Hey Church, my name is Simon Au-Yeung. You’ve probably seen me around at random times in the years. I have a lot of family at the church and grew up in a Christian family. I could sit here and tell you about all the years I attended church and my path growing up in a Christian school but I’d rather skip ahead.
In November 2013 my dad passed away to lung cancer. I was a 17 year old senior in high school who was angry at everyone including God. I went to University the following year and maybe went to church a few times on or off but would make excuses not to go. The few times I would pray it would be to only ask God for things. “Lord help me play well today in front of the jury” “Lord give me strength in my hardest of times”. In the following 3 years I would work at the summer camp, and attend church randomly out of the blue. The times I prayed it would be continuing to just ask for things. Never once did I listen to God and the times he spoke I would plug my ears and look the other way. Imagine that, I’m a musician who can’t listen.
2016 Easter comes along and I don’t think I’ve attended an Easter service in a few years and really had no intention of going to this one. Someone from the church reached out to me, a coworker from summer camp back in 2014, and she goes “Do you need a ride to Easter service?” And at the time I was kind of floored because I had barely spoken to this person since we worked together and here she is asking if I need a ride. She told me she wanted to go early though to see the setups that Cornerstone has for Easter, you know the ones where they have the history of Jesus and the room dressed up as the tomb. It was this moment I felt like God was really speaking to me and said something along the line of “It’s Easter, Just go for a little bit”.
We go and look around the rooms and there’s so many things I started feeling when I got to this one exercise. There were a couple tall jars and small stones. Each jar had a label saying “family, work, friends, me, and God”. The instructions were to place a stone in each jar you put your effort towards. I just felt like I could put a stone in each jar but I couldn’t put one in the God jar.
In the next few years God helps me see and hear what he has in store for me. I had not improved much in the aspect of listening to God but in 2019 the “Vision Series” had just started and I felt like God was nudging me towards getting involved. When the idea of baptism came up I kept telling myself “not for me Lord, I’ll do it when I’m ready”.
I think the idea of baptism always scared me because I thought you had to be perfect. I thought you had to be as good a Christian as possible to be baptized, but after talking with Pastor Jeremy he told me “It’s not about being perfect, it’s about the mark of a new beginning and a new life with Jesus”. I used to pray before every major concert or recital I had for strength, for calmness, and for no nerves. Now I pray hoping that my music glorifies him and that it pleases him. I feel very comforted now knowing that God is with me and has always been with me. I want to live a life that is pleasing to Him through all the highs and lows of my life.
