During July 8th through 10th, the El Monte SDA church’s youth choir team, Adonai’s Song in God’s Name, had the opportunity to visit our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ at the Vietnamese San Jose church. Our goal was to spread the word of God through music and testimonies to help motivate and initiate their youth English service.
Prior to the trip, I honestly didn’t give much thought to it. I was excited because it is the first time our praise team had ever done something like this: Traveling 352 miles away seemed nothing short of an adventure. I did not, however, think much about how we were given the honor of being the spark that could ignite an entire English service. I think in the beginning, some, if not most of us, thought our job was simply to go to San Jose, sing a couple of songs, meet a few people, have a lot of fun, and come back home in time for the next Sabbath in our church.
However now that I have been able to contemplate on our experience, I realize that this trip has truly been a blessing to our group, and to me, personally. In our church, we always say that we are a family, and rightly so because we have grown to love each other to the point where we can poke fun at one another, but this trip strengthened that truth for me. Somewhere in between practicing for our performances and laughing over dinner in the sweltering heat with these people, I realized how much I love them; God has blessed our youth with the close bonds that we developed. Sometimes, our youth in El Monte might take our unity and number for granted, but seeing how some churches might not have such a youth group as we do really makes me value the family that I have here at my home church.
In addition to our song performances, a few of our choir members also gave their testimonies. A parallel strand of truth ran through all the testimonies: There was a period when the person who was testifying did not feel connected to members of the church. For example, John Huynh gave a testimony about how things were for him when he first got converted and started attending church. After every Sabbath service, he would go home right away because no one ever invited him to potluck; He felt like he did not belong. As hard as it is for us to believe, there was a time in our church when we were not large in number and strong in bonds. Through this, God taught me about the importance of fellowship. It may sound like such a cliché to say in church: “The importance of fellowship,” but sometimes, we preach it yet do not practice it. Even though, members of the church should always go to church because they are seeking truth, but in addition to that I think fellowship within the church makes such a great impact as well (Not to say that church should simply be a “Hang out” place for friends). God wanted us to all come together under one canopy every Sabbath morning to give us a glimpse of what heaven would be like: A place where we can let our guard down, and just simply bask in the happiness of worshipping Him with brothers and sisters who are happy to do it too. To be able to learn from and support fellow church members is a wonderful development that does not happen overnight.
This trip also motivated me so much because God has shown me once again the beautiful truth that we are not alone; Everywhere around the world, there are people, young and old, who are willing to sacrifice so much to learn and share the Bible. My prayers and commendation goes to those of the San Jose church for having a vision and taking the initiative in constructing a brand new building dedicated to English speakers and youth. I would like to give special thanks to the San Jose church for investing in the youth, believing in us, and helps us believe that we can do great things for God. I cannot wait to see how God will work in their church, especially in their youth. Our pianist and choir teacher, Philip Pitcher said, “I think what impacted me the most was to know that our youth can go out and spread the word of God. So now, it’ll come even more naturally to us eventually.” Though God was using our group to lend a helping hand to the San Jose youth, He also had a plan in using this trip to teach our young people as well.
Kristi Huynh
