Another Weekend Adventure - Suwon

Date: 6/08/2008 (3rd week in Korea)

Since I got my internet service set up yesterday, I spent the whole evening looking online for a close by church with an English; however, most churches I found where at least an hour subway ride away. On Sunday morning, I came across a message board that an American pastor posted in 2005 regarding English Service at Suwon Full Gospel church. I tried searching for the church on google but couldn't really find any further info. All the info I had was it's about 10min away from the Seryu subway station, and there was the pastor's phone number. Suwon is on the opposite direction than Seoul city hall, but it's a lot closer, only about 4-5 subway stops from Gunpo, so I decided to just go and see what happens.

After i got off at the Seryu station; I had no idea which direction to go, because all it said was it’s about 10 minutes away from the station. So, I tried to look up the bus maps, but couldn’t really figure anything out because most of the writings were in Korean. Therefore, I said a prayer and just started walking. About 5-minute walk down the road, I saw a building right across the street with English writing, and it says “ Dream Presbyterian Church”, so I thought I’d ask some church people for directions. When I got closer to the building, it didn’t really look like a church, it’s more like a residential housing with clotheslines hanging outside. I saw a middle-aged, mom-like lady outside, so I asked her if she knew where the church is, and showed her the paper with the name of the church (in English).

The lady didn’t speak English, so she called out her 3 kids from the house to help me. There were 2 boys and 1 girl; they look like they’re either older elementary school students or junior high. They were all very shy and embarrassed to speak to me in English, so they talked among themselves in Korean and were trying really hard to figure it out. They even tried calling the pastor’s number I wrote on the paper, but it was invalid. In the next hour or so, the whole thing had a dramatic turn. The mom came out with a baby in her hand, and she said something to the kids, and they gestured me to follow them. Suwon is more of a countryside compare to Seoul, and people seem to be more simple and pure than those from the city. In addition, people seem to have a stronger sense of community. All the neighbors seem to have good relationships. The kids took me to one of their neighbor’s place and asked if they knew about the church. Since I only had the English name of the church, they were all having trouble with the word “Gospel”; they tried to ask me what the word means, but I had no idea how to explain to them. Soon, the whole neighborhood came out- moms, dads, kids, aunts, uncles, and even family dogs. Everybody was trying to help me out and one guy even took out his cell phone and tried to find the word on his dictionary, and some of them called their friends to see if they knew about the church. The whole time I was there, I was just totally AMAZED!!! Although those people do not speak the same language as me, but they were to eager to help and willing to go the extra miles for me; it’s truly touching. I thank God for sending me those angels to lead my way. Finally, I got into a neighbor’s car with the kids; he decided to drive me around and try to find the church. On the way, they continued speaking/discussing each other about where to go. It turned out the neighbor is Japanese who lives in Korea; he spoke good Korean though, but he called one of his Japanese friends on the phone to see if she would know. So we had 3 languages, Korean, Japanese, and English, going in the car. They found the church at the end (of course I had no idea how), the kids took me in and asked a person inside for the English service. They made sure I got into the room before leaving. The kids were so sweet and so cute, I would really love to visit that family again when my Korean is better to thank them for their help. I also realized that they could understand a lot of what I was saying, but they were just embarrassed to speak English. What an experience though!

The English service at Suwon Full Gospel church was very small, and the 2 girls i prayed with were very charismatic. Although I attended a charismatic church in VA and enjoyed it, but it was a little uncomfortable to me at Suwon. At one point, one of the sisters pressed really hard on my stomach and said she felt something was coming and told me just let go and let it flow, but I don’t think I felt that “thing” she was talking about. I did ask them about the pastor whose name I saw on the message board, and they said he went back to the states and didn’t know much about him. The new pastor just started the English service about 2 months ago.

Even though I don’t think I’m going back to that church, but the message today was really practical to me. It was talking about ‘God will make a way even when things do not seem possible”. Overall, it was a cool experience. God blessed me with bunch of people who helped me to find the church and also blessed me with time of fellowship and worship with others. I guess I will continue to look for and pray for my English service.