“Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.” John 5:29
My name is Gloria Au. I am an 8th grader that attends Arts and Communications Magnet Academy, better known as ACMA. I go there with my two sisters Lillian and Miriam Au. My parents are Johanna and Wesley Au. I live in Beaverton, Oregon with my family and a cat named Bernadette that comes to visit us every day. Since I go to an art school I have a lot of hobbies including drawing, crafting, acting, designing, but my favorite is dance. I also am in my school’s robotics club along with Girl Scouts where my Mom is the leader of my troop. My dream job would be a teacher or a backup dancer for my favorite artists! I plan to continue high school at ACMA where then after that I will so far, go either to U of O or the University of Utah. Those schools will help me get to South Korea where I will then teach English while starting my career of back up dancing. As those are my main interests currently.
I believe that God is the one person in the universe that can keep balance between good and evil, I believe that he will always be there for me when I need him. I believe that he will help me through all hard times and help me to see the good in life. This is one of many reasons why I follow God, not only that but I follow Jesus. I believe that Jesus and God will teach me valuable lessons. I believe that Jesus is God’s chosen son, I believe that Jesus will come down once again when the world is in a crisis. When I get to the Holy Spirit and what I believe about the holy spirit I feel like it gets a little tricky. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the good in life. The thing constantly battling evil for us. I believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and I want to continue following them.
I think baptism can be confusing. For me, I got baptized around one, so it’s like your parents telling God that you are going to follow him without your ideas and thoughts. I think getting baptized is telling God that you’re willing to try to learn from him, confirming your baptism is saying you’ve learned a lot, but you want to continue learning. So that’s what I want to do. I have learned so so much from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but I feel I have not learned enough, there is so much to myself I can still uncover when following God. I want to affirm my baptism to show God I want to learn more, I want to learn the right way to live life, how to be peaceful with others, and how to be the person that I want to be.
I think to be a follower of Jesus now doesn’t mean that you have to go to church every Sunday, but instead do an online worship, or maybe not going to every church event, but still going to most of them. I do believe that this world has shaped the image of how we see God and Jesus, but also how we worship them. I think that technology has given us many new options in how we can worship God. So now with today’s society I think we should be respectful and involve ourselves in most things of our church, but sometimes people have off days and dont feel like they can do everything. God doesn’t need us to try and overwork ourselves for him, he wants us to be human and give ourselves a break.
The mission of the church is to do its best job to inform people of Jesus and God’s mission. How we can help them and listen to them. The mission of our church is to help God and Jesus’s voice be heard even though we cant hear them physically. Even when you can’t physically hear them, our church helps us understand how we can hear them mentally, how we can tell if they answer our prayers.
I believe I will have so many questions as a Lutheran, but to start off I have three constantly on my mind, but only one of them I have been able to answer. So I will start by answering that one. Many say God and science don’t mix well together. Which that is true. I believe that many of the creation stories may be kinda like fairy tales. They aren’t exactly true, but some of it is or could actually happen. I think that the world was made how scientists believe, but I believe that God made it happen, so with a theory like the big bang, if that theory is true I believe God caused the big bang to happen. Now my questions I have not been able to answer are, how does God answer so many prayers at one time? My other being, is Hell really a thing if God loves everyone? To go into depth God gets so many prayers at one time with the billions of people on the planet, how does he listen to everyone thoroughly, how does he hear me over millions of other voices praying at the same time. To go more in depth in the other one isn’t Hell a curse to go there. It’s not a good thing. I think God knows that so I wonder if Hell is really a thing, because I feel like if he really loves everyone and cares for everyone he would not punish us, even the ones who do wrong. So is Hell like a thing in a nursery rhyme, how they always have warnings in it, but they are always there to try and scare you and keep you from doing wrong. My favorite example is the naughty list. It’s not a real thing, but it’s there to scare kids and keep them from doing wrong.
I plan to follow God by going to church, continuing to ask questions, praying to God, and listening to God. I think that I am involved with the church exactly how I plan to be involved in the future except for one thing, I plan to in the future listen to myself, my health, my heart, my body, to make sure that I will take care of myself when listening to God. Because it’s just as important to take care of yourself as it is to follow God.