2017 Family Update

(CLICK ON THE ABOVE PHOTO TO OPEN PHOTO NEWSLETTER ...IT'S A LOT NICER TO LOOK AT)

Where our last update left off we were gearing up for a short outreach into Japan with long visit to Korea. Bora hasn’t been home in nearly 6 years and Grandma and Grandpa were missing the kiddos. A lot has happened this past year, and it’s usually rare that I get to look back and say “Yeah we planned for that!”. Amazingly, this has been one of those years. We asked for prayer for our Tokyo/Korea trip and for the TESOL certification course following in WA, and God was faithful in providing everything we’d need to do both!

Tokyo, Japan- Our family had the pleasure of traveling with our KDTS outreach team to the start of their outreach to Japan on a pastoral visit, without the responsibilities of actually leading the team. Those trips are the best! Our amazing KDTS colleagues planned a great outreach that took our students through Japan and ended in Thailand with the other half of our school. We were only in Tokyo for several days after getting over the first day of jetlag and sickness, but we went with our team on outreach caroling in Ikebukuro District and also joined YWAM Tokyo in worship. Every Friday the YWAM Tokyo staff has worship at Ikebukuro West Gate Park with open air praise and worship, prayer for anyone, and this week we had Santa handing out candy canes with the Christmas story. Jubilee was Santa’s helper and they both drew a crowd.

Our Korea visit was an awesome time for our family. It was so good to catch up with so many good friends and family that we hadn’t seen in so long. We got to spend a ton of time with Bora’s parents, and they especially missed their grandkids. They spoiled us a ton, and we got to spend a lot of quality time with them. SO MUCH FOOD. We got to visit with lots of cousins and extended family as well, some we hadn’t seen since our wedding 11 year ago!

Grangju is such a cool city. So many great coffee shops and restaurants, but I guess that’s typical of anywhere in Korea today. Bora preached at YWAM Gwangju about the father/daughter dynamics of partnering with God in ministry. I was so proud to see her preach in her most natural, fluent tongue and see the Lord using her in this way. I’m definitely made me a proud husband.

We visited YWAM Jeju which is a small Korean island and also one of YWAM’s largest training bases. We don’t have many contacts there, except for a few friends in ministry, so we knew it was important to establish a relationship if we’re to work with YWAM Korea more effectively in the future. We were able to connect with many key people within our organization in Korea and it was a really important visit.

While praying in Jeju the Lord spoke clearly to my spirit, “House Church”. Later the same day I prayed some more and He confirmed it again, “House Church”. I shared it with Bora and we went from Jeju to Seoul for the end of our Korea visit. While in Seoul I was able to meet with a good friend and traveling evangelist-speaker, and I was introduced to another Korean pastor. Over lunch we were talking about the state of the church in Korea, especially the young people. This pastor and my friend both shared that they believed strongly that there is a new move of church growth coming to Korea in the form of a “grassroots, house church” model. This got me pretty excited! On this same Seoul visit I’d catch up with former missionaries now working within the current Korean church structure, and hear testimonies of God’s goodness to the Korean church but also a lot of concerns and wisdom that only a Korean who has worked both internationally and domestically with the church could recognize. This trip was beginning to reveal God’s heart for a radical rediscovery of what makes the Body of Christ beautiful, intimate, and unified family body as opposed to maintaining programs and isolated ministers and laypersons.

We were blessed to enjoy the great hospitality of some dear cousins in Seoul, and we finished our trip with lots of dates, family outings, catching up with friends, and amazing movie theater popcorn.

One of the ways we’ve heard the Father direct our efforts was for Bora and I to complete the TESOL certification program, and do it together! TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, it’s a class to train English teachers. So after one month back in Salem and barely unpacking, we uprooted for another 5 weeks to train Near Port Townsend, WA at YWAM Discovery Bay. This wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing help and support from our KDTS family in Salem! Hye Young came with us and provided childcare for the duration of the school! She is amazing! She enabled Bora and I to both take this full-time and intensive course together, with homework every night. It was a 5 week cram course with 2-3 months worth of material. Bora and I very naturally work well as a team in preparing lessons, she’s got the brains and I have the… well I’m tall… and I have good hand-eye coordination, I have a good credit score and I can whistle!

God’s goodness knows no end. On a Friday during the course I received a text from my good friend Nick. It wasn’t long but said something along the lines of, “God put you on my mind to pray for you…love you…hope God is growing you and your family in Him…” It wasn’t a typical message and it was sent in the evening when I was feeling really overwhelmed with balancing a family and trying to get my assignments done on time. The next morning Bora took Hye Young out to thank her for watching our kids and I stayed home and collected shells on the beach with Jinha and Jubilee. In the evening I got a call from Bora that she’d been in a car accident, that everyone was fine but that it was “bad”. Catching a ride with our friend and TESOL staff Bob, I made it to the Cliffside road that our car lost control on and ended up totaled in a ditch. There were very few safe places where she could have lost control on and not gone over the cliff. God protected everyone.

The next day I stole away to the beach by myself to talk with God. I walked for an hour slowly down the beach and didn’t see another soul my whole walk. I got the usual insecurities and fears out of the way. What is Bora and Hye Young were killed? How are we gonna afford a new car? Ect. But I felt such a peace, and such a presence with me that much of my walk turned into singing worship and thanking God for saving my wife and our friend. As I’m singing I’m filling up a children’s sand pale with these MASSIVE shells that had blown in a couple nights before with this huge storm. I’m having to empty my pale of smaller shells to make room for all of the giant ones I’m finding, but all I’m finding are different assortments of shells. Eventually I remembered that I’d need to walk back just as far as I’ve now ventured out.

As I turned around to head back I said, “I love you God, I just love you.” And I looked down and I see this PERFECT sand dollar right in front of my feet! I immediately knew my Father was telling me right back, “I love you, too.” I pick up the sand dollar and then I asked the Lord,

“ God, it’s be really cool if you could give me sand dollars for my kids…” and taking a few steps further there are two more! Then I asked the Lord, “ God, could I find a really beautiful one for my wife?” And a minute or two later I found this really pretty and unique gray one with this cool shade design! Now I start getting greedy.

“God, could I find sand dollars for each of the women in my TESOL? Within 10 minutes I think I had 9 or 10 sand dollars, enough for all that I asked for. I’m now juggling giant shells in one arm and carrying in the pale the 10 sand dollars in the other as I walk the mile or so I’d journeyed, worshiping along the way!

This was a hallmark moment in my relationship with my Heavenly Father and for those of you reading who are cynical because of the Disney-like corniness of my experience, you’re totally right it was embarrassingly corny, and magical and it’s an encounter that will mark my life! It’s appropriate that I’m currently reading ‘The Bruised Reed’ by Richard Sibbs. In it Sibbs does a study on the passage from Isaiah 42:3, prophesying of the coming Messiah, “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”(Isa 42:3 ESV) We are the bruised reed, not a mighty tree like we often pretend. We are the “poor in spirit”, and the sooner we lay ourselves low before the Lord, surrendering our cars, our wealth, even our spouses and children, the sooner we are raised up and glorified in Christ!

Our family is doing great, even with some hardships along the way we are confident God is holding our family firmly. Jubilee graduated Kindergarten! She’s made a couple close friends in Ariel and Owen, and we’ve just started getting to know their parents and they are some super sweet people. Jubilee is still a people magnet and a joy to be around. She reads everything, which is scary and I have to be more aware of what words are on my computer screen or on advertisements around town. She still wants to be a rockstar.

Jinha I can now say, is my little friend. His sweet little voice is so cheerie, and he is becoming a snuggle bug. He is still always I motion, and he’s smelly, and he has a hilariously loud laugh. He still loves all things related to automobiles. Every day this week he’s told me at least once that his favorite colors are green and blue. Today he brought me a kids bible and told me it was his favorite book because “Jesus loves me so much”. He could have asked me for anything then. He’s starting to talk about God, mostly about God “fighting bad guys”…none of it makes any sense but its really funny to listen to. Its really humbling to see the Spirit at work in their lives at such young ages, and I’m really grateful for them.

Bora is doing great. I think we’ve broken a record this year for how many dates we’ve gone on because of our growing KDTS family and my sister Sarah living here now! It’s so great to, every week or two, escape with Bora and enjoy a cup of coffee, or walk aimlessly around Goodwill or Target. Bora continues to be a blessing to our single staff who don’t have transportation, and is always driving people around town with her new-found freedom and drivers’ license.

Bora and I have both taken much of the summer quarter off from leading worship. I’ve stayed involved at our church, Bora is taking a break altogether, just to refresh and allow the Lord to minister to us in corporate worship times. It’s been awesome to hear my wife play more in the house for an audience of one, just the Lord and her. I am jealous that as a drummer I can’t as easily do that. I’ve had more opportunities to play with my friends from Church. Grae, Kiley, Andrea and Ean are all awesome musicians and though it’s only a few times a year, it’s a lot of fun creatively to play more styles and types of songs than only praise and worship.

Looking forward: Our renewed excitement for what God is doing in Korea and our newly acquired ESL skills have opened some interesting prospects. While in Korea we were asked to consider pioneering a bilingual weekly YWAM gathering. YWAM Korea has a lot of inroads into international college student communities, but no bilingual program to plug them into. We’re also watching Jeju with excitement as they have successfully run bilingual DTS the past couple of years, and this year ran a bilingual School of Worship! We also want to continue to pray into how we might prepare to get involved with the house church movement.

This summer I was accepted into a graduates program to attend seminary in Portland! I had heard of some older people with ministry experience being allowed to study without an undergraduates degree. I inquired on a whim, applied and was accepted! I still need to take a GRE test since I don’t have a bachelors degree, and FAFSA grants only apply to undergraduates programs, so the soonest I could possibly start part tie classes would be Spring 2018. For the time being I will continue to chip away at my Associates in Biblical Studies with YWAM. I’ve accrued nearly 60 credits over the years at a healthy pace for my family and with no debt, spreading my education out over the course of the last 10 years and feeding my spirit and my mind with knowledge paired with practical and immediate application in missions. My goal is to earn my AA first, then seek the Lord from there. God COULD have some seminary training somewhere down the road for me, we’ll see!

In just one week YWAM Salem will host another Korean DTS! We have two new staff ( two dudes!) joining us and our new students for three months of lecture and two months of outreach. This Fall we will also be welcoming over 40 Fall DTS students, it's going to be a fun quarter!

Our desire is to run a three month ESL next Spring, so pray for the timing and the details to come together. We are trained but we are still fresh when it comes to ESL. If we don’t pioneer an ESL here first, we might look at staffing an ESL somewhere else to network for support as well as get more experience. It’s also my heart to staff an English language DTS someday soon, but with everything we’re involved in with KDTS and now ESL prospects, I don’t see it happening for a long time. I get to pour into the KDTS students, but I miss the one on one and small group dynamics of a DTS in my mother tongue.

Please pray for our finances. We have lost over $200 of monthly support this past year. The math never seems to add up but God always meets our every needs! That said, we don’t want to wait another 6 years before going back to Korea. If you feel led to invest into our families work with YWAM please check our support page:

Thanks for being our friend, and for praying for us and for pouring into our family. It has been a busy year and things don't look to be slowing down. Just knowing that we have a covering of prayer, and so many friends and family that love us and support our work, that is a huge encouragement! Thank you!