Days of Fog and Fruit

What can I say? It has been too long since my last blog entry. Much has happened in the past month, and that is partly the reason for the delay in my writing. I will attempt to tell about the past month without writing something that will take you a month to read.

Our church family members, some of whom you can see above, celebrated birthdays, first for the months of September and October...

...and about a month later, for the months of November and December.

At the end of October, many church members went hiking on a nearby mountain after church.

I used the oven in my house for the first time and baked a blueberry-raspberry crisp.

The weather grew colder and we had our first frost.

I continued teaching Bible college classes.

And then word came from our landlord that everything in our house had to be packed up and Pastor Sejun and I would have to move out while he repaired the leaky, inefficient ondol floor heating system.

Pastor Sejun and I lived away from home for a week and a half. I continued teaching the Wednesday lunchtime English Bible Study at the Paik Hospital...

The infamous strawberry fart (strawberry jelly filled) munchkin

...and teaching the Thursday morning English Bible class at the Yeomyung School where I discovered the students enjoyed Dunkin Munchkins just as much as the students at GGCA.

This student was given a powdered donut facial by his classmate

Grace Mission Church prepared a pot luck luncheon to celebrate Korean Christian Thanksgiving, not to be confused with Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) or American Thanksgiving. (Can you spot the kimchi?)

Meanwhile, leaves were falling everywhere...

...and even a bit of snow fell after we moved back into our house.

I was blessed to be given free tickets to attend the Yeomyung School's annual fundraising performance and to see my students sing, act, and break boards doing taekwondo.

It was a busy month. I spent American Thanksgiving Day teaching Bible class at Yeomyung School, then helping a sister in our church move out of her apartment, and then grocery shopping before going to the apartment where some American Christian school teachers had prepared turkey and all the trimmings. Black Friday was spent teaching in the morning and then being part of a special event for Korean special needs preschoolers.

There is a lot of time required to prepare for teaching and preaching, then there is the time taken by the services, Bible college classes, and Bible studies, and then there is the time needed to do mundane things like grocery shopping, doing laundry, cleaning, traveling back and forth to church and all the other ministry locations...

Sometimes I simply want to crawl under the blanket in the church office and take a nap. Sometimes I do, but not for very long, since there's usually somewhere to be or something else that needs to be done.

Sometimes I feel like this guy, like I am walking around in a fog, trying to stay on the road, trying to find my way, wondering what's up ahead, wondering if I'm going in the right direction. I'm a guy with a license to preach in a foreign country who has no pastor to mentor him and who will soon have no team members other than the native people in his church. This blog is called "What Was I Thinking?" and I ask myself that question now and then: What was I thinking - what was anybody thinking - when they sent me here to do this?

And then there are other days when I feel like this guy, enjoying his fruit. Sometimes, I get to taste a little bit of fruit, like when a church member says in a rap session that the message spoke to her heart and encouraged her, or when a Yeomyung School student comes up to me after Bible class and says, "This class is fun. I like it" with a huge smile on his face. Just like Paul who called himself the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle, I am the least of pastors and not fit to be called a pastor. But I do it. I preach and I teach because that's what is needed, and somehow God uses me and people's lives are changed by the Word of God... even when it comes out of my mouth.

Prayer Requests

Pray for our young people in the church. They are preparing to perform in a Christmas play here at the church on Christmas Day.

Like young people everywhere, they are wrestling with issues of identity and beliefs and deciding how deep to go in their relationship with God.

Pray for this transitional year in our church. With Dawn Doorenbos and Jadzia Swietek moving to Baltimore this month, we will feel the loss of two godly ladies who have been investors in many lives, including my own. Pray for my schedule and my health, my travel to China at the end of the month, and for my future, whatever that may hold.