( 04.9.06)
Julie Kim

Before I begin sharing my experience at Encounter, I want to give a little background of myself. I moved to California from Texas a little over a year ago. I have to say, God had a reason for me to move. Last June, while I was at a weekend getaway with my sister, I passed out and when I woke up, I was in the emergency room. The doctor told me I was dehydrated and after a few hours they sent home. For the next 3 days I was in bed unable to do anything because of an excruciating headache and ended up back in the emergency room. To make a long story short, I was transferred to UCLA Medical Center due to hemorrhaging and an aneurysm in my brain. As soon as I arrived, they immediately began prepping me for surgery. By this time, I was loosing my eye sight and my hearing and the pain was so unbearable that I think I finally gave up and passed out because I really don’t know what happened after that. I was in surgery for approximately 9 hours.

The day after my surgery, I was pretty much back to my normal self…minus a large patch of hair that was shaved off, a few hundred stitches and staples…oh and a tube sticking out of my head. My recovery was truly a miracle. Even the doctor’s were impressed that I was doing so well. My surgeon expected me to have all these side affects but for the most part, I suffered from very few. He even said that it was a miracle because the aneurysm actually ruptured at the very moment he went in to clip it. Had it been minutes before, who knows what could have happened to me. 24 days later, I was finally released from the hospital.

It’s been a little over 9 months since my surgery and to this day, I sometimes can’t believe what I went through. There were days that I looked in the mirror and saw the missing hair and the scar across my head and thought, “How long is it going to take for my hair to grow back?” But there have also been days when I looked in the mirror and said, “Oh my gosh, I could have died.” I started wishing, in some ways, that this experience would have been a little different. I’ve been given a second chance and I wanted God to move me in a way that I would appreciate life more. But even more so, I wanted this to be a life changing experience for me so that I could make a difference in my life and in the lives of others.

The thought would just come and go and I really didn’t pray or do much about it. Well, after I started attending Southland, one of the things I wanted to do was get more involved. So when Encounter was announced, Tina and Aaron kept telling us that we needed to go. Janet (my sister) and I said, “What the heck” and we signed up. We had no idea what it was about, so we asked Tina, “What is Encounter all about?” No matter how many times we asked, Tina just kept saying, “You just have to go and experience it.” Since Tina was no help, we asked our cell members. We were able to get enough information to make us feel comfortable about going.

Basically, it seemed like any other retreat. I’ve been going to church all my life and been to many retreats so I saw it as no big deal. Honestly, when Friday came around, we were debating whether or not we wanted to go. There were a lot of things going on with trying to get our business up and running. We’ve been looking for a property and we still hadn’t found anything. I was so frustrated because nothing was working out and realtors were not getting back to us. I really didn’t want to go. But I know when I don’t want to go is when I have to force myself to go. So we went.

Well, during Encounter, I really didn’t expect anything. I truly went thinking that this was going to be like any other retreat. I have to say that it was much better because even though the schedule was jam packed, I enjoyed the fact that each topic flowed to the next. Not only that, I truly loved that it was presented by our sisters and they incorporated their own personally testimony. It was touching and I was definitely able to relate to what they were saying. But still, it was nothing more than that.

Saturday evening, we had ministry time. This was a time for us to pray about ourselves. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Well, as we were praying, the group leaders were going around praying for each person individually. One of the group leaders came over and began to pray for me. As I was listening to her pray, she kept repeating, “God sees you.” At first, I was sitting there thinking, “I know He does. Tell me something I don’t know.” And then she said, “God sees the loneliness and He is working on that. He sees you.” As I was praying that God would reveal the meaning to me, another sister came and prayed for me. She had a vision that she shared with me. She saw a tree that had been uprooted. She said that I was that tree and she felt as though I was in a vulnerable place. Again, I started questioning what it meant. Well, all of the sudden, as I was praying, the room became very quiet. I couldn’t hear the music or all the others praying around me…and in a very clear voice I heard, “I see you.” In all my years of going to church and who knows how many retreats, I never really heard God’s voice until that night. Within that moment, everything started to become clear.

I won’t go into all the details but I want to share one aspect with you which I believe covers everything. When I heard that very gentle voice say to me, “I see you” I began to see everything that I had gone through in the past year. I saw that in parts of my life, I was hiding behind a mask. I wanted everyone to believe that I was okay and that my life was great. But in actuality, I was lonely, I was scared and I was definitely in a vulnerable situation. I feared about things like my future because for the first time, I felt like I had no control over my life. But God reassured me by saying I see you. Up to this point, I had always tried to do everything on my own. It was time for me to finally let go and let God take control.

I can honestly say that just in this past week, God has been working on my behalf. He has already placed certain ideas in my heart, ways that He will use me. He has revealed to me things that I can do to make a difference in other people’s lives…like give this testimony. Even as far as my business is concerned, I believe that God placed everything on hold so that I could go to Encounter because everything is now moving forward.

I never expected anything to come out of this retreat but I truly was able to have an encounter with God. It wasn’t this crazy dramatic thing that happened, however, in a quiet but clear way, God spoke to me and the best part is that I know He sees me. He sees where I am and where I am going. It’s because of His grace that I am here today and I’m excited to see what He has in store for me.