FAITH FOLLOWS SUMMER 2018 | ISSUE 2
SYDNEY New life, new journey, same God FAITH FOLLOWS
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EDITORIAL
If you’re reading this, then you’re reading the second issue of ‘Faith Follows’ Summer 2018 issue. Why did I make this magazine? Because I wanted to highlight all the interesting, bizarre and God miracles that are taking place in my life. With the issue of time-zone differences, I realize that I cannot catch up with everyone personally over the phone or over FaceTime. That’s why I created this magazine: to give people a more intimate account of my life journey here in Sydney, Australia. My goal is to eventually make this a published magazine but that’s a discussion for another time. Given my perfectionist spirit and nature, I take enormous joy and pride in making this magazine. I strive to tell the best stories possible with quality imagery and craftsmanship. I’m not a designer nor have
I studied design but I have spent countless hours pouring my heart and soul into this magazine to give you a glimpse of my story. I don’t write any of this to make myself look cool, quite the opposite. I truly care about your time and will only deliver the best. God has taken me on an interesting journey (to say the least) and I can’t help but share all the victories, low points and stories to help encourage you in whatever season and situation you find yourself in. As usual I will not hold anything back and you can always expect authenticity from me. My hope is that you connect with the stories I tell and how God is moving in my life and in turn, you can encourage others by seeing the change that is happening in your life.
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THIS IS R
How I learned to be broke an
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REAL LIFE
nd content at the same time...
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Trust. If I had to sum up this season of my life, it would be just that. I left the US about seven months ago which was a big faith step for me. What was even a bigger faith step in this season was to trust God with my finances. To someone looking in from the outside, my life is a hot mess. I’m broke, I’m relying on random provision from people, my parents and a bit of everyone in between. The wild thing about my whole predicament is that my work ethic is unreal. It’s unmatched. It’s obsessive. Yet I heard a voice from God that said not send out the 30 resumes I printed out my first week here. I obeyed this voice at first, but when the numbers in my bank account started to get smaller and smaller, my faith began to shrink. So I did what I wasn’t supposed to do and I applied to any job I could. To my chagrin, I received rejection left and right. It became something of a phenomenon. I would apply or send a
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resume out. I would even interview or do a ‘trial’ with a company and when it came time to follow up to see if I was going to be hired, to my surprise every employer passed on me. I would receive a resounding ‘no’ or my availability didn’t match with their needs. There’s something that happens with your self confidence when you receive that much rejection. It was embarrassing. I felt ashamed. I’m a grown man. I’m 26 years old I would tell myself. How come I can’t get a simple job and provide for myself ? I refused to seek any help because I felt like I put myself in this situation. I sold everything I had, left Los Angeles and moved to a foreign country. This was my fault. Why should I burden anyone, especially my parents with my troubles? Shortly after I found myself with less than $50 in my US Bank account and $1 in my Australian bank account. At this point I was hopeless. I was angry at God and sad at the very same time. I couldn’t come to terms
“Why would He bring me all the way here just to fail?”
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with the fact that God brought me all this way just to fail. What was the purpose in that? Why did He put me on this journey to come all the way around the world and have me go back home to nothing? I didn’t know how I would be paying for rent the following week or even groceries. Every single opportunity I had tried, I failed. Then one night I received a $500 gift from my friend. I had never received such generosity from someone that wasn’t directly related to me. I was beyond thankful and undeserving to the point where I refused to take it, not out of pride but of feeling unworthy. I took the money and used it to pay for my rent and groceries. Sadly $500 doesn’t travel very far in Australia 8
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and I found myself in late July not knowing how I was going to pay for my rent or tuition for the semester. I couldn’t help but see the perfect timing in all of it. I knew that I could get suspended from college if my tuition and fees weren’t paid on time and I could lose my student visa and be forced to leave the country. I had a return flight back to LA that I bought back in December to see my best friend Carlos get married. I thought I would get kicked out of school, I would lose my visa and be forced to go back home to Los Angeles where I had nothing but four or five boxes to my name. I wrestled with God for weeks. It didn’t seem right or fair that I gave up my whole life to do college again just to be kicked out and deported six months later.
Photography by Jared Thomas
The taste of failure didn’t set well with me. I eventually received an enormous blessing from the same friend who helped crowd source part of my tuition fees.
a common occurrence. I run to God because in my weakness and human exhaustion, He brings me peace. And that’s all the comfort I need.
Again, I felt undeserving and didn’t even want to check my bank account because I felt wrong receiving the money. But that’s the beauty of grace. It’s undeserving yet we’re given it free of charge. I wish I could tell you its been rosy and that I’m living happily ever after, but I’m not. I have no job prospects. Every search leads to a dead end. And every time I don’t know what else to do or where to turn to, I go to God. Our study room has been my quiet place where I listen to worship music, pray, cry (a lot) and talk to God. I guess its become
I’m content in this season because I have come to rely on God more than anything else. That my identity doesn’t draw from a number in my bank account, but my identity lies in God and in Christ. I’m content in not knowing the reason behind this season. I’m happy knowing that God is taking care of every need I have. I’m thankful for this season and am expectant to see what God does next.
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Pictured left to right: Jared (Front), Ann-Marie (Front), Laura (Front), Phyl (Front), Sarah Callista (Back), Raff & Thea (Back), Hayet (Back) *Sarah Chung not pictured
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TEAM IS EVERYTHING The unclear lines of team, friends and work relationships
I like to think God has a wild sense of humor, someone who loves to joke and have fun. I say this because when I came to Hillsong College, the last thing I wanted to do was media, film or join a creative communications team. But I suppose the things we want to do the least may be the very thing God wants to use to work in us. I briefly mentioned this team in the previous issue but I had no idea the impact this team would have on me in this season of life. It started out with just the four of us: myself, Sarah Chung a fashion designer from New York, Ann-Marie a web designer from Toronto and Phyl an art director from Belgium. We all came from different sides of the world but for some reason God used our Frontline pastor Jeff Johnson to bring us all together. We worked on our first campaign together which we had a week to do. It helped market the biggest Encounter night our Frontline ministry has seen in
Sydney. After realizing we needed a bigger team, we hosted a panel at a Frontline event and we soon found our small team of four grow to a team of nine in the span of a month. Our team includes Raff & Thea Geiger from Germany, Laura Chang from Taiwan, Sarah Callista from Indonesia and Jared Thomas from Ohio. It was by no coincidence that God placed the right people on our team and we soon found ourselves working on a second campaign for our Encounter night which was on August 7th. I wish I could tell you it was easy, but planning, producing and doing a campaign became a full time job, a task we weren’t aware of. But it was in those times, the late nights, the long meetings that we grew close together. Whenever someone asks about our team, I often refer to our team as the Avengers or a super hero squad. Each person has their specific talent and skill that they have years of
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Photography by Various Artists
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professional experience in. Given that the Frontline ministry age demographic is 25-35 and we are all over the age of 25, we carry a different maturity than most teams and respect one another dearly. I have been on many teams throughout my life and I can honestly say this has been my favorite team to work with. We all get along so well and over the past five months that we have been working together, we have operated as a small family that look after each other. That’s the beauty of a team, when you’re able to operate beyond just a task and build a community around people you genuinely like to be around. For that, I am thankful.
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LA There are friends and then there are people like Laura... nuff said! Photography by Hayet Gessese
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URA FAITH FOLLOWS
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Laura Chang Taipei, Taiwan
Laura is by far the most interesting person I have ever met. EVER! I could have never imagined that when we were placed in our tutorial group at Hillsong College, that this short, shy and reserved Asian woman from Taiwan would play such a significant role in my life. Laura was born in Kaohsiung to a middleclass family. As a teenager her father left the family with a twomillion-dollar debt. With no other choice, Laura took on multiple jobs as a teenager to help keep the family together. Her family eventually had to live separately to find higher paying jobs and to avoid the harassment of their creditors. She realized that there was more money in bartending and began bartending at one of the biggest clubs in Taiwan owned by a Chinese billionaire. The billionaire had taken an interest in Laura and looked after her safety. Laura then realized that there was even more
money in gambling and given the environment she was in, became a baseball gambling bookkeeper. Laura started to make a lot of money and began to live a glamorous, yet dysfunctional lifestyle. It all went in a downward spiral from there and she eventually became a broke hopeless addict. In 2005 Laura was given a chance to move to Seattle to seek opportunities to work. She started by attending a language school to learn English and worked as a live-in housemaid for wealthy students. Laura then began to take design courses and took on more jobs to pay for the costs. Her hard work eventually paid off as she was offered her first professional job at a design agency two years later. Since then, she has moved to three countries and eventually relocated back to the Asia Pacific and became a top designer in Singapore.
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Laura’s life is an incredible testimony to the grace that God has on her life. I’m constantly amazed at the stories she tells me about her past life and I often wonder how she is still alive. Each story always tops the last in their remarkable larger than life, movielike experiences. Laura is soft spoken and slow to speak, but when she does, you know she has chosen every word with the careful precision and tact of a master. I remember when she was asked to give a prophecy in class. She paused for a moment and in dramatic fashion, turned to me and said she had a word for me. She said that I needed rise up to the authority I was given and to stop asking for permission to do things. Laura and I slowly became friends outside of college when she came onto our Frontline creative team as a designer. At a brunch for our team, she told me that God revealed to her that I was one of the ten people she needed to help. She said she didn’t know what that looked like. I thought she was completely out of her mind. Little did I know... Her first blessing was a card that
was addressed to the ‘man of many nations’ and in it was a thoughtful letter and donation. The next blessing was a card with two verses in it and $500. When I opened the card I cried in front of her and told her I couldn’t accept it. She told me not to refuse the blessing and accept the help. During our biggest offering event of the year at church, she felt the urge to give $500 and knew it was the right thing to do. In the natural, it didn’t make sense and she was left with $85 in her bank account. She trusted God in that moment and weeks later, a donation came her way, ten fold to be exact. She remembered the $500 she was told to give and knew it didn’t belong to her. When I thought I was going to get deported, Laura rallied people from our class and community and helped raise money for my tuition fees. That’s the kind of woman Laura is. A woman full of faith, wisdom, courage, kindness, love and prophecy. They always tell you to never judge a book by its cover and the same applies to Laura. I know God has placed Laura in my life for a purpose and I’m beyond happy to be her friend.
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WHAT’S What to expect in the coming weeks and months
NEXT?
Photography by Matthew Lejune & Edwin Andrade
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Please pray for... Job (haven’t worked in 7 months) Tuition & Rent (for this year and next semester) Spirit (my spirit has been prone to ups/downs lately) Discipline (to focus on school, church and my four careers: writer (author/screenwriter), preacher/pastor, director, songwriter)
Last semester I started a men’s group for the younger men in my intake (same semester as me). We meet about every three weeks and I’m really excited to see this group grow, connect and become more like a family. It has been on my heart for a while to lead these men and I’m blessed that I get the opportunity to do so. These men are the next pastors, leaders and businessmen of their generation and I have the honor and privledge to speak into their lives.
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After my best friends Carlos & Sonia Solorzano’s wedding, I met a 72 year old Vietnam war veteran named Kalani Moku during my day layover in Honolulu, Hawaii. I’m very excited to share our conversations and his exciting life story in the nearby future. Addiontally, I am currently writing a book called ‘Made’ and plan on finishing the manuscript by the end of December. The book deals with the issues of identity in today’s world.
KEEP IN TOUCH Thank you for reading this magazine and being a part of the journey. If you would like us to send you a postcard or would like to make a financial based contribution, send us a message. Thank you! 221/3 Bindon Place, Zetland, NSW 2017 Australia INSTAGRAM
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