Welcome to Shepherds Church Blog–just a sneak peek into life in our church. Enjoy!
In Downey UBF, I used to serve the Wednesday worship service message every week. The most powerful message I remember delivering was based on Acts 7, Stephen's martyrdom. Usually I would finish the message on Monday, and then spend Tuesday and Wednesday practicing and praying to digest the passage properly. I served this particular message...
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Did you know that tucked within the huge campus of CSULB is a secret Garden of Eden? Well, it’s not so secret, since it’s open to the public. However, not many people know of its existence. I’m talking about the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden. It’s been on the campus since 1981, and it’s...
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Hey my fellow shepherds, I wanted to share what happened recently in the tech world: ChatGPT. What is ChatGPT? It is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. To put it in...
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The mother plant I was eating breakfast this morning and I saw something peculiar. We used to have a kitchen appliance in front of the window and I had placed some small succulent plants on the window sill behind it. In order to water them, I would have to streeeetch past the appliance or contort...
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Hello Church Family! On Friday I made a soup that Sarah Flores used to make in the Sister’s Common Life and we ALL loved it! How happy and blessed I was in the Common Life! This time it was made by me and Hannah Boos. Since several people at church asked for the recipe, and...
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Excerpt from testimony Nehemiah 9:1-10:39 (Shared Oct 29, 2021) In the previous passage Israel people were desperate for God. They were fasting, confessing their sins, and spent many hours in Bible study, praise and worship. Overall it was a very serious time when they did whatever they could in their desperation for God. And...
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I saw this recipe recently online and decided to give it a try. It seemed easy enough for my nonexistent cooking skills, so I thought, "Why not?" I usually rely on takeout or my mom's cooking to survive, but this time I wanted to just make something on my own. Boy am I glad I...
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As you all know, vegetables can be quite bland. To me, they are the manna of the food world, especially black beans and lentils. As in the case of manna, you have to put in work and creativity to transform vegetables into something delicious. I have made black bean patties and zucchini patties in the...
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After I had Bible study on Isaiah 49:1-7 with the fellow senior brothers, I was reminded of a poem I read a while ago titled "When God Wants to Drill A Man" written by an unknown author. This poem complimented what I learned from Isaiah 49, because it describes how God fashions me to be...
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When quarantine went from 2 weeks to several months, I decided to start gardening. To be honest, I’ve never been good at gardening. I usually kill all my plants. I even killed a cactus, which I thought was impossible. But, I thought I would try to garden with a “shepherd’s perspective.” So, here’s my experience...
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Once my parents were going to a conference, so they had us stay at our piano teacher's house and go to a Vacation Bible School with a nearby church. The songs were amazing and I never forgot some of these, like the peaceful tune of "You have been so good to me." To this day...
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King Nebuchadnezzar tried to appeal to them with mercy by giving them one more chance to bow down at the next musical cue… and threatened again to throw them in. He taunted them saying, "When you are thrown in, then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" When I read that...
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Ahh! A dangerous creature that will bite!! The teeth are so sharp, look at the evil in its eyes! And don't forget the naked rat tail, yuck! That's what we thought when we got a good look at the object of our dogs' barking one night in our yard. We shone a flashlight around and...
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“Look up at the heavens and count the stars - if indeed you can count them.” These words were a promise given to Abraham. All he wanted in life was to have just one son. For the sake of one son, he left everything and followed God. He went through thick and thin. In times...
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My dad and I were just talking about the sincere and touching testimonies we heard tonight...However, I was troubled when one shepherd mentioned having no human contact at all aside from crazy people all week, even though at the same time he said this was the best time for him to really be with God....
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Graduation Testimony Key Verse: Philippians 4:13 I Can Do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens Me My name is Eduardo. By God’s grace I am a recent graduate, with a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design. My story begins with my childhood, as an elementary student I did very well in school. Every year I would...
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About two weeks ago I baked some really delicious ribs marinated in tangerine juice and drizzled with brown sugar. But then this happened… This isn't the actual tray I used, but mine looked identical! #facepalm When I pulled the trays out of the oven I sighed heavily. And then as I scrubbed them I sighed...
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Greetings! I came across a post about Christianity in China in the 1900s. The post is a summary of all the flyers that the believers drew during the time of turmoil and tribulation when the land of China suffered terribly from wars and plagues. It caught my attention because I remembered at our LOVE conference,...
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Recently Shepherdess Sarah Flores mentioned in her testimony about the Torchlighters video based on John Wesley's life story. I was interested and watched it with Mary Angeline. The video begins with a young John Wesley being saved from a house fire. When he was returned to his mother she said, "God has saved you, just...
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I moved into the Common Life during the winter of 1989. I thought that since my heart was steadfast, I would not move ever again. But things did not go as I expected. Instead, we moved every single semester, from 1989 to 1992. I don’t know why we moved so frequently, even to this day!...
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“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11