First, thank you for celebrating my birthday and feeding me plenty of rice and noodles! This week I gained three pounds! My tummy is happy even though my doctor may not be 🙂 Thank you for all you
have done for Santy and me; thank you for your love and care. May God’s goodness and mercy follow you all the days of your lives.

As I reflect on my 66-years of life, I am assured that God has made arrangement for everything and what He asks of me is just to trust Him. He holds my future in His hands and will never drop it. As I ponder on this, I am reminded of Nathanael Ayers. Those of you who watched the movie, The Soloist, might still remember that Nathanael Ayers was a homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles when he was “discovered” by the LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez.

He was playing the violin when Steve Lopez happened to pass by. To make the long story short, Mr. Lopez befriended him, wrote a book about him, and later the book was made into a movie. The story of Mr. Ayers’ life is nothing short of tragedy but it’s also one of grace and redemption. It turned out that Mr. Ayers was a student at Juilliard, the prestigious music school in New York City, who had to drop out of school and later his promising musical career due to mental illness. But thanks to Steve Lopez, Mr. Ayers got the help he sorely needed and is now living off the street, in a nursing home.

There is another interesting fact that I just learned about Mr. Ayers: he was a classmate of Yo Yo Ma at Juilliard. The trajectories of their lives cannot be more different than night and day: Yo Yo Ma went
on to be one of the world-renowned cellists while Mr. Ayers went on to live on the streets. It’s not by choice that he suffered mental illness; it’s by design. By the same design, God brought Steve Lopez
to his life. By design God cares for us; by faith we live in His care.

Pastor Paul