Life at Gracepoint

God has dignified my life by letting me serve in ImpACT. I look at my childhood with shame, because I failed to be the older brother that my younger brother needed when he was growing up. He needed love from me, but he received my fits of anger and verbal abuse. He needed comfort, but I was the major source of emotional and physical pain. It wasn’t until the end of my high school days that I felt guilt and shame, but by that time it was too late for any healing or reconciliation to happen between the two of us. It was too late to apologize. Too late to do anything real to repent, to compensate, or give consolation. Nothing. It was hopeless. The memories are still vivid for me today and I still get depressed over them whenever they surface.

I received the Gospel seven years ago, but the same old messages still amaze me today. That God loves sinners. That God makes all things new. I had always asked God to give me a second chance to be an older brother. I asked in faith, because deep down I didn’t believe it was possible with my background. In 2006 when our church was starting ImpACT again, I felt like God was answering my prayer, and I leapt at the chance to be the older brother I never was.

As a 26 year old it is embarrassing to admit that I’m still learning how to be an older brother, but many thanks be to God who uses many people, even those who are younger than me, to teach me. Josh Wang was one such person. We were Team Leads together for the first Springfest. It was 2006 and it had actually been a long time since I had interacted with kids and I had all but forgotten how rowdy they could be and how angry I could get at that. In the past I would’ve just gotten angry, but Josh responded completely differently. He established boundaries and rules for our kids, was calm, and often talked it out with the kids to find out what was really going on. Josh doesn’t know this, but he was instrumental in teaching me to respond with care rather than anger. Whenever I explain rules or have to put a child in time-out I still have a vivid picture of Josh doing this for our first crop of ImpACT kids.

In an ironic and poetic justice kind of way God answered my prayer to be an older brother by placing into my care a child who is exactly like my little brother when he was young. His name is John Tran. He is Vietnamese, has the same last name, had a very hard time listening to instructions, tested boundaries, and seemed to enjoy making people mad. This was a kid who on several occasions would tell his driver that he was at the wrong house, make his driver wander around the neighborhood just to come back to the same house and triumphantly exclaim “I tricked you!” In the past I would’ve strangled my little brother, but now I was committed to patience and loving correction. I love God’s sense of humor. Mr. Chi and Principal Jeannie can tell you how many times I had to put John in timeout and the number of talks we’ve had. I wasn’t expecting it, but as I confronted him more and more, I grew to love him more and more and was naturally driven to pray on his behalf without it feeling like a chore.

I am so thankful for all the lessons I’ve learned from working with Mr. Josh, Mr. Chi, Principal Jeannie, Principal Andy, Mr. Bruce, Principal Tony, Steven, and Wynn. I still have much more to learn, but I am thankful that through ImpACT I experience God making things new in this area of my life I once thought was hopeless.

Two Saturdays ago, the sophomores and juniors of a2f Blue along with the staff drove out to the San Francisco Food Bank for an afternoon of volunteer work. We arrived at a humongous warehouse structure filled with towering rows of donated foods. One sophomore likened the inside to Costco, except that all the food we saw was donated and slated for consumption by the city’s underprivileged. We were put to work packaging food rations for the elderly in the city. The Food Bank staff arranged us in assembly-line manner so that everyone had a specific job, and the completion of a single food box depended on the efficiency of every member, starting with the very first job on the line. A2f Blue hit a groove of speedy and joyful activity as we assembled boxes, wrestled with huge rolls of saran wrap, heaved boxes of cans onto the assembly belt, and stuffed in as much food as possible into each box. We did this for 3 hours which passed by in a blur. By the time we were done, SF Food Bank staff congratulated us on helping pack 27,000 pounds of food which would go immediately to those who could not afford the daily, basic necessity of food.

As we were given the tour of the facilities afterwards, I was reminded of the time we partook in the 30-Hour Famine, where we raised money through a massive garage sale while fasting for a little more than a day. After the garage sale, we walked through an exhibit on world hunger and poverty that coincided with our “famine,” which left an indelible impression on me. Hearing the staff at SF Food Bank tell us of how about 1 in 5 children in the city of San Francisco don’t have enough to eat, and how many families live below the poverty line in what is ostensibly one of the richest cities in America made me realize that the very problems we tried to address during the 30-hour famine existed in our very own backyard. I grumble about being “tired” or “busy” while enjoying 3 healthy meals a day and not having to worry about where my next meal will come from, or how I will pay for car insurance and rent. But I realize that being thankful and stewarding well the resources we are blessed with go hand-in-hand, and I learned through this Serve Day of how much more I need to be thankful for every single aspect of my life. If I am truly thankful, then I will have room for the generosity needed to serve the poor. As we drove home from the SF Food Bank, the looks on the students’ faces told me that they were tired but fulfilled from doing an afternoon’s worth of worthy work. I think we were all grateful for the opportunity to serve our community. At the same time, this experience gave us at a2f Blue a glimpse of why we need to be good stewards of all we have, thankful for the basic necessities of life, and work hard to serve others less fortunate than us.

For Andrew and me, our wedding was a special time as it gave us an opportunity to reflect on our lives and thank God for all of His blessings. As Pastor Ed shared during the message this past Sunday, my peers sang a song for us at the reception called “He’s Always Been Faithful” by Sara Groves. Here are the words:

Morning by morning I wake up to find
The power and comfort of God's hand in mine
Season by season I watch him amazed
In awe of the mystery of his perfect ways

All I have need of his hand will provide
He's always been faithful to me

I can't remember a trial or a pain
He did not recycle to bring me gain
I can't remember one single regret
In serving God only and trusting his hand

All I have need of his hand will provide
He's always been faithful to me

This is my anthem, this is my song
The theme of the stories I've heard for so long
God has been faithful, he will be again
His loving compassion, it knows no end

All I have need of his hand will provide
He's always been faithful to me

I’ve sung this song at least half-a-dozen times, but still, I was moved to tears as I looked at each of my peers, and remembered different struggles, trials, and times of pain we’ve gone through together. Most of us met as freshmen, eleven years ago. Back when I first met them, I had no idea the kind of friendships we would have now. Over the years, we’ve prayed for each others’ salvation and we’ve fasted and prayed for each other when we were sick or struggling with a sin issue or struggling against God. When I think about my peers, I can think of different things from their past, joys and pains, but I especially see how God is at work in their lives, and I thank God for how we’ve grown up to take our place in His kingdom work. My peers and I are scattered throughout the different ministries in our church (ISM, SF Campus, Berkeley College, Praxis, and Davis). And each one of us, in our own way, is trying to share the gospel and God’s love as we received it and experienced during our undergrad days, our early post-grad days, and today. When I think about my friends, I can see how our weaknesses, our sins, our hard times, have brought us closer to God, allowed us to experience His grace, and I see that we were able to grow in our faith and trust in Him. I am so thankful that we are here, serving God together, experiencing God together, and look forward to all the ways that God will continue to work in, and through, our lives.

I’m so thankful for the summer I’ve had. Every day that I’m at North Loop (our church building in Alameda) I thank God for the community we have here and the abundance of work that we have to do. I started this summer wanting to take seriously Pastor Ed and Kelly’s encouragement to all of us at our team meeting to make this a summer of service. They gave words of wisdom that were precious to me because of my insecurity, that the way out of insecurity is to become practiced in serving, because everyone can serve and learn to be good at serving. So I made a commitment to go wherever I was needed and to do whatever needed to be done, starting with this summer. Because I’m naturally a selfish person, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull through or give myself fully.

Far from my expectations and worries, this summer I’ve experienced that there is simply joy and freedom in serving God. I experienced that when I’m fully available, then I have no time slots to protect or worry about keeping for myself. I got to spend time with the director sisters at Northloop. Seeing a little bit of what they do at Northloop, I can more deeply appreciate the huge responsibilities each one of them has, against the limited time of each 24-hour day, and I’m amazed that they always have time for people! It also brings me so much joy to see waves of people working at Northloop for different reasons, preparing for Worldview Camp, discipleship retreat, mission trips, Austin farewell, NSWN, and then hearing about how God worked through those events. And I see how we are a church community that carries each other, especially with the encouragement and accountability of northloop.edu for those who are job-searching, and the Northloop lunches that allow everybody to take a break from their work and eat together.

Personally, I’m thankful for the way I’ve been changed in little ways this summer. I can see that over the course of the summer I’ve changed in the way I respond to opportunities for work. Now I’m not so afraid of work, which I used to be very reluctant to volunteer for. My reaction time is speeding up as opportunities arise, because I’m simply willing to put one step forward and give it a try, and my ownership over the tasks I’m given has grown. As I take part in various needs throughout the church, I feel more connected to the church as a whole and have a growing sense that this is my church, I’m not just in this one small group or department. I’ve also realized that I’ve learned most of the useful skills I have through this church—Photoshop from Carmen and Joyce, mail merging from Sunny, plotting from Richard, etc. I’m blessed to be part of a church that equips me to serve and a church that has the meaningful work of God where I can give my blessings back to. I’ve realized that I don’t deserve to be entrusted with the work of God and it’s a great privilege to serve Him. It’s exciting to see how God actually uses the meager efforts of finite people to make an eternal impact on people’s lives, and I’m thankful that I can be a part of it.

What's harder than trying to lead a retreat for a bunch of Fourth Thru Sixth graders? Leading them but having your hard drive crash 20 minutes before you're supposed to give them the message! Well, that's what happened to me during Gracepoint’s Annual FTS (Fourth through Sixth) Retreat. I gave my first message on Friday night and then prepared and edited my next message after getting feedback from the teachers and stayed up until the wee hours of the night. I woke up the next morning got a hot meal and came back to my room to get my laptop - only to find it had crashed. Trying to reboot it, I realized it was DEAD with only 20 minutes away from the 2nd message. I had no local copy of my presentation which included 2 video clips of the universe and the cell. I was dust. I luckily had a copy of the video clips but it was on my machine at work. I had lost all of my notes and slides. So while the students went to Pinecrest Lake, I worked on my four other messages.

But one thing I knew, I wasn't alone. I called upon my friends and fellow staff back in Alameda. I called Josh to help me with my message examples, I used some of Daniel Kim's old notes and examples, I got tech support help from Michael Kang and David Wu, I got a replacement license key from Kevan Ho who was visiting Austin to help me with my slideshow and I got additional and invaluable feedback from the FTS teachers, and I got a lot of prayer from countless other people. I felt the church in action as I knew that although I was giving these messages there many people helping me and I really experienced the church. In the end, three of the kids made decisions to become Christ followers. I was floored and stunned. Hearing their clear prayers and decisions, I saw it was God who was working in the hearts of these children, long before I was even in the picture. I felt so privileged that he would use me in even this small way to bring the message. After our nightly meeting where we shared these decisions and prayed for these kids and as I walked back to my room I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and cried as I praised the Lord and thanked him for using a sinner like me. I thought how could He use me and I was filled with gratitude. Although this was the hardest thing I've had to do, it was one of the most rewarding and I can honestly say I would do this again; all the "hard" stress was worth it!