Orion's Faith Journey

Orion on smiles on his day of baptism!

Hello my name is Orion Welling. My journey really first started with my grandmother. She prayed with me to introduce me to Jesus and accept him as my savior. I was very young at the time so I didn’t fully understand what this entailed but I went along with it. I continued to go to church and Sunday school as a kid, really enjoying singing along to the songs, listening to the parables and stories we were taught. As I grew up, I had more of an interest in science and mathematics. Learning and calculating how things worked through physics which helped me understand more of the world worked around me. However, I started to question the validity of faith in a modern society. I had many questions about culture, technology and science and how it could work with religion and the Sunday school wasn't answering those questions. Like how the Big Bang event created the universe so quickly but in Genesis, it is stated that God created the universe in seven days, to me at the time it seemed like different time frames. So I never asked these questions for fear of standing out and being weird but also being ostracized by my friends and elders, therefore I kept quiet well into my teenage years.

This unknowingly at the time caused me to drift away from the church and I started to resent it as well. I stopped going to Sunday school because the lessons felt childish and repetitive, I yearned for more complex topics to actually have a dialogue about. So the resentment kept growing since no one answered the questions in the sermons either, thus my attendance at church stopped. The stresses from high school and mental illnesses also didn’t help any of this either, I became much angrier and cynical towards everything including my family. All of this came to a tipping point when some of my actions caused me to be involved with the authorities.It was a very dark time in my life, I felt very alone and very hopeless. I didn’t turn to Jesus at this time, in the back of my mind I knew I should have reached out in prayer but I felt incredibly unworthy of His time. But there was this particular moment in the garage that urged me back towards Him. It was an incredibly powerful and miraculous moment that had left me in tears. Which led me to spend that same night in prayer. Just confessing all of my sins and realizing I can’t solve anything and get out of my situation without Jesus. I still had to work on my outlook and attitude on life but everything after that started to work itself out one after another. The timing of everything was just perfect and it couldn’t be explained logically. It was Jesus working in my life, saving me even though I still felt very unworthy.

I knew I had to turn my life back to faith, I worked on my attitude and patience. Going back to church and trying to be engaged through sermons, and I’ve tried to sing more but I’m still reserved about that. I’ve been trying to take steps to reintegrate faith back into my life with plans to return to Sunday school, helping out during service, and getting into a life group (but that one is gonna take a little more time). My mom, grandmother, and grandfather have really helped me through this, sticking by my side no matter what happened and constantly reminding me that Jesus is in my corner supporting me too. My stepfather also offered lots of advice and solace that helped me feel less alone.

At first I couldn’t find a favorite verse as I wanted one that would give me strength to continue but also resonated with my story. The song Amazing grace fit really well thus leading on a search for passages about redemption. I stumbled across Jeremiah 29 verse 11-14. “11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.[a] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” These verses really help me overcome my feelings of unworthiness through this time, knowing that God will have a good plan for me and that He will help me as long as I come back to Him.

Izabella Pun's Testimony

Meet Izabella Pun, one of our teens who got baptized last week! You may ask, what is a teen’s journey of knowing Jesus like and what compels them to want to get baptized? Read on to find out!

---

“I was supposed to talk about my life before accepting Jesus, and if I’m being honest, I was stumped. I grew up believing and knowing Jesus. For around the first eleven years of my life, I’ve been what I would call a ‘faithful Christian’. Been to church, and never missed a Sunday unless I or one of my family members were sick. Every time I went to Sunday school or Agapeland, I would always give my ‘churchly answers’. Which were always right, but I really never understood them. I remembered memory verses, but never took them to heart. As most people say, I thought of church as a job. God was a side-job, that I never really understood or took the time to understand. During school, I would play the cello for our choir since my school is catholic. I treated that as a job.  Everything Jesus or God related, was like homework, something that was just to get done. When I was at school and had knowledge of most religious questions, since no one else really went to church on Sunday, I was known as the “holiest” person. People thought I was even holier because I always helped play the cello in the choir for masses and liturgies. But in fact, I wasn’t. I had a heart like a non-Christian. I knew him, but I didn’t apply him to my life. Most of my decisions were influenced by my parents. Pastor Adriel said to not make any negative statements about anyone and to try to avoid that during our testimony, but most of us know that Asian moms usually influence our decisions and choices more often because they’re all powerhouses and spirited people. 

I remember how there was one time in my life when I felt the Holy Spirit. Not specifically a time, but more like many tiny moments in my life that changed my worldview and helped me dive deeper into Christ. One of those moments was when I was in grade seven. I had a really good teacher, Mr. Diky. He was one of the most  Christlike teachers at basil, since most of our teachers weren’t even Catholic at a catholic school, or Christian.  But I could see Mr. Diky was very passionate about teaching us religion. We always joked about him, saying he talks too much, and that it ran down his family because Sam his son talked a lot too. Most of the people in our class didn’t care about religion that much, and neither did I. I saw it as a job. Until one day Mr. Diky put a video on. I don’t remember much from that video, but one saying stuck with me. “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Quoted by St. Augustine. I don’t really know why it stuck with me, it just always did. I’ve had many struggles during my junior high years, and it’s never gotten better, but it’s my mindset that keeps me going and views the world differently. For all the times I’ve been struggling, I’ve always turned from God. I blamed everything on him. My faith was weak and challenged, and I always tested God. I would question everything, and never dug deeper. That quote assisted me to understand better. Faith is believing in something you can’t see. We can’t see God, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there. We can’t see air, but we know it’s in front of us. The second thing that helped me really accept Jesus as my saviour was a movie I watched with my mom and dad. It was called Frank vs. God. It talked about a guy losing everything he had, and was trying to sue God. Everyone that knew God was invited to court. Monks, Elders of First Nations, Priests, Pastors, Rabbis, and more. When Frank, the guy suing, was interviewing the Priest, he asked a very challenging question. A question which we always ask in our daily lives. Why do bad things happen to good people? The priest replied with this: “I do not really know. When I ask for strength, I am faced with difficulties to overcome. When I ask for wisdom, I am faced with problems to solve. When I ask for love, I am surrounded by suffering lives.” Every single time I asked God for something, he’s never given me it right away, or the way I want it to be given to me. He makes me wait, and he sends it in the least expected way. Most of the time I ask God for something and don’t receive anything, I lose faith. When I finally started realizing everything God does is perfect, just, and right, I decided to finally let go. Leaving my whole life to him was what I was supposed to do in the first place, He just wants us to realize it ourselves. 

After I finally realized God was with me my whole life, and that I should have never doubted him, is when I found a new Worldview. Now when I examine everything, I realize that life could be much different from all of this. God didn’t have to send Jesus to save our sins, yet he did. Now everytime I see a beautiful sight while hiking, or just feel joy, I know that we wouldn’t have that without God. He will always be for me, and never against me. My whole attitude hasn’t entirely changed, but it still feels like lots are different. Every day while I’m laying on my bed and staring at the roof, I pray. I just talk to God and tell him how I’m feeling. I know He won’t judge, and that he’s always there for me. I want to be baptized today because I want to show that I have a new life in Christ. The communion bread and wine would be good too since I’ve always been envious of my parents who would eat their communion, and I would try to eat it yet they never let me. Another part of getting baptized is to represent my love for God, like getting married and receiving rings to symbolize your love for your spouse. Baptism is a representation. To end off, one bible verse I really enjoy reading is Isaiah 40:31, which reads: ‘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.’ ”

Father’s Day Feature: Stephen

We asked our English Ministry Operation Team chairperson the wise Stephen Pun and dad to 2 teenagers if he could share some insights about fatherhood.

"Can't we just have a checklist on what to do?" This is probably one question all fathers would ask at least once on their fatherhood journey. Looking back, being a father is much more than what to do and is way messier for me. It is about relationships - relationships with our children, with our spouses, and with God. After asking and listening to my children and wife about this topic, our conversations converge back to our identities and the importance of knowing we are beloved. With that in mind, three areas I would like to touch on briefly: seeing our children through the eyes of Jesus, knowing God through the lives of our children, and the relationship with our children.

In a culture where individualism and materialism dominate, our anxiety can easily spill over and permeate into our children’s lives. We know in our Christian minds that our identity does not build upon what comes out of our hands, but we intentionally, or unintentionally, place different expectations upon our children. We shift their focus from being the chosen ones (cf. Col 3:12) to what they can do or how well they perform. The continuous comparison then occurs between our children and others over their grade, performance, character and appearance. In doing so, we move them away from who they suppose to be in Jesus’ eyes and push them to be defined by the world.

Waiting and listening can be deemed as passive and unproductive in our society, but it is through these ways we get to know our children and our God. His work takes place in adults, but it is also found in the lives of our children. Learning to wait and listen together to God draws us together as a family. It strengthens our faith as we learn and see how His hands work in the lives of our children. It helps us to trust and place our children in the hands of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 19:14) with love beyond what we can fathom. Hence, we need to learn to wait and listen together with our children in the presence of God.

Lastly, the relationship with our children can be, and should be, filled with fun. Remember the times when we longed to simply spend time with our fathers, to be listened to by them? The same principle applies to our children. We all need to set aside quality time for our children and spouses, and listen to and embrace them (cf. Lk 15:20). Allowing them to be loved as who they are, not what they can do or how they can perform. Being present to them means without the noise and distraction, away from our worries of the world. Setting aside what we want and simply doing something they want and enjoy.

A wise person once said that the best gift fathers could give to their children is loving their mothers. This is a beautiful gift that demonstrates and teaches none other than to live in love, which comes from God (cf. 1 Jn 4:12; Eph 5:25). Parenting children is about how we, fathers, live as the children of God (Jn 1:12) despite our messiness. Our children will see a glimpse of His glory and experience His love through our lives by His grace.

Lord, we thank you for Your greatness and the indescribable joy of being fathers in Your care. We thank you for the abundance of grace we have received in Christ Jesus, as we purpose to be faithful and loving in our family relationships and in service to others. Amen.

Father's Day Feature: Caleb Lok

In light of Father’s Day in a couple of week we asked Caleb to share a little bit about his dad, the legacy he left and what he has learned from him:

My Dad was a man of God. He passed away in March this year unexpectedly due to complication from surgery. It felt bittersweet, but with Father’s Day coming up I reflect on the sweet things that he left for me as his son. Here are 3 things.

1.Throughout his life, he modelled the importance and discipline of serving God. From as young as I can remember, many Sundays he would be involved in worship leading, translating and church leadership

roles. As I became older, he continued being active and expanded his servanthood to short term missions and become an elder in the church. I’ve heard from many people he was always joyful.

2. My dad was a businessman and that’s where I got my entrepreneur spirit from. As I went on my own journey with business, the ebbs and flows would always lead me to sharing or asking my dad for advice during dire times. I always hoped he would give me something profound through his experience and wisdom. He always did. And it was simple. Just Pray. Give Everything to God because everything is in Gods’ hands. In this world where the main goal of a business is to maximize profits and prosper

financially, my dad encouraged me to run one that honours God, one that is entrusted in God’s hand, and whatever God did with it, I was to give Thanks and praise. Soon enough, I realized that it wasn’t just the business that he wanted me to do these things but everything in life I was to do these things.

3. Lastly, my dad always worshiped God in humility. I’ve served in worship teams for many years and have enjoyed songs that can be emotional, uplifting, majestic, and catchy. As my dad retired and moved to

Canada, he had to learn newer songs that he’s never heard of, but would always share with me the ones’ that described how big and great God is and the depth of how amazing and in awe we should be of Him. His focus was on the meaning of the lyrics more than the music and he always appreciated the one’s that described God’s attributes.

I deeply miss my dad as I wish I had more time with him. However, I know what is better is the fact that he is with our Heavenly Father, and he gets to worship Him having the full experience of Gods greatness and goodness. My dad set out his footprints in the sand for me to follow, so I can walk along with Jesus as he did and when my time comes, I look forward to seeing him again in heaven.

Why Serve our Community & Church Family?

Put me in Coach! Why Serve our Church Family??

Romans 7:6

But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

As Christ-followers and a new creation, we have been set free from the chain of sin in our hearts and mind. This freedom is not a self-centred choice to do whatever we want and how we want, but it is a freedom to live abundantly in the Spirit and in God's word. It's a freedom that aligns our hearts and minds to God's desires and His command and blessings for our lives.

Our service in the church and in our community also flows out of this freedom. We are called to serve and not just "volunteer" because, at the heart of it, our service is a response and obedience to what our Lord Jesus Christ commands us, "To love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our minds," and, "to love our neighbours as ourselves." We serve not because we want to feel good about doing good but because God has already freed us from such self-centred motives. We serve joyfully because we already are experiencing the overflowing delight of being God's children.

So, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, how are you living out your freedom in Christ today? Are you living out of the abundant life that is in Him? If so, where are you exercising your service to God and for His kingdom? Jesus has instituted the church to be a place where we serve together as one body, and the Holy Spirit has given each of us unique giftings to add to it. Let's not waste our time standing on the sideline and take a step of faith into a ministry that God is calling you to be in. As you are in Christ, so should your motives. So serve freely, and serve faithfully.

-Pastor Calvin

EMOT Mother's Day Feature: Ren

We would like to introduce you to our English Ministry Operational Team (EMOT): Pastor Randy (lead), Pastor Calvin (assistant), Pastor Adriel (youth), Stephen Pun (chairperson), James Pan (worship deacon), Renee Tung (outreach deacon), Ashley (outreach deacon) and Glenna (care deacon). The EMOT is here to serve our English congregation church family! We thought it would be fun to ask the team about their moms leading up to Mothers Day. Meet Ren and her mom! 😍

*What was your relationship like with your mom growing up and what is your relationship like?*
Definitely as time goes on we are able to develop a deeper friendship. One thing that doesn’t change is how she always knows what I need before I ask

*What is something she always says?*
Something she always says to me recently? In order of frequency
1. Comb your hair
2. No, you can’t leave Aubree (dog) with me while you work/travel
3. It’s better to be kind than to be right

*What is your favourite memory with your mom?*
Not sure about favourite.. but she created her own “summer school” program and got each of us to grade each other’s work .. prime example of work smarter not harder

*What is something your mom did/does that you would love to emulate with your own family?*
Resilience and Joy! Her steadfastness in Gods greater purpose and truly living out what joy and freedom there is in trusting in His plan through the thick and thin.

*What would you like to say to her?*
What if Aubree doesn’t sleep on your bed, can she stay with you then??

*Now that you’re on your own, what do you appreciate most about your mom?*
Am I really on my own yet though - I’m confident on the EMOT team I still get the most home cooked meals by mom! 😁