Top 10 GYC 2010 Moments

Jan 5, 2011 | Faith

This post is dedicated to those who in one way or another shared these moments with me.

10. Presence of older generations

There was a significant presence of older generation at this GYC, especially leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist church. I felt like I was seeing a bit more of Malachi 4:6 – “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers…”

9. Presence of old friends

While reunions at GYC are old stories, I was very pleasantly surprised to bump into people I knew from 5, 6, 7 years ago. I thought I’d never see them again.

8. ANEW booth

I thought it was amazing that people actually stopped by our simple booth and we actually met important contacts, including someone who works at UPenn, incoming students to Penn State, current students in Virginia, etc. Considering that we didn’t even have anything that says “Campus Ministry” on our banner, I think those were definitely divine appointments.

7. Strategic Plan

Amy’s 2nd seminar was titled “Strategic Plan: Is God Calling You?”, talking about how we can discern God’s calling concerning our life work and the questions that we can ask ourselves to evaluate the distinct gifts that God has granted. Elder Skeete went over some of these principles during CAMPUS MTP about three years ago, and it was very enlightening. As I’m coming into the mid-life of my PhD program, I’ve started an on-going conversation with God about the next step, what would I do, where would I be, and who would I be. I realize that I need to go over those questions again, which will assuredly provide more clarity. This will be an exciting process.

6. Being prayed for

I got the opportunity to speak to Mrs. Kathy Irizarry to listen to her thoughts on some potential future plans. The content of the conversation is not something that I had not gone over in my head before, but it was nice to talk it over with someone who’s older. At the end, she reached over to lay her hands on mine and asked to pray for me. I wasn’t struggling, I wasn’t in any turmoil, and I wasn’t being convicted of any particular thing, but as soon as she started praying I began to cry. And I couldn’t stop.

I was so touched by her gesture, even though it was a very simple one. It’s been a while since an older woman offered to pray for me, and I really appreciated this little encounter.

5. Something Is Happening – ANEW

As Amy interviewed David, Hillary, and Eunice during the Something Is Happening session, my heart was stirred once more by the importance of campus ministry. When David said that we were just a bunch of broke college students trying to make a difference on campus, I was struck by the magnitude of our ministry – it’s so small, yet big, but small, but big, all at the same time. Here we are, just a bunch of nobodies who oftentimes don’t know what we’re doing, yet something is truly happening. We’re like as close to the dirt as a grassroots movement can be. In terms of numbers, our campus ministry groups mostly consist of 20 students or less at each school. ANEW’s conference attendees are an order of magnitude less than GYC’s. Yet none of these really mattered. Each committed student at a secular campus is a miracle in itself, and God is awakening more and more each day.

But there’s another reason why I was stirred by this moment. In the context of the youth movement in the Seventh-day Adventist church, ANEW and campus ministry in general have a niche that is very specific and of great importance, simply because we have no back ups. There is no back up to ANEW, or CAMPUS, or STRIDE’s ministry. If not us, the students on campus, who else is going to do campus ministry? The forty- or fifty-somethings may dream, plan, and talk about campus ministry, but it is the late teenagers and the twenty-somethings who can in actuality execute the plan to completion. Our feet are on the mission field, literally, and campus ministry simply must be done.

4. End of David Asscherick’s message

Pastor Asscherick’s conclusion completed my “No Turning Back” experience. While I can say “No Turning Back” in a courageous way, like a soldier who’s committed to the general until death, I know too well that this commitment can wane and fail. Saying the same phrase to a father, however, is a different story. Why would you turn away from your father? It’s unthinkable, just as it is unthinkable to turn back from our earthly father.

When I walk hand in hand with my Father, why, of course I would never turn back. Of course it doesn’t matter if anyone wouldn’t join me or if I had to leave the world behind. My Father loves me and I love Him, and that’s it. It’s the love of God that constrains me to serve Him as a Master. So I said, I have decided to follow You, Father, and I don’t ever want to turn back.

3. Micah Christian Ramos

Micah is one funny boy. Natasha and I were babysitting the Ramos babies while their parents had lunch with some of the GYC leaders and GC officials. At some point, Micah decided to pull his dress-pants down and totally just ran out into the living room with his underwear showing where they had the meeting. Yes, into the gathering of the leaders of the Generation of Youth for Christ movement, the President of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and other church leaders, all with a grin on his face, cracking himself up as I ran after him and brought him back to the play room, myself cracking up. Definitely one of the most memorable moments of GYC.

2. Seeing Thando preach

Watching Thando preach with power morning by morning was literally beholding a miracle. When I met Thando for the first time in Boston, she was the quietest, most soft spoken girl I had even known. She was so shy and I couldn’t hear her most of the time. But God has given her a voice to preach the Gospel to the entire world. The fact that she was standing there bears witness that God can liberate us from ourselves.

1. ANEW New Year’s Eve Gathering

Students from the ANEW network gathered together for a worship service during New Year’s Eve to spend time in fellowship, singing, and testimonies. I don’t know if I can accurately describe what happened in words. It was simply powerful. People kept coming, whether they were students in the network or other GYC attendees. No one really knew about this event except the ones in the ANEW network, but the room was almost filled. What made it powerful, though, were the testimonies from the students. We had asked a few to share, but then we opened the floor for anyone to share their stories. And the testimonies kept coming, both from students we know and those we just met. All of us were surprised at how many testimonies there were. The word that ringed in my head during the whole thing was “awakening”. It was like seeing student after student waking up to realize God’s purpose of placing them on campus. For some it took one ANEW conference, for other it took years. It felt refreshing, organic, and real.

We have a vision of actualizing “A great awakening of secular campuses that stand ready for the return of Christ”, and I think on December 31, 2010, 9:00 – 10:30 PM, in Room 325 of the Baltimore Convention Center, we witnessed some evidence of the start of this awakening.

This Story Called Life

Nov 2, 2010 | Life Reflections

If life is a journey, then each of us is a lonesome traveler. Not that we travel alone from start to finish, but that our path is distinctly our own. No one else starts at the same exact point as we do, no one else ends at the same point as we do. No one else takes the same turns, U-turns, detours, and wrong turns. But at every point, though, our path overlaps and intersects with others’. We meet other travelers on the way, some going the same way, some going other ways. Sometimes we get to travel together with people for a long period of time. Naturally these people would be going in the same direction as we do.

At those intersections or overlapping lines, there’s this thing called influence that we exert upon each other. In one way or another, we wouldn’t be the same again after those interactions. Some may even influence the next steps and turns that we would take, whether we are conscious of it or not.

What’s more fascinating is that there are travelers whose paths we never intersect, yet the twists and turns in their paths greatly influence ours. These people may live in a different time and place than us. Great historical characters who lived inspiring lives are prime examples of this group of people.

What got me thinking recently, however, are not these obviously influential people who are far away from me. I thought about the people who are closer, whose stories I assumed I know but in reality, I actually don’t. I was thinking specifically about my parents. We are much attached to our parents, of course, and we know them well. Yet, although our paths overlap very closely for a very long amount of time, when I start to think about what they have gone through in their lives, I realize that I have no idea what it is like to walk on their paths. They too once were like me, being in my age, making decisions as I do. What thoughts did they have then? The persons that they became of course were in turn, influenced by their parents, my grandparents.

My father used to tell his kids stories about his younger years. I wouldn’t get tired of him telling the same stories over and over again. He would tell us what his family was like, what he did when he was in his twenties, how he left his hometown to go to Jakarta with very little money to make something out of himself. He made crazy, risky, and bold decisions that turned out to be right, and he made some others that turned out to be wrong. Life was rough and definitely not smooth-sailing. At times he came across scams and people who tricked him, and in the end he would just have to take the hit. When I was little, though, hearing these stories over dinner, I would always have this surreal feeling – I can’t believe the person who’s telling the story and the person whose story is being told is the same person. But yet it is.

As I grew older, certain parts of the stories were explained in more details and I got a clearer picture of my family history and heritage, some related to the historical context of the country. It gave me more insights to understand the person-hood of my father more, and how those things could influence him. Yet even with all of this combined, I still don’t know what it means to experience all the things that he did. To extend it even further, he would tell me stories of my grandfather whom I never met, and they would sound like stories in a history book – distant and grand. My grandfather’s path influenced my father’s path, which in turn influences mine. And you can just keep going.

This is simply what happens in life, and it’s quite amusing just being marveled by the way things are. The web of humanity – there is not one person on earth who knows how we all are interconnected. Things like Facebook give us a snapshot of how intricate the part of the web that we’re in is, but it’s still not the full story. I long for that day (or the thousand years) when we will at last know and have all of these explained to us.

The Peculiarity of Joy

Oct 21, 2010 | Life Reflections

This thought is by no means original to me, but recent events have brought this back to mind. In the human experience, pain and suffering are those that have a leveling effect on (pretty much) every human being on the planet. What I mean by a leveling effect is the capacity of every individual to somehow relate to each other on similar grounds.

When it comes to the evil things that happen in life, even though essentially we can never fully understand another’s pain, we can imagine similar things happening to us and how terrible it is to be in the same situation. For example, when a person cuts his finger, even though I cannot truly experience his pain at the moment, I can still at the very least understand the concept of getting a cut and say, “Ouch! That hurts!” When someone is betrayed, lost a loved one, becomes a victim of violence or crime, we know that we would feel almost exactly as that person feels if the same thing happens to us. We see those who suffer from natural disasters and calamities, and we know to say in our hearts, yes, it could very well happen to me too, prompting us to reach out to them. Indeed, sympathy and empathy are noble gifts to humanity.

I wonder, though, if there is something equivalent to sympathy when it comes to joy. What would be the tool for me to understand when someone is overjoyed because he has fulfilled his life dreams? It would be much easier if his life dreams overlap with the things I like, the values I hold. But if not, it would be close to impossible for me to feel a fraction of the happiness that he’s experiencing. It seems to me that we are much more limited in trying to put ourselves in another’s shoes when it comes to joy and happiness, and I think it’s because there’s much individuality in joy and what can make an individual joyful.

What makes a person happy, thrilled, and fulfilled is distinctly different than the next person. One person likes to mix all his food together, another person likes them all separate. One loves pouring over books, another one loves building things. If a friend loves and gets so much joy out of picking up pebbles, he’d still be my friend, but it’d be hard for me to relate. The things that he enjoys may actually be painful for me. Basically the point is, the things that interest a person, things that can make his face glow when speaking, his passion, life goals, and dreams, define who he is. A person’s idiosyncrasies are part of what makes him him; they make that person weird, quirky, unique, special, and peculiar. Dealing and embracing each other’s quirks and differences is partly what makes life quite amusing.

As hard as it is to relate to people’s joy due to dissimilar interests, what a marvelous thing it is to find company in which we share the same weird things that thrill our hearts. You get excited over the same things, your conversations are energizing, and when one shares an experience, the other can say “Yeaa, I totally know what you’re talking about!!” as opposed to “Huh..? Okay…” There’s resonance, you’re at the same wavelength, your hearts are beating at the same beat. When that happens, it’s definitely worth it to keep those people around for life.

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