The Latin America Directors’ Conference was held on February 3-6 in Caracas, Venezuela. God blessed Dr. John Jun´s last conference among 8 national Director´s Conferences around the world since last December 09.
The highlights are as follows:
It was not easy for the Latin America directors to join this conference. M. Andrew Kim of Ecuador was assaulted just before the conference. M. Juan Kim of Nicaragua had a Dengue fever. Venezuela had a money devaluation that caused the conference fee to almost double. But altogether 35 missionaries and shepherds came (19 Latin directors among 22 including Jorge Antonio from Dominican Republic, Isidro from El Salvador, Efrain from Peru, Don Kuper from Argentina, 3 from Korea, 7 from the USA and 6 coworkers). The conference place was in a high mountain above the clouds from where we could look down at many mountains. Though it was winter, we had many blossomed flowers all around us.
Dr. John Jun must have been very tired due to jet lag and long trips. But his message was very powerful with the title, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” on Romans 1. His message once more proclaimed that the gospel is the power of God that saves all who believe whether they are Romans, Greeks or Latin Americans.
Dr. Samuel H. Lee delivered a very inspiring message entitled, “to walk in the spirit” from Galatians 5 with M. Juan Seo’s fluent simultaneous interpretation. We were all encouraged by the two lectures and wrote our testimonies from Galatians 5 and shared in 5 groups.
The opening message was from M. Timothy Rhee, a new Latin America Director. His title was “how long will you be negligent?” from Joshua 18:1-10. He was full of new spirit to pioneer the remaining 11 countries of Latin America. The closing message was from M. Don Kuper based on Luke 5, “Put out into deep water.” He said “Let us do our ministry again by walking in the spirit!”
Dr. Esteban Cho of Bolivia gave a special presentation on “House church” focusing on husband and wife relationship and had a discussion time.
S. Nehemiah Kim gave two lectures about systematic theology and “catching the main stream of the Bible.” The directors had a chance to have 3 credits in Theology.
Dr. John Jun gave the missionary plaques to three Mexican missionaries: Jorge Antonio to Dominican Republic, Isidro to El Salvador and Efrain to Peru.
The directors discussed about the three summer regional conferences: Mexico Summer conference (8 countries: Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Belize and Mexico in Mexico City on July 22-25), Bolivia Summer Conference (7 nations Argentine, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Bolivia on July 29-Agu 1.) Venezuela Summer Conference (5 countries:Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela on August 5-8.)
Next year the Latin directors’ conference will be a united conference held in Panama on January 27-30. We will have special lecture on church history.
We thank God for M. Juan Seo and Hanna Seo who served all from picking us up in the airport to serving delicious food with several Venezuelan leaders.
