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Web log by J.J. McKenna of prayer requests and streams of experiences for prayer consideration.
1.8.02
A little autobiography.
This was my submission to the Covenant World Mission offices and I hope it will help introduce some of you to my history.
Due to the transitory wanderlust in my father, my family did not often reside in one zip code for more that four months. We had lived in a quarter of the United States and even spent a few months in my mother’s hometown of Villahermosa, Tabasco in Mexico by the time I was eleven. Our final home was in Marinwood, CA. From this place our family eventually decayed into the fractured state from which we have only just begun to reassemble. My mother migrates from the United States to her more tropical climes of Tabasco during the colder months and returns again to pursue monetarily viable employ through the California Department of Transportation. My father pursues romance and human love in matrimonial exercises which have now cost him more heartbreak than I would ever care to experience. My junior siblings have tried to mend their brokenness through self-medication and cultic experiments and I have embraced the grace of Christ.
When I was 15 I had stopped living at home. I worked at a theatre as a movie projectionist. My house at the time was my 1975 Buick LeSabre (the Cadillac of Buick). I was also a ferocious member of a most successful water polo team and between these three elements I had all of the basic needs of my body satisfied. Having been raised a Catholic it was not yet overly obvious to me how thirsty my spirit had become. The discontent of my life at this time seemed to me to mostly stem from my parents divorce some three years prior. It was through a local youth group that I became connected to the personal Jesus who is my namesake, counselor and Savior. Through my high school career I lived alone but started to thirst after answers to the whys of my heart which had been both unheard and ignored in my childhood institution. It was emotionally difficult for me to separate myself from one of the only constants in my life but the pull on my soul was too strong for me to stay deceived.
I went church shopping after high school and landed in a church that I had passed a couple thousand times by the highway and on the way to my work. Marin Covenant Church is on a hill in an office building. The sermons from Interim Pastor Luchtenburg were so palpably compelling and spirit led that this welcoming church family soon became my own. In the choir and in dramatic presentations I found a way to express my thankfulness to the Father. It was 1994 and at this time in my employment history I had three different jobs. I was working at the movie theatre, in a tunnel installing CO2 sensors and working for a twelve branch children’s theater company. My desire to better instruct the children in the shows compelled my to find a Christian school where I could study the mechanics of the human voice and methods of instruction. I studied Music Education, Vocal Performance and German at Willamette University in Salem, OR. Salem and Trinity Covenant Church quickly became my home.
I have been attending Trinity for nearly eight years and have been a member for two. I have found a family unlike anything I could hope for in my brothers and sisters at Trinity. I have remained involved in various ministries and have been employed for the past year and a half as the Worship Team Leader. Within this family I have found a place to serve and seek. While serving with this family I was approached almost four years ago by Beatriz Argüello who is the Chair of the Normandía Covenant Church in Bogotá, Colombia. I began to pray about this possibility but I did not as yet take to heart the possibility of this venture. It had been my desire when I finished high school to serve as a missionary and had applied for the Peace Corps at that time. I was meeting with a saint in our church who had served for 38 years in Thailand. It was with the guidance of prayer, brother Jim Morris and the desire of my heart that I informed the Normandía church that I would be pursuing the possibility of serving in Colombia. This area of ministry would be a culmination of talents and opportunities that would serve the churches of the Northwest with which I will partner and the churches in partnership with el Pacto in Bogotá.
Due to the transitory wanderlust in my father, my family did not often reside in one zip code for more that four months. We had lived in a quarter of the United States and even spent a few months in my mother’s hometown of Villahermosa, Tabasco in Mexico by the time I was eleven. Our final home was in Marinwood, CA. From this place our family eventually decayed into the fractured state from which we have only just begun to reassemble. My mother migrates from the United States to her more tropical climes of Tabasco during the colder months and returns again to pursue monetarily viable employ through the California Department of Transportation. My father pursues romance and human love in matrimonial exercises which have now cost him more heartbreak than I would ever care to experience. My junior siblings have tried to mend their brokenness through self-medication and cultic experiments and I have embraced the grace of Christ.
When I was 15 I had stopped living at home. I worked at a theatre as a movie projectionist. My house at the time was my 1975 Buick LeSabre (the Cadillac of Buick). I was also a ferocious member of a most successful water polo team and between these three elements I had all of the basic needs of my body satisfied. Having been raised a Catholic it was not yet overly obvious to me how thirsty my spirit had become. The discontent of my life at this time seemed to me to mostly stem from my parents divorce some three years prior. It was through a local youth group that I became connected to the personal Jesus who is my namesake, counselor and Savior. Through my high school career I lived alone but started to thirst after answers to the whys of my heart which had been both unheard and ignored in my childhood institution. It was emotionally difficult for me to separate myself from one of the only constants in my life but the pull on my soul was too strong for me to stay deceived.
I went church shopping after high school and landed in a church that I had passed a couple thousand times by the highway and on the way to my work. Marin Covenant Church is on a hill in an office building. The sermons from Interim Pastor Luchtenburg were so palpably compelling and spirit led that this welcoming church family soon became my own. In the choir and in dramatic presentations I found a way to express my thankfulness to the Father. It was 1994 and at this time in my employment history I had three different jobs. I was working at the movie theatre, in a tunnel installing CO2 sensors and working for a twelve branch children’s theater company. My desire to better instruct the children in the shows compelled my to find a Christian school where I could study the mechanics of the human voice and methods of instruction. I studied Music Education, Vocal Performance and German at Willamette University in Salem, OR. Salem and Trinity Covenant Church quickly became my home.
I have been attending Trinity for nearly eight years and have been a member for two. I have found a family unlike anything I could hope for in my brothers and sisters at Trinity. I have remained involved in various ministries and have been employed for the past year and a half as the Worship Team Leader. Within this family I have found a place to serve and seek. While serving with this family I was approached almost four years ago by Beatriz Argüello who is the Chair of the Normandía Covenant Church in Bogotá, Colombia. I began to pray about this possibility but I did not as yet take to heart the possibility of this venture. It had been my desire when I finished high school to serve as a missionary and had applied for the Peace Corps at that time. I was meeting with a saint in our church who had served for 38 years in Thailand. It was with the guidance of prayer, brother Jim Morris and the desire of my heart that I informed the Normandía church that I would be pursuing the possibility of serving in Colombia. This area of ministry would be a culmination of talents and opportunities that would serve the churches of the Northwest with which I will partner and the churches in partnership with el Pacto in Bogotá.
