The Last Week of My Grant Year | Sunday: The Pastors in My Life in Busan

PENIEL INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

10:00 a.m. | Yeonsan, Yeonje-Gu, Busan

Throughout my grant year, I have found great support from my faith communities here in Busan. I am grateful and count myself blessed for having gotten to know Korean folks, Filipino students and workers, and other foreigners in the area. The Filipino community at Holy Joy used to be a bit bigger, but now that community is only represented by Russel and me. 

Russel preaching at Peniel International Christian Community

PASTOR RUSSEL

By a curious turn of events, Russel now pastors a church in mainland Busan called Peniel, whose foreign members consist mostly of Filipino men and women. 

PASTOR DEO

Deo Vistar, the former pastor of this international Christian community is also Filipino - one who, as a matter of fact, graduated from the same seminary in the Philippines as Russel and who is now pursuing a PhD in New Zealand after having earned two Masters in Korea. 

I am so impressed and inspired by this man's life journey so far! (You can read his blog here). Pastor Deo speaks my native tongue, Visaya, and so was a figure who seemed very familiar to me from the start. There is nothing like hearing your native tongue - complete with its intonations and particular phrasings - to reach into your heart and draw you into a family that is at once a wide network and an intimate unit. There are others at Peniel who also speak Visaya, making this community of believers very attractive to me.

This is the church that Russel has, in a way, "inherited" from Pastor Deo. Not knowing how long I would be able to keep attending this church upon my return to Korea, I did my best to enjoy everyone's company on my last Sunday here before returning to the U.S. for a brief vacation.

This man has a wonderful, wonderful singing voice!

 HOLY JOY CENTER

2:00 p.m. | Yeongdo, Busan

After Peniel, we took the subway back to Nampo-dong, and then walked across the Yeongdo Bridge to Holy Joy Center in time for me to practice singing with the worship team. 

PASTOR GABRIEL

These days, the worship leader and main pastor of the English service is the same (and, might I add, busy) man, Pastor/Professor Gabriel from Kosin University. He is a vibrant character whose stories about his native South Africa and his experience of marrying a Korean woman (and, subsequently, her family) has kept me laughing and, at the same time, deep in thought regarding the way human beings interact with each other across cultures.

With the apparent flight of most of our Filipino church attendees (who made up the largest portion of foreigners in the English service), the church deacons cultivated new plans of drawing in foreigners from a different country, Cambodia.

Now, we have a growing community of Cambodians who attend our English service. The church provides them with English tutoring, and, because I'm an English teacher, has appointed me as their English instructor. Today, though, I team-taught with Russel as we used an online tool to help deliver our lesson on the alphabet and very basic words in English.

Our group of English learners. The others were in a different room learning Korean

Our students' names. Pronunciation was an issues so we had to have them spell their names out to us

A game we played on the board to gauge their spelling skills

Observing some hilariously misspelled words by their team members

Baby strapped to mom's back as she participates in the spelling activity

Hopefully baby is also learning some English, even subconsciously! 

After church, Russel and I walked back to Nampo and headed to our favorite Chinese restaurant, where we ordered the same two items on the menu: sea food fried rice and sea food soup (they had fancier names on the menu but, seriously, you couldn't be more to the point than this!).

Russel still on Pastor mode, sharing his ideas on eschatology, or end-time events.
Who needs dessert when you can talk about an optimistic view of the end of the world?!

He wanted me to bring a few small gifts back to my family from him, which was really thoughtful.
These are some of the coloring books he picked up for Emily!

Without a doubt, my experience here in South Korea would not be the same without this man who, from the moment I stepped into Holy Joy, took my hand and led me to the various communities he was already a part of or was just establishing. I don't know what the next year will bring, but I want you to know how grateful I am for your care and company during my first year in Korea. Thank you, Pastor Russel! (Feels strange addressing you as that, but you truly do have a pastor's heart).