By: Jet and Hershe Wong / November 12, 2017
Hello! I am Hershe, and together with my husband Jett, we will share our testimony how God blessed us through our DJ Cell Group. We thanked God for this privilege to share His goodness. We were very blessed to be led by God into this Church and be a part of ETab.
DJ Cell are where friendships are deepened and strengthened as we learn to love and value one another and grow together in our Christian walk with God. It is where we are inspired to touch others’ lives while forming an important factor in achieving our own set goals. There are two most significant and memorable events in our life where our cell group friends were a blessing to us.
First, few years back, after I graduated, I desired to work in a company where I can take Saturday and Sunday off. So I tried my best to be hired in one of the top universal bank. There I took the exams and managed to pass it all by the grace of God. But nothing prepared me for the final interview. For me it is the most difficult and scariest part, honestly, I am very poor in verbal communication and personal relations (PR), I am not comfortable communicating in English (as you may know English is the accepted medium of communication in the business world) and I don’t speak it well. Job interview is my Achilles heel. Even though I was dressed well, I wasn’t prepared for what I will answer, I was so embarrassed, I failed and went home crying. For a year and a half I felt depressed and very disappointed with myself for missing the opportunity. But God is all merciful, and He do things on His own ways, not my ways in order to manifest His power so I won’t be proud and gain credit for my ability.
He used again people to give me another chance to achieve my goals and as well as fulfill his promises. With my persistence, I applied again in the same bank where I already failed, surprisingly, I was scheduled for the final interview. But this time I already know what to do, weeks ahead I approached Sir Fernand my DJ Cell Leader and asked for his help. (Everybody knows Sir Fernand, The English Professor.) I invited him and his wife Lovely over a cup of coffee and asked him if he could coach me in dealing with job interviews. So Sir Fernand trained me, gave me advices, helped me how to prepare with the possible questions, how to answer it, how to be confident and how to be precise. After the coaching, they prayed for me.
In the interview, in silence I was dazed, it was not just me but the interviewer was also prepared and it was harder and more difficult than the previous one, but truly Gods appointment has come to pass, I was hired and now enjoying the pay and the Saturdays and Sundays at ETab. I always acknowledge that without Sir Fernand and Ma’am Lovely I wouldn’t be able to achieve my career and my spiritual goals.
Second, my wife and I celebrated our wedding last June. Our wedding was a very wonderful experience full of important and very important persons, but the preparation also gave us a stressful time conceptualizing and planning. We were very hands on with everything. The budget, the theme, the choice of songs, musicians and singers, the photo and video, the venue, the food, the billeting, the transportation, the suppliers and small details equally important in making the guest comfortable and full as well as glorifying to the Lord. We were very excited to pull this off. And as much as possible we want it to be well organized and seamless. For us to achieve that, we decided to hire a wedding organizer to execute our plans. Our job will be to plan and arrange everything, and the organizer to execute what we planned. Eleven months into the planning, everything went well until weeks before the wedding day when the organizer we hired surprisingly charges us with an unreasonable amount for supposed one location visit in 2016. They know well how far we can stretch our arms and our legs when budget is limited. When you are on a tight budget, you will do whatever it takes just to make every peso count without compromising the quality. Yes, we were prepared and expecting P5,000.00, but we were surprised by P12,000.00. And knowing that it was spent for two nights with somebody in a middle class hotel, we were shocked and irritated. Of course we are not paying for somebodies vacation. Its way beyond what we expected from the organizer. And to make it even more serious, they only informed us ten days before the wedding even though we’ve been to numerous follow ups as to how much we owe for the trip. We never see that punch coming straight for us. It’s like telling us we have no choice but to pay or else we will look for a different organizer for our wedding causing us desperation to hold on to them. We were on top of our stress limit that week, I was not feeling well and Hershe was also sick. But we firmly decided not to tolerate this kind of business attitude. We both agreed not to take their services and cancel the contract with the team. They may take our down payment but we will not allow this kind of atmosphere to join our wedding celebration.
I remember vividly, two months before the wedding every Sunday, Pastor Toh Nee would ask me if how is the wedding preparation, and I would firmly reply with a smile, by the grace of God Pastor it is going smoothly as planned. But in the 3rd Sunday of May when that problem occurred with the organizer, Pastor Toh Nee as he’d been doing, asked me again if how is the preparation, this time my answer is different, I said, we are having a hard decision to tie the organizer for the wedding day Pastor, but with swift confidence Pastor Toh Nee replied, “you go to Carlyn ah”, she is good in weddings, she organizes wedding for our church.
We know fully well how capable Pastor Carlyn is when it comes to weddings and organizing, we’ve seen it many times here in the church, we know it’s her burden, but we are confined to break our initial decision to let Pastor Carlyn enjoy the venue even just for our wedding. We thought she deserves more than just a rest.
But we prayed, break our initial decision and asked for the help of Pastor Carlyn if she can took over the critical part of working all the details in a very limited time. We thank God, she was just waiting for us to ask her. Together with the help of Pastor Carlos, our zone, our cell group, our leaders, our friends and the Pastoral Staff from the church, we are assured of Gods hand for our wedding. On the day of the wedding, we were surprised, all of them has its own task to accomplish, one in charge for me and one for Hershe to look after our needs, but together they prepared for the ceremony, they set-up the venue under the blazing heat, the tables, the decorations, they made sure that the flowers will not dry out, the bouquets and the programs it was very organized from start to finish. And we are forever grateful to all of them.
We thank them all for sacrificing under the intense heat and for staying up very late the night before the wedding. Words are not enough to thank them and forever we can’t repay the time and efforts they gave. Our hearts are melting every time we remember this. And we can really say that we could never find true friends as them. We didn’t plan for that to happen but God turned out that way. The DJ Cell Group was all invited as guests but they turned out to be our wedding organizers. Even our Family members, relatives, friends, and colleagues were surprised and commend our church for the full support. We too were amazed and was so blessed. It was more than the team we expected. It was our own DJ Cell Group.
That’s the beauty of cell group. You can have a second family and finding Godly friends which motivates you to draw closer to God and be involved in the work of God. Through cell group discussions you can express yourself and surely everybody is willing to listen and will give advice. You will be guided and cared. This is how cell group works. And I believe there are so much more wonderful testimonies. So we highly encourage everyone, especially the new ones to be a part of a cell group. Let’s be excited and cooperate with every activity of our cell. Together, let us journey and grow in the Lord, fulfill His commands to do community and commissions. Join a cell group, be blessed and be a blessing. Thank you!
