How I came to be content being a misfit in the Christian community

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak for the first night of Southern Adventist University's Student Week of Prayer. The theme was "Radically Chosen," and we were asked to share about our experiencing choosing to follow God. 

For me, choosing to follow God is intricately tied up with my sense of "identity." As a Mexican-American immigrant, I have spent most of my life hoping to "fit in" and building my sense of comfort off of how well I belonged. Nevertheless, I still have struggled with feelings of loneliness, isolation, and being miscast.

In the following message, I share how God taught me to be content being a misfit and why a little doubt and a little anger in your spirituality isn’t the end of the world when you’re being held by the most compassionate arms in the universe. (My message begins at 22:00)

The reason I walked barefoot on the promenade | Confessions of a Four Year Old

An experience that first sucked up my will to live has now became a positive turning point in my life that filled me with new appreciation for living. Loss has created a new person who is less worried about ego and pleasure, and more interested on community and love. I am now the kind of person who comes home for two weeks to struggle with hours of boredom for the sake of minutes with family.

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Thank you, friends

Your generosity and support totally made us smile! Hello there!

So this is a short blog post to publicly show our appreciation to all our friends and family who donated to Jacqueline and I's Birthday for a Cause on One Day's Wages. To be quite honest, we were both a bit apprehensive about our $1000 goal because we are nobodies. However, you, our friends and family, really came through in a big way and we were blessed to break our goal.

The final report is that Jacqueline and I were able to raise a total of $1059 for One Day's Wages Human Trafficking Fund. And to be honest, we only received $30 after the first four days. That is to say, our community helped us raise $1029  in four days! This leaves us totally speechless. We are humbled to be a part of such a wonderfully supportive community.

Thank you for those of you who showed us support and we are especially joyful to have seen so many give to our Birthday for a Cause.

We know Jesus, Lord of All, will reward you according to the measure of your generosity, yes and even more.

Blessings!

Christ is our unity

This last Saturday was a special one at the Christian Advent Center. It was a Russian-German Sabbath with a huge influx of local Russian Adventists coming to conduct the service. I am not sure on the details of the set up yet, but they come once a month and the whole service is conducted in Russian-German as opposed to English-German. The added complexity comes with the existence of some fellows like me who speak neither Deutsch or Russian. So at one point during Sabbath school, there was a Russian host being translated to German and English by two others. In my nineteen years of age, this has not been a regular sighting.

"If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret." (Photo by Beau Gilmore)

Having rarely experienced such a diverse setting for church, I greatly enjoyed to be part of the multicultural worship service. I also had the added privilege for this to be my first time in the back helping run the live stream, which kept my mind pretty full and focused throughout the day. However, I did not let the precious experience of being in that room pass me by. I cannot stress enough how refreshing this past Sabbath was from the many one-language services I have been to. It is nice to see brothers and sisters make efforts to worship together despite culture and/or language barriers recognizing that there is one faith we share. Moreover, we recognize this commonality supersedes the fact that we have to communicate through translators and body language and on last Sabbath, chose to worship together, eat together, fellowship together, tire out together, and close together.

Several Sabbath schools classes formed around the center.(Photo by me)

By day's end, nothing but joy remained as I broke Turkish bread, with Croatian, Russian, Ukrainian, American, German, Bulgarian, and Brazilian friends. Cultural barriers be gone, for Christ is our unity.