Roy & Kaitlyn Lo
Kaitlyn
I grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Southern California in 8th grade. My parents were indifferent agnostics who believed that God either does not exist or is irrelevant to our pursuits in this world. But somehow by chance I grew up in a Christian school and heard the gospel when I was in 5th grade. It made sense to me that my sins required some kind of payment and I was relieved that Jesus took my punishment on the cross. I wanted forgiveness from God and thought that my end of the bargain would be to try to follow God's rules.
Fast forward to college, I started coming to our church because people were friendly and the messages were intellectually satisfying. But the more I learned about God and how he desired us to live, the more burdened and guilty I felt because my end of the bargain kept growing. One day I just decided to walk away from God since I was miserable and believed I'd fail. Ironically, that's just where God needed me to be. Miraculously I went to a retreat where I heard the familiar gospel message that Jesus unconditionally loves sinners and it was like I heard it for the first time. I trusted in God's free gift of forgiveness and unconditional love, and I knew I wanted to follow Jesus the rest of my life.
My love for ministry started in law school when I had my first experience working hard to reach out to classmates, doing life with other brothers and sisters, and studying the bible with a friend and leading her to Christ! I was blown away that I can do something this meaningful and worthwhile with my life. Since then, I've had the privilege of serving at our church in Taiwan, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Berkeley and now West Lafayette. God has definitely humbled me a lot as I saw (and continue to see) my own sins and failures, and I have come to know God's grace and mercy so much more. I am so thankful God saved a wretch like me and now I get to be a part of his people building up his church!
Roy
I was born in Taiwan to a non-religious family and immigrated to Texas when I was 10. Being a social outcast all through middle and high school, combined with my natural love of science, turned me into a full-on atheist, the kind that goes around evangelizing about how God doesn’t exist.
And that’s how I showed up at UC Berkeley, as a free-thinking skeptic studying mechanical engineering. But on my first day of college, someone invited me to check out their Christian club. He said there would be free food. I didn’t want anything to do with a religious group, but I wanted a lot to do with the free food, so that’s how I started attending a Bible study.
I investigated this strange religion only to discover that I had been wrong about the most fundamental facts about life, and by the end of my freshman year decided to give my life to Christ. After graduating college I went to law school, having been told by some friends at church that I have a way with words that could be honed by legal training and help other skeptics like me come to believe in Jesus. While studying law, I also ministered to college students and continued to do that bivocationally as a litigator.
In 2010 I got married, and my wife and I had the chance to help start a church in Minneapolis. Later we moved to be a part of church plants in Taiwan and Los Angeles, where I decided to go into full-time ministry. Along the way God also blessed us with our two daughters, and in 2016 brought us back to where we started at Berkeley. In 2019 we began a new adventure serving in our middle school department. It’s by far the loudest and rowdiest bunch, but also endearing and rewarding for those who can put up with the sights, sounds, and smells of adolescents eager to have fun but also ask big questions about life and God. I had hoped God would grant me to serve Him as a youth minister for the rest of my days on earth... but recently our family's moved out to Purdue to lead the college ministry and mentor college students there!