News > Europe

January 25, 2013

 

Key verse: Luke 15:24 “‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'

So they began to celebrate.”

 

I was born on January 1, 1982 as the first son in a loving and warm but not a rich family. One year later, my brother was born, and all of my parents’ attention and love were directed towards my brother, and I became a faint-hearted boy who had to size up the situation and then always had to give in to his brother. In order to get the attention of older classmates, I drank and smoked even in the second grade. In school, I was the comedian who exaggerated just to win attention. At home, I was a pathetic creature whose parents constantly compared him to his better younger brother. Since I could not fulfill my parents’ expectations, I despaired about myself. Out of unfulfilled parental love and desperation, I tried to comfort myself through mangas and pornography. With the nightly consumption of pornography, I became more and more miserable and suffered from an aggrieved self-esteem and shame. The difference between what I wanted and how I lived made me even woeful and I took to comics and pornography to escape and thus was drawn deeper into a vicious circle.

The entrance into the university was a hope that would allow me to leave my hometown of Kwangju and be able to put an end to this bad habit. Instead I registered at the nearest university to my home, Chunnam University. All my hopes and perspectives disappeared. However, Jesus invited this hopeless man through a friend to Easter worship service at UBF, to a heavenly feast. This first impression of UBF I had was shocking. During the testimony sharing or message, many kept agreeing with an “Amen” and it seemed to me to be a cult. Yet, I enjoyed the older shepherds’ attention that they even reacted to my smallest gesture and encouraged me. During nine step Bible study, my shepherd encouraged me that I was created to be a very good being according to God’s plan and that my life could be changed into being like a good wine. At the summer conference 2000, I realized that Jesus has a full heart for me despite my inadequacy and my sins. I, who led such a dirtied and ugly life through comics and pornography and a being mocked by everyone, was not condemned by Jesus, but forgiven of my sins by spilling his blood on the cross. (He said to me):  Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).

 

When I began to turn away from searching for peoples’ love and attention and sought for God’s word and prayer and sought after drinking the living water from God that springs into eternal life, my life changed as well. I was hopeless, without a perspective, but could now struggle with my studies with a vision. During my short stay in the USA for my language studies, I understood my roommate’s heartfelt pain and inward sorrow after his parents’ divorce and decided to be a shepherd for people who understood and took care of them. I prayed to have my bones buried in my land of mission, if God sent me out as a missionary.

 

Under God’s guidance, I began my doctoral thesis at the Kwangju Institute for Science and Technology (GIST) in order to take part in the pioneering work there. With God’s word from Gen. 13 and Joshua 1, my heart was filled with pioneering spirit and vision. However, GIST was a training field for me, since I was spiritually untrained and immature. I often thought with my head in trusting in God, but I trusted in my strength of will, diligence and faithfulness. Without crying out to God, everything would be just fine, in this way I deceived myself. Instead of trying to please God, I lived before the eyes of the professors and secretly started dating a girlfriend. Being blinded by sin, I felt that what the church demanded of me was oppression and interference. I thought that it was the end of torture and the beginning of happiness, if I left the church and thus God, as well. Like the prodigal son, I left the way of faith with the expectation of happiness. Yet, life without God was completely different from that what I expected. Sometimes I could not return to the student dorm, instead I slept on a park bench or in the pavilion in the park in front of the institute. My relationship with my girlfriend ended because of misunderstandings and fights. My research was delayed and I suffered setbacks and reaped reproach, contempt and mocking from my professor. In my confusion, Satan tempted me with the sweet sin of fleshly lust. I visited the red light district and spent the night with prostitutes and enjoyed myself. In the empty lab or in the dorm, I sat and watched pornography or stayed in bed the whole day. Like the prodigal son who left his father’s house, I fell into a miserable situation.

 

It was then that I first remembered God. I thought of the one to one Bible study, and the time I cried out to God. I remembered the messages from Shepherd Nehemiah every Sunday. I wished shamelessly to go back to God. While I tortured myself in the lack of courage to go back, my shepherd came who had mercy on me and visited me late in the night and read to me from God’s word from Judges 6:12, “When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, The LORD is with you, mighty warrior,” and encouraged me to return to God. I thank God that I could return to his lap. God placed me anew as a co-worker for the pioneering work at GIST, although I had lived in debauchery away from God’s house. God gave me grace to preach at conferences and fellowship meetings and to preside at Sunday worship services. God gave me the most beautiful wife with a mature inwardness and armored with faith on my side, Shepherdess Esther and blessed us as a family of faith and granted me my doctorate.

 

For a mutual research project, I stayed at the Korean Dasan North Pole Research Station in April for a month. I was happy to come to Europe that I had never visited before, but in my heart I had some questions. Why does God send me just when I am in the midst of searching for a post-doc position? Is it just to comfort me over my lack of success in application to American campuses? But then I realized God’s faithfulness, and I had to praise God that just during my stay at the North Pole I was surprisingly accepted by a Finnish university. When I had applied there, I had had no idea where that university was located. After reading the acceptance letter, I checked and found that it is in Finland, close to the North Pole, and there is no sunrise in winter, while in summer the sun will never set – so there is midnight sun and a climate like in the polar region. The short trip to the North Pole was kind of an exploration trip. For Koreans, it usually takes eight weeks with several failures and several visits to the Finnish embassy in order to receive residence permit for Finland. My family received it within only four weeks – so God revealed his faithfulness and gave us success in just one application.

 

The Korean peninsula was in chaos because of a typhoon, but we came through the storm on August 28 to Finland with great expectations and hope. The beginning in Finland was empty and unclear like my apartment where there was only a refrigerator but no furniture, not even a lamp on the ceiling. Without a bed, M. Esther, being in the last stages of pregnancy, had to sleep on the floor with a cover. Finland is so thorough, that everything goes slowly, but everything went faster than we thought and within three days, we got all the things we needed: furniture, lamps, etc. We were filled that day with thanksgiving to God who took care of us down to the smallest detail. The ironing board and the rice jar served as a podium and every Thursday M.Esther and every Sunday I delivered our messages. Although we were only two people at Sunday worship, we sang and shouted out loudly in the hope that the neighbors would knock on our doors because of the noise and visit us.

 

According to Joshua 14:12 – “Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said” – we went with Caleb’s spirit to the campus, ate lunch there and despite our poor abilities of communication, we visited the buildings and prayed. We still do not have any answers till now, but the news is encouraging that the Korean trend has come to Europe; we hung up posters for Korean lesson in order to come into contact with the natives. Later, I realized that because of their shyness, Finnish students will never give a greeting or a call without being actively approached. I repent that I took lack of time as an excuse for hardly trying to pass God’s word on. Now I want to reach out to the students after my work and start having relationships with them.

 

Pride sprouted up in us so that everything was taken for granted, then M. Esther did not pass the test for the social insurance. In the time of sighing, discouragement and bitterness, God encouraged us through a telephone conversation with M. Pauline Kim in Denmark and led us to repent of our unbelief. Although M. Esther had to return to Korea because of the failure to pass the test for the social insurance and we had to separate, we could remain all the more awake in prayer. God, who works for the best for us (Rom 8:28), protected M. Esther and the unborn child during the long flight and made it possible to have a healthy delivery and further care at the hands of her parents in Korea. Our pain was changed into joy.

In the institute, I researched on the process of how nano particles are being produced, about their character, and how they turn into a cloud. Therefore, instead of just staying at the research center, I often have to take the measuring instruments to various stations for experiments. Since God knows the specifics of my subject and how I feel without my co-worker around, he allowed no time for melancholy and sent me on a business trip to Switzerland where I had Sunday worship and fellowship with M. Paul Lee’s family. God showed me that it is most important that he is my Lord. Through them, he helped me to learn some practical attitude and faith for the mission field.

 

In my short missionary life in Finland, I receive a deaf and dumb training because of my lack of language, but I pray that we can take heed of God’s loving heart for the Finnish everyday anew and sow the seed of the gospel on the campus with the spirit of a dying kernel of wheat and thus establish a love relationship with the natives and serve the disciple making ministry with a disciple.

 

By Studd Caleb Kim