Lending a Helping Hand With Vivian and Henry Fithian

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2 Welcome to Transformed Under the Pepper Tree. In this monthly magazine, you will read stories of how God is changing people s lives at PazNaz, transforming them into the image of Jesus Christ by the power of his Spirit! You might be asking, Where can I find information about a specific PazNaz event? Some information about specific events on campus is found within these pages, but each month Transformed is focused on relating stories about what PazNaz is really all about. Rather than programs or events, there are stories about changed lives, stories about people coming in contact with the Savior, and people exploring what it means to become a follower of him. It is exciting to hear what God is doing in the lives of people! Years ago, Pastor Earl Lee and a group of staff members gathered around a pepper tree located on the northern-most point of what was to become the site for First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena and dreamed and prayed that God would provide a place where more people could find power for living through Jesus. What began then has been going on for over thirty years as men and women, boys and girls have come into relationship with Christ in significant ways under the shade of that old pepper tree. The mission of the church hasn t changed. May it continue to flourish as people experience the transforming power of Christ. Blessings, B. Scott Anderson Executive Pastor Lending a Helping Hand With Vivian and Henry Fithian Everybody Has A Story From Pastor Scott Daniels Faithfulness in the Face of Persecution A Story from Yoko Barraca Transformed is a magazine publication of First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena (PazNaz). It is designed to highlight the Church s stories of personal transformation. For a complete overview of PazNaz, their beliefs, and ministries, please visit the website TRANSFORMED Issue #32 December 2013 The Magazine of PazNaz 3700 East Sierra Madre Boulevard Pasadena, California Fax: PazNaz

3 Lending a Helping Hand with Vivian and Henry Fithian After feeling led to start volunteering with Helping Hands in 2007, Henry and Vivian Fithian assumed leadership of the ministry in October of Henry and Vivian will begin their 7 th year of service with Helping Hands this coming January. Their desire is to touch the lives of the underserved in such a way that they cannot help but believe God is real, that he knows them by name, loves them, and will not forget them. This is the Fithians story... - Sharon Boulghourjian Making a Change A man s steps are directed by the LORD. Proverbs 20:24 In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. Proverbs 16:9 In 2007 we began to experience God working in our lives and drawing us to leave the comfort of our small church family and to consider the new season in our lives that we were entering. That season was retirement. We spent 2007 praying about the change, visiting various churches near and far, and listening to advice from trusted friends. God appeared to be calling us to a church close to our home. Finally, on the Sunday before Christmas in 2007, we headed north on Michillinda Avenue toward PazNaz (about 7 minutes from home) and never looked back. We were warmly welcomed and soon discovered many people we knew from various seasons in our lives. Becoming Connected to Helping Hands It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus: and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives helping others. Ephesians 2:10 The first Sunday in 2008 we began attending the Disciples Sunday School class. Unknowingly, we arrived at 9:30 am thinking the class began at that time. We then discovered on our second Sunday that fellowship time began at 9:00 am, and we arrived at the end of an announcement for volunteers to assist a ministry called Helping Hands. Volunteers were needed to sort and hang clothes on Mondays and Tuesdays so that the clothes would be ready for folks from the community to pick up on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We later learned that Helping Hands is a ministry of PazNaz Compassionate Ministries. It is a community food pantry and clothing assistance program that provides these necessary items and spiritual support to more than 600 local families each month. We decided that we were interested and made an appointment with former Pastor April Steele, who oversaw the ministry at that time. Our appointment with Pastor April was very lengthy as she truly wanted to know who we were and about our journey with Christ. Afterwards, she took us down to the Helping Hands area, which is located in the west section of the lower Sanctuary next to Reed Hall. As the three of us were ascending the stairs in Gilmore Hall, Pastor April made a statement that seemed odd at the time. It was this: Dream about what you would like to do with Helping Hands. We wondered, What could we dream about hanging clothes? We began hanging clothes that same day and in about a week the dreaming began. Soon we were able to enlarge the space available to hang clothes. It wasn t long before Henry began unloading the truck twice a month on Tuesdays when it returned from the LA Regional Food Bank, and then, not long after, he began to occasionally make the bread pick up from Von s in Monrovia. By March 2008 we had begun to serve clients of Helping Hands by handing out food and enacting Ecclesiastes 9:10: Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. 3

4 In mid-2008, Jerry Lewin, Helping Hands ministry leader at the time, began experiencing issues with his health, and we began filling in for him in various parts of the ministry, learning as much as we could as we volunteered. In addition, around this same time, we were asked to join the leadership team of Compassionate Ministries. God Opens a Door During 2009, Jerry s health continued to decline, and he decided to relinquish his leadership role with Helping Hands. Pastor Selena Holston-Gabriel, who followed April Steele and was now given oversight to this ministry, asked us to pray about accepting the call to become ministry co-leaders of Helping Hands. After our time of prayer, we discerned that God was calling us to take up this mantle, and in October 2009, we assumed the leadership of this ministry. Dreams and Plans Transform Lives As we came into leadership, the dreams and plan for Helping Hands began to increase substantially. The desire for our clients to experience peace, equity, and respect while at Helping Hands led to transforming systems of food delivery, enrolling new clients with privacy, tending to our homeless friends with compassion, expanding delivery methods of important information to our clients in both English and Spanish, and much more. We continue to seek the Lord s guidance in how he wants us to move or change in order to meet the needs of the people he sends to Helping Hands. God has drawn a large number of volunteers to Helping Hands who have generous servant hearts. They are experiencing Proverbs 11:25, A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. They refresh others not only through the giving of food and clothing, but also through a smile, a word of encouragement, help with getting groceries to a car when needed, a listening ear, a prayer, and countless other ways. The faithfulness of our volunteers speaks 4 PazNaz volumes to our clients regarding the faithfulness of God. We believe in the absolute necessity of prayer. We have acted upon our desire to increase substantially the prayer time with our volunteers before Helping Hands opens its door to our clients. At 1:30 pm in the afternoon on each Wednesday and Thursday, the team gathers to pray and ask God to help us enact what Romans 12:15 teaches, Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep, and in Psalm 55:22 where it says, Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you. We pray for one another, for our clients, and for needs in the Body of Christ at PazNaz as they are presented. Gradually, over the past few years, more and more of our volunteers have become comfortable in praying aloud for the needs presented. We are privileged to see God working in the lives of our volunteers and our clients. We have seen people decide to visit the prayer table with Spence Jakeway or David Moyer; people who were demanding and rowdy become thankful and peaceable; people who were using another person s appointment card voluntarily confess that and desire to do the right thing; people who have heart-rending situations remain grateful for what God is providing for them; people who were once clients become volunteers. Many, many more examples of transformation could be given. Some of the most heart-encouraging events have taken place recently. We have been able to work with several of our friends who are currently displaced and do not have a home. We have been able to encourage them by having them join Helping Hands as volunteers. Some help to unload the truck on Tuesdays; some assist Henry in helping to make the food distribution flow smoothly. Several served at the recent workday at the PazNaz Valley Center campus. It is very satisfying to observe these friends become and feel a part of Helping Hands. All who serve at Helping Hands believe that God has called us all to be together at this present time to serve him with our whole being. That s our deep desire. Transformation Gets Personal We both know that God has always been leading us toward the hurting and underserved. Our journey has included working with Samaritan s Purse Disaster Relief after hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Friends Disaster Relief after hurricane Mitch, Domestic Missions Workers for Operation Christmas Child-Samaritan s Purse, clothing and goods distribution in South El Monte, and many other experiences. Our desire is to touch the lives of our underserved friends in such a way that they cannot help but believe that God is real, that he knows them by name, that he loves them and will not forget them. We want our lives to be fully consecrated to God so that we move at the impulse of his love. Moving more fully in that direction, we acted on a desire we believe God put into us, so during a recent Thanksgiving we began to go to Church in the Park to visit, pray with, and serve our friends and congregation there. - Vivian and Henry Fithian If you re interested in volunteering with Helping Hands or Compassionate Ministries, please contact Sharon Boulghourjian at sharonb@paznaz.org. It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus: and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives helping others. - Ephesians 2:10

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6 I would like to think briefly about the uniqueness of the three versions of Christ s advent that come to us in the New Testament, for each writer has their own story to tell. For Matthew, the story of Christ s birth is the story of fulfillment. Matthew s genealogy of Christ begins with Abraham, letting us know from the first sentence that the story of Jesus is the story of Israel. But Jesus is not just the fulfillment of Abraham s promise, he is the reinstallation of David s reign. So it should not surprise the reader to discover in chapter two that, like David s first son (Solomon) who was visited by a curious royal inquisitor from the East (the Queen of Sheba), the new Son of David was pursued by curious Magi who also had come to see true royalty on display. 6 PazNaz

7 The story of Jesus in Matthew is the retelling of the Exodus story. The plot of the Exodus story is as follows: a paranoid ruler attempts genocide; a deliverer is protected; the people pass through the water; they are tested and formed in the wilderness; and they are formed as the light of the world. Now read Matthew s story of Jesus. Paranoid Herod attempts genocide in Judea. Jesus the deliverer is delivered into and out of Egypt. Like the people of Israel, he passes through the waters of the Jordan. He is tested and shaped for forty days in the wilderness so that he might become the light to the world that the people of Israel were intended to be. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2; Matthew 4:16) And then Matthew s story moves forward with the calling of twelve disciples to reform the twelve tribes of Israel and, like the receiving of the law by Moses at Mount Sinai, Jesus proclaims the new law of his kingdom to his disciples on the mount (Matthew 5-7). For Matthew, the story of Jesus is the fulfillment of everything his people had ever hoped for and all they had expected God to do through them. Jesus did not come to abolish the sacred law and the prophets, he came to fulfill them. Luke s story is about God s deliverance of the lowly. God begins to move among unknown oppressed people like Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary. Mary s song of praise celebrates God s turning of the economic and political tables by exalting the lowly and scattering the mighty. The actual birth narrative starts with taxation. The empire needs resources to keep its military pursuits going, and so it oppresses its poorest citizens. Jesus enters a world that has palaces for the mighty but no room for the lowly. It isn t royal visitors who hear about the birth of a Messiah, it is working class shepherds to whom angels proclaim history s greatest news. Like David, Israel s greatest king who rose from the obscurity of his father s sheep fields, so too, the true Son of David would rise from the obscurity associated with shepherds. He would not be a priest, but even as a boy he would instruct the wise. His lineage is not just linked to Abraham, for Luke, but it is tied all the way back in history to Adam himself. Jesus is the key to all of human history. He is the one who has been hoped for in every generation. The Spirit of the Lord has anointed him to Bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. (Isaiah 61; Luke 4:18) John s story of Jesus does not include rulers or peasants, Magi or shepherds. His story of Jesus is cosmic in nature. For John, the very Word (the Logos) embodies God s essential action that spoke the world into existence; his Word that not only sustains the world but is the essence of the wisdom woven into the fabric of all things; that Word became flesh and dwelt among us. John s Advent story is that God s hidden glory is no longer hidden, but it has been fully revealed in the person, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:3) No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:18) These are our shared stories of Advent: a story of fulfilled expectations, a story of deliverance from oppression, and a story of cosmic proportions. But they aren t our only stories of Advent. Each of us has our own story of Christ s coming. We each have a story about how Christ came to us and has made all things new. Your story may be a story of deliverance from brokenness and sin. Your story may be the story of how Christ has brought meaning, purpose, and mission to life. Your story may be about how Christ has sustained you through the trials of suffering and loss. This is the season of stories. Our stories are slightly different from one another. But they always start the same way: Christ came. May he continue to come and make all things new. - Pastor Scott Daniels 7

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10 Each of you have a unique story of how God has drawn you to him and how you have responded to that call. But for some, to walk with Christ can mean a painful rejection by family members and the culture in which you ve grown up, especially where Christianity is a suppressed minority religion. Jason and Yoko Barraca and infant daughter, Kyrie, have recently come back to PazNaz. Jason is a Presbyterian minister, serving as a chaplain in the Army Reserves. Yoko has a Masters of Divinity and is finishing up her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Fuller Seminary. Yoko loves to sing as her primary form of worship expression and is a passionate participant in the Celebration Choir. I recently sat down in an interview with Yoko, and these are excerpts from her amazing and inspirational story. - Pastor Alan De Vries YOKO: My family history and spiritual journey kind of go together. I was born and raised in Tsu, Japan. It s near Nagoya between Tokyo and Osaka. It s a pretty small town. My grandparents started the family business of making family Buddhist altars. My father and my mom also did that together. Japanese Buddhism is mixed with Confucianism, so they do ancestry worship. They have altars in their homes where they give prayers to their ancestors. They see them as a type of guardian angel. Because of their occupation, as well as being devout Buddhists, for me to become Christian was pretty crazy. It was by the grace of God that I was led to my home church at the age of four. My sister, who is four years older, took me to church. My pastor s daughter was her classmate. So during that time, she was inviting all of her friends from school to go to their Sunday school. American missionaries started the church, but she and her family were Japanese, and her father took over as the Japanese pastor. He s actually still there. He s 75 years old and still the pastor. He s been the pastor this whole time! My sister and her friend went to the Sunday school and, since I was only four, I just went along. I liked the songs and stories, so I just stayed. I loved it so much that I got baptized when I was 10 without telling my parents. That s pretty much how I started walking with the Lord. Obviously I didn t know too much, the depths of it or what it meant for me to become a Christian in this Buddhist family. In the early days I would go to Sunday school, sing the songs, and read the Bible with them, but that was it. Outside of church I would just go on with the Buddhist life. We had daily prayers morning and evening in front of the altar with my whole family. Just like the Lord s Prayer, I had the prayer memorized because we did it every single day, twice a day. When I got to Jr. High school, I started playing sports. In Japan, less than 1% of the population is Christian. They don t care about Christians, so there are school activities and other activities on Sundays. So, of course, 10 PazNaz

11 my softball team met on Sundays, too. In the beginning I said, Well, I m a Christian, so I m going to church; I m not going to come to the practice. My coach said, Okay! Then I got a regular position as a shortstop on the team, which was a huge deal for a first-year student. So he kindly warned me that since he was giving me a position, if I didn t come to Sunday practices, I would lose it. I was the only person missing on Sundays, and it didn t look good on the team. So I stopped going to church for three years while I was in junior high. Literally, we played throughout the year and had about five days off, believe it or not, out of the 365 days of the year. So this was a huge deal. After I graduated from Jr. High school, I was no longer part of the softball team. I realized, Oh, I have Sunday off! What do I do? The past three years I was reading the Bible on my own. Nobody taught me how to do devotional time, so my devotional was singing Sunday school songs. So I told myself, Okay, I m going to sing three songs as my prayer. That was my way of connecting with God and understanding his attributes. Now I was facing a new struggle. Obviously I wanted to go back to church. But after three years of not going to church, I felt that I was unworthy and not good enough to go back. I struggled quite a bit to bring myself to go back to church. But then God kindly reminded me that, because I m not good enough and because I m a sinner, that was the very reason why I needed to go back to church and that I needed my Savior to cleanse me. The first Sunday I returned, I saw a picture of Jesus the very famous picture of Jesus knocking on the door, from Revelation. He spoke right to me and said, I have been knocking on your door, and I m so glad you came back! The moment I stepped into the sanctuary, I saw the picture of the father of the prodigal son, running toward me, kissing me, hugging me and said, I ve been waiting for you! And that s the moment when I said I want to serve this God for the rest of my life. I know he s welcomed me back. I know he has forgiven me, and he really loves me. So that s when I really dedicated my life to Christ. I was 15 years old at that time. This new commitment meant that I would set myself apart from all the Buddhist or other religious activities, which was a huge deal. I didn t realize how Japanese culture was so embedded in these different religions, like Shintoism and Buddhism. I mentioned about the prayer ritual that we did as a family. After that Sunday, I told my parents that I d no longer participate in that. They were not happy about that. I also told them that I was committed to the Christian faith and that I would go to church on Sundays. They didn t like that either. So that was the beginning of persecution. In Japan, unlike some parts of the Middle East, you don t get imprisoned or beaten for your faith, but obviously there s so much emotional and psychological persecution. I was very much ostracized. I still remember one of the biggest events that happened my grandma s funeral. When she died, obviously we went to the funeral and, since in Japan there s ancestry worship, we had to bow to her and offer incense and prayers. However, I refused to do it. It was very public, too. You go one by one, while all of the rest of the family, relatives, and guests would watch. My father is the eldest son of his family, so he s the head of the household, the Nakagawa family. My grandmother was my father s mother, so he has the responsibility of showing the family tradition by his own kids behaving. So when he saw me not participating, it really broke him. He literally punched me in the face in front of everybody. It was a horrible moment for all of us. But at that point, I thought and believed that standing up for my faith, at any risk, was what I was supposed to do. I was just trying to be obedient to the word of God and what the Bible was teaching me. But I think my rather radical transformation brought feelings of anger and hatred toward Christianity for my parents. I didn t know any better. For the next 2-3 years, that was how life went on. I was between 15- and 17 -years-old at the time. I was grounded every Sunday so I couldn t go to church, but then I would sneak out on Fridays and go to Catholic mass because they d hold mass on Fridays, and my parents didn t know! So that s why I m still a little ecumenical or nondenominational. I was wanting and craving Christian fellowship, and that was the only thing that I could do. Back in those days, there was no cell phone, so my friends from church would try to call me at home, but my parents wouldn t let me talk to them. All the letters from my Christian friends were torn to pieces before I could see them. Since I was so isolated, I believe that s why I used to hear the voice of God a lot, because that was the only way he could communicate with me. Some people might find it a little bit offensive, kind of weird, but I know that was God s special grace that he granted me. In those days I would pray, God, why did you have to put me into this Buddhist family? I wouldn t ask to be a pastor s kid, but maybe the daughter of a nominal Buddhist or atheist, anything but a devout Buddhist family. But God simply said, Well, your dad s not going to read the Bible on his own and go to church, but you can be the church to him. You can be the Bible to him. That s why I m sending you to this family. That s when I really started praying for my parents and realized my place in my family and in the culture. Yoko s story doesn t end there! To read the rest of her miraculous story of transformation, please visit:

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