Shinchon Small Group

Back in November (I think), I joined the OEM Shinchon Small Group. Acts 2:42-47 is our model for small group ministry. It's been an incredible JOY to be a part of the Shinchon SG. What a blessing and privilege it has been to be connected to a community of believers who love Jesus and each other. We've prayed for each other, studied the Gospel of Luke together, shared joys and challenges with each other... and have just enjoyed life together. I really feel like our small group has become my "family" here in Korea.

God incredibly and graciously blessed our group with growth. Vince started out as our fearless leader during the first semester. Second semester, Zane began leading. After completing the leadership training, I started co-leading in March due to the increasing size of our group. What started out as a small group grew to become a very large group.


Some of our members...

A few weeks ago, we celebrated the end of an incredible semester. God has done so many great things. We've prayed for each other for numerous months and seen some really sweet answers to prayer. We decided to construct a visual reminder of what God has done in our group...


Zane taught us how to make origami leaves and fruit. On the green leaves, we wrote things that we were thankful for. The yellow and orange fruit represent answers to prayer.


Folding the fruit was more complicated... as you can see by the looks on everyone's faces.^^



With Vince and Zane... what a sweet time of celebrating God's goodness!


Vince being silly as usual...^^

Our finished tree:

On the bottom of the poster, we chose Philippians 1:9-11:

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

The bittersweet time has come for us to multiply/divide our Shinchon group. Zane will continue to lead half of the group in Shinchon and I will start leading the other half at another location. It's sad because of how close our group has become... but it's sweet because of what God has done, is doing, and will do! It's exciting to reflect on the great things that God has done... and the greater things yet to come. I'm so thankful that God decided to include fellowship and community in His design for the Body of believers...

Slowing Down

Things are finally starting to slow down. This semester has been really fast-paced, so it's kind of weird to adjust to this change of pace so abruptly. Definitely not complaining though...

I haven't been so good about updating lately, so here's a very brief synopsis of the past few weeks (and weeks to come):

• The small group semester ended almost two weeks ago (more to come later on that).
• The small group banquet was last Sunday (more to come later...).
• My after-school class at Cheongryang finished on Tuesday.
• All of my students were on field trips last Wednesday-Friday. [I still had to go to school, but finally got to finish up some paperwork, catch up on lesson planning, and begin preparations for my summer vacation class. Also slipped in a visit to Sara's school.^^]
• Next week, my students will have final exams.
• The semester will officially end on July 20.
• July 20-21 ~ Teacher's trip
• July 22-31 ~ Summer Vacation Class
• August 1 ~ GO HOME!!!!!!!!!!

I'm ready.

Praise God.

Warm Hospitality

My co-teacher, Mrs. Ko and I taught our demo lesson together a few weeks ago. She's been wanting to have Sara and me over for quite some time and we finally made it happen this past Saturday. Mrs. Ko also invited Teacher Lee Hye Eun with two of her children. It was such a special time - being able to meet their children and having Sara meet my co-teachers.

We started out with lunch at an AMAZING Italian restaurant,Il Mare (I've been quite spoiled with delicious Italian food lately)!

Sara's scrumptious salad...


Pasta with shellfish


Mussles in red sauce - I can't believe what I've been missing my whole life! (I'm so glad I can appreciate some sea foods now!)


"Margharita" pizza - so tasty!

After a marvelous lunch, Mrs. Ko took us to her beautiful, spacious apartment for dessert. Since Mrs. Ko's husband was unable to join us, he bought a berry cheesecake for us to enjoy. Mrs. Ko also cut up lots of fruit... so we definitely got our fill of food!!!




Here Sara and I are with Mrs. Ko's and Teacher Lee Hye Eun's children.
L-->R Dobin & Ubin (Lee Hye Eun's children), Jae Eun and Yoon Seong (Ko You Kyung's children).


L-->R Sara, me, Ko You Kyung, Lee Hye Eun

I think my favorite part of the whole afternoon was seeing Mrs. Ko's wedding pictures! I learned a lot more about weddings in Korea and thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Mrs. Ko's life.

From what I understand, it's not very often that Koreans open up their homes to people, especially foreigners. Koreans are generally very kind and welcoming, but usually home invitations are just not the norm. When Mrs. Ko invited me to come, she told me that she had never had a foreigner in her home before, so she was a little nervous about being a hostess. So, it was an extra special honor to be invited to her home. I am SO thankful for this experience.

Stephen*

I think I made a girl cry today, Teacher.
These were the words of one of my after-school students whom I'll call Stephen. We had some very interesting conversations after school yesterday. Stephen is one of my best students and has a special place in my heart because I taught him during Winter Vacation. He is a very creative student and as I've been recently learning, quite a deep thinker.

Before our class yesterday, he told me about how he made one of the girls in his class cry. He was just treating her the same way he would treat any of his guy friends. He couldn't seem to understand why this was a problem. I couldn't help but smile before proceeding to explain that it's not a good idea to treat girls the same way he treats his guy friends. I tried to tell him that girls need to be treated more gently because it's easy for our feelings to be hurt sometimes [sorry for any feminists that may be offended by this]. It was definitely an interesting conversation.

I was reminded once again that my students are MIDDLE SCHOOL students - going through so many changes and learning so much about life. It's easy for me to think of them as younger students because their English levels are more like young children.

Teacher, WHY?!
After our class was finished, this same student said to me, Teacher, are you a Christian? He told me that he had recently started to read the Bible and had all sorts of questions like...

• Teacher, why did God tell people not to kill each other, but then helped the Israelites kill entire nations?
• Why did God bless Jacob since he was such a terrible man?
• Why are humans born with sin?
• What happens to people who never ever hear about Jesus?

Stephen's questions really surprised me. I had no idea that he was even interested in spiritual things. And I certainly didn't know that he is such a deep thinker. We talked for nearly a half hour after class. He also told me that he's also been reading Dante's Inferno. Our conversation reminded me of conversations I had in college... definitely something I wouldn't have expected with my middle school students. I was both encouraged and challenged by our conversation. More encouraged than anything else, though. God is at work!

*I've changed his name for the sake of privacy.

Blessed to be a Blessing...

This week, my friend Jina randomly invited me to have dinner with her. She is Korean and speaks English fluently and is kind of like an older sister (I call her eonni in Korean, which means "older sister). She studied abroad in Australia and was shown incredible hospitality by friends/believers there. As we sat down to dinner at a fancy, amazing Italian restaurant [my favorite!!!], she told me that it was on her heart to bless others with the same kind of care that her friends in Australia blessed her with. She said something about freely receiving love and hospitality in Australia and now she wants to freely give. We had such a sweet time of sharing and encouragement. She's an incredible woman of the Lord. I'm so thankful for her...



Her thoughtfulness made me eager to pass on that loving care to foreigners in the US sometime down the road... I feel like I've been overwhelmed with such love and care throughout my entire year here in Korea. God continues to remind me of His tender love through so many of the people that He's placed in my life. I'm so very thankful...

The Swine Flu

This week, I received a notice from the school nurse about the swine flu. She was worried that I might have it... even though I haven't stepped foot in the States (or any other foreign country) for the past nine months.

My co-teacher told me that I should be sure to avoid having any interactions with people that have recently come back from the States. When I informed him that Sara had just returned from the States on Monday and I had spent a good portion of Tuesday afternoon with her, he was quite worried.

Sara's school made her stay home for the whole week because they didn't want to risk an outbreak of the swine flu... even though she had NO symptoms and had gone to the doctor just to make sure that she was okay. I guess it's a SMOE regulation now... no school for seven days after traveling to a foreign country where the swine flu has made an entrance.

Since my co-teacher seemed so worried, I offered to stay home for the rest of the week as well, just to ease his fears. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to think such drastic measures were necessary...yet. lol.

I guess I wouldn't mind if the SMOE regulations are still in effect after my visit HOME in August!!! [I certainly wouldn't mind having a few extra days to adjust back to life in Korea]. Time will tell, I suppose...

Children's Grand Park

Today was a MARVELOUS day. Our entire school went to the Children's Grand Park and the students spent the day painting and writing poetry. It was a thoroughly refreshing day. I will list the things I appreciated about it:

1. Slept in a little (didn't have to show up until 9)
2. Chatted with teachers while sipping a Caffe Latte (compliments of the female gym teacher).
3. Took a lovely stroll through the Botanical Gardens with Teacher Lee Won Kyung.
   
   
   Talk about REFRESHING!!!!! The gardens reminded me of New Zealand...
   
   
   
4. Saw some beautiful roses and actually was able to smell them this time (for those of you that don't know, I don't have the greatest sense of smell, although I think that's changed since coming to Korea...).
   
   
5. The weather was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT while we were there - not too hot, not too chilly, not too humid...
   
6. Chatted with several of my students... I really enjoyed seeing them enjoying life like children are supposed to enjoy it. They were all so friendly to me, too. So sweet today...
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   This is Shawn (Hong Jong Chan). He has been in every one of my after-school classes. It's been so cool to see him grow. I was excited to see his artwork because he's always doodling in class! ^^
   
   
   
   
7. Tasted sushi and didn't die. The raw fish kind of weirded me out so I only tried a couple of pieces before removing the raw fish from the rest. I knew my mom just wouldn't be able to handle the idea of me eating raw salmon...
8. Received a flower from one of my former students. So sweet... it is now being pressed between the pages of my Bible so that I can preserve the memories...
   
   (unfortunately, my camera decided to take dark pictures... so you can't see the flower very well... but it's there, I promise!)
   
9. Was blessed with significant time to spend with my main co-teacher, Lee Hye Eun. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversations. And... she treated me to a little sea animal show. It was based on Cinderella (my FAVORITE fairy tale growing up) and was definitely targeted for children, but I quite enjoyed it.
   
   
   
10. Finished the day early and had time to go to the bank to wire money home. The teller was SO kind and helpful. It was refreshing not to feel hurried...
11. Perhaps the best part of the day: a THUNDERSTORM!!!!! I've been missing those thunderstorms. I'm not sure why I love them so much, but for some reason, it just does my heart good... I didn't have my umbrella with me, but it didn't matter too much. I didn't mind getting wet. It was just absolutely lovely!
12. Since I finished early, I got to go visit Sara at her place. She just got back from her brother's wedding in Cali, so I was delighted to see her pictures and hear all about her time with her lovely family. We enjoyed dinner and tea together. Once again, it was nice to be able to relax and feel unhurried.
13. Found some stickers that I needed for class at the stationary store for REALLY cheap... Sara and I were also quite easily amused by the random English words slapped together to make some sort of sentences (?) on random notebooks, stationary, and gift bags.
    
14. Had a nice subway ride home and was so encouraged by the Psalms. The Lord just continues to faithfully pursue my heart and remind me of His INCREDIBLE love.
    

I needed today. I'm so thankful...