Japan, Korea and Taiwan

From the Pastor’s Desk (289)

Lynette and I visited Japan, Korea, and Taiwan from Tuesday, May 13 to Thursday, May 29—a total of 17 days. This was the longest time I’ve been away from church, except for two occasions: when my family and I took a vision trip to Southeast Asia, and when I took my first sabbatical in 2019.

We spent five days in Japan with my son Enoch, seven days in Korea—three of those in Seoul and four on Soan Island—and four days in Taiwan. Every portion of the trip was different but special.

In Japan, we were able to spend some quality time with Enoch. He is planning to wrap up his teaching career by the end of this year and return home in January of next year. Though he is still not actively walking with the Lord, we encouraged him to do his best to share Christ with his students before he comes back—especially with one family he has grown very close to. We had dinner with this family both last year and again on this trip. Every member of the family is sweet and precious, and it breaks my heart that they have never heard the gospel.

In fact, this pain and sorrow are what I feel every time I visit Japan. With a population of about 125 million, only around 1% are Christ-followers. Churches and Christians actively sharing the gospel are few and far between. We must pray and ask God to send workers to Japan. Also, if you could continue to pray for Enoch, I would greatly appreciate it.

In Korea, we spent three days in Seoul. We knew that a New Life couple we’ve known for more than 25 years would be in Seoul around the same time, so we made plans to do some things together. It was a lot of fun hiking up to Namsan Tower and sharing meals with one another. One thing I noticed about Seoul is that there are people from all over the world. This is not the Korea I remember from when I left in 1978. I wonder what kinds of ministries churches are doing to serve and reach out to the internationals living in Korea.

We then traveled down to Soan Island, one of the southernmost islands in Korea, aside from Jeju Island. There, we met Pastor Cho’s family and the members of his church. I first came to know about him when I stumbled upon a Christian documentary featuring young pastors who had given up their city church ministries to serve in rural farming or fishing villages.

Pastor Cho is very young, polite, respectful, wise, and creative, with many brilliant ideas. He is full of potential and could easily serve as a senior pastor at a promising church in a major city. However, after praying with his wife, they felt called to this island to love and serve a small church made up of about ten adults in their 70s to 90s, along with fifteen young children. As in many cities across Korea, this island has also seen an influx of migrant workers from developing nations in Asia as well as from Russia. New Life has not engaged in any missions work in Korea until now due to a specific reason I had. However, perhaps it is time for us to do something for this nation, where Christianity has been in decline over the past couple of decades.

After Soan Island, we flew to Taiwan. It was my first time visiting the country. While we were there, Lynette told me she appreciates Taiwan because of all the Taiwanese New Life members who are so precious to us. We had an awesome board meeting for House Church Ministry International. During the meeting, it was mentioned that our house church ministry is becoming more international in nature, and we must prepare ourselves for the future. I sensed that this was God’s way of telling me and New Life to brace ourselves, because He has greater work in store for us—partly due to the language we use and speak.

We had such a fruitful and fulfilling trip. Thanks to everyone who kept up with our schedule and prayed for us. And it’s so good to be back home!

Your pastor,

Pastor Eric