8/6/2011 9:05am Retreat Day 4 and International ___ Night

So, yesterday was the last day of the retreat. Nothing big or major… Pastor Park started the day with a brief prayer meeting in which he talked about the four friends of the paralytic (the ones that cut a hole in someone’s roof to lower their friend down to see Jesus). His point was that Jesus sometimes needs friends to make miracles happen. I’m not sure that was the best analogy – I would have used the apostles or something, since Jesus was actually not physically around anymore, but I got his point. In connecting the dots, he was suggesting that we try to do our part to not just spread the gospel, but to try to spread what we’ve learned to other adoptees in specific.

Then we had the last bit about our ‘true identity.’ I forget the name of the guy who wrote this stuff (sounded familiar, so I thought I’d remember it – figures), but essentially, one of his bits was about telling the difference between Satan’s lies and God’s truths. They go:

Satan’s lie – You are a sinner because you sometimes sin.

God’s truth – You are a saint, ‘one declared righteous by God,’ who sometimes sins.

Satan’s lie – You get your identity from what you have done.

God’s truth – You get your identity from what God has done for you.

Satan’s lie – You get your identity from what people say about you.

God’s truth – You get your identity from what God says about you.

Satan’s lie – Your behavior tells you what to believe about yourself.

God’s truth – Your belief about yourself determines your behavior.

I thought that was pretty good stuff… After, though, we had to write how a whole mess of verses related to us, which wasn’t really that cool. :P The verses weren’t exactly profound (they were weird ones, like the verses where Paul was just saying ‘hi’ to some of the churches), so I just kind of wrote stuff. :P

But, the real meat of our writings (we were writing for three hours) was kind of a feedback questionnaire about the trip. We met with Pastor Park, one at a time for about half an hour to review our original application and then to discuss those questions. …Yeah, I totally took 44 minutes with mine. :P Oops.

We were chilling here, waiting for our turn...

 We ate lunch, cleaned up and then left…

The Nicks went home in a different car b/c they’re further out than the rest of us, and Raia went with us b/c she was going to meet her aunt. We just got back to Dongan church and Elder Kim and Daniel Lee had to turn around and head right back to the retreat center (they had a leaders retreat or something). While we were waiting for our host families to pick us up, we got invited to International ___ Night. Now, that ____ was either ‘quiz’ or ‘cuisine’ night… And we never really got clarification for that. :P But, it was in two and a half hours. MeriKim and I shrugged and said we’d go. David managed to hook up with his friends he made on his last trip here, so he’d be going to see them.

In the time between, Youngchai (my host family mom) took Jong Hyun and I to go pick up Ju Eun. She was just finishing up at English school…

  

Rebecca, our translator for the DMZ day, whom I met earlier, was the teacher. Seems like she runs the show herself… Her classroom was tiny, and her current class was just Ju Eun and two of her best friends. They were all pretty cute and all somewhat acted the same (read: crazy). Rebecca is pretty cute, too (ok, I had to throw that in there :P ).

Youngchai bought all of us ice cream, and then we went to go let Ju Eun play with her friends at the playground, then we all went home.

I got my stuff all organized and stuff, then played a little guitar with Jong Hyun practicing violin. It took a little effort, but we managed to play at least one song together. Then it was pretty much time to go right back to the church.

We met up and Rebecca drove us to the host’s apt in her Samsung SM3. Felt kinda like a Mazda. Anyways, it was kind of a farewell night for three people, who would be going back home within the week. They had a little ‘raffle,’ and both MeriKim and I won something.

My shorts make me look like a cripple in this pic. :S

The host was a deacon at the church, and she was explaining how she visited the US and was really lost. But, someone had an international night or something similar, and made her feel really welcome. Eventually, she started hosting a night for Americans and Koreans to get together and eat Korean food (was saying how much Americans loved her kimchi). She really developed a heart for foreigners after that, and so when she came back to Korea, she continued having international nights. Now, whether it was a ‘cuisine’ or ‘quiz’ night, I don’t know, because all the food was Korean, and we didn’t play any trivia things. Anyways… It was fun… Yes, I wished I had a guitar to noodle around with, but what can you do. :P Haha…

We went home, and then I wrote some, then went to bed.