Why does Katie like prayer so much?

This question was asked to my dad – of all people, and then he later passed it on to me.  Initially, I laughed about it and was pleasantly surprised by the forwardness of the individual.  Yet, when I actually paused to think about it, I realized that the question is completely legitimate to ask.  

I haven't always been so into prayer.  I knew prayer was important, and I needed to do it in order to spiritually grow; however, I didn't see the relevance or effectiveness of prayer in my own life for the longest time.  This all changed during the week of July 3-11, 2010.  

The week in July was when I was asked to lead HSMT in prayer while in Arizona.  I apprehensively took on the role, but I was full of doubt and questions.  How would I have been able to lead a group of high schoolers in prayer?  What did it mean to be a prayer leader?  What made me equipped to fulfill this role?  How could I lead effectively when I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?  Thankfully, in my insecurities, that was when God was able to glorify Himself.  “For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak but You are strong,” 2 Corinthians 13:9a.  

In Arizona, I realized two significant things (among many):

        1. Prayer works

        2. Prayer is powerful

In the week of interceding for the Navajo, leading prayer times, having numerous chit chat/prayer times with the high schoolers, and observing our youth initiating prayer with one another on their own accord, I could not help seeing prayer as the answer to any situation we came against.  This was the first time that I witnessed a direct correlation of our prayers to the events that transpired during the missions trip.  

Following the week, prayer became more and more of an infatuation and addicting to learn about until 2012 when I realized that empowering the youth to pray can lead to a change in our world.  Prayer is the only avenue that can move God's hand in our world.  Imagine if ALL the youth in your generation were completely enamored with God, active prayer warriors, and persistent in their prayers!!  How would our world look today? 

“For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” 2 Timothy 1: 7 

Prayer and more prayer!

No program folding tonight! 

We started the night off with a time of meditation and prayer with Nathan and went into a time of devotion with Enoch who shared about grace and loving our neighbors. Jacob led us in a time of sharing and meeting other people! Then we split up into small groups!(:

Announcements: T-Shirts and Crew Necks are available for pre-orders! Contact Naomi Low and be on the lookout for future posts and announcements! 

ITP: (increase the peace) is in 2 weeks! March 14 from 8am-2pm (according to Edwin Cheung) Contact Edwin for more details and to sign up! 

MEMBERSHIP: turn in your membership forms along with $5 to become a member! Talk to a counselor or an officer for more details! Forms can be found in previous post! Contact Melissa Chow for for any questions! 

Nonetheless, I'm Blessed

Through the ups and downs of high school it's been a quite hard to have a stable relationship with God. Some days I feel as if I'm alone and I don't know where I'm going. However, God has His ways of speaking to me, and often times they're unexpected.

Last year, I had a school project called “Save the World”. In a group, we were to choose an unresolved world issue and find a place to alleviate this issue. My topic was to help children under the poverty level. I went to Harambee Preparatory School, a K-6th grade private school that provides a safe place for children to learn. The word Harambee itself is quite beautiful. It is Swahili for, “Let’s get together and push”. Initially, I only went for my project: after school tutoring, and quickly left to go back to the comforts of my own home. As time passed the meaning of Harambee became real in me. I developed relationships with the children, and began savoring my time with them. I instantly connected with one of the girls, Ellisse, a 1st grader that constantly chatted my ear off. When I was playing with her and some of the other girls her age she started singing “How Great is Our God”. The other girls soon joined and they sang the chorus:

How great is our God – sing with me How great is our God – and all will see How great, how great is our God. 

I was amazed at how they were able to easily sing praises. These girls, who had so little, were able to sing of God’s amazing grace. It hit me then, our God really is great. Even though I was supposed to be serving them, those girls reminded me of how powerful and almighty our God is.

God unveils (hah) himself through the little things in life. So this week...I encourage you to be ready and open to what God has to say. You never know when or where God will speak to you - it'll just happen :) 

Peace y'alls.

Tutoring Ellisse

All smiles :)

programs and mercy~

ICYMI

Hey everyone! Hikoi is responsible for folding programs this month... yaaaaaaay (interpret that how you want). But the good thing is that you have an excuse to come to hikoi earlier and spend more time in fellowship with others while doing something good for the rest of the church.

Because program folding went "a little" longer than expected, we ended up starting hikoi an hour late. But no worries because Jonny was able to use the limited time well by introducing our new topic of "mercy" which we will focus on for the next few weeks. Following justice, mercy will be the next focus in our study of the attributes of God. By understanding the qualities of God, we are able to see how far we are from Him. However Jonny reminded us that we can bridge that gap through the cross. yaaaaaay! Stay tuned for more about mercy in the upcoming weeks of Hikoi.

On a less serious note, we recognized our february birthday members. :D Because Manting and Chelsea are so loving (and because all of Hikoi was watching), they gave out their own cupcakes to people who they appreciate and love. <3 cute. Lastly, we headed off to small groups.

Announcement!
- Hikoi membership will be extended to March 6 (Friday) so pick up some forms from Melissa Chow and turn them in to your sg leader. Being a member means that you are committed to Hikoi and get discounts on things like the hikoi shirt and wire, so don't miss out!

Some More Puns from the Punmaster

Hey guys. I have no idea on what I'm suppose to write about, but baptism just happened so I guess I'll talk about that. Besides screaming at the top of my lungs for each of my friends, it was amazing to see how God works in everybody's lives. I was so happy for my friends who got dunked. I know Dan has talked about this before, but why isn't everyone getting baptized even though it was a commandment from God? I really want you to think about that. If you really believe in God and love Him, why aren't you baptized yet? If you are, good for you.

On the other hand, I'm close to getting my Eagle Scout project approved. So pray for me about that and also that my plan will go smoothly. If you want more details come and ask me about it. Also pray for my energy level. I'm in the middle of drumline season and we added a whole bunch of visuals into our show, so it's really tiring to do lunges and turns with a drum on.

I'm sorry this is really short, but I really don't know what to write about, and my mom is rushing me because she wants to go get dinner. But as always, I will leave you with a couple puns.

A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired
A photon checks into a hotel and the bell-boy asks if he needs help with his bags, but the photon says,         "I'm traveling light"
If you show me a piano falling down an elevator shaft, I'll show you A flat minor
I didn't like my beard at first, but it then grew on me
I stayed up all night trying to figure out where the sun went, then it dawned on me
I was wondering my the ball was getting bigger, then it hit me

Answering Hamlet

"To be, or not to be, that is the question— Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them?"

Greetings from your kinsman through Christ Cyrus. I am taking Shakespeare for English this year and we are currently reading the play Hamlet, which got me thinking when we covered these lines. This famous speech is remembered because it is a question we all ask ourselves at some point in time. To be or not to be? To live or to die? I asked myself this question in middle school when I was an emotional mess, overwhelmed by a new workload and environment. I became lazy and despondent, hostile to my family and unable to see past my own troubles. Praise God that He led me out of it and back to Him! The question posed by Hamlet is whether or not to live with all the terrible troubles of this world. His eventual answer as to why people choose to live is that we would rather deal with the hardship that we know than go into the unknown.

"But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of."

For many people that might be the case, but for us as Christians we have a different answer. Our life is in Jesus. Jesus might sound overused, but in this case it is a compelling reason. "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." Colossians 3:2 (ESV). With the joy that Jesus brings us and the hope we have in eternal life, what better reason to stay the course than to follow God's will and share Jesus with others? Setting my mind on things above has helped bring me motivation and calm in knowing what is in store. So have faith HiKoi-ers, and look forward to God's kingdom!

Rockin' with Rock

Exciting night!! In Case You Missed It:

We started off the night by folding programs in the Praise Center. We got to meet a few Rock members during our prayer time. Rock provided dinner (pizza from Costco!) for us! And we played a game of Human Bingo! Apparently, everyone in HiKoi has Facebook... John Chan and Nelson Kuan shared about their faith in school and in their life! We ended the night with the Hugging Game led by Naomi and ice cream for dessert! Yay!

Hopefully you got to get to know some other High Schoolers tonight! :)

m.c.

"Come, and you will see" // Denise Poon

I just tried to imagine what life would be like on an errant Wednesday night if I were a high schooler again. So, a few things:

• First, I'd be in bed already. This might sound outrageous and indecent, but I slept at 10:00 every night in high school. Time management and no Facebook distractions FTW, honestly. 
• I would also be in much better shape than I am today (as is the case with most counselors except Josh Yuan. Ask him about his Jenny Craig story), because I used to run cross country and track of all things. (See below for visually unappealing proof.)

One thing that hasn't changed much since high school me, unfortunately, is my propensity to distrust God's intentions for my life. I've always been a mishmash of questions about people, things, the world, my life, God, blah blah blah. This, coupled with the fact that I am usually unfailingly honest and unabashedly blunt, means that I sometimes try to bully God and demand answers to things like, "Why did You do this? Where the heck are You going to send me on overseas missions and when am I leaving?"

These questions have varied over the years, but I think the running theme is my anxiety, fears, and suspiciousness of a God who is, by all rights, completely good and more than generous with someone dumb like me. Over the years, here are some of the things God has said to me in response/showed me:

• One, God is not scared or intimidated by me. My feeble attempts at cornering Him into giving me answers doesn't work because He is a God who does not need to meet my demands. And that, of all things, has been weirdly comforting. I love that God can't be pushed around by me, and that He is fearless and so above me--because I could not revere, could not worship, could not love a God who was so easily swayed and who answered my every demand. 
• Two, God and His children are always on a need-to-know basis. A few months back I wrote out a list of questions I had for God. As I irately demanded answers, He just asked me, "How many of these do you actually need to know, Denise? Only one. We're on a need-to-know basis, and you need to be okay with that, otherwise the way going forward is going to be very difficult if you don't trust Me."

This past Sunday, I was doing devotions and was reading John 1:35-51, which is when Jesus first calls some of the disciples to follow Him. Two of John the Baptist's disciples see Jesus. They are with John, who says, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" The two were curious, so they trailed after Jesus, probably at a bit of a distance (weirdos) and Jesus turns and outright asks, "What do you seek?" 

They are dumb, so they change the subject and ask Jesus where He's staying instead of answering the question. Which I think is how we are--we follow Jesus from behind, trying to size Him up, curious where He's going or what He's up to, but when He actually turns around and looks us in the eye, we're completely befuddled because we actually don't know what we want or what the heck we're doing. 

Jesus, being gracious and all-around solid, doesn't pressure them or say, "Answer the question, you fools, I'm Jesus !!" He simply says, "Come, and you will see."

And so they do. 

They spend time with Him and at the end of that time, He's no longer just "Rabbi," which is what they first called Him. He's the "Messiah" to them.

I don't think we need to know the answer to all our questions. We, like the disciples, simply don't know most of the time. But Jesus just looks at us, sees us so fully, and just tells us to come. That's all it takes. Just that first step to walk next to Him and He'll show us the way.

// Denise //

P.S. I have included pictures of myself post-high school to remind y'all that you will have lots of amazing adventures beyond high school, FCBC, etc. And so that you can feel like you're getting to know me or something.

P.P.S. Currently listening to Becky G's "Shower" and Lord Huron's "She Lit a Fire" on repeat, one after the other. Highly recommend.