a friend pick up food for people who were still studying at SLC on Tuesday. This time around, we ordered food from the typical Mikey's Eatery. It's a Canadian-Chinese restaurant with Christian owners, whose daughters actually study at UW. As such, it's become a bit of a default UWCCF meeting location when people can't decide where they want to hold a meeting over food. A nice small simple place, and it's always quite comfortable when you know some of the people working there.

We brought the food back and ate together in the food court. Shortly after, people quick returned back to the third floor to continue studying. I hung around a bit upstairs afterwards waiting for a friend. And soon enough, it was time to go. Said my goodbyes to everyone, as it would be a good year before I see anyone again. Moreover, some I would likely not see again anytime in the foreseeable future, as they will be graduating while I'm away in Singapore.

Overall, it was a very nice way to spend my last night in Waterloo.

And thus ended my 16 month stay in Waterloo. Not much by many people's standards, but a lot by what I would have ever expected me to last haha.

This is part 4 of a 4 part series. You can also read Part 3.

Fall 2008
It was my fifth co-op term, and my second term serving on committee. The least of my worries and cares should have been behind me. Or so I thought. The stretching of my faith and challenging of my beliefs had only just begun.

The challenges for this past term, which just ended yesterday for me, were set in place at the end of the Spring 2008 term. Only, I didn't realize it at the time, because they hadn't cropped up on me.

One of the first orders of business for kicking off the new 2008/2009 school year is UWCCF's annual fall leadership retreat. This retreat is intended for members of UWCCF who are currently in, or are interested in taking up leadership positions within the fellowship.

Our vision for the new year is, quote:

To be a Spirit filled, Spirit led fellowship, grounded in the Word, who know, love and worship our Father in heaven, evangelizing to and discipling everyone around us as Christ did.

It's a pretty cool vision statement, and is for the most part taken directly out of Jesus' Great Commission that he gave before ascending to heaven.

Most any Christian would be cool with this, but there is an aspect of the first two clauses that sometimes is a bit controversial, Spirit filled and Spirit led.

What does that even entail?

From my pure unscientific and uneducated observations, if you ask a Pentecostal Christian, they will likely tell you that you know you are Spirit filled when you speak and pray in tongues. Ask a Charismatic or Vineyard Christian, and they might start talking about prophecy, gifts of healing, as well as other physical manifestations such as shaking/falling or feeling physical warmth or heat.

But what if you take a survey sample from UWCCF? Consisting of mainly Alliance, Evangelical or Baptist Christians, they will likely answer with something regarding conviction of sin, or perhaps even being filled with the Word (again from my observations). In some cases, they may not even know what to say.

A point that the elected chair made early on in our planning for the new year was that UWCCF, coming from the background that it does, often lacks education or exposure to the Holy Spirit. It is, after all, a member of the trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All Christians will acknowledge that the it is a biblical part of who God is. But is that all?

As such, it was decided that the new year would begin to seek to have the fellowship learn about exactly who the Holy Spirit is, and exactly what its role is.

Myself coming into this whole thing was pretty amazed at the concept. Introduce the Holy Spirit to UWCCF? What a novel idea! (Read: I come from a charismatic background).

For the fall retreat, the chair short-listed a workshop about the Holy Spirit as one of the afternoon sessions. However, it appeared that no one knew of any suitable teacher for the subject, so it was likely going to be scrapped altogether.

At that, I felt that I should say something. Knowing my background and the resources I have available to me at my home church, I felt that I would easily be able to find someone to speak on the subject. I proposed it, and the workshop remained. Moreover, it was actually decided that the speaker I would bring would be the main speaker, as opposed to a workshop speaker.

I was quite surprised with the outcome. Surely God was about to break some new ground in UWCCF. Surely I was here for a reason.

Perhaps that's where things went downhill (perhaps that's a poor choice of words... uphill? Things got tough, but I don't think the events that ensued were bad. If anything, they were actually good. Good for my faith and for that of the fellowship, as I shall write about a bit further down). Motive check. Why exactly did I want to bring a charismatic speaker in to UWCCF? Yes, to introduce the Holy Spirit to UWCCF. But looking at myself honestly, I think it would be safe to admit that there was probably a bit of self-righteousness or pride about the whole issue.

You see, coming from a charismatic background, certain more experiential aspects of Christianity are fairly commonplace to me. So I believe now that those experiential aspects had brought me to a place of subconsciously seeing myself as more spiritually mature than my non-charismatic brothers and sisters. Big, big no-no when you're in a place of leadership. On second though, big, big no-no regardless.

I don't think I fully grasped that at the time, and I went ahead and opened up a line of conversation with my old youth preacher, who is fairly charismatic and has done a lot of ministry in native communities across western and northern Canada.

Things were almost set and I was anxious with both an anticipation for great things, but also an air of uncertainty about how UWCCF would take it.

I think it was around that time that God broke me down. Something came up, and I still am not too sure what prompted it within me. But long story short, certain questions in my mind started coming to light regarding what exactly I believed about my faith with respect to manifestations of the Holy Spirit, etc. It became enough that I could no longer responsibly bring my original speaker to the retreat. I only write a short paragraph on this, but in my heart and mind at that point in time, I was so conflicted that I was at a loss for how to proceed.

In a rather lengthy email, I drafted up my concerns to the rest of committee. I was hoping for some kind of direction from them, but realistically, I knew that I was the only one in a position to make a decision.

After some prayer, tears, and talking with various people from my church, I made my decision.

For that season, I felt that I would not bring in my original choice. Instead, I called up the associate teaching pastor from my church, asking him if he would like to come instead. Perhaps this decision was made out of fear and lack of faith. But I knew that from a practical and humanly point of view, this other pastor was a much better choice. Reason being that he comes from a Methodist background, and is one who always teaches from the Word in a way that I know would fit the way that UWCCF members would respect.

He brought an interesting experience set to the table in that he is a non-charismatic teacher working in a charismatic church. I felt that, again from a practical perspective, because of this background, he would be a very logical and reasonable fit for the task.

By this point, you can clearly see how my direction for the fall retreat had changed. I started off wanting to bring in the Holy Spirit in the way that I was familiar with it - in terms of experience and power. But by the end of my deliberation, I had changed my mindset from that into one wanting to bring in a very, for lack of a better word, academic approach to the teaching.

Whether or not my decisions were correct, and whether or not they were truly made from a spiritual decision making process, I don't know.

But what I do know is that out of that, the retreat turned out to be a very challenging retreat for people. Even the "toughest critics" in UWCCF were blown away with the teaching. And this is in a way that actually sat well with them. Again, perhaps that was a problem for me in itself - wanting everything to sit well with people. But regardless of my own personal inhibitions, when I reached the last night of the retreat thinking back to all that had transpired, I couldn't help but give praise to God.

Two things happened. Firstly, for myself, I was set on a journey of searching and seeking after God's heart. I think that for the longest time, I had not taken true ownership of my faith, always going after what people told me was good, but never trying to look at things myself. And secondly, for the fellowship, I know that the pastor I invited did an amazing job at challenging people's beliefs in a way that they were able to open up to.

And thus, the fall retreat was the highlight of the past term. I don't think that I've fully been able to describe the difficulties I went through in the months leading up to the retreat. So just know that it was probably one of the most stressful things I've gone through in my entire university career so far. And also know that coming out of it, God was so faithful that, in spite of my shear and utter fleshly foolishness, He made the retreat something good for Himself. He pulled through where I couldn't and spoke to people on a level that was exactly what we as a committee had hoped to have.

The retreat ended there, but my own personal challenges continued.

This made it a bit difficult at times to serve on committee, as truthfully, I felt that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I felt that I was being a detriment to the committee, rather than a complement.

I'm not sure how things actually were, from the perspective of others. Regardless, I was there. And regardless of the fact that I was on committee, I had to continue to work out the questions and thoughts in my mind (about the Holy Spirit).

I won't go into all the details, but in a nutshell, I was struggling with my emphasis and focus with respect to my faith and the Holy Spirit. I slowly came to a realization that I had made the erroneous assumption that operating in the Holy Spirit equaled spiritual maturity.

But really, this is not so. In actual fact I now feel that a lot of the things we do in UWCCF, or in church as a whole, are not necessarily signs of spiritual maturity. It is never about how much you do. Leading ten Bible studies in one week does not necessarily mean you're spiritually mature. Prophesying accurately over someone's life does not necessarily mean you're spiritually mature. Speaking in tongues does not necessarily mean you're spiritually mature. Exercising the gift of healing does not mean you're spiritually mature.

There are a couple passages that speak to me about this. Firstly, there is a time when Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the end of the age. These are his words in Matthew 7:

Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'

I think it speaks for itself when you see that operating in spiritual giftings does not necessarily equal doing the will of the Father.

The other passage that spoke to me is taken from John 3, when Jesus is speaking to the Pharisee, Nicodemus:

"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

It's not just the knowledge that will get you by either. Being a Pharisee, Nicodemus was very well grounded in the book of the law. Yet, he couldn't understand the mystery of the Kingdom.

So what then is important? Through talking with people and listening to people talk this term, I've began to see for myself that what is critical, above all else, is love. It sounds so cheesy when I put it that way. But it's so important.

Consider the fact that Jesus' greatest commandments were to love God with everything that you are, and then after that, to love everyone around you as you would love yourself. Jesus didn't say that you should go heal people. Rather, you should love them, and then out of that, perhaps you will heal them out of that love. Jesus didn't say to run Bible studies for people. Rather, you should love them, and then out of that, perhaps you will run Bible studies to encourage and strengthen their walk with God out of that love.

1 Corinthians 13 speaks to me about this to a degree:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I known in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

And so that's where I am today. With a bit of a re-focused paradigm. Trying to not focus on the gifts and results of love, rather, trying to focus on that love itself such that the other things will come naturally out of that.

I know it seems so fundamental and simple. But whenever you are in a position of serving, especially in a highly organized, structured and time-constrained fellowship like UWCCF, it can become easy to lose sight of this and just see what needs to get done for program's sake.

There's probably a lot more that I can write. But for the most part, this brings me to the last culminating email I sent to committee, which touched one some of these points.

Where to go from here? To Singapore, I suppose. And I really hope and pray that I can reground my faith into an even deeper love of my God and of those around me.

Knowing all this is only the beginning. I think, at large, this still needs to filter to my heart and to my being as a whole.

So all together, these past 16 months in Waterloo have been amazing, to say the least. I've grown a lot, but I know that I still have so much more to learn. I'll see what happens in Singapore.

Looking forward to it all.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series. You can also read Part 2.

Spring 2008

Spring 2008 proved to be a time of training, trusting, and realignment (sorry, I couldn't think of another word beginning with "t"). At the end of the Winter 2008 term, I was approached by the current committee to be an appointed committee member for the Spring 2008 term. I went back and forth on that decision a few times, but in the end, accepted after much debate. Perhaps out of what had transpired from the meet and greet night.

Nevertheless, I was set for my first taste of UWCCF committee. And a nice introduction to it. Being the spring term, we as a committee, made use of flexiblity and smaller numbers to our advantage in planning and running nights. It was overall a good introduction to UWCCF committee, as the chair that term was very open and encouraging in everything he did. There was no pretense about anything and everyone else on committee that term besides the chair was appointed.

Things were overall alright, but I still don't think that I had fully recovered from the pressures that I felt heaped upon me during the previous term. As such, it became my mission at large that term to find a job in Waterloo.

And to my horror, things weren't going well. First round passed and I was still jobless. In fact, I had received no interviews. So things started getting a bit scary and I wasn't quite sure what to do.

Through this though, people had encouraged me by reminding me that my responsibility is to God, and not to UWCCF. Even the elected chair for the coming year spoke to me personally giving me his blessing to go to Singapore even if I didn't find a job in Waterloo. Perhaps my role, which God brought me here for, was to help with the planning and preparations. There was no stipulation that I had to be present for the actual term.

During that term, my fellowship back in Toronto had their annual summer retreat, and I attended that. A large portion of my time there, I was mulling around my predicament of job situation with respect to Singapore and UWCCF. However, in sharing with people and praying about it, it began to dawn upon me that I was going about things in all the wrong ways. It had become clear to me that my zeal for finding a job in Waterloo was not so much out of a zeal for doing God's work as it was a desire to satisfice those UWCCF members who had questioned me so vehemently about my motives for running for committee versus going to Singapore. I wanted to prove to them that I had the faith to get a job in Waterloo. And at the same time, personally, I didn't want to have to be faced with the decision of choosing between UWCCF and Singapore.

But out of that, came two realzations. First, as noted, is that my focus should be seeing what God has for me that temr, rather than focusing on appeasing the perceived needs of UWCCF. Second, what was truly important to me. If God truly wanted me in Waterloo during the time of my exchange, would I truly be able to give it up? I this question was posed to myself without the bias of pleasing man, but more so out of a motivation of was I really laying down my life and taking up my cross daily.

During the retreat, a message was given about the story of Abraham and Isaac. The relation between Abraham, Isaac and God spoke to me deeply about my situation and shifted my mind into an attitude of wanting to begin to desire the things of God rather than pursuing my own goals.

In particular, consider Abraham and Isaac. God promised Abraham that He would turn Abraham into a great nation. That Abraham would have numerous decendants. Yet, all this was promised to Abraham while he remained childless. Finally though, God appears to make good on his promise by blessing Abraham and Sarah with a son, Isaac, despite their old age. Can you imagine Abraham's delight? Finally God had come through for them, and all was well in the world. That is until God gives Abraham perhaps the most nonsensical command in all of the Bible: sacrifice your son to me as a burnt offering.

I can't even begin to imagine the thoughts that ran through Abraham's mind. God gives him a promised son, and now tells Abraham to kill him? How, God, are you expecting to make true your promise of turning me into a great nation if I kill the only son you've given me?

But yet, Abraham's faith in God is enough that Abraham proceeds to carry out God's instruction.

Amazingly as Abraham nears the point of no return, about to slay his son with a knife, an angel of the Lord appears:

But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

This challenged me greatly. In essence I felt that I was being tested in the same manner as Abraham. God had given me an amazing opportunity to study abroad and reconnect with my culture. But now, would I be willing to lay it on the altar and return it to God if he so demanded it from me? I wasn't sure at the time if I would be able to, but I prayed that God would give me the faith to do so.

Abraham's faith in this situation still amazes me to this day. I can almost imagine him saying, "Ok God, you promised to turn me into a great nation. You are now demanding that I sacrifice my one and only son to you. But because you are a faithful God and you know what you are doing, I will not hold this back from you. I will do as you say and trust that you will make your promise true to me regardless of what I realistically know."

I returned to Waterloo after the retreat with this revelation and tried to refocus my motives for applying to jobs in Waterloo.

Shortly after praying about this, tweaking my resume, and applying to a host of additional Waterloo jobs, I quickly picked up more interviews than I had ever had combined in all my past terms in Waterloo. From this, one immediate offer, and I was soon employed.

God was faithful. God is faithful.

Continue to Part 4