Praise God for the inauguration of Gracepoint Hsinchu! Many of us flew to Taiwan to join our founding mission team members on this historic occasion of planting a church in Hsinchu. Our thoughts and prayers are with Eugene and Cynthia and the rest of the mission team, as well as with all those who will come to hear the Gospel and experience the love of God through them!

The Young Adult Winter Retreat was a wonderful time for our church to start off the year together hearing God's Word. We also enjoyed the hilarious time of icebreakers getting to know one another, hearing testimonies shared by brothers and sisters, learning of great heroes of the faith, and praying together for the three brothers soon to be ordained as pastors. As many of us committed to answer the call to be prophets of God to our generation, we were filled with anticipation for all that God will do in 2008!

From the Joytown preschoolers performing their rendition of "The First Christmas," all the way to the 5th and 6th graders giving their all in their skit, "Fit for a King," this year's Joyland Christmas Celebration created many touching and fun-filled memories. Gracepoint volunteers spent many hours practicing skits and songs with the children, prepping props, costumes, decorations and food, so that all (children and adults alike!) could enjoy a special night of celebrating the birth of Jesus. All praise to God for His indescribable gift!

Thanksgiving Celebration was a church wide event where we saw creative performances of singing and dancing of all our ministry groups from Element Youth all the way to Praxis Young Adults. It was a wonderful time of expressing our gratitude to God in a fun, loving, and surprising way. And of course we ended the night eating a scrumptious turkey dinner to our hearts' content.

Our Thanksgiving Retreat was a time to come together to hear how God has been working at our Berkeley church and San Francisco Campus. Through hearing messages, personal testimonies, and year end reviews of our various ministries, we were amazed and grateful to look back on how much God has done in our church this past year.

On October 21st, we celebrated our first anniversary as Gracepoint Fellowship Church! Through shouting aloud joyful songs to God through the stirring praise time, enjoying a meaningful orchestra medley of tribute to God's faithfulness arranged by our very own Paul Chen, video clips of interviews based on the question, "What does Gracepoint mean to me," and special performances of "Will You Be the One," and "One Life," we celebrated a moving time of remembering how God has led us through this past year, and committed to passionately carry on the legacy of wasteful love for one another as first demonstrated by our Lord Jesus. Congratulations, Gracepoint!