by Samantha Fernando
Before the J-YA band came to be, there wasn’t even a young adults group for college students in GSCC. There were only a youth group for high school students and very few college students. In early 2009, a group of college students started attending GSCC’s main Sunday services. A few months later, we started a young adults college group later named J-YA. The J-YA band started in early 2009 to bring praise and worship to Friday youth nights. The original members were Franzon Faustino, CJ Flora, Aevan Balan, Hersheylynne Borao, Lito Sibulo, Cyrel Flora, and Vanessa Santos. The band lost a few sheep but gained a few over the past year or so. The current members of the band are Franzon Faustino, John Andres, Jeshua Aveno, Jerahmeel Aveno, Daryl Purificacion, Mary Ann Santa Ana, Maricres Santa Ana, Sharlene Cabudoy, Vanessa Santos, and I.
Not only does our band play praise and worship for the youth and young adults that attend FNL (Friday Night Life) every week, but our band is going to be the next generation praise and worship team you’ll hear every Sunday morning. We’re being trained up, and we have been called and blessed by God to use our talents to praise Him. The J-YA band does not have a leader, per se; however, we have been blessed with two instrumental geniuses who guide us through our practices: Franzon and John who, by the way, are best friends! They help the other instrumentalists with the chords and/or drum beats and counts, and they sometimes help us vocalists to find the harmony for the songs. Sometimes, we receive help from Kuya Bong and Tita Pam, especially during special occasions like GSCC’s anniversary. We practice two or three times a week depending on the occasion.
We don’t only praise God on Fridays or Sunday mornings, but we also like to show people the talents God has blessed us with elsewhere. For example, starting around Christmas of 2010 until now, we’ve had the opportunity to praise God at Season’s Mall in front of Seafood City several times. We also play at youth rallies; the most recent was at Berryessa Valley Church about a month ago.
I had the chance to talk to some of the members of the J-YA band to learn how they feel about being a part of one of God’s ministries. “It’s a privilege to use our talents to serve God,” says Daryl Purificacion. It really is a privilege! God blessed us with these talents, what’s better than using what He blessed us with to give back to Him?’. Jeshua Aveno states, “I like it. It is fun and it’s good to worship with people our age.” I completely agree. It really is a whole unique feeling when you get to worship with people within your age group. One of our newest members, Maricress Santa Ana says, “I feel at home with them and it is a good use of my time. I love it!” Giving our time to God in praise and worship is definitely a feeling like no other. It’s a win-win situation: we’re productive and we’re praising God at the same time.
If you ask around the congregation, they can see that we love what we do and that we love to praise God. Our very own Pastor Jun Caruz says, “I give them two thumbs up. They’re very good, dedicated and very good musicians.” And Cisco Fernando states, “They’re committed. To sum it all up in one word: ‘Inspiring.’ ” When we perform, people always compliment us and say we did so good; however, we do it for the Glory of God. If it weren’t for Him, we wouldn’t have these talents and we wouldn’t be able to praise him like we do. As a band, we are offered the opportunity to record a CD of our original praise and worship songs along with some covers of our favorites. We will definitely record one in the future, but until God tells us we’re ready for a CD, we can wait. As a band, we have definitely grow, not only in number, but also in faith. The best part about it is that we are doing it TOGETHER! We hope to reach out to others and teach them through our music, and we hope that they will grow with us too, in faith and in love.
