We love Sundays...

We are attending Seoul Union Church (photo 1 & 2) and loving it! The church was founded in 1886 by Horace Underwood (a member of the typewriter family) who was the first missionary to Korea, and the church has served the English speaking, expatriate community ever since. Pastor Prince, a native of Ghana, attended seminary in Seoul and is leading the church through a challenging series of sermons on Nehemiah. He is "speaking right to us," but we have heard a number of the 150 persons in the congregation say the same thing. He also leads a Sunday school class that we attend (Photo 3- pastor Prince is front/ center.) The congregation includes persons from Korea, China, Japan, Russia, Singapore, Canada, USA, Brazil, Finland, Norway, Dubai, Ghana and other African nations. A true international church that demonstrates to us how much God loves all of us -- regardless of our minor differences on the outside -- He desires to reside inside every person on this globe!

Pastor Prince has us recite this before we read the scripture and are taught by the sermon:

This is my Bible -- I am what it says I am -- I have what it says I have -- I can do what it says I can do -- Today, I will be taught the Word of God -- I boldly confess, my mind is alert, my heart is receptive-- I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of the Word of God. I will never be the same -- never, never, never; I will never be the same -- In Jesus name, amen. --- AMEN!!

We also are attending a weekly Bible study that is lead by Barry and Karolyn Benger. Barry, an administrator at Seoul Foreign School, is on the right in photo 4, along with Kenneth who serves in the Singapore embassy. We are going through a Beth Moore series on the Fruits of the Spirt -- great stuff!

You can check out the church web site at www.seoulunionchurch.org

We like to have friends over for dinner on Sunday evenings -- last night we had four of our favorite young people over for tacos and and Mexican food. Photo 5 shows, left to right, Caleb Kim and his sister Hannah, Jason Ahn and Sara Hong. Caleb is the administrtuve asssitant at Fulbright. Hannah is a linguist who is doing graduate study here in Korean. Jason is a Fulbright grantee studying North Korean issues while waiting to enter medical school. And Sara just got admitted to the nursing program at Yonsei. Her parents are missionaries to Paraguay. She is fluent in English, Spanish and Korean. All of them are active in local Korean churches-- they are amazing young adults.

Just an additional note - the Korean church(approximately 40% of the South Korean population) recognizes and values the American missionaries who came here to share the gospel message over 100 years ago. Korea sends more missionaries , per capita, than any other nation. They are even sending missionaries to the USA. Interesting, huh??