He Prayed That We Might All Be One

Well, I woke up Sunday morning to attend church. We worshipped at a church called Hanmee Church of Christ. Supposedly, Hanmee suppose to stand for Korean-English. The church is bilingual. Don Kinder is also the preacher there. The location of the church is a converted penthouse that is also used as a non-degree seeking preaching school. The school has six week sessions where they bring in different people for each session. This session they brought in James Burch, an adjunct professor from Pepperdine. We had dinner with him on Saturday. Church started at 11:00am. We sang songs together but in different languages. I’ve been to many foreign and multi-cultural churches alike and I’ve never seen it done that way. To a person who wasn’t singing at all, it probably would sound like racket, but if you were singing you would be so in tuned on the words you were singing, you could hardly tell that others were singing in tongue. Weird, I know. Don preached from Mark 12:28-29. It was a really good sermon. After church every Sunday they have a pot luck lunch. All the food is straight Korean…no holds barred. Like I said earlier, we had eaten at the church Saturday too, and a lot of people complimented me on being able to eat all the Korean food. “Not many Americans like Korean food,” they would say. I must admit it wasn’t my favorite either, but having been to China first, it definitely wasn’t the worst.
After lunch we had bible class. Don usually teaches the English bible class, but since he had just got back to Korea a couple days before I arrived, he didn’t have a lesson so we just talked. When bible class ended, Sang, the director of the preaching school and the translator for worship, was walking around preparing for a baptism. His son and another young man were giving their life over to Christ. It was two this Sunday, but last Sunday they baptized four other ones. Ironically, this was not normal for me. I’m used to attending churches where baptisms were as rare as six every two months, not every two weeks! Sang had me take the pictures. It felt good to be needed on my first Sunday at my new church. The church has about thirty members.
Later that evening I watched the USA play Spain in basketball. It was a close game but they pulled it off. Afterwards, I got in the mood to play a little basketball myself, so I went to the courts outside and broke in my new KBA (Korea Basketball Association) basketball I bought at HomePlus the day before. That night, my dorm inspector bought me and some other guys in the dorm some Chinese food. I guess it was kind of like a “welcome to the dorm” gift. It was really good. They were all asking me a lot of questions. Joseph, a guy I met on my first day, was there and I met a new guy named David.
I found out that not only am I the first exchange student from OC to come to KCU, but I’m the first American exchange student ever to come to KCU. I guess I’m making history! Well today is my first day of school and like always the first day of school is always the most exciting. This place is wonderful and everyone does their best to make sure I’m comfortable. I’m really glad I’m here.