Sunday Stuper

Good afternoon and happy Sunday!

It is about 5 pm here in Seoul, South Korea and the family and I are just enjoying a little R&R. David, Bear and I have been doing wonderful however, the Korean lifestyle has finally started to catch up with us, not to mention the time change. The last two days it feels as if David and I have walked at least 20 miles, now this is a bit of an exaggeration but when you aren't used to walking everywhere you go it can be exhausting. Yesterday the hubby and I attempted to locate a bookstore one subway exit down. While this seems to be simple enough...its not. In short we never found the bookstore and ended up walking the entire way back to our first point of entry at the subway station. Our Korean is next to non so it makes navigating the city that much harder. Anyhow we were able to salvage our evening with meeting up with a wonderful friend of ours (Mr.Kevin Tanner) from North Carolina for some dinner and Cold Stone ice cream in Itaewon. Now yes I did say Cold Stone and I meant it, our beloved creamery has surfaced pretty much all over Seoul, thank the lord!

Now for other exciting news David and I attended our first Korean church service this morning. Now you may be imagining a small church congregation with perhaps a hundred Koreans all stuffed in like sardines. Well you have the sardines part right but now multiple those numbers by 3,000! We actually went to the largest church in the entire world, right here in Seoul! The church is called Yoido (do meaning island) Full Gospel Church. There is approximately 850,000 active members and around 9 services on a given Sunday. We had no idea what to expect however, so we went into it with a skeptical mind. I am pleased to say however that we came out truly blessed for having attended. The service was in full Korean however they offer live translation for about 7 languages, English included. The best I can do to describe the service is to imagine a Methodist service on steroids. There was a massive choir, full orchestra, huge pipe organ and about three levels of wooden pews with Koreans all smooshed together. The music of course was out of this world and we found the message on discipleship to be right on. The lesson came straight out of the book of Mark chapter 8 and stressed the importance of serving others instead of ourselves. After the hour and a half service with communion and offerings included, we were ushered over to a separate building on the 11th floor for the international briefing of new comers. Now this is where it got really interesting for us. We met with an elder of the church that was a New Yorker and had lived in Korea for the past 17 years. He gave us a full church history and the low down on the founder of the church, a Dr. Cho. I don't want to overwhelm you with details but I want to highlight some of the amazing things this church has accomplished since the Korean war. Dr. Cho firmly believes that the only reason his church has flourished the way it has is due to prayer and the glory of God. The church itself owns five building downtown with a main auditorium that holds about 20,000 people. The ajoining buildings account for 22 overflow rooms with direct access to the service via television. They have an entire building just for children's Sunday school rooms and another building that holds the church offices and news paper operation (the fourth largest paper in Seoul). If that is not impressive enough the church has a college, a trade school village for children that want to learn a trade (free of cost) and hundreds of planted churches affiliated with the mega church around the city. Dr. Cho is the founder of CGI-Church growth international which has taken him around the world about sixty times to spread his ministry to other nations. Anyhow, we were dually impressed and are continuing to look into the church and its many outreach programs. If you have a desire to learn anything else about their ministry here just let me know or you can look it up online.

Well that is the main purpose of my post today but I will say that we are learning to love the Koreans more each passing day. We have found them extremely helpful and kind. Our experience at this church today only solidified our earlier impression. Once you make friends with a Korean, you are friends for life. The saying of the day is Hallelujah! Have a blessed Sunday everyone!