By Danny Qian

When I first heard that there would be a church “campout” in the summer at our church, I was optimistically cautious.

I was optimistic because I thought that our older girls would love the fellowship with their friends and staying up late with them.  

I was cautious because I never had to be there with them, sleeping in tents (not my preferred sleeping situation) since in previous years they would just campout with the church staff.  

However, knowing that my younger two girls and my wife could also participate, we would definitely have a great time fellowshipping with church families and friends and they could simply go home to sleep and come back to church to participate in more activities the next morning (since we wanted the younger kids to get a good night’s sleep).

The campout turned out to exceed my expectations and the sleeping situation wasn’t too bad either (as I brought air mattresses).

The fellowship was amazing, especially since we really haven’t been able to catch up with many people due to COVID-19. The worship was also awesome and well planned. I was pleasantly surprised that the staff put together a really great outdoor worship program in the grass area, right in front of all the tents.

What I really appreciated beyond the nice worship, good fellowship, all the games and breakfast the following day, was how everything felt simple but to the main point of our faith. The campout simply felt like something that would please the Lord: good fellowship among brothers and sisters in Christ, where Christ was being worshipped in the center of it all.

By Arman

As a follow up to our introduction to guest Arman from Kazakhstan, Arman here shares about his initial impressions about one month into his stay.

What are your initial impressions of Southern California?

I've been here several times before, and can say that colder seasons are a little bit easier for life. I am more cold than heat-resistant :-) Probably because I grew up in a very cold part of Kazakhstan. 

But I love the church and my coaches and the team at Rio Hondo Prep –hot days fade in comparison to all the blessings here.

What are your initial impressions of high school football in Southern California? 

Coming to Rio Hondo Prep feels like being thrown into high school straight out of kindergarten. Everything is so structured and well organized. I am impressed by the discipline and speed of our team. Even though we have much bigger and stronger players in Kazakhstan, we’d be wiped out if we played the Kares team just like our first 2 opponents at the beginning of the season :-)

What are your initial impressions of our church, Evergreen?

By God's grace I feel like I've been a part of the church for a long time. I am very thankful for the warm welcome. You've provided me with your friendship, a place to stay, a car and a ton of great food :-)

I am also very encouraged by the faithful preaching of the word and by God's work in bringing new people to church. May we see dozens of people come to know the Lord this year through the ministry of Evergreen!

What are you most looking forward to for the remainder of your stay?

One of the members is taking me to a college football game – this will be my first big game to watch at the stadium! 

I also started exploring the sport of surfing. It's very challenging but I hope I will be able to try it a few more times while I am here since I won't be able to do it in Kazakhstan.

I'd like to learn about football as much as I can but I feel like I'll be able to only scratch a tip of the iceberg. 

I look forward to making shabu-shabu with Pastor Mako.

I look forward to an undefeated season for the Kares team so that I could claim a little part of their success. lol :-D

I look forward to getting to know the church better and being able to encourage the saints.

How can the church family be praying for you?

We have one Muslim student at Rio Hondo Prep, he and I became good buddies. He says that he wants to understand the Bible but his family doesn't allow him to read it. He is interested in studying it together with me at school. Please pray that we do and that he comes to know the Lord!

Adam recently came to be part of our church and is recently married to our missionary in Japan, Sabrina. Hear from Adam, a missionary himself to Japan, as he shares more about himself.

Please share a little bit of your background and how you came to Evergreen.

I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I come from a family of Italian Canadian nominal Catholics. I decided to follow Jesus during my third year at university, becoming involved in student ministry and by extension, missions. I’ve traveled to India and Japan for short-term missionary work, and spent one year in Osaka, Japan (August 2019 – August 2020) for medium-term missionary work. Amid my preparations for my Osaka term, I met Sabrina through an online dating website. As we met in-person and dated in Japan, we decided to meet each other’s families. This brought me to California in September 2020, where I had the privilege to meet Sabrina’s biological family and her spiritual family here at Evergreen.

How has your time at our church been so far? What are you initial impressions of our church?

COVID-19 has definitely made things interesting in my initial engagement at Evergreen. I first started attending Sunday services online. I’ve appreciated the love of Jesus being made explicit during the services, and seeing that incarnated with the people of Evergreen as I’ve been attending in-person.

My initial impression was that Evergreen is big! My home church in Canada is a small percentage of the size of both the congregation and the campus. The size and scope have definitely been a change for me, especially after returning from Japan, where a group of six people every Sunday was a successful turnout.

The few families that Sabrina has invited me into fellowship with have been loving, patient, funny, and encouraging. These families have been intentional in cultivating community with us, not as a duty, but as a natural outflowing of their character and care for us. We’re excited to dive deeper in relationship with them.

What are you most looking forward to in your time at Evergreen?

More than anything, intentional community and the organic discipleship that comes out of that are something that excites me about my time at Evergreen. I’m excited to learn more about the vision of discipleship here, and encouraged to see that vision play itself out within these families of community Sabina and I are engaged in.

How can we pray for you and Sabrina? 

1. Our marriage. We are seeking to cultivate a space where we are living out our identities as family, as missionaries and as disciples. Pray that we prioritize loving God, loving each other and loving others in this.

2. Immigration and citizenship processes that we’re currently involved in. We are seeking to become dual citizens (Canada-USA), and the processes are long. Pray for favour.

by Pastor Victor Chen

For over six months, much of my interaction with the children of our church came through the screen. Though not quite the YouTube star, I would appear each Sunday shortly after 9am to a regular audience of church school students ranging from PreK through 6th grade at home.

There was the familiar opening music, blue backdrop, special guest appearances from other Church School teachers and animated lesson videos from “The Gospel Project”. I made sure to stay energetic and to the point, all the while speaking as if the students were in the same room.

The true star of the videos was our media director, Garrett Inouye, who made the videos come to life each week with careful editing and production. We tried to stay ahead of schedule by recording one week in advance, but with holidays and vacations, there were some days where we would record multiple videos in one sitting. 

At the same time the videos were being shown on Zoom, I was teaching in-person to a group of church school students first outside the children’s ministry office and then in the MPR. The reason why we pre-recorded the videos for our students online was so that I could focus on one audience at a time, both online and in-person between two departments, 1st/2nd and 5th/6th grade. Initially while trying a hybrid model, I wasn’t able to focus on either audience as my attention was split.

Over a month ago, we made the decision to end our pre-recorded church school videos. Recording videos weekly was beginning to take a toll as more ministries were reopening. By God’s grace, we were able to begin live streaming my main teaching from the MPR allowing students at home to tune in and follow along.

On 9/12, we will relaunch our church school in person. All grades through 6th grade will meet in the MPR at 9am for a main teaching session and breakout to their respective classrooms for lesson review, activities and small groups. Parents have the option of requesting an online option, which will be a link to view our livestream of the main session along with other resources to access with their children.

This also coincides with our launch of a unified curriculum, “The Gospel Project”, from the very beginning of a three-year cycle through the Bible. On 9/12, we will begin from Genesis 1. 

As I look back on church school during the stay at home order, I see so many changes and transitions. We went from nothing to Zoom to hybrid to pre-recorded videos and in-person outdoors to livestream and in-person indoors. 

The Lord has brought us so far.

I’m excited for where the Lord will bring us next.

Join us as we relaunch Church School in-person on 9/12. Parents can check in their students up through 6th grade in the MPR beginning at 8:45am and stay for a special parent orientation following the main teaching session. 

Dear Church Family,

My name is Arman. I was born and raised in Kazakhstan in a nominally Muslim home. The first Christian I met was an American missionary, Jon. I met him at a gym during my sophomore year of university in 2006. Through my friendship with Jon, studying the Bible and history of early Christianity and observing the life of a small local house church that I began to attend, I was becoming more and more convinced that the claims of Christ as presented in the New Testament were true. By God’s grace in November 2007, I turned away from my sin and trusted my life to God in Christ. I was baptized at my house church in May 2008.

Most of my background has been in business and project management. Currently I run a Christian publishing company that is located in Russia. Our goal is to equip thousands of Christians (and especially pastors) with solid theological resources.

I’ve served as a lay pastor or preacher for most of my Christian life. In God’s providence, sports has always been one of the primary platforms for my personal evangelism and discipleship. Maybe it’s because I myself got to know the first Christian at a gym.😊

In March 2020, I started playing for a local American football team in Almaty, Kazakhstan [Almaty Horde]. Their coach came to our church service because he heard that the preacher (me) was a good athlete, and he wanted to recruit me. At first, I hated that sport, but I loved the team and wanted to serve the guys who desperately needed Jesus. At my first practice, I got nicknamed “Padre” and that nickname has stuck.

By God’s grace, all of my teammates have heard the gospel and about half of them have visited our church. To make this ministry long lasting, I wanted to learn how to coach and along with my church, started praying for an opportunity to intern in the US. 

In March 2021, I came to California for the Shepherds’ Conference at Grace Bible Church. There in God’s providence, I met Pastor Rocky. He immediately offered his help! Later he helped set up a coaching internship with Rio Hondo Prep School. After overcoming several logistical hiccups related to COVID-19, I came to LA on August 8 and will be here for a couple of months.

I am so thankful to our Lord for the hospitality of Evergreen SGV’s members! Brother Baldwin took me to the church service straight from the airport and I immediately felt loved by you! Quite a few people came to say hi and told me that they’ve been praying for me after watching a video I recorded a couple months ago. Thank you for providing me with housing and a car. My church in Kazakhstan also praises the Lord for your generosity! 

My coaching internship started well. The staff and the team showed me a very warm welcome. I need to learn a ton of things as I feel like I went from kindergarten to high school, but I am very excited about this invaluable experience. Please pray that I learn well and that I can serve the team well in any capacity I can.

I look forward to getting to know you better while I am here.

Much love in Christ,

Arman