9 July 2006, New Haven, CT, USA
What a blessing to be able to attend church while you are thousand miles away from home. How I missed the worship and the experience of different church functions in various parts of the world.
I am currently in New Haven in visiting an old friend of mine, Krista, whom I met during her studies in Hong Kong. Her husband Keli is pursuing his PhD in Yale and therefore they live on campus. The church Krista brought me to this morning is called Calvary Baptist Church of New Haven, CT (http://
www.cbcnhct.org) located about 15 minutes drive from their home. This church has Sunday services for Mardarin/Cantonese and also English. I am fortunated enough to be able to participate both (one from 10:00am to 11:30am and the other from 11:30am to 12:30pm). The style of both services are very similar to the Baptist church that I attended about 4 to 5 years ago ing Hong Kong. The schedule for today’s English section as follow:
- Prelude
- Call to Worship (Pslam 150)
- Singspiration
- Prayer & Thanksgiving
- Scripture Reading (Isaiah 6:1-13)
- Sermon – Encountering a Holy God by Brother Ryan Stokes
- Response Hymn
- Offering
- Welcome & Announcements
- Benediction
- Doxology
For the Sermon in Chinese, the speaker talked in Mardarin and then there is a brother doing interpretation to Cantonese. The topic for today’s sermon is “Hannah’s prayer” with reference to the scripture 1 Sammuel 1:10-20. I got lots of insights throughout the whole sermon – how important is “prayers” in our life! The speaker reminded us to think the following when we prayed: Do we just asking Lord in fufilling our wants? Or do we pray to Lord saying that we are ready to follow his way and yet we still juggle the issues ourselves? Do we pray with faith? Do we, followers of Jesus Christ, have caring hearts on other people’s needs? If we don’t, our prayers wouldn’t be listened.
I then realized how Lord blessed this whole trip. The greatest thing I got from the San Jose conference was prayers – pray with a buring fire for others and for your paster. This part of the trip should be just for relaxation and yet I found that Lord still sent me messages. On our way back home, I met a brother who is currently studying in Divinity School. He said: how great are you spending your summer holiday in participating Christian activities. I said : I should thank Lord in sending me here and gave me all these blessings. We always think that we are doing things for Lord: actually, we don’t. He is putting blessings upon us! How grateful to be the beloved sons and daughters of our heavenly father!
Lord said “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”Isaiah said “here am I, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)
This is also the title of the book that catched me in the Forerunner Christian church bookstore and here while I am at Yale, I got the same line from the Sermon.
Lord, here am I, send me to serve you and your beloved people.
# Krita used to be an undergaudate in Lingnan and finished her study in Hong Kong in 2002. Though we are from different parts of the world, we met in Hong Kong. Even more, Lord has his binds on us – we got a chance to go to South China Technology University in Guangzhou and spent a week there together in July 2001. Five years later, I came to the States for conferences and could stop by in visiting her. For this trip, I could even meet her husband, Keli, whom she met while purusing her graudate school here. Keli is truly a promising and energentic young scholar! How I feel grateful in seeing them loving each other. I thank Krista and Keli for their generous hospitality on Yale campus!
