How God Led Me to Korea
Here is the testimony of how God led me to Korea. For the audio version (which can be more entertaining), please go to the media page on this site and search for the sermon, “Freedom to Dream.” It will bless you!
How God Led Me to Korea
During my final year of studying engineering at Virginia Tech I spent a considerable amount of time in prayer and fasting for my future. I made up a long list of different career possibilities including different jobs, countries, and ministries and prayed over them. As the year went by, God began crossing different options off the list. By the time graduation came around, the only thing left on my list was doing missions in Japan. A prayer of mine from the beginning was that my parents and I together would be led by God very clearly concerning my future. My parents were not at peace with me serving in Japan, but did understand my heart for ministry and were willing to let me go there for one year or two. I did not feel at peace with any of this. God had not yet made Japan clear to me or to my parents. It felt like I was just settling on it as the last option.
So, after I graduated in May of 2005 and moved back home, I told my mom I would be fasting for one day each week. She asked me why and I told her I was going to continue to fast for guidance for my future. She paused for a moment, and then responded by telling me that my future was important to her and to my dad and that they would join me in fasting. This was a great blessing to me! Interestingly, the day after our first fast, my father told me that he had a dream that I was at the orphanage in Korea with the kids and the orphanage’s founder Pastor Yoon Kwon Chae. This seemed so random that we laughed about it (My father had met this pastor in Virginia one time back in the 1980’s. I had also visited the orphanage in Korea for a couple days in 2003, but never thought anything would come of it). This dream seemed completely out of the blue. Because at that point I was focused on Japan, we didn’t take it too seriously.
In the next few weeks, though, God made it clear that I was not to go to Japan, so once again my future was wide open. My once long list of career options had been completely crossed out. I began working a job at a construction site as I waited for God to speak and lead me.
About a month after the dream of the orphanage my dad had another dream. This time it was a nightmare. I didn’t know this about my dad at that time, but he is the type of person who lies down, quickly falls asleep, and then wakes up. He very rarely remembers his dreams. After this bad nightmare he got out of bed in the middle of the night and went into another room and opened his Bible and began praying, asking God, “Why did you let me have this horrible dream?” As he was reading through Scripture and praying, God spoke to him in a very clear way. God said to him, “I speak in dreams. Pay attention!” At that moment my dad immediately remembered the dream he had of me being in the orphanage in Korea.
The next day he approached me and told me about this second dream and what God had told him. As he was telling me about his second dream, it clicked in my mind… I had literally been praying for my dad to dream dreams! You see, every semester and summer I make new entries in my prayer journal. I write down peoples’ names and pray for them. As I pray for them, sometimes the Spirit will put something specific on my heart to pray for that person and I will write it down in the journal and lift up that specific request every time I pray for them. Well, the day after I graduated, I made a new entry in my prayer journal and my dad was the first name I wrote down. As I prayed for him that day, the Spirit put a verse on my heart. The verse was Joel 2:28, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” I prayed over the verse and couldn’t understand exactly how it related to my dad. I kept going over it in my head, “your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions…” and finally decided, “Well, my dad is my old man, I’ll pray that he dreams dreams.” So I wrote that in my journal, “Dream dreams, walks in your Spirit.” And just a few days later my father had that first dream of me at the orphanage, and then a month later he had the second dream where God tells him, “Pay attention, I’m speaking!”
After I told my dad I had been praying for him to dream dreams, he told me I need to e-mail Pastor Chae at the orphanage in Korea and find out what is happening there. We began praying over this possibility of serving in Korea. I e-mailed Pastor Chae (who can speak English, thankfully) and asked if I could be of any help at the home. This began a long, slow process of trading e-mails with him. He would e-mail me every few weeks to tell me, “The staff is considering, but we don’t know yet.” In the mean time, as summer ended and fellow graduates were starting their careers, I continued to work construction, wait, and pray, believing that God had a plan for my future.
In late September, one night as I was laying in bed about to go to sleep, I found myself reflecting on the different faith jumps Korea would present (living in an orphanage that doesn’t speak English, living with a ton of kids, being on my own, not having a secure future, and even knowing I’d have to eat kimchi everyday). Then, amidst thinking of these concerns, God suddenly turned my mind to His promises. I remembered Hebrews 13:5, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” The end of the Great Commission in Matthew also came to mind, “Surely I am with you always, even now to the very end of the age.” I felt God’s peace fall on me. I remembered all the times I had told God I would obey Him no matter what and go wherever He would send me. Now, because of His peace, I knew I finally had the strength to not just say I would obey Him, but to actually follow through and do it.
About a week later my mom received an e-mail from a distant friend. This lady asked how I was doing. My mom replied that I was currently working construction and praying about my future… that I would either be getting an engineering job soon or perhaps serving at an orphanage in Korea. Her friend replied to that e-mail by telling my mom that she had she had a sum of money she had felt led to set aside for the Lord. She is a prayerful woman and during one of her times of prayer God directed her to give the money to missions. As she prayed for more direction about who exactly to give the money to, God put me upon her heart. She wrote to my mom that beginning in December she would begin giving $1,500 a month for an entire year for wherever God would lead me. That is $18,000 in support! I had not asked her or anyone for support money yet, this was completely a gift from God. My mom called me in and showed me the e-mail, and then looking at me in shock said, “Well, if Korea doesn’t work out, you have to go somewhere!” I had to laugh. God was answering my prayer. He was leading my parents with me.
In fact, that same month my dad had two more vivid dreams of me living at the children’s home in Korea. Before anything was confirmed, my family (parents, sisters, brother-in-law) gathered together and each shared their heart about me possibly leaving for Korea. They each felt God’s hand was over everything that was happening. They each felt it would be beautiful for me to go love the children. They each voiced their blessing over me leaving and then together laid their hands on me and prayed for me. Shortly after that family gathering, Pastor Chae e-mailed me that he and his staff had prayed and wanted to welcome me to the orphanage, requesting that I arrive by the end of the year. I would live in the guest room in the home and teach the children English. Right after I received the e-mail, I purchased my plane ticket to depart December 29, 2005.
During my time before leaving, God began speaking to my father about my future. My father shared with me that he feels this children’s home will be my permanent home from here on out. He feels that I will live in South Korea, but after a few years God will begin sending me on different missions for His work. God will take me to different places, but I will always return to Korea to rest, recuperate, and prepare for the next sending. I felt in agreement with him in my Spirit and excitement grew within me about what would come.
During this time God also reminded me of visions/daydreams I had when I was a third year in college. For a few weeks whenever I would lie down and begin to drift off to sleep, I would have daydreams that would take me to poor towns and villages in Asia. I would be with a team of young adult volunteers. During the day we would build a church and an orphanage and serve the community. Every night we would gather together and worship God, read His Word, and pray for each other. We would simply rely on God. And after a year or two, after the community would become strong, we would go to the next town or village and do the same… place to place, just like the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts. I remember smiling as I would have these daydreams… it all just seemed so pure, just completely trusting in God’s promises and going in faith. But after a few weeks of entertaining those daydreams, my lack of faith caught up to me and I told myself, “I’m not cut out to be a missionary. I can’t speak a foreign language. I don’t have the experience. I like air conditioning and my car and American food. I’m an engineer. Those daydreams are for someone else.” And I quit letting my mind wander there again. But now, as I was preparing to go to Korea, God reminded me of those visions and I felt in my Spirit that there was a lot of truth in them. I had to repent for my lack of faith and recommit myself to Him. I began to feel that God was sending me to Korea to train me and prepare me for that work. By going to Korea I could learn the language, learn the children’s hearts, and build a team. My hope was that after time I would have the language down, have grown in God’s love for the orphans, and would have a team of full time volunteers at different orphanages in Seoul. And then we would come together as a team and go and begin building orphanages for the orphans of North Korea, whether directly in North Korea or in North China for the refugees there. These were the hopes and visions that I carried with me to Korea and am continuing to pray towards.
