Oh yeah! Time flies by already, it's hard to believe that it has been 2.5 months as a deaf ministry Protege already! This week I have been reflecting on what has been done within 2.5 months about a lot of awesome stuff that I had the opportunity to take part here at National Community Church. Here are some wins:
-Shooting some ASL Alpha translation, which is one of the most exciting thing that is happening here at NCC! Here is one of our other Protege's thought about ASL Alpha filming series at http://andysjourney.com/?p=139
I also enjoy leading an Alpha group at Ebenezers for this semester and enjoy having four young ladies from Gallaudet Unviersity and one Gallaudet graduate coming to Alpha on Mondays, getting to know them better! And we learn a lot from each other as we discuss after the talks on video or live!
I also had the chance to go to an Alpha conference at Orlando, Florida in October to learn more about Alpha and create an awesome networking! I will submit a short testimony about ASL Alpha to http://alphausa.org/Group/Group.aspx?ID=1000042012, my testimony is 3 minutes in length, it may show up in this website at the bottom right. I was amazed at this opportunity to share more about this video in ASL, we have been talking about uploading this video to this website to allow the deaf user to download the video to be able to use Alpha in their group in worldwide in ASL! Our goal is to share and enable the people out there to lead the people to Christ! So far, we finished four sessions out of fifteen sessions! Those four sessions are: "Is there More to Life than This?" at Chinatown, "Why Did Jesus Die?" at Arlington Cemetry, "How Can We Have Faith?" at Gravely Point near DCA airport, and "How Does God Guide Us?" nearby a train station.
-Planning a 5K run called Java Jog for Feb 20 to donate $$ to help the missionaries, the Barlows, at Nicaragra to build a coffeehouse, and we will go to Nicaragua on our mission trip as well on March 15-19, more info at http://aoneeight.org/trips/04-nicaragua/. We have about 20 people or so that are committed to go, a combination of hearing and deaf people! It matches with Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, [hearing nor deaf] for you are all one in Christ Jesus". I am really excited about this mission trip, as we will work together to donate our muscles, our strength to love the Lord (Mark 12:30), to build the coffeehouse!
-Connecting with other deaf ministries and churches. We have been meeting every other Wednesday at Gallaudet University for lunches to talk about how we can work together to reach one of our biggest dream, to reach Gallaudet students. We called it DMNC, Deaf Ministry Network Connection.
I also start to connect with other Christians outside of NCC, such as Signs of Worship coordinator, Nyack College administrator (the small campus Christian college in DC nearby Union Station), Gallaudet professors, Gallaudet students, and other people to see how we can work together in different areas of the outreach, to work together as in One Body of Christ! To abandon our ministry identity and focus on the greater need of the city! Talk about simplicity!
-Learning a lot about how National Community Church runs! I went to a Staff Planning Retreat at Inner Harbor Baltimore, MD with all staff and had two days long of meetings. I have seen how they shared their creativity, how the system works here with Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and Stewardship Team (ST), and the bylaws, and etc! I also learn how they plan the sermons, budget, reports, etc. I had the hand-on experience myself as I plan the Deaf Ministry report that include the budget plan and the year-around goals! It was awesome! I also had the chance to grab my free time to run around the Inner Harbor toward the historically place called Fort McHenry, http://baltimore.org/arts-and-culture/fort-mchenry. It was cool to have a short thoughts there! I realized that I ran 6 miles in total on that day after a month or two of no run! Oh yeah, I had a soreness in my thighs after the run, but I was carefully to not be that obvious when I limp a tiny weenie bit, ha!
-Reading several Protege books such as "Stength Finder 2.0" by Tom Rath (my strengths are: restorative, individualization, achiever, activator, and self-assurance), "Next Generation Leader" by Andy Stanley, "Simple Church" by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger, and "The Knowledge of the Holy" by A.W. Tozer (am currently reading this). I also read "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan from Jason Yost, my mentor. He assigned me this awesome book to prepare me to listen to those speaker at Catalyst Conference at Atlanta, GA. It was a wonderful conference where Andy Stanley and Francis Chan speaked. I have benefited a lot from this conference personally, two of those message that I will keep in mind are: "Leaders never leave the place that God has called them to, until God tells them to leave" and "Leaders in the office must be honest to each other instead of keeping things to themselves and blow-up or waste their time struggling, but to get it out and be honest with each other to create the best environment out of the office to make their time in office worthwhile!". That's what we, the leaders, all need to remember!
Here is the video clip of Catalyst at http://vimeo.com/7925488 (find me at 0:59!)
-Starting to study some Bible courses through ISOM, isom.org, using the DVDs and workbook that I just received this morning! I am so excited to learn more about Him through those courses!
In all, I feel like my personal growth had soared within those few months, including the few months before I come into Protege! As Thanksgiving nears, I feel like I should start this blog to be able to share the updates with my friends, especially my sponsors. How grateful I am to be able to do this with your support!
Thanks!
Kari =)
