Reflections from the Vision Trip & Joint Retreat in South Korea

Reflections from the Korea Trip:

Identity, Community, and Purpose in Education

Dear Veritas Community, 

Thank you for your prayers for our Korea Trip and the students who participated in it.  It was a 5 day vision trip in mainland Korea for the four students from the Fullerton campus, joined by the Korea campus students for some of the activities.  This was followed by a joint retreat in Jeju Island for all three campuses (Fullerton, Korea, and East Asia) of a total of 37 students and 13 staff members.  Thanks to your prayers, we were blessed in so many ways that it is hard to capture in words.  One way to summarize the experience is that everyone, students and staff from all three campuses, want to experience more of it.  

Some of the highlights were: 

1. The experience of the miracle of modernization of Korea, and seeing how that growth is directly connected to the many missionaries who came to Korea to transform its culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Imagine why a young lady missionary named Ruby Rachel Kendrick would leave on her tombstone, “If I had a thousand lives to give, Korea should have them all.”  Studying Korean history and its rise from the ashes in a record amount of time, I can honestly say that Korea has a very special place in God’s plan of redemption.  

2. The visit to the DMZ (demilitarized zone).  We had a chance to walk 500 meters below ground and walk another 500 meters in a crouching position through one of the many tunnels that the North Koreans had dug to invade South Korea, and felt the reality of the divided Korea.  We also watched through binoculars actual people moving about in the actual city of Kaesong.  We all cried a bit in our hearts.  We also visited the Korean War Museum, at the entrance of which are tall stones with engravings of the names of tens of thousands of soldiers, categorized by country, and even by state in the United States, and with the engraving, “They came to fight for a country they never knew and a people they never met.”

3. The Sunday Worship at an EM church.  It was an unexpected experience because the place was packed, more than half of whom were non-Koreans of all ethnicities.  The message was very gospel-centered and powerful.  I felt a surge of hope about what God is doing in Korea and what God is preparing its people to do, especially in preparation for the Unification.  I also had a chance to speak at the headquarter of Esther Prayer Movement, an international gospel-centered prayer movement.  I spoke about Gospel Culture as the key to both a spiritual revival and national revival in Korea, focusing on our faith and obedience to the lordship of Christ. 

4. Finally, the climax was the Jeju Retreat.  It was a great blessing for students from various countries (all Veritas students) to come together to worship, fellowship, and have fun together.  The result is difficult to explain into words, but the promises of God about unity and diversity in Ephesians come to my mind: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body to grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:15).  It felt like we needed each other, to grow deeper in love, deeper in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.  Jeju is a special place in Korean history–a history of broken people, just like the entire Korean nation itself.  And God used a ministry called YesDaddy Ministry, a church founded to bless orphans, women, and multi-ethnic families, to host our Veritas Retreat, to show what God can and wants to do through broken people like us.