Rebecca Wong

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Not Home Yet

It's good to see you all here today, many familiar faces and many new faces.

Just as a quick word of introduction, my name is Rebecca.

I am from over yonder north in Northern California, a little town called Colfax, which is just 2 exits down from Weimar.

I see some familiar faces here from the Weimar area.

I'm an ESL professor at American River College, and I also am an artist.

So in between my semesters, I started an art company where I'm teaching pop-up art workshops, art classes for kids, summer art camps, and also I use this art company to fuel and to support overseas mission work.

So I actually literally just got back a couple days ago from Bolivia, where I was serving at an orphanage and teaching art classes for kids, which has been so much fun.

I'm honestly still in recovery from my last trip.

There was a little bit of jet lag and a little bit of exhaustion.

It's funny because this is my first time to South America, and I was like, it's not that far away, right?

It's really not that far, but the actual routes of travel there were not very direct.

So my journey back to California took me a span of 2 and a half days from going from a bus ride from 1 city to the next city, then after the bus ride, then had to take another shuttle.

And when we were taking the shuttle, they decided to shut down the entire highway due to the protesters.

They were blockading the main highway that took you from 1 city to the next.

I was like, dear Lord, help us to get through.

Finally made it through, and then another 3 flights from Bolivia to Panama, Panama to LA, and then LA to Sacramento.

When I was finally on my last leg of the trip, my last flight, I can't tell you how much I just wanted to be home, To crash in my own bed and just knock out and sleep and I was just like, Lord, I want to be home.

That longing was so intense and yet I said, God, gotta stay up.

I don't know if you've ever been like that, in a place where you were stuck.

You weren't home yet, but you really wished you were.

Maybe you were stuck somewhere in between.

The message that I will be sharing with you today is entitled, Not Home Yet.

Let's have a quick word of prayer before we dive in.

Father in heaven, Lord, I come before you this morning not with the words of human eloquence or persuasive speech.

No, Lord, in simple humility, fear and trembling, I come before you asking that you will speak through me through the power of your Spirit, God.

Let it not be I, but you, Christ, exalted, glorified, and lifted, Father.

Remove every distraction here, and may we hear your voice speak.

The story starts With a young man named Roland Howlett, in 1937 he graduated from then called Emmanuel Missionary College, which is our well-known Andrews University, and he accepted the call to serve as a missionary in Vietnam.

In the first couple of years he arrived to Vietnam, he had a heart of industry and missions.

He established the first Adventist training school, the first publishing house, the first clinic, and a church in Saigon, which is the capital of South Vietnam.

1 of the first students that he made was a young man by the name of Ly Ba Huy.

Roland Howlett, this amazing and incredible man and missionary of God, had such a great influence upon my grandfather that through his influence, my grandfather, my grandmother, and all 8 children were baptized into the Adventist Church by God's grace.

Coming from a completely Buddhist background, no concept of who God was, to coming to know the Lord and Savior, our Jesus Christ.

My grandfather, my grandmother, all 8 children here, And my beloved mother is on the left.

But very soon, World War II took place, which shook the world.

Unfortunately, Roland Hallett, the missionary, he was forced to leave the country.

But the work was not abandoned or left in vain.

Roland's students continued the pioneer work that had began in Vietnam, including my grandfather who stepped up to serve as the treasurer for the fledgling conference.

My grandmother became the ladies dean of the Adventist school, and they actually moved on to the Adventist compound that had been built.

And there we saw as the years passed that the Adventist community grew by leaps and bounds as the gospel continued to spread.

But after World War II, then came the Vietnamese Civil War.

The Communist forces of the North were marching down to take over the South, And they came closer and closer and closer to the capital of Saigon.

When US troops withdrew their support of the South, all of the Vietnamese civilians knew the end was coming.

The remaining Adventist volunteers who were there on the compound began to evacuate and return back to the United States.

The reason being, Adventists were known as the quote-unquote American religion.

So as soon as the communists come in, they would be the first target.

So evacuations were happening as the Aventists were fleeing Vietnam.

At this time, my grandmother and grandfather had moved off of the Adventist compound.

They had another place that they were living, but it was close by.

And in the middle of the night, there was a knock on the door.

My grandfather and grandmother awakened, went to check and see who it was.

There was a young lad there, and this young lad said, you go tonight or you will never get out.

She said, listen, my son is fighting on the front lines of the war right now.

The family was already divided and she said, If we leave tonight, how will we keep track of our family?

How will we know that we'll ever be reunited again?

But again, the message was, you go tonight or you may never get out.

It was an agonizing decision, but my grandfather and grandmother finally yielded and said, we go.

So my mother remembers all she had was a bag of clothes.

Her siblings grabbed whatever they could and in the night they crept into the darkness.

With war curfew, you don't want to be out after dark.

If you are out after the curfew time, you are liable to be shot and killed.

But here they were, sneaking in the middle of the night.

Quietly, they went over to the Aventus compound, where the Aventus had gotten ambulances.

They smuggled my family into the ambulances, and the ambulances then went to the airport.

From the airport, my family boarded a plane.

And this was the start of a new journey for them.

For them, this was all in 1 night, losing everything they ever had, losing their home.

They didn't know what it was before them, but they took the next step.

And interestingly, they didn't know this at the time, but literally just days later, after my family fled, Saigon surrendered to the communist forces.

The armies quickly took over, captured the Adventist campus.

And today, where the compound was, is now a communist school, sadly.

The refugee journey was long and difficult.

From 1 plane to 1 refugee camp to another refugee camp.

William Guthrie

The Antidote to Pain

Let's start with prayer this morning as we seek the Lord together.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your goodness and your love toward us.

In a world that is full of uncertainty, full of pain, We just look to you and we ask that you would be here this morning as we ponder your goodness and your love and pray that you would send your Holy Spirit to be with us, in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so in line with the theme, I don't know how this all came together this way, but I didn't even select the picture with this story in mind, but a few years ago I was skiing with some friends.

And we were up in the Lake Tahoe area, and we'd driven several extra hours to get to this particular ski area because of the terrain there.

It had steep terrain, and I like steep terrain on skis.

As we pulled into the parking lot, There was still a bit of weather hovering over the mountain, clouds and things like that.

We jumped out of the car, got into our skis.

And we headed straight to the top of the mountain on the lift.

And I think it was about the second run in, though, that I identified a cliff.

And some of you would say, well, you're crazy.

You know, nobody should be skiing around cliffs.

But I thought, and I sometimes think that, you know, Cliffs are fun to ski off of.

So this cliff looked like it had a good landing, and I was eager to take advantage of this challenging terrain that we'd come to this resort for.

The snow conditions were great, And so I sent my friends ahead.

They went down to the bottom of the cliff and scouted out the landing.

And I stood at the top and mentally prepared.

Has anybody stood on top of a high dive, like 1 of the really high dives, you know?

The longer you ponder it, the worse it gets, right?

But eventually, they gave me the all clear.

And I proceeded to ski directly off the cliff and straight into, remember that weather I was talking about?

And what happened was, the landing came up very abruptly, as you might imagine, because my frame of reference, have you ever tried to ski in a cloud, or walk in a cloud?

You get nauseated because your body has, it's like riding on a roller coaster, and your body has no frame of reference.

As I contacted the snow, I immediately felt my body get thrown forward.

My boots ejected from the bindings on my skis.

As I continued to hurtle forward, I met the front end of 1 of my skis coming up the other way.

The rigid material of the ski proved to be unforgiving to the tissue of my upper lip.

It happened way too fast, I couldn't even think about it.

The shock hadn't worn off before I discovered quite a bit of blood pouring out of my upper lip.

My friends graciously slid slowly beside me as I gingerly made my way down the ski slope, leaving a trail of red snow all the way down the mountain, intervently stopping to exchange a red snowball for a white 1.

At least there was a virtually unlimited supply of what we could refer to as nature's gauze.

So we proceeded down, entered and asked them, where's the urgent care here?

Most ski areas of size have a little, you know, casualty area where you can get some help.

And I met a really nice ER physician there.

She was staffing the place, and she offered to stitch up the damage my ski had done, although she did admit she wasn't a plastic surgeon.

I tried not to pay too much attention to that, and agreed that it was probably the best thing to do to go ahead with getting things taken care of.

But what I wasn't prepared for, I see Dr.

Moret over here, he's glued in on this, was the anesthetic going into my upper lip.

And many of you will know that the lip and nose area is highly innervated.

And as an aside, I've never been afraid, I've never been a fan of vaccines at all, or needles in general.

And when I was a kid, I think the pediatrician's office, or the pediatricians must have, at least the staff at the pediatrician's office, must have known me as a Houdini or something like that.

I remember on 1 occasion, after I'd escape the exam room, they had to pursue me down the hall and catch me and drag me back, only to hold me down and treat me like a human pincushion for a little bit.

But back in the Kirkwood urgent care, those nerves were doing an exceptional job of transmitting the sensation of what felt like 1000 bees descending on my upper lip.

I forgot all about getting poked with a needle, and despite my valiant effort, there was no holding them back.

The tears just flowed freely, adding saline liquid to the mixture of lidocaine and blood.

But if I lost you in the details, the pain was excruciating, but thankfully, short-lived.

The doctor did what turned out to be an excellent job of repairing the lacerations.

With the day cut short due to the injury and subsequent repair, we returned home.

Looking back, the worst part in retrospect was all the missed skiing that we had.

In medicine, we have an entire subspecialty dedicated to treating pain.

Not to mention all the other specialties that treat various painful conditions.

We have medications, procedures, surgeries, and even psychotherapy for treating pain.

Usually It's easier if we know it will end.

But prolonged pain can be even harder to deal with.

If you know anyone or have experienced chronic pain, I've had my own little bout with chronic pain due to my excessive pickleball engagement.

Over the past few years, I developed an overuse injury with nagging pain in my neck that would worsen every time I played pickleball.

If you haven't seen me on the court, that's probably why.

It probably wasn't helped by my penchant for trying to smash the ball as hard as I could, though.

Pain isn't something most of us want to experience.

But pain is not also without any purpose, right?

We pull back from hot items to avoid being burned.

We stop activities or behaviors, like pickleball in my case, when they cause pain, because we inherently know that they may be causing us harm.

And so far, we've only been talking about physical pain, but what about other types of pain?

If you've ever experienced the end of a relationship, you may know the pain of rejection, a broken heart.

That pain can also be quite physical, right?

Others may have experienced the pain of losing a loved 1.

Or maybe more applicable in the academic setting is the pain of failure.

I wound up failing a few tests in medical school and when I lived at the house just down here on campus street, I remember trying to prepare for the part 1 of the boards and I just seemed like all of my classmates had made it to the top of Mount Everest and were putting their country's flag up there while I was trying to figure out how to use crampons and an ice axe at base camp.

It just didn't seem like it would be possible, but God is good and he got me through that.

I wound up failing a few tests at medical school though and having to retake the last of my licensing exams during my residency after failing on my first attempt.

But I'm grateful that failure does not define us.

I know there's others here who can attest to that.

My current job is in the field of addiction medicine.

Daniel Krall

Crossroads: Which Way, Lord?

Father God, I want to thank you so much for the Sabbath day.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here at Advent Hope, my home church, and to share a little testimony about an experience I went through recently.

I pray that there's somebody in the audience today who needs to hear this message, that it will benefit them in some way.

And I just ask that anything that I say, that it will bring glory to you and you alone.

I ask all these things in your name, amen.

So the title of my presentation this morning is Crossroads, Which Way, Lord?

I usually like to delve into more deep theological topics.

This is a bit different than what I usually do, but it's something that I went through recently and I felt compelled to speak on it this morning, so I hope that you guys will enjoy.

But this is a personal testimony type format infused with some personal insights that I've learned along the way.

And so I hope that somebody today needs to hear this message and it will help you as you make your own life decisions.

I'm a fourth year dental student and 1 major aspect of fourth year is figuring out what comes next.

Some students find a job, other students choose to specialize, while other students opt to get an additional year of training in general dentistry.

As of about a month ago, I thought I had all of my postgraduate plans figured out.

I was in the interview process for a one-year hospital-based program called a general practice residency, which is going to provide me with additional training in general dentistry.

From there I would determine, you know, maybe I want to specialize next or just go into private practice.

I had applied to several programs across California and was excited to further my education.

This was the trajectory I had been headed towards ever since I started dental school.

Right from the get-go I knew I wanted to do a GPR.

Well as I was about to discover God had other plans for my life.

And suddenly, I found myself at a crossroads with no clear direction for the future.

Thankfully, God didn't leave me at this crossroads alone.

He led me to a most relevant sermon by Dr.

I'm sure many of you in this room have been impacted by his sermons as well, but it was a sermon that impacted me so much that I had to share it with you today.

Eric Walsh's sermon was how to know God's will for your life.

And in it, he shared some advice that he received from Pastor Morris Fenden about how to make major life decisions.

I'm gonna share these tips with you now and then illustrate how each tip came into play during my own decision-making process.

What you see now on the screen in front of you is a list of tips that Dr.

Eric Walsh shared from Morris Fenden's book.

Walsh stresses you must follow in this exact order.

Number 1, have no will of your own on the matter.

Number 4, consider providential circumstances.

Number 5, consult with godly people and have them pray for you.

Number 6, ask God in prayer to reveal his will.

Tell God your decision before you tell anyone else, and then proceed with your decision.

All right, so let's get right into these.

So like I said, I was in the interview process for a one-year hospital-based residency program for general dentists.

I started interviews clear back in October and still had several programs to interview with in December.

So by late November, you know, I was deep into this interview process.

And the way that these programs work is that some of them will actually send out acceptances early on, like in early to late November, whereas some of the other programs participate in the match program similar to how medical school works, and they don't send out their results until late January.

For example, I interviewed at the non-match programs first, because they send out their acceptances first, and actually got an early acceptance into 1 program, as well as a rejection from another 1.

But I had my eyes set on 2 programs that were in the match program.

1 was in San Francisco, 1 was in San Diego.

So I decided to turn down the acceptance and move on into the match program, which was kind of risky because before, I had this guaranteed acceptance into a program.

But going into the match, as you know, sometimes there's never a guarantee that you'll even match somewhere.

So I guess you could say I kind of assumed this go big or go home mentality.

Well, fast forward a few weeks and it's late November.

At this point, I'm kind of between interviews.

The non-match programs had sent out their acceptances, and I decided to take a risk and wait around for the programs to invite me to interview in December.

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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

All Teachings

Not Home Yet

44m

The Antidote to Pain

42m

Crossroads: Which Way, Lord?

47m

33 Years and Forever

36m

Giftedness & Godliness: A Message to the Graduate

45m

A Better Way to See Yourself

1h 9m

G.I.D.E.O.N.

44m

From Surviving to Thriving: The Gospel Effect in Medical Training

59m

Existence of God

48m

The Pre-Advent Judgment

52m

Called by Name

1h 6m

Healed While Healing

57m

Sound Doctrine