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Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. 2 Peter 3:18

Last time as a family of three 😀🙌🙏 (art by @rejoiceling )

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.” Psalm 127:3

Disney let's make this remake happen 😂 #circleoflife #lionking

The Book of Jonah is ready for download! I wanted to release this book because we are in a moment where the Church has run away from its call to love the lost. I am grateful for the many churches around the world that I’ve been able to partner with but I’m also very aware of who has been missing. Like Jonah, we have hardened our hearts against our neighbors. We’ve made them to be our enemies instead of people that God wants to save. Our communities are hurting and we’ve been running away. We are called to be present in this moment: let us have the courage to stay. Do not find shelter in entertainment distractions or being addicted to work. Gods is calling us to feel pain and sorrow. We are not overcome with misery. This is a moment for us to all find hope together. Let’s point people towards Jesus.

I'm sad to announce that I will no longer be doing personal training. I've been in the business for 17 good years and now is the right moment to spend more time with my family. I shutdown my business in 2020 hoping to get restarted once the pandemic ended but God has other plans.

God help me to see the joy amidst the hardship

In 3 months we are expecting another boy and our lives will be upended again. It's God's plan for us to raise Jeremiah Pat in a pandemic and God has a purpose for why our next boy will be born during a global crisis. I don't get to choose the times I live in, I can only be faithful to what God has called me to do in my generation. Watching Jeremiah love his family, his friends and God has been really encouraging. The great crisis of our time is anger, hatred and selfishness. I believe that God's greatest to our family would be the gift of growth. We want to be refined in the fire. If we have to go through the hardships of this moment, may we take advantage of this opportunity to see and experience God.

I cried more this year than any other year of my life. I mourn that I've been competing since I was 10 years old and this year I was forced to stop. It's been really hard to lose this part of my life that I love. I don't want to compare my loss to others but I mourn alongside everyone who has lost something this year.

Did you know that kids like toys? Christmas is a time of celebration and the kids in Mexico deserve some Chino Luchador alongside some awesome toys. Come celebrate Jesus’ birthday by donating new or used toys to our Tijuana outreach hosted by Pastor Rolando Coronado, Rubí de Coronado and Parousia church.

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Jeremiah Pat likes to sit between Carmen Pat and me when we read books. He will listen while I read and then grab the book away from me and give it to Carmen after a few pages 🤣. He loves his reading time and wants to share the moment with both of us. I get sad when we read like this because it reminds me that I didn’t have times like this with my parents. When my parents came to the US in their 20s, they struggled a lot to get their restaurant started and I was sent to China to live with my grandparents after I was born. I cry a lot as a parent. This has been an amazing year but everything hurts so much deeper now. I can’t see hurting families the same way. When I hear stories of lonely kids, I think a lot about Jeremiah. I’ll never get over the pain of my childhood but I found hope because I came to know my heavenly father. I pray a lot now, I hope every lonely kid can know their heavenly father when they read the book that God has given all his children.
I want Jeremiah to know God’s love. That starts with me. I want him to know my love for him as a father. I will read him stories from the Bible about how God loves his children and I want those stories to be believable because of what he experiences everyday. I hope my love for him does not depend on him being good, I want him to feel loved no matter what he does. I know that Jeremiah will upset me and do wrong things but I don’t want him to feel that my love is diminished because of it. My love does not depend on him doing the right things. One day I hope that he will believe that Jesus Christ came to save sinners because he loves us. I hope he will believe that.
I’m going to be leading a team this winter to serve our friends who grew up in the orphanage and now have families of their own 😍🔥🙏. This is something I dreamed about when I first started this work over 10 years ago. I’ve seen the statistics of what happens to abandoned children but God has truly blessed those who we have worked with. Now the challenge is helping them grow as parents when they’ve never known their own mom and dad. Some of the orphans have actually been parents for a couple of years now but I never felt comfortable teaching any workshops until I became a parent myself. I’ve been asking my partners, like Cari Furr and Mark Torvinen , to pray for me. This trip is going to be hard because preparing to teach about families is going to bring up a lot of my own fears about being a good dad. I don’t want to parent shame (if you read parenting blogs, you know what I’m talking about). I don’t want to go in with just a list of how they can be better parents. This winter, I want to have hard conversations about the difficulties of adoption. I want to have hard conversations about what it means to adapt to different disabilities. I might not be the best person to talk about the wide range of parenting hardships but I’m praying that God will use me to bring grace and healing. There’s been a lot of hurt in the Chinese church around the difficulties of families. It’s time for us to experience renewal.
I went to seminary because I’m insecure. Getting my master’s degree added to the student debt load I had from UCSD but going into professional ministry was terrifying. The only qualifications I had for ministry were a few years of leading short term teams to Shanghai and being a Bible study leader. I wanted to work with pastors and missionaries but I didn’t want them to make fun of me. At 21 years old, I already got strange looks whenever I sat in meetings with people who were twice my age. I was desperate to feel like I belonged. Insecurity feels like falling and I was desperately trying to find anything that would make me feel adequate. Getting a piece of paper from Bethel Seminary seemed like it would do the trick. I don’t regret the education that I got and I really appreciated the professors but I wonder what would have been different if I lived my life with faith first. I’ve been in ministry for 15 years now and I still struggle with insecurity. It’s made worse because I can’t hide my feelings through more accomplishments or education. I don’t think I can achieve my way out of this feeling. When I read the Bible, it sticks out to me that Jesus called fishermen to teach religious scholars. That’s the kind of courage and calling that I want. In my next 15 years, I am asking God to shape my career with faith. I can accept that some people are always going to think that I’m not qualified and over my head. My insecurity is still with me but I’m going to imagine myself falling into God’s grace.
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;” ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭103:13‬

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