Our Stories As Part of God's Story:

Multicultural Team Retreat
February 20, 2010
By Brian Johnson

We met about 8am at our house and all sat around the dinning room table with coffee and pastry. We prayed for the person to our left while standing and putting our hand on their shoulder. I prayed for my wife Kathy. I told her that I could still feel the presence of her mother Edna who came to live with us ten years ago after having a stroke. She died in April 2002, but her life was still an inspiration to us.

We then paired-off into couples, Pastor Alfredo and I, to talk about our “baggage” or character defects. One of my defects is procrastination and how I was trying with God’s help to deal with life in a timely manner. Pastor Alfredo talked about his troubles with living in a different country and culture and his struggles to adapt to his new country, America. It dawned on me that I was also struggling to adapt to my new “country” the country of dealing with life in a timely manner. So maybe we are all “strangers in a strange land”. Pastor Alfredo liked this analogy.

After this exercise we returned to the group to discuss Isaiah 61 which starts:
The Spirit of The Lord God is upon me, because the Lord
Has anointed me to bring good news to the suffering and
Afflicted…”

And Isaiah goes on to explain Israelites were down trodden and broken hearted and Isaiah prophesied that the people of Israel will be “given beauty for ashes and joy instead of mourning.” They will be given “everlasting joy.” I told the group that it seemed too good to be true and I was having a hard time believing and understanding “everlasting joy”.

Our last act was to lay hands on and to pray for those who wanted it. I said I wanted to be prayed for. It was a wonderful experience. After that we had lunch and the mini-retreat was over.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2010, we had our Kidz Konnection Day at Downey Chili’s! Thanks for your participation!  We are encouraged by  your willingness to help our students.

Newcomers, first-time visitors, and members alike all found out just how easy it is to donate to Kidz Konnection.

Did you miss it? Not to worry – we will be holding another event soon. Come and join us next time.  Spend an afternoon with your family or  with your friends.  Lets make a difference!.

And if for no other reason than pure curiosity,

Aren’t you wondering where God will take Kidz Konnection?  visit the program during the week.

“Kidz Konnection has change my life” – Abdul 

‘Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  1 John 4: 11-12:

In my school days, I played on a collegiate soccer team where you were expected to “sacrifice your body” for the good of the team. I was playing as a left forward. During a game, a fellow team mate kicked a high long pass.I went after the pass as fast as I could down the left line. I caught the ball and before I had time to think a defender had swept me off.  I was thrown into the air and off the sideline.  I was severely injured and taken out of the game by the coaching staff. Later, when my body had cooled off, I was in terrible pain and in complete shock. My injury was so severe that I had physical therapy for over 9 months.

Pain plays an important part in our lives even if don’t want it. But when the pain is so severe our body goes into shock.   This shock or “numbness” has interrupted the unity of the body.  Pain is also important to pay attention to in the spiritual reality.

There are cries of pain from the Body of Christ. The unemployed, the divorced, the widowed, the bedridden, the sick, the lonely, the grieving, and the aged have all experience pain. What do we do when we hear those cries? Do we ignore them? Or, like physical pain in the body, are we to pay attention to those cries, and help bring healing to the Body?

The Bible is clear. We are to bear one another’s burdens. That’s a part of what it means for us to be a Community of faith. We are to comfort others as Christ has given comfort to us. Your hard time becomes my hard time. We join hands in the journey. When you suffer, I suffer. But we do it together. We share it together. And we do it, not so much in our wisdom or our words, but in our availability, our understanding, and through our presence.

We are called to bear one another’s burdens. To mourn with those who mourn. To be a follower of Jesus means to come alongside people who are hurting and find ways to help them walk even through the valley of the shadow of death. We are called to do this.

The truth of the matter is there is very little we can do or say to “fix” someone’s problems or change the circumstances that have caused his or her suffering. But there ARE specific things we can do that will help them survive the pain.

So how can we help a hurting friend?

**Be present**

I sometimes visit people in Los Ranchos Rehabilitation Center and wonder:
What can I say right now? What am I supposed to do to help take their pain away or at least ease their suffering?

After years of thinking about that I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no words for that. You can’t reverse what has happened in their life. You’re not going to have the magic words. In fact, what I’ve found is that the most significant thing you can do to bring healing in their lives is not to say anything at all, but just to be there. Just to be present in the room with folks who are hurting is an act of grace. They remember that. Very often they do not want you to say anything other than: “I care about you. I love you. I’m hurting for you. I’m crying with you.” “I’m praying for you” And that’s all we can do!

Remember, we can’t fix their problem. We’re not Jesus . God is the healer. God brings the restoration to their lives. But we can be His hands of comfort and encouragement. When God wants to hug someone, He always sends one of his followers to put His arms around them.

The apostle Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (1 Corinthians 1.3-4).

Sometimes God intervenes with direct miracles, providences, or giving supernatural strength to those in need. But for the most part, He relies on us His hands and feet, His chosen people here at FPC, to do His work in the world. We love each other, work for healing, and suffer with those who suffer.

The next time you find yourself in a hard place, searching for comfort, and wondering where God is, Jesus may invite you to look around your church family and find His warm embrace here with us at FPC “your church family.” The next time you see a friend, a brother or sister who is suffering, Jesus may just invite you to be the warm embrace!

We comfort each other with the comfort we have received in Christ and I’m 100% sure God has place a name in your heart like He did in mine. Let’s listen to His voice and when we do comfort someone, we become the Body of Christ and He receives the glory!

George

DYM

God continues to do amazing things in our congregation. Last Sunday we had a very special worship service. Rev. Steve Yamaguchi shared with us a very interesting perspective about Moses and Moses’ call. In a nutshell, I can say that his main point was: God chose Moses to be a bridge builder in spite of his weakness and limitations. He had cultural and language barriers. He was a Hebrew raised as Egyptian; he was a Hebrew who probably did not know how to speak to his own people in their own language, but he was a man chosen by God to lead his people out the oppression of Egypt into the abundance of God’s plans and purposes.

So, what language does God speak? God speaks the language of Grace, pure grace to offer freedom of the oppression of this world. That grace often times is offer thru people who is in the process of becoming what God intended them to be. In first Presbyterian Church of Downey we are in the sabbatical process. We are learning a lot, but we are also discovering our deep need to depend upon the Lord and to celebrate and continue to grow in the language of God.

You can see “the language of God” in our worship planning review. We are more open to be relaxed and to let the Holy Spirit “run” our worship services. You can see that in our staff meeting, we met at Chili’s restaurant yesterday to help with our fundraising day for Kidz Konnection. We openly talked about our weaknesses and how we can support and assist one another.

Where else can we see the language of God in our church? We can see that language of grace when we see the excitement of the small groups for Lenten series. We have three small groups during the week. We also can see this wonderful language in the support that we offer to one another across our congregation. Last Sunday while visiting our brother Richard Meharg at the hospital, I experienced an extraordinary multicultural moment. When I got there for the visit, our faithful sister Egbe was there before me, and after greeting one another we engaged in a very fraternal and joyful conversation. At one point in our conversation I realized that in that room we had three different cultures with three different languages (English, French and Spanish) and three different ages and experiences in life, but at the same time I was amazed that we were totally bonded by the language of grace that comes from the extraordinary heart of our God.

So, what language do you speak? Let’s keep speaking God’s language!

Alfredo Delgado

With each flyer presented at Chili’s on

!!!! Kidz Konnection DAY !!!!

Chili’s will donate 15% of the sales to our program.

Kidz Konnection DAY is tomorrow: 

Tuesday March 2, 2010 from 11:00 am to 11:00 pm at

 Downey Chili’s- 12030 Lakewood Blvd. Downey, CA 90242

 Call Chili’s at 562-803-9151 or George at 323-377-7408 

We look forward to seeing you here. Pepper in Some Fu!

Click below to download the flyer

kidconnection 

Here is a preview of what the youth has been working on!

ELEKTUS INTRO

It doesn’t take a mega church to make a mega difference!  Elektus Youth has been sponsoring 2 wonderful kids from Africa for the past 3 months.  We are supporting the work that Compassion Ministries does raising $72 dollars per month.  The money raised is sent to our kids in Tanzania.  We are consistently finding creative and incredibly encouraging ways to reach out to our children thousands of miles away.   Last, month we all wrote letters to our sponsor kids; this week we got our first letters from Africa. Awesome!

At Elektus, we often find it is the David’s of the world, small yet passionate, that slays the giants of poverty and despair–one small positive action at a time!  These African Children inspire us to keep looking for more creative ways to share our Mission to know Christ and making Him Known. 

This year is no different.  Our youth group took the Change for Africa challenge and provided jars for the entire church to donate. The teens then took time and care decorating their jars and have been helping raise support one coin at a time! 

Want to get involved?  We will happily mail you information and sign u up for a Africa Change Jar. 

Just email me at fpc.youth@verizon net and let us know how if you are interested in helping out.  In your email please state your name, address and a phone number!  Also, remember, you can stop by my office and donate in our youth African Change Jar.

George

DYM

                       JIMMY                                                                                                                                                                      ANTHONY

Pastor Candie leaves today-

Here at FPC we hope and pray that the Sabbatical already underway will significantly shape Pastor’s Candie’s life and also the community of believers here at Downey. We ask God for the Sabbatical to be meaningful and to guide us through this time of discoveries.  We also pray for the things we don’t expect to find—the things that will find us before we even see them, we ask God for patience.

But as most good road trips, they are more meaningful when traveling with others. We are going along with you Pastor Candie in your Sabbatical because as a community of faith the sabbatical has as much to do with our growth as it has to do with your own personal discovery. In that same spirit, we know full well that what happens on God’s road will shape our community of faith, too.

We look forward to reading your dad’s journey as a P.O.W and the opportunity you had to reconnect with your past since your dad traveled such suffering roads.

As much as we look forward to your sabbatical beginning, we also look forward to its end, or more specifically, our reunion and everything that we will be able to share. Not only we’ll be anxious to share with you what found us, we will be anxious to hear what found you while you were away—what you learned?, what you discovered about your dad?

The great Christian, road-tripper Paul, closes his first letter to the church at Corinth this way: “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14).

Until we see each other in May…you will remain in our prayers and hearts

-George

DYM

A few months ago, our confirmation class started studying the Experiencing God book and still is. We began our time together by looking at ways that we have experienced God’s presence in our lives. There was an amazingly wide variety of ways that God has touched the lives of students in that room. It would be incredible to see how God has touched the lives of everyone who reads and comments on this blog.
A common misleading notion about church is that we go to church to somehow “pay our dues” “due the church thing” “I showed up, that counts” or get a footprint on God’s walk of fame sidewalk. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our primary reason for giving God worship is because God deserves it. Our creator and the Lord of the universe wants us to gather for worship at least on Sunday Morning. But God makes sure that we get something out of it too! In fact, we get more out of this relationship than anyone else.
In worship, we get a chance to have an encounter with our Creator! That experience transforms our perception on life. I know from personal experience how easy it is to miss what God is doing in our lives. Even now, I sometimes don’t see it but I know a year from now I will be able to see God’s fingerprints in my life. All we have to do is be focused on other things to miss His mighty works. I asked our youth group to write in their journals how they experienced God’s love and provision because as such a young age would be easy to miss if they weren’t looking for them.
Right now I’m sitting in a hotel desk near Yosemite reading scripture (the guys are knocked out!) but also looking at amazing paintings on the wall. I’m enjoying them and appreciate them, but I just realized that I have no idea who painted any of them. There’s a name written on each one in plain view, but until I looked for it, I didn’t even notice it.
The same thing happens in our lives. God’s signature is all over them, but unless we’re looking, we won’t see it. Coming to Sunday worship or the upcoming Lenten Series is a great way to get focused on God. Knowing that God is there and cares enough about each of us to touch our lives makes everything easier and gives us a new outlook on the difficult things in life.
I hope that you will decided to focus more and more on God and as you do, my prayer for  you – and me too – is that we’ll all come into God’s presence more and more and as we do so, we’ll see the love and care that our God has for us. He is making a story out of us.
Looking for God’s Signature with You,
George

The Computer Lab at our Library is playing a very important role in providing learning support and services to all our multicultural students and adults alike. The more informed you about the Computer Skill Language Lab, the more you will benefit from using its resources. The Computer Lab is open for students daily from 9am-5pm.  We are teaching English, Korean and in the near future Spanish. We have computer programs and software in the Lab for students’ use. These include computer applications in English grammar, spelling, reading, and listening. We also have software and applications in Korean, to name just a few. In addition, there’s a collection of books for viewing on various topics from our courses.  If you’re interested in learning a new language, you’ll need to register in the office and George will set you up with an account.  An account you will need in order to continue your language skills.

Be sure to visit the Computer Lab frequently. The learning support, services, and resources which you’ll find in the Lab will certainly help you achieve your learning and knowledge goals. Be sure to ask any of our staff if you have questions about our courses, about our Computer Lab!

George

DYM