My name is Nathanael Philip Abad Mosher and together with Nehemiah Williams, we are PPDK Productions. We are two men with one story and one mission: to live a life worthy of sharing with others. We seek to redeem our gifts while embracing our sensitivity through mutual accountability and the grace of God.
We were brought together because of two things: exceptional gifts at the cost of exceptional sensitivity. I entered UCLA as a biomedical engineer with secret dreams of becoming a comedian. Nehemiah went his way to the renowned Berklee College of Music to pursue God through song. As we embarked on our respective hero’s journeys, we both hid a darkness lurking underneath. The once tiny monster relegated to the corners of our life grew and ran roughshod over their lives. We both spiraled into debilitating depression as pornography decimated the integrity of our relationships. Yet when we saw nothing but death, the Light of Truth appeared and we surrendered everything to Life itself.
We’re starting with our stories because that’s what we know. We can’t tell you how to live, but we can tell you how we survived our own. Tomorrow I’ll be releasing Part 1 of my sit down interview with Nehemiah, where he goes in depth into his testimony. I can’t wait for you to hear it. It’s a thrilling, wonderful, beautiful ride that I got to sit in on just last week. Our goal to is to explore how people’s calling becomes their calling card, how vocation fuels occupation, how “to work” can be to worship when we understand who we were made for.
For the first episode of our first podcast series, “From Work To Worship”, I’m going to be sharing something I’ve been sitting on for a while: my testimony. I had the privilege of presenting it at a men’s retreat called Cornerstone and a brother in Christ said, “You should make it funny.”
It ended up being about my relationship with humor itself, and more importantly, the creator all things, and humor itself. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done and it’s also been the most freeing. On January 18, Nehemiah and I are going to be performing our respective testimonies through our respective storytelling forms, mine comedy, his music, and we’re going to show how our stories intersect and compound into a deep, deep well of light and life. Tickets will go live tomorrow with his podcast as well. Stay tuned and mark your calendars.
I’ll also be touring the set with a friend of mine, Sean Conrad, and we’re going to be turning our testimonies into stand-up sets. I’m thinking that I’ve created a new genre of stand-up comedy, “worship comedy”, or it’s just the oldest thing in the books, good old-fashioned, honest, authentic storytelling.
This is my testimony. It's the story of how I met God through pursuing stand up comedy. I cried a lot while writing it and that's how I know it's hilarious. It's an incredible story and I can confidently say that because I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I actively resisted going through every single part of it and I'm only alive to joke about it now because of grace. So I hope you enjoy it just about as much as I hated going through so many parts of it. And I hope above all, that you know there's someone out there who wants nothing more than to know you deeply, and to love you, so that you can be set free. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is.
This is the full transcript if you want to read/ share with someone later:
I cried a lot while writing this, which is how I know it's hilarious. I’ll explain.
See, growing up for me was easy, ‘cause I was better than everybody. At least, I thought I was. I had a superiority complex. If you don’t know what that is, you’re stupid. I was good at school, athletic, I could read at a collegiate level when I was only 6, I was good at Math too, not ‘cause I’m Asian, but because Math itself is racist and so is being good at anything at all. I entered UCLA with a perfect score on the math section of the ACT and then went on to major in English, ‘cause I’m a man who works on his weaknesses, ladies. It’s all men in this room, can we change that?
At my 10 year high school reunion, Alexa Madden, one of the “pretty” nerds, told me that everyone in 3rd grade thought I was a genius ‘cause every day I’d walk into school carrying the Bible in a Ziploc bag ‘cause Man does not live off of ham and cheese sandwiches made by his Mom alone but every Word from the Bread of Life Himself. Everyone was like, “Nathan is reading the biggest book I’ve ever seen in my life. That guy is going places!” I went from Genesis to Exodus to Leviticus and then never tried reading the Bible again until twenty years later. Leviticus was confusingly boring.
Faith to me was a game to be won. Every Friday we’d go to All Workmen are Not Ashamed, otherwise known as AWANA and we’d play games, memorize Bible Verses, do Bible trivia, AWANA games, AWANA Olympics, Bible verse reciting competitions, we’d get AWANA bucks, spend them at the AWANA store, it was like Chuck E. Cheese for Christians. It was Chuck E. Cheesus.
We’d do pinewood derby competitions and my Dad would replicate Hot Wheels using his carpentry, engineering, and physics knowledge to crush the competition, always winning my sister and I a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the design and speed category. We were winners in Christ, except occasionally to the Altobellis. Their Mom and Dad were both engineers.
What I’m trying to say is, I wanted to want to want you, Jesus, but most of the time, I wanted a toy nerf gun at the AWANA store more. What I wanted the most was to win. What I really wanted to win was the heart of my Father.
When I was young, I was afraid to go to bed alone ‘cause I was too creeped out by this villain from Bible Man, the TV show. Bible Man was like Batman for Christians. He would fight villains with scripture, like “1st John 5:4 says through our faith comes victory,’” and the villain would be like, “Curse you Bible Man, if it wasn’t for your knowledge of scripture you’d be nothing, ahhhh.” He’d hit him with a lightsaber and the villain would explode. His sidekick would be like, “Perfect timing to end the wining,” and there was Bible Girl too. She was a white girl, cause they’re the holiest of all girls.
He would fight against villains like, “The Cheater” who would kidnap kids and give them answers to exams, which is like the most helpful pedophile ever.
“Are you gonna molest us?”
“No, but I will help you get into Harvard.”
There was the Fibbler, Master Misery, Dr. Fear, the Prince of Pride, and the worst of all, the Gossip Queen. She would get kids to gossip, singing, “Come a little closer, have I got news for you, a tiny morsel of gossip, it’s very juicy too, this harmless information flows from me just like a faucet, but what else can you do when you’re the Queen of Gossip?”
She was a blue-haired witch that looked like her makeup was done by a 5-year-old Play-Doh maestro with a budget of 5 dollars. She was frighteningly disgusting!
I would get nightmares and my Dad would tuck me in, staying with me until I fell asleep, and when I would get afraid he would remind me that I was his buddy. He’d whisper, “Buddy buddy. Buddy buddy”.
As I fell more and more asleep he’d whisper it ever so slightly, lightly aspirating like a heartbeat, “B-ddy B-ddy”.
I’d say it back like a satellite call, “B-ddy B-ddy. B-ddy B-ddy”. Next thing I knew, I was asleep and Gossip Queen would melt away like the wicked witch she was!
In sports, I became a star pitcher and my Dad would train me. We’d throw night and day wherever and whenever we could until when I was 12, as a closing All Star Level B-Team pitcher, I averaged 2.2 strikeouts an inning, until I threw out my arm and was never the same. Metaphorically and literally, my balls dropped.
My Mom, my sister, and my longtime haircutter, Priya, told me to get the Bieber-Sheckler-Beatles combo flippy haircut, and as my hair went to and fro, I got turned upside down by Lust.
My middle school best friend Jaimal and I were sitting in the backseat of his Mom’s car on the way to a math competition and I said, “Jaimal, don’t get a girlfriend. Focus on school. Women are a distraction.”
A few months later, his Mom said, “What’s up with Nathan?”
Jaimal said, “Nathan got a girlfriend. He’s not so into math anymore.”
Jaimal went on to Harvard. I went on to lose my virginity at age 16. He focused on hidden figures. I focused on curves. He was the loser. I was the winner.
I built a new identity as the kid in AP class who smoked weed on the weekends and partied, but still got solid A minuses, weighted of course. I made new friends with the kids of “Blanco Way”, a horseshoe-shaped street off of Sepulveda and Sawtelle that I still live on to this day and every weekend we’d get invited to anywhere from seven to eight different high school parties at different schools. My sophomore year there was even a little chart in the girl’s bathroom, titled “Cutest guys in 10th grade” and I was on that list. I was top 20 in grades, but more importantly I was top 10 in looks.
I met a girl one weekend at a quinceanera and we made out and the next week she came over and said, “I’m sorry we didn’t go all the way.” A few months later my friend Henry let me lose my virginity in his guest house while his parents were away and my heart walloped for two hours as I panicked about the shame and guilt I accrued by disobeying the principles I had learned growing up in a Christian household. I was disobeying my parents. I was going to Hell.
A few months later I found out she was cheating on me and I was devastated. For her, I had written poetry, with her I had felt close to whole and she betrayed me. Around that time there was a new youth pastor at my church, Demetrius. He began to court my suspicions about religion and God and hypocrisy asked me questions like, “Are you scared that maybe you might end up a bench player in life? What if God has a greater role for you to play?”
When I was 17 I got obsessed with stand-up comedy, delving down a deep YouTube rabbit hole and learning about one-liner comedians like Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, Zach Galifinakis, and Demetri Martin. I met Tyler who was a comedian at our church who specialized in one liners and offered to drive me to open mics and shows on school nights where I’d see a star-studded lineups of comedians I had Tivo'd the night before and I was in awe, because maybe here I could hit the strike zone once again.
We drove in his Mustang Convertible he had purchased as a result of his new cush TV writing job and my Mom called me crying, ‘cause she was afraid that I was out too late on a school night, not sure if I was safe. Tyler asked me what was wrong and I said, “My Mom is just being Mom.”
He said, “She should be happy that you found something you love.”
I said, “But that’s just how Moms are.”
He said, “I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
That night I took a shower and began to feel an ever increasing incremental distance from my Mom, realizing that I didn’t know the Woman from whom I had come from. And I began crying a deep wail I had not known since Birth.
I thought, “I don’t know my own Mother” and it grieved me deeply.
All of a sudden, it felt like a hand was coming around the back of my shoulder, and I felt a warm embrace. It felt like a deep hug, one I hadn’t known in years and I knew it was God, because I felt whole.
After that moment on, I knew God was real, but we only talked every few months.
I entered UCLA as a biomedical engineer and all I wanted to do was stand-up comedy. I was obsessed. I switched to English so I could do it as much as possible and started a comedy club with my friend Austin and went to open mics every night, running shows in lecture halls, parking lots, venues off campus, trying to figure out how to be funny, while simultaneously having as little fun as possible. I was serious about comedy because I needed to crush the competition in both speed and design and I was sure as Heck not gonna be a G-D- engineer.
I told my Mom I wanted to be an English Major. She said, “Is it ‘cause you want to do comedy? You’re not going to do comedy.”
So I did it as much as humanly possible and worked hard enough to get a manager at the same management company as Kevin Hart by my senior year. I took an internship in New York at a production company and I did it every single night, everywhere I could, snagging a semi-finalist spot in the NBC Stand-Up For Diversity Competition not because I was Asian but because stand-up comedy is racist and so is being good at anything at all.
I had a girlfriend named Giulia. She thought I was funny and sweet and kind and so was she. After we broke up, she said, “It felt like comedy was your girlfriend and I was always just there.”
I said, “You’re a hater anyway!”
And I did 5 minutes about our breakup onstage in front of 300 people and I was miserable. I wanted her to know how broken and alone I really was, but I didn’t know how to tell her. So I made fun of her and thought maybe she would see through the facade. She’s married now. I’m sure she’s a lot happier.
My friend Jonathan, who I met on the backline of a soccer field when I was eight years old, he was a goalie, I was a defender, he was my roommate freshman year. He had moved to Boston to work in ministry with his family and I’d tell him, “Comedy is going great. I have a girlfriend. I’m doing really well.”
He’d say, “But those are circumstantial things, how’s your relationship with God? Y’know, he’s always gonna be there when everything falls apart.”
And I’d say, “Well, you’re a hater anyway!” And I’d hang up the phone.
He was always right. Things always fell apart.
While I was out in New York a family member had a psychotic break where they revealed to me the acts of another which led to separation which still continues to this day. I began to have panic attacks while I tried to reconcile the reality of my now broken family. I focused on making my parents proud and making myself the greatest comedian I could be at a young age, as young guns around me began to be tapped up onto television. I was just waiting to shoot my shot. I was waiting throw that strike. I was gonna get on Stephen Colbert and make my Dad see me up there, proud of his Son.
I met a comedian out in San Francisco who wanted to know how I was able to do full-time college and full-time standup and we fell in love. As I drifted away from my family and my sister and fought with my parents, she was a friend who understood how I could love jokes and love her. I always had this fear that I was gonna become wildly successful, yet wildly alone. With her that felt impossible because we were gonna be successful together.
As things started to spiral upwards, the circumstances congealed into a picture perfect love story of two dreamers out there making it on their own and just like Jonathan predicted, things started to fall apart. A few months into moving in with her my psychiatrist said I had been doing well enough that I could get off my anxiety and depression meds and I spiraled right back down into cacophonous agony as I confronted once again the facts of failure, family, and freedom from any solid foundational purpose.
When I was in the depths of my depression, I told my Dad I felt like a failure, and he said, “We’re all failures, but Jesus loves us anyways.”
I said, “Thanks Dad, now I really believe I can kill myself.”
I understand now what he meant. We all fall short of the glory of God, but the gift of God is eternal life. But I didn’t know what I was living for. I didn’t know Who I was living for anymore.
My dream since I was 17, watching Demetri Martin’s “If I” on Youtube, thinking about becoming a comedian despite my ambitions of medical school, was to do an autobiographical one man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and finally two years ago, I got to do it.
I wrote a show about getting there. One that God had started writing all those years ago when he showed me the warm embrace of a Father who really cares. Who cares above all that I know him deeply and intimately the way a child in the womb knows even the heartbeat of their Mother. “B-ddy, B-ddy. B-ddy, B-ddy.”
I wrote about my experiences with suicidality, depression, anxiety, not knowing why I was who I was, a man with a potty mouth, a dirty heart, a pornograpy riddled search history, a soft, sensitive soul, who wanted above all, to be loved and understood, who wanted to be funny.
And as I shared my story people came up to me with tears streaming down their face telling me, your show was hilarious. I added songs and poetry, not that made people laugh, but which made people most definitely cry and I took the savings my Mom put aside for me to become a successful surgeon and I rented out a venue in Edinburgh and nobody showed up. Well, some people showed up, but proportionally, financially, mathematically, it was a disaster. I had a girlfriend though, and I wasn’t a virgin. Jaimal was still the loser.
While I did the show out in London, a comedian by the name of Jak Knight shot himself in a Tesla, knocking down the stars with him and showing me that all the success in the world isn’t worth throwing away your relationship with God. Years ago I remembered him on stage saying, “I want to believe in God, but God’ll be there when I’m 30.” He shot himself at 28. He was the starting 2 guard in the top 10 young guns of comedy. He was Next Up. I was a bench player, but Jesus saved my life for a much better role.
After I left Edinburgh I rewrote the show to account for the experience of losing the bastion par excellence that Jak Knight represented, and I took the advice of my then long-time girlfriend, Megan and told the truth of why I got on medication in the first place. I talked about my family with the permission of the parties involved and focused on forgiveness. The newfound evolution of the show won me the “Artistic Risk Award” at the Vancouver Fringe Festival for defying the boundaries of comedy and storytelling and for letting my Heart wring dry on stage.
As I sat there behind the dark curtains waiting to go up on the night, the executive director of the festival happened to be in the audience, I prayed to God to speak through me, and I got out of the way. Every joke hit, every song landed, every poem hit hearts home. I threw a perfect game for the second time in my life, and I had nothing to do with it.
When I came back, I had no job anymore and my relationship was on the rocks. I heard a voice say, “You’re gonna fast for three days.” And so I did. At the end of the fast I decided to get off the mood stabilizer I had now been on for the past four years and confront directly the pain I had been avoiding for so long. I talked with Tyler, the one-liner comedian from my old church, who took me into the place only stars would go all those years ago and he told me to stop running away from the pain because my feet were broken. He was a youth pastor now and Jak Knight was dead. I started hearing Jak’s voice say, “Nathan, you’re a comedian. Go be one.”
Now, he was a black dude, so I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that “Nathan” was not the N-word he actually used, but I won’t say that word here, but I did hear him say it in my thoughts, so I thought it, but remember, stand-up comedy is racist, so it’s not ‘cause I’m Asian.
I reached this place after getting off medication, where I felt like I was in just as much pain as when I would tie a belt around my neck and pull as hard as I could, but I knew now, I wanted to be alive. No matter how the Enemy spoke to me and told me that my Life didn’t matter, I knew I had a purpose and that God had spared mine for a reason.
I said to the Holy Spirit, “God, I’m helpless and I can’t make decisions anymore. Can you just tell me what to do?”
For the first time a voice spoke back, saying, “Give me 10 days, but you have to do everything I say. Trust me.”
And so I did, I started exercising, and fasting, and working a new job teaching chess to elementary school kids. I had left behind my work as a preschool substitute teacher to go on the road and I needed to be back around those who if we welcome in His Name, we welcome Him, and the Father who sent Him, the children. I started tackling my pornography addiction and looking into the child I was before I had encountered the Spirit of Lust at the tender age of 8. I started playing chess and learning about losing gracefully and putting the safety of the King and Kingdom above all. I told my girlfriend I wanted to give up premarital sex because the Holy Spirit told me to, and then I relapsed on pornography and said maybe, premarital sex isn’t so bad. We broke up. I’m celibate. Every time I thought Jesus would abandon me, he said, “My son, my beloved, I will never, ever leave you. I only want what is best for you.”
I finally read the Bible. I listened to Father Mike Schmidt and Jeff Cavins break down the Bible in the Great Adventure Timeline and finally found a way to make Leviticus and its surrounding context not so confusingly boring. And I couldn’t get enough. I listened to it on double speed as much as I could and I got through it as fast as possible in speed and design because I felt loved and understood. And Father Mike Schmit, oh gosh, golly gee, was funny.
I had a role to play. And this time Jesus in all his blinding light appeared right in front of me and picked me up off the bench and said, “I have chosen You for such a time as this.”
I said, “God, how do I know it’s you speaking to me?”
He said, “From now on, I will address you as my Son.”
When I was in the midst of confronting the pain I had numbed through the use of medication I came to the end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew where Jesus said, “For if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive yours in Heaven.”
And so I forgave the accusing family member, whether or not I know if they are telling the truth. And I forgave the accused, whether or not I knew they were either. Whoever or whatever happened, Jesus is enough to forgive and bring peace to all who lean and trust in Him.
I couldn’t. I can’t. You couldn’t. You can’t either. They couldn’t. They can’t. God can. God will. I’ll let him. You’ll let him. God willing, they will too. Jesus always can.
That’s the testimony of the chosen and beloved children of God.
My freshman year I quit baseball because I had befriended a man by the name of Jeremy Libenstein. He was cool, he had looks, he had silky smooth Bieber-Beatles-Sheckler hair, he was good at hockey in speed and design and women liked him a whole lot. And he bullied me. And I go into the specifics about it in my show in stark detail and so I’ll spare the gravity of how much I felt less than by what he did to me. But I’ll tell you this. I love him with all my heart because I know Jesus has the forgiveness I cannot always give.
Two weeks ago, I tried to find him online and I found an article showing that bail was set for him in a Missouri County Prison for 20,000 dollars ‘cause he was caught selling cocaine outside a Fair. And one day, God willing, I’m gonna find him, and I’m gonna give him a deep, deep hug and I’m gonna tell him Jesus loves you, Jeremy, and He wants nothing more than to know you and give you peace, because He gave it to me for free and we have much bigger Roles to play then 1st base, shortstop, and pitcher. We can forgive, we don’t have to forget, we don’t have to be afraid, cause we can remember the good things God has done for us. I love you, Jeremy, and I hope one day you see me telling this story and you fall down on your knees and worship the blinding light of the King of Glory because the Son set free is free indeed to win in both speed and design, to be loved and understood, by Jesus Christ who is real, here, and waiting for you to be his, “B-ddy, B-ddy, B-ddy, B-ddy”.
Road To Christmas is now available on all streaming platforms. Listen to it on Spotify here:
Press Play on Your Purpose,
The Paraprosdokianist
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