Church Life
God has blessed our life and ministry in many ways during the past half-year or so.A couple months ago, after having postings out for about eight months, God blessed our youth ministry with two leaders in David and Amy Martin. They’re a young couple from the Midwest who have a desire to eventually serve as missionaries in China, and they have a visibly genuine love for the Lord. What’s exciting for me is the opportunity this affords to focus more on developing our adult ministry which has been getting less than half of my attention.
Since our last update, our adult congregation has started taking baby steps in connecting with our neighborhood. I was invited to give the invocation at a local Kiwanis club meeting, our members started to regularly spend time at a nearby nursing home, and we had an outreach at a senior citizens’ center for Chinese New Year. In a few weeks, we’ll be doing some beautification work at Shery High School, a continuation school in the area, as part of a greater church wide effort in the South Bay called Sharefest to be a blessing to our neighbors. The sister who’s coordinating this event manages a large number of people at work for SBC, but in the fifteen years she’s been in the church has done little more than usher on Sundays. It’s been great seeing people like this stepping out to use their gifts and abilities for God and getting so much joy from it. (Left & below rite - some pictures from last year's event at Fleming Middle School.)
Also, almost all our visitors this past half-year have been directly from our neighborhood, as per our prayers, and most of the ones who have stayed are not Asian. I don't think it's necessary for us to have representation from every race and ethnicity in Southern California, but this has been a significant step for us towards living up to our designation as a “community church” in a community with few Asians.
A Tiring Challenge
I
just recently reconciled with one of the key leaders at our church
after a month of distraction, frustration, and awkwardness. It really
felt like Satan was working overtime to keep us down, but I’m glad to
be over it. As hard as the experience was, I've been truly thankful
for the opportunity to grow through it. I thought I’d have more to say
about this, but we decided to have a clean start and forget about the
past which I’m trying my best to do.
Family Life
Michele and I just got back from a Family Life marriage conference. At first, I decided to go just to encourage other couples from our church to do the same, but it ended up being a really good review for me. With all the ministry tasks and relationships at church, it’s been easy to settle for less than great dialogue and interaction when I came home in the evenings. I’m grateful for the reminders and insights we received. I’d recommend the conference to anyone interested in refocusing and refreshing their marriage.
Finally,
I love being a dad. Jie is so wonderful, and Michele, being a great mom,
has made it easy for me to appreciate Jie all the more. After a
session at the marriage conference about “leaving a legacy” I’ve
adjusted my schedule to get home a little earlier in the evenings to be
able to spend more quality time with her on a regular basis. Everyday
has become much more precious with my daughter in my life.
Recent books for discussion, if you're interested:
Prayer Requests:
- I recently started a leadership team for our adult English Ministry. A separate leadership team for the EM is new for the 30-year history of our church, so please pray for the new leaders to really take ownership of this and for a good working relationship with the church board.
- A friend of ours asked us to pray about possibly going overseas for missions together in the pretty near future. We’re open to what God wants, although I really want to finish up what we’ve started at CCCSB first.
- Please pray for faithfulness in sharing God's faith, hope, and love with our neighbors, and also for a greater joy in doing it.
I wrote my update (see next entry) about 2 and half months ago now so I feel that it's a bit outdated. :P Yohana will be 11 months old tomorrow and is beginning to stand on her own. Two of her first recognizable words are "Amen" and "nana" (banana). She is passionate about food and books over all else.
I've just recently begun training a young guy in the worship ministry to start leading worship as one of our main worship leaders is stepping down soon. I'm excited for this timely opportunity as the Lord has made me aware of my need to actively develop future leaders and be prepared to 'pass the baton' whenever God calls us elsewhere. Please pray that the Lord would give me wisdom to mentor Tony.
A couple weeks ago I also began walking every morning at 6:00 with a sister from church who has recently recommitted her life to God. After several years of going her own way and getting mired in a sinful lifestyle, she finally woke up to how unhappy she was making herself and decided to make a fresh start with the Lord. Hallelujah! It brings me so much joy to see God working in her heart and life in miraculous ways. Plus, although I originally committed to walk with her as a practical way to support her, the daily exercise has definitely been great for boosting my energy level and overall daily productivity!
Jie
My primary ministry these days continues to be taking care of Yohana. Now approaching her ninth month of life, she has learned, among other things, to crawl, sit, pull herself up, cruise (walk while holding onto furniture), and eat a variety of solid foods. She has also begun to learn boundaries and obedience to Mama and Papa as we teach her what behaviors, objects, and places are acceptable and which ones are off-limits. It is a joy to communicate with her and see her comprehension growing day by day.
The first six months of her life, I didn’t have enough mental or emotional energy to even consider returning to work. Now, although I love staying home with Jie, I also find myself looking forward to the day when I will step back into the classroom for a few hours a week. I will probably start thinking more seriously and specifically about teaching again after Jie’s first birthday.
Worship Ministry
Overall, being part of the worship ministry has definitely given me a
greater sense of ownership of the church and helped me feel that this
is truly my church family for the time being. I’ve been leading one of our congregation’s worship teams since December and so far am really enjoying it. Although it’s obviously more work to plan, practice, and lead corporate times of worship than not to, I find that it’s more rewarding and meaningful, too, and helps keep me dependent on the Lord. It’s also good to ‘rub shoulders’ with my 5 teammates, bonding and getting to know them better as we work together.
Since January I’ve also taken over as worship coordinator for the English congregation. One area in which I would like to see our ministry grow this year is musical excellence, as most of our worship team members have limited experience in playing their instruments or singing in a worship context. In order to help us develop our musical skills, I have been coordinating training workshops for each instrument, bringing in “experts” from outside our church to teach and work with our members. Hopefully these workshops will inspire and motivate all of us to practice and reach our full potential in terms of the musical talents and abilities God has given us.
Being relatively new to this business of worship coordinating, I’m learning as I go, but it’s kind of amazing to see how God has been preparing me for this responsibility for a long time. In January I gave a training workshop to the youth worship team. While I was speaking to them, I realized how the Lord has given me so many opportunities (and challenges) over the last 15 years to grow and develop specifically in the area of worship and worship leading. In high school – or in college, for that matter - I never would have imagined myself overseeing the worship ministry of an entire congregation, but it seems that God has been growing and maturing me little by little over the years to bring me to the place where I’m at now. Not that this is an ending point, by any means. But I guess sometimes you just get a glimpse of how all the seeming random episodes and experiences in your life are actually not random, but interwoven and contributing to something greater.
Teaching and Learning Language and More
Today was unexpectedly my last day of tutoring Shannon, the girl from Beijing that I’ve been meeting with weekly for the past 5 months. We decided to take a break indefinitely. I feel okay about this since I think her English speaking has improved a lot. Actually the timing works out well. Yesterday I began learning Mandarin from a retired teacher at our church. I’m excited to be a language student once again!
Recently I thought, “I’ve been out of college for almost 7 years and I am still not on the mission field,” and felt a little discouraged. God has been challenging me, though, to really see myself as a missionary right here where He’s placed me. My life is full of people – like my Indian neighbors Neerja and Rishu or my Korean Jehovah’s Witness friends Young Hee and Sun-Nyuh or my sisters Kai and Norma at church – that haven’t heard the good news, or need to be encouraged, instructed, or strengthened in their faith. I need great (or should I say ‘Great’?) amounts of love, patience and faithfulness to be a blessing to these people, not just when I feel like it or on pre-set days, but any time, all the time. If that isn’t a challenge that long-term missionaries face, what is? For now we feel that this is where God wants us, and I just have to be patient and trust that if we are called to serve Him elsewhere, He will open the doors and make the timing clear.
