Opportunities

I am so thankful for the opportunity I had this past weekend to photograph the annual Summer Bible Conference @ James Madison University. I have been praying for more opportunities throughout the year and it is amazing to see how God answers prayers looking back at the year. When I began to first pray for opportunities, I saw nothing. I didn't see many opportunities, if not any. However after a while, I began to see some, but when I did began to see a few opportunities such as entering photography competitions, the opportunities shut down. This brought me back to a vision a girl shared with me at Grace Retreat. On last day of Grace Retreat 2011, this girl came up to me and told me a vision she had while we were worshiping. She told me she saw a window. The window was sort of small and really high; then the window disappeared. However the window came back later lower and bigger. She told me that the window symbolized opportunities in my life. As I look back at everything, I am amazed at how God has been working through my life. God used the girl to share this vision with me to remind me to never give up. I remember how excited I was to get my DSLR seven months ago. It was semi-sporadic. I always wanted a DSLR, but I imagined myself getting a job and saving up enough money to buy it. However, my dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him I wanted only one thing -- a DSLR. I didn't think he would get me one. I remember I wrote something along this in my diary - God, if it's your will, please can I have the DSLR? And to my surprise a few days later, my dad told me I could choose one. I did not see many opportunities even from then on, but it was good. The waiting time is very special. If I never had to wait for anything I would not understand the significance or the importance of it. Now, I see that God is giving me so many opportunities to be able to teach others how to take pictures and to photograph others. When I take pictures, I want to show the world the beauty of God's creation whether it be people, plants, or animals. Going back to taking pictures at the conference - I am so much more appreciative of Esther and Susan for all their labor and hard work in all the past conferences. It was definitely enjoyable taking and editing pictures, but it was also different. It was a bit more burdensome than I thought it would be. I never really worked under the time pressure. I never had to get a good picture at a certain moment. Nobody really cared when I took pictures of certain things or didn't. Only I did, but at the conference I had to take pictures at certain moments for the video. That was the hard part. Now, I really admire the Grace Retreat photographers who take amazing worship pictures because I found that to be extremely hard. Before I was like - "oh, how hard can that be?" But the low light and people moving and changing positions...it's very hard!

Again, I am amazed at how God works and so thankful that He is working in my life. (:

My God answers prayers!

Now I'm not sure how photography fits into my future, but I'm praying about that. I know that God has the perfect plan. (:

Important Life Lessons

Life is too short to hold grudges

.

Sin is a continuous struggle in life, but there is victory in Jesus.

I am powerless against sin; however, God is not. I need the Holy Spirit in my life daily to overcome sin.

God is good; men aren’t.

I cannot let past circumstances determine how God will work in the future.

I need the Holy Spirit every single day.

Cry out – in desperation, in prayer and God will without a doubt hear our prayers. Not just hear, listen. Jesus’ heart is aching with mine.

Testimonies

I forgot.

I forgot the promise I made to God a little more than a year ago. At our annual 2010 youth winter retreat, I promised God that I would share my testimony with others – the big and the small things as Pun gave a seminar on the importance of sharing our testimonies with others. That’s what this blog is for in a sense – to share how good God is that in some way that as you read it, you may be encouraged.

However, I forgot.

Well, I suppose I didn’t completely forget. I knew it in the back of my mind, but small things like laziness and uncertainty held me back. Surely you guys would not want to read everything I write. It seems like I always talk, but I missed the main point of sharing testimonies. It’s not about me. It’s all about God. A testimony I share should be and needs to be about God. Therefore my thinking was flawed.

I believe sharing our testimonies with each other is extremely important. Not only does it encourage other people, it encourages me as well. As I think back to all the things God has done in my life, I remember all that God has been doing in my life. When I don't share testimonies, that's when I begin to forget all that God has been doing in my life. I want to share with others all that God's been doing in my life - whether it is something small or big because no matter how small they may seem, they're amazing. I cannot do these things on my own; only God can. I believe my God can do big things, but with this excuse, I stopped recognizing God for what He was doing. Whenever something happened, I would think - "Of course God can do it" but at the same time I wouldn't recognize what He did. I now realize that this attitude is wrong. Yes, nothing is impossible with God. However, God can choose not to show any miracles to me. Yet he still does. God is good all the time. I need to praise Him and give thanks to Him because all the glory is rightfully His. I remember at Grace Retreat Pastor Kyu would always pray, giving God all the glory and honor. I wondered why did that and now I know. 

God deserves all the honor and praise.

Therefore for the next year, I hope to be honest while sharing all that God's been doing in my life! Senior year, here I come. (:

Facedown

*I apologize in advance - for I am about to go on a blogging spree. You are in no way obligated to read anything or everything I write. It's just going to be everything that's been on my mind for the past month or so. (: *

Facedown - by Matt Redman:


I recently read a book titled "Facedown" by Matt Redman. It's a short book, but I wouldn't exactly say a quick read because of the density of the content. Because it's a short book, Matt Redman gets straight to the point. Thus, you need time to think about what you just read before you jump into the next chapter (though I didn't exactly do that).

However what I read kept coming back to me. This book really opened my eyes to other elements of worship - mystery, holiness, and awe. 


"Facedown worship always begins as a posture of the heart. It's people so desperate for the increase of Christ that they find themselves decreasing to the ground in an act of reverent submission. When a soul is so captivated by the Almighty, to bend low in true and total surrender seems the only appropriate response."

Throughout the Bible, we encounter facedown worship - Daniel, Abrahm, King David, Peter, James, and John. I never really took notice of what it really meant when I read in the Bible something like - "and he fell facedown." I would just overlook the importance of those words. However facedown worship tells so much about the person and God. Facedown worship exemplifies total surrender to God. His glory is so overwhelming that the person's reaction to his revelation is to simply fall to the ground on his face. In this sense, God is awe-some (full of awe).

"So many clues as to what our congregational gatherings should look like are found in these encounters of the heavenly throne. When it comes to worship, the throne always sets the tone. Each time we gather together, we don't just journey to a church building- we journey to the very throne of God. To lose sight of this is to lose sight of the majestic in worship." 


As worship leaders, it is important to be able to set the tone for people to worship God. It's never just about playing the right notes and singing in tune. Instead worship goes far beyond that. It goes beyond the physical realm and enters the spiritual realm where it's all about God. We worship God through the lifestyles we live; through our actions, we either glorify God or simply don't. I believe we should encourage each other to acknowledge God's holiness, awesomeness, and mysteriousness. In this way, we may, too, be able to encounter facedown worship in front of our King.

I loved the chapter "The Song of Creation."

"Creation is alive with musicality; and every sound, note and strain is a response to the divine, pointing to the author of all life- God himself."


After I read this chapter late at night, I put down the book and decided to fall asleep. As I tried to go to sleep, I listened to the bugs and creatures outside (the window was slightly open). As I listened I was so amazed at God's creation. I am so glad God did not make all animals sound the same. Imagine listening to the same note forever and ever from everything! As I fell asleep, I thanked God for the beauty in His creation. His creation truly glorifies Him.

This book "Facedown" definitely helped me understand worship more. (:

Thoughts

• This is a late write-up considering that I watched  the "Amazing Spiderman" last Tuesday, but here it goes: Watching the Spiderman movie reminded me how weak we are as humans. We try so hard to find cures to our problems such as cancer and so many other things but often times we are left without any answers or cures. On the other hand, my God can heal cancer, grow out legs, grow our arms, destroy tumors, and so much more in the matter of a mili-second. God is so powerful and far above us. The movie made me realize how weak we are as human beings and how great God is.
• I keep having dreams that we're working on our VBS for the Mexico Mission trip even though I know that we already went and came back from it.
• The more I think about Mexico, I am reminded that missions wasn't just the nine or ten days we spent in Mexico. The months of preparation for the mission trip was just as important as going there.
• I need to trust God with my future - college, major, etc. The time has finally come and now it's my turn to start thinking about my future.
• What Augustine said during the message about making decisions is making me think. It's so hard to make selfless decisions but those have the best results.
• Faith - I need to have faith that God will provide everything for college. It would be insulting to God if I didn't believe he is going to take care of everything after all that he's shown me. God is always looking to build our faiths. (:
• Summer Bible Conference in twoooo weeks.
• I keep thinking - "this is the time of transition." So many things are changing.
• Reading 1 Chronicles chapter 1-4 was extremely hard. It was names, names, names, and names. Now that I think more about it, all those names were real people. In a hundred years, what am I going to be? A name. I'm probably not even going to be a name because those names were important people during the time. Even though there's an unending list of names, God loved and loves each and every person. That amazes me. It's hard imagining that the list of names were actual people who lived just like me. They loved God and God loved them. 

I don't want to post all of them, so here are four from days twelve to  twenty-one!

Day twelve:

Day fifteen:

Day seventeen:

Day twenty-one:

update: I need to stop sleeping. I took two naps today. I'm just reading and all of a sudden, I get sleepy and I fall asleep and then wake up two - three hours later. Then I keep having really weird dreams. I need to stop sleeping so much.

New lens!

It's loud, it's cheaply built, it's a little hard to use, but it's still a new lens! I'm sooo excited for it. Now I can go down to f/1.8. I need to start learning the other buttons on my camera though...

I cropped most of these pictures because I can't focus on small objects unless I'm pretty far from them. So I guess I'm going to have to do some heavy cropping with this until I just do portraits with it. (:

Mexico Missions 2012

"In the last days, God says I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17).

"Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." - William Carey

If I had to compare last year's mission trip and this year's mission trip, everything went perfectly and smoothly last year and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong this year.  I am not saying last year's mission trip was better than this year because we did not encounter great difficulties. So many things deviated from the original plan that every time something went wrong, it ended up being really funny. The difficulties we faced throughout the trip reminded me how God is more concerned about building our faith rather than allowing us to live suffering-free lives (this is an important lesson for life in general).

So the first difficulties we encountered was actually getting to Mexico. Due to the huge storm in the Washington area the night before, our first plane got delayed. There was actually three different groups - Aug. Mary & Adriana, and Hannah. I'm sure almost each person had a different flight schedule at least in some part of the trip due to so many delays and craziness. We decided to take a leap of faith and took flight at a time. After about two hours of standing in line and talking to the lady, we finally got a ticket to Houston, Texas (well, Aug spoke, and we stood and waited). Due to our first plane getting delayed, we missed our second flight to Mexico City. I think we were trying to get our tickets sorted our in Baltimore. However we could only get tickets to Houston. After arriving in Houston, we had to wait even more to get our next tickets to Mexico City. In our original plan, we were supposed to travel all day and arrive at Icthus around 7 PM on Sunday night. I can assure you, that did not happen for any of us. During certain points of the trip, some of the airplane ladies told us - "I'm sure not if this trip will happen for you guys. You might have to fly back to Baltimore." That could have been discouraging, but we didn't let that discourage us. After a long time, we got a flight to Mexico City, but that's as far as we got Sunday night. In Mexico City, we could not get any plane tickets until the next day at 9 PM. So the group of eight of us picked a bench and made our home in terminal two in front of Krispy Kreme for the next twenty-four hours. This is really random, but there are janitors everywhere in the airport in Mexico City. Seriously. Every time I went to the bathroom in Mexico City, there was a lady waiting for me to finish using the toilet so she could clean it again. As we were sleeping, janitors were sweeping around us.

Excerpt from my journal from July 1, 2012:
"We're still at the airport. Looks like we're going to have to spend the night here. God, it's kind of confusing why we have been delayed. I just really want to be at Icthus right now. But I trust you God that your ways are better than my ways. I know you have promised protection over us. So I pray that we may be safe as we sleep." 

July 2, 2012:
"So at the moment, Adriana, Matthew, James, and Deborah are at the Icthus Education Center. Sam & Andrew will be going to Tuxla at five while the rest of us go at nine."

By July 2nd, the third group was in Icthus, eight of us were stranded at the airport in Mexico City, and Hannah B, Susan, and Mary Anna were traveling all day. By the end of the day, everyone but Aug, Susan, and Mary Anna arrived at Tuxtla and went to Icthus. Aug, Sussan, and Mary Anna spent the night at Mexico City and arrived the next day to village, Jerusalem where the rest of us were.

In hindsight, the delays and everything really helped missions team bond. "Jesus, I am so thankful for the delayed flights even though I would not want to do it again. I think it really helped our team get closer to each other as brothers and sisters."


My group arrived in Icthus at three or four in the morning. We woke up at seven for devotionals, ate breakfast at eight, and left for the village at nine. On the first day we did not do any VBS since our whole team had not arrived yet. We rested and played with the kids. It was amazing seeing the same people as last year and knowing that they remembered us!

Verses God spoke through to me during the trip:
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).


"The Lord will keep you from all harm- he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore" (Psalm 121: 7-8).

"Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the field be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth" (Psalm 96:11-13).


 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrifeid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go" (Joshua 1:9).

"Then Rachel said, 'I have had a great struggle with my sister, and i have won.' So she named him Naphtali" (Genesis 30:8).

"Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers. against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms...And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayer and requests. With this is mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints" (Ephesians 6).

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths growth tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint" (Isaiah 40:28-31).

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).


What did we do there?

"The team held VBS for the village children everyday
delivering messages / performing skits / making crafts and playing many games.
In the evening time they were able to reach out to the teenagers and spent time praying for individuals who needed physical healing and encouragement. One of the days they travelled to another nearby village, consisting of mostly Catholics, and shared the gospel through VBS and a skit. They witnessed God's powerful love for people through their trip."

source: http://ichthusworld.org/node/4193

 What did I learn?

• God is concerned about faith-building rather than letting our lives run perfectly because when things go wrong, we need him. I need to depend on him all the time. I need Him more each day "I need you more, more than yesterday..." Although things seem to go wrong, "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). It seemed like we were breaking everything at the village. While we were practicing for the VBS, a vase fell and the water spilled. We didn't know but the water reached to all the cords that controlled the sound system. As a result, one of the mixer or whatever it was burst into flame/smoke. In addition, we broke their water-heater. The water-heater is supposed to stay in the water at all times when it is connected to the outlet, but it was left on the shelf and it ended up making a fire. We saw it as a sign that God was going to bring fire to the village. As we prayed and as the village people worked on the sound system, everything was fine with the sound system! We believe that God resurrected the machine because it was clearly smoking and it smelled terrible. For the heater thing, we ended up buying them new ones. (:
• I need to love with everything I have. Love is choice. Love is selfless. At times it flows naturally from my heart, but other times it is extremely hard; however love is beautiful. The way the village people loved was a beautiful example of how Christ loves us (we ended up going to the same village as last year). They had no idea who we were, yet they gave us a home and fed us lunch and dinner everyday. They selflessly gave us rides when there was an emergency. One of our translators because very sick at night and our host drove her to the hospital in the middle of the night. Furthermore, when we were about to leave the village, we found out that we had the wrong keys to the van. We could have waited for someone to pick us up, but in three vehicles, they drove us all the way back to the Icthus center late at night! That's three hours of driving for them (back and forth). So generous!
• Nature glorifies God. The wind, the trees, the moon, the clouds all reflect God's glory. I was left awestruck looking at the moon at night. It was really cool when we were praying for this woman. All of a sudden, the wind started to become stronger and louder. I believe that was the Holy Spirit coming into the church and into the woman. (Read Psalm 96:11-13 above).
• I have a mission to pray. Jesus wants us to pray for our families, schools, states, nations, and for the world. We need to cry out for our nation because God listens when we do. "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16b). God is going to do big things when people begin to start praying because our God is able to do things.
• It feels good and right to do the will of God. There is a satisfaction is doing God's work. (Read Ephesians 2:10 from above).
• Five loaves and two fish - what we offered was our own version of five loaves and two fish. We could only offer our best and our best wasn't great, but God multiplied it and blessed others. All the glory and honor belongs to our God. God is good all the time!
• It is sooo important to daily read the Bible. Well this was emphasized at Grace Retreat, but it was repeated throughout the mission trip as well. Time to start my Bible Reading Plan...

I am so thankful for the opportunity God has given me to serve the people in Mexico. I am also thankful for our missions team that grew closer as the trip continued. God opened my eyes to begin to see each of their beautiful hearts as they served Him. God truly has a great future for them if they continue to seek Him with all their hearts. I have to continue to really cultivate what I learned from this trip into my life. I want to love no matter the circumstances just as Christ did. (:

After coming back from the trip, all I've really been doing is sleeping. Yesterday I fell asleep around eight and woke up at ten. The longest I have slept in forever! Now I need to start using my time wisely by not procrastinating on things I need to do. Yay! The conference is in two weeks and Jonathan's birthday party is this Saturday.