My Faith
My journey to God has been a long and continuing one. Of my background, to begin with, my family is not Christian not one in the 5 or 6 family units that I know.
Born in 1986 in ShenZhen, China (right next HK), I moved with my mom to Vancouver as a Made in China export just before the age of 7. In China my dad was an officer in a governmental ministry and my mom was a marketing executive in an oil company. Things were smooth, but in moving to Canada we suffered from the sick currency exchange and a non-recognition of work experience. Because of this, dad worked manual labour jobs to get us by while mom learned English and accounting.
With a dim future in Canada, dad went back to China with entrepreneurial hopes. As he wound down in the shower after a long day something went awry. The then-used water-heating gas tank in the bathroom began to leak and leak and leak until enough was concentrated to poison and damage his brain, leaving him barely cognitive.
In despair my mom sought supernatural aid everywhere hopping from Buddhist temple to Buddhist temple. Yet out of tragedy God brought good: we ended up at a church. My mom told me years later that dad had proposed going to a church before but she had refused In this small and strange seedling of sorts God led my mom and I to church. Over the years to follow, my mom sent me to Sunday school with the view of church as an institution for bringing up well-behaved people (while she remained unenthusiastic overall).
Though there were sometimes extended periods of absence, I usually went often and with eagerness to learn curious to learn, for example, why the much celebrated Halloween is inappropriate in the Christian view. As a youngin making awkwardly brief excursions to English children™s Sunday school in a primarily old and Chinese church, I didn‘t make much of if beyond some curious learning.
From family tragedy to meagre Christian experience, however, God was laying the foundations for deeper growth readying me for more as I moved to the neighbouring city of Richmond at the end of grade 10. I was grounded enough to find a new church and somehow given courage enough to expose myself to much more beyond Sunday school: Sunday worship, fellowship, Vacation Bible School (VBS), youth camp, and corporate prayer. God continued to pave the way and bless me, matching and exceeding the initiative I took to invest in Him.
In this new place where I was vulnerably uncomfortable, a handful of people welcomed me and made me feel more at home. It wasn‘t too long before I could see the fellowship unity, overall maturity, and loving attitude as something markedly different from what I‘ve seen or come to expect of my peers. (I want to point out here that despite this, I knew and know still that Christians have many failings still.) Serving God in VBS brought me much joy and delight, especially to see the simple love and simple faith of children. Growing more and then coming to the summer youth camp I was struck with tears during worship, as God spoke to me through the unity, passion and devotion of otherwise normal people. “Here I am, Lord“ became words true to my heart and not a distant hymn lyric. I found myself able only to respond in one way as God called out to ask: “whom shall I send?“ It was then that I committed myself to a life following Christ.
God stirred me, taught me, brought me, showed me, involved me, and called me. This God I’ve learned of–previously impersonal–became a real and living God to me that gr. 10 summer. I wouldn’t know God if I didn’t turn to face Him. But it is God that first loved me; it is God that first pursued me.
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