A patient community sees harvest

I have been blessed to have been exposed to Christianity for most of my life. However, it wasn't until May 2008 that I chose to accept Christ as my personal Lord and savior. My spiritual journey began when I was 5 years old and moved to Canada from China, the land of my birth. My family attended a Chinese bible study in Canada, and it was there that I was first introduced to Jesus and His love for me. However, before I had a chance to make my faith my own, my family moved to the U.S., where I spent my middle and high school years. I did not attend church regularly during this time, and although I never rejected the idea of God altogether, He seemed like a complete stranger to me.

Regardless of this, however, I felt compelled to join a Christian fellowship my freshman year at Duke University. I was mostly in search of a supportive, moral
community because I knew that college would bring many new temptations, and I
did not want to fall into them. It is strange, looking back, because the choice
to explore Christianity seemed so natural, even though I had been disconnected
from the faith for almost a decade. I participated in a Campus Crusade small
group bible study all of my freshman year, but stopped going my sophomore year
mostly because of time conflicts, but also because I did not really feel my
faith growing. Sophomore year was a rough year for me, as I struggled to
maintain control of different aspects of my life, and found myself feeling
helpless, empty, and alone. It was then at my lowest point that I began to look
into Intervarsity.

Prior to attending small groups or large group, I already knew several IV members from other extracurricular activities at Duke. Indeed, a few of them had tried reaching out to me by inviting me to IV events my freshman year, but it wasn't until January 2008 that I began to recognize their efforts as acts of love and not attempts at making me a "spiritual project." At first, it was definitely a struggle to reconcile the "new" Christian way of life with the way I had been living, which had been entirely self-serving and fundamentally meaningless. However, I began to feel that God wanted me to know Him better, and IV provided the perfect opportunities for me to do so. In IV small group, I felt accepted and cherished even though I was non-Christian, and I felt safe to voice my concerns, doubts, and questions. I rarely found satisfactory answers on the first try (in fact, I still struggle with some questions), but I could feel that some pieces were beginning to fall into place.

I came to understand that the reason I felt empty and helpless was because I was trying to fill my life with worldly objects, like academic success, social affirmation from peers, and romantic relationships, instead of filling it with God. I was solely relying on myself and other people for happiness, an act that is futile because people (myself included) would inevitably fall short and disappoint. Only God
can provide without fail.

Finally, after a semester of actively pursuing God, I decided in May that it was time that I took a leap of faith and committed my life to something that had grown to be an integral part of who I was. To me, the biggest cause of my change of heart was the model of Christian community that I witnessed in IV. So many people shared with me their incredible journeys and struggles and really helped me understand that our God is a god who wants to be in a personal relationship with us. Without these conversations and without the fellowship of IV small group and large group, I know that my faith could not have grown so exponentially in such a short time. By the end of the semester, I still had questions and I was scared of what was to come (I had no idea what to expect), but I was so eager to make God a permanent part of my life.

Six months later, I have absolutely no regrets - I only wish I had made the choice earlier. I feel closer to God than ever, and I am continuously made in awe of His glory and unspeakable love. Looking back, I can see clearly now that even though last semester was the most spiritually awakening one for me, God's fingerprints can be found all over the last twenty years of my life.

He has been working through so many different people, planting seeds deep inside me that remained invisible until the right conditions were presented, at which point these seeds sprung, seemingly out of nowhere, and bloomed into something beautiful and truly fulfilling. I realize now that often, God's work is unseen until He chooses to reveal it, and I feel eternally grateful to those who continued to let God work through them even when they did not see immediate results in me. Their patience and selfless love got me where I am now, and I only hope to be able to show the same patience and love to others who may be in the same place that I was a mere year ago. The bad news is that there is so much emptiness in the world, but the good news is that God is the only one who can truly fill it.