Grace Chen
自从受新冠病毒的影响，我们必须居家隔离以来，儿童部的义工们就开始在网络上服事我们的儿童。我们尝试不同的形式来服事：暑假之前，我们有每周的亲父时刻；暑假期间，我们举行了网络夏令营；新的学年开始，我们有每周晚间的儿童祷告会。与此同时，每个星期六早上，是我们的儿童崇拜。从三月开始，儿童部也建立了自己的YouTube频道，制作适合我们儿童的影片，来让那些不能参与到各项活动的孩子们也能得到牧养。我们也因此积累了很多视频资源。近两周的时间，我们使用部分的视频来传福音，其方法是剪辑原有的视频为手工视频和圣经故事视频，发布在中文的应用程序上，目前已经发布了15个视频影片，过去一个星期的播放量大概在一万次左右。 Read more →
By Allison Tran
What’s up friends?! My name is Allison; I’m a youth here at SJCAC and wanted to share about my journey to Gainesville, Georgia this summer.
I started this journey with Adventures in Missions (AIM) thinking that I would be going to Peru this past summer. Because of COVID I was given the alternative option to take a domestic trip to Gainesville, Georgia. Originally, I applied for this secondary trip because I had already fundraised. As the time got closer for me to leave, I was extremely excited to be surrounded by new people who would push me in my walk with the Lord. I was excited to experience missions in this country, be in a new state, and draw closer to God’s heart. When I got there, I sat alone one morning and struggled. I realized that I had signed up for this trip without fully asking if God wanted me there. Read more →
Hi, I’m Sabrina Lin and I was asked to share a story about my Dad.
My dad, Dr. CT Lo, was born in 1932 in Taiwan and is 87 years old now. He has a PhD in zoology and is an expert in schistosomiasis, which is the scientific name for bilharzia, a disease caused by the blood fluke parasite. So, my Dad worked for the WHO in Ethiopia trying to eradicate bilharzia. Being a scientist made him very skeptical and critical. He didn’t take what you said at face value. He always analyzed everything, almost too much. He thought he was always right. Do you know anyone like this in your family? Read more →
At the start of this lockdown, like most people, I was stressed out and experiencing major changes and disruptions to my life as I knew it.
Within a week of the lockdown and uncertain about my job situation, I had to transition to working from home. After a week of working on the kitchen table, being in Zoom meetings with the TV blaring CNN updates of the pandemic in the background, I was struggling. The lockdown was triggering old memories of the communist takeover of Saigon, when my parents were under house monitoring and their freedoms were taken away.
I was overwhelmed by the thought of having to work from home and worse, being home 24/7. You see, my life had a huge tension, even before the Coronavirus. My life as a Christian with my church family and “ministry” was totally separate from my household situation. Most of my faith was lived out — outside of my house, worshiping at a church building, serving others in various ministries, praying with others, gathering with small groups and different circles of friends, and attending workshops, events and conferences. But when it came to my home life, I did not feel I was supported or could fully be my authentic self in my even own house. Read more →
By Chan Lim
My testimony for Pastoral Care School (PCS) begins several months prior – when God got my attention through back pain brought on by what turned out to be multiple disc tears and herniation. Still on my gradual road to complete recovery, I praise Jesus today as my Healer and Sanctifier.
In my pain the Lord told me one early morning, that everything we experience in this life, including pains and pleasures, joys and sorrows, was a tool He lovingly used to draw us near to Him. Jesus parted the clouds and told me personally, with as much love and mercy and compassion as I have ever experienced, that His back, too, had hurt as He carried His cross. All so that I could approach the Father in glory, no longer behind a veil. Read more →
by Ted Kang
God, in His wisdom, marked time with seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years so that we could remember and reflect upon the stories that make up life. Driving through 2,400 miles of desert and mountains in Arizona and New Mexico over the holidays, I had plenty of opportunities to look back and recount the significant events and changes of the past decade. Welcoming my fourth daughter at the turn of the decade, taking on the assignment of leading the church in this season, losing 30lbs of weight to become healthy again, going back to school for another degree are just a few of the personal milestones over the past 10 years. As a church, we launched a preschool and a Chinese school out of our Vision 2020, planted a new church in Mountain View, helped plant the one and only Arabic church in San Jose, and are preparing for the launch of another church plant in the near future. What is not very obvious to us is the fact that these things didn’t simply “happen” to us. Rather, they were the outcome of a thoughtful, intentional and resolute effort driven by our faith in God’s promises and a vision of the future. And for each of these things to be birthed, we all had to make some significant changes in our priorities and commitments. Read more →
By Elisa Cheng
I went to this summer’s Life Conference with a lack of enthusiasm, little expectations, and a lot of fear. But, through God’s gracious love and His life-giving words, I came out of the Life Conference with a refreshed excitement of His plan for me, peace that is attainable only by Him, and confidence in the promise that He will never leave me.
Throughout this summer, I have been specifically dealing with a lot of fears of college — whether the college I am going to (Case Western Reserve University or “CWRU”) is the right college for me, whether I will go insane and not be able to handle the heavy nursing course load, and whether I will find a community of friends and mentors that I so need. And so, I am amazed at how God used this Life Conference to show me that CWRU is the perfect college for me and that I am now free to be excited for what is to come in the next month. Read more →
By Esther Thio
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify to God’s power last Sunday during our English Congregation’s worship services. For those of you who do not know me, this is a step of boldness that I typically would not have taken. But God spoke so loudly and clearly in my heart, that there was no way I could say no.
I remembered it was a Thursday morning when I received a text from Pastor Douglas asking me if I would be willing to share on Sunday about how God has been working in my life. My usual text response to Douglas would be, “No, I think there is not enough time for me to prepare. There are many people at church who will have better stories to tell.” Read more →
by Abigail Kang
Many of you may know that I returned from my trip to Uganda this past Summer. Thank you for all your support and prayers. I want to start off by giving some context. I went with an organization called Teen Missions International, which is based in Florida. Every year, they send out over several hundred teens to 15-20 different countries in the world, where they also have bases in. This year, I was on the Uganda Footwashing Team–a team of 19 including 4 leaders. All teams start off at boot camp in Florida, which is an intense, 2 week preparation for the field. From running an obstacle course every morning at 6AM, to packed schedules from 5:30AM-9:30PM, to flooded, muddy tents almost every night, I had to rely on God from the get-go every single moment of the day. It was a tough two weeks that would prepare us for the worst situations possible on the field, and it was also a full two weeks in which I began to build my relationship with the Lord. After the two weeks, on Commissioning Night, we were sent out to the field. Read more →
by Felicia Uhm
In July 2019, 35 adults and children of all ages had the privilege of serving those experiencing homelessness in the Tenderloin district. It was just a little taste of Jesus’ incarnational ministry here on earth.
Jesus had the ultimate experience of homelessness — he left his home in the Kingdom of God, left his position and title as the Son of God and the King of Kings to live on earth. He experienced no shelter, no community, no comforts, completely vulnerable as a baby and needing others to take care of Him. He relied on His earthly parents for His daily bread and His Heavenly Father to sustain Him of His mission on earth with spiritual truths in His living Word. Read more →
