This blog post was originally posted on my Patreon feed for my patrons. I have edited it slightly to fit my blog, and I hope that it gives you a good idea of what I'm up to with my art ministry stuff! There will be more on that later, too. Stay tuned!
The Beginning
At the end of 2019 I came home from Taiwan, ending my four year stint as an artist with Create International. I had no idea what was up next, but it felt like the right time to come home. Soon afterwards, in January of 2020, I received an email from a woman who was connected with the Create International national leaders, Calvin and Carol. She explained that Carol had suggested she contact me for help with a project she was working on: "Moksh! 7 Stories," as I was already familiar with evangelistic projects and understood the value of contextualization. She asked me if I could do the art and animate the project, and I said yes, feeling that God wanted me to do this work. The goal was to produce seven short videos depicting the good news of Jesus to a specific audience: Hindus. They were designed to answer certain pertinent spiritual questions Hindus have, and they were meant to go on Youtube so that people all over the world could access them.
So, we go to work!
The Struggles
It might seem like a fun and easy job to be a work-at-home artist, but I have to admit something to you! Over the following year in 2020 I floundered, like a fish who is trying to do a contextualized evangelism art project, pencil gripped in its fin, flopping about and gasping for air on the beach. (nice metaphor, eh?)
It was very hard to gain momentum on Moksh 7 Stories because:
It was a huge project for just one person to do.
It turned out that my animation skills/my computer's power were not equal to the task.
I succumbed to depression due to re-entry and COVID, which did not make me the most Johnny-on-the-spot worker.
But my leader was so patient with me, and in the days I felt like giving up I (grumpily) fell back on my first conviction that God had called me to do this project and therefore I should indeed do it!
Since those first days a lot has changed. I learned how to better spend my time as a stay-at-home artist through the forced isolation of COVID plus some good resources such as Matt Tommey Mentoring and the tireless listening ear and solid advice from my brother. I attended therapy to help me cope with the out of control feelings I was feeling, and as time went by things began to settle into place and feel much better. I thank God for his faithfulness to me during 2020 and 2021, and I am baffled by his open-hearted willingness to call people like me to take on tasks, even before we're ready to do so!
You may be wondering why I bring up some of those more personal things in regards to this project. I suppose the reason I bring up my weakness is because it feels wrong to look back at the completed Moksh project and say "Aha! I did it! Good for me!" as if I had done it by myself without support from my team, my friends, and especially my God. I DID get it done (eventually!) and I'm proud of what it looks like, but mostly I feel thankful for how God worked in me to make Moksh. I also feel a lot of anticipation. I hope that just how God worked in me to make the Moksh drawings, he'll work in the Moksh animations to bring life to peoples' lives.
As I write this, most of the Moksh videos are available on the Youtube Chanel. Please subscribe to the Moksh channel. It would really help get the videos seen by more people!!
Story 1: The Beginning
Story 2: The Rebellion
Story 3: The Solution
Story 4: Power over Nature and evil spirits
Story 5: Power over sickness and death
Story 6: The Ultimate Sacrifice
Story 7: Eternal Life
In addition to these are some neat videos on how to tell the gospel narrative while applying a henna tattoo! So cool!
The reason I wanted to share this stuff on my website blog is because maybe you don't know that I do this kind of art! Or maybe you have a Hindu friend and you have been wondering how to talk about spiritual matters with them. My advise is to start as a student - ask them what Moksh means to them, and then ask the Holy Spirit how to talk about it with your friend. Or maybe you would like to support missions but don't know how. Check out my Patreon. I'm going to continue to do art ministry such as this project in the future, and you can help that effort by supporting me on that platform. Or maybe you are a a faith based media organization or are involved with work in the Hindu world and need more resources. Please check these out and use them!
We're relying on word of mouth to spread this message (this specific YouTube video message) to the people who should watch it, so if you can tell people about it that would be super helpful, too. :) I hope that you enjoy the art, the smooth animation (thank you so much to our animator who is not me!) and the beautiful story of Truth and Rescue from our earthly chains. God bless you.
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