December 6, 2007

A journey across America

Dear Friends from around the world,

At this holiday season when we celebrate the birth of Christ and look forward to the New Year, we would like to share with you a journey that began on June 20, 2007, and ended on November 16. We begin with two images. The first took place on July 6 when our nephew James Chou married Michelle Hung in historic Rhodes Hall in downtown Atlanta. It was a festive family occasion with several hundred guests. We officiated at the wedding as these two young people began their life together. The second took place on June 30 in Boston when we, with three of Carol’s sisters, boarded a tour bus for a trip to Niagara Falls. The bus was filled with people from ten different countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. We soon discovered, however, that Dan was the only native born Caucasian on the bus. Keep these two images in your mind during this journey.

From mid-July through early November we crisscrossed the southeast, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest, visiting supporting churches and participating in a special mission emphasis known as Mission Challenge ’07. Here are some factoids that may be of interest.

• We visited 17 states and spoke in 38 churches for a total of 60 speaking engagements.
• We visited 9 university and college campuses and 1 prep school.
• We attended 4 mission-related conferences in Louisville as well as a church retreat in Georgia.
• We spent a week of continuing education at the famed Chautauqua Institution in western New York, where we attended a week on “Sacred Texts in Context: Literalism and Interpretation.”
• We visited two Trappist monasteries—one in Iowa and the other in Kentucky.
• We spent many hours in 3 world-class art museums in Tacoma, Washington, Huntsville, Alabama and Cartersville, Georgia plus a visit to America’s most famous volcano—Mount St. Helens.
• We visited 2 Taiwanese churches and 3 Korean churches.
• Languages used during our travels included English, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hakka.
• We drove over 12,000 miles using two rental cars and we flew 16,000 miles in 3 countries on 3 different airlines.

A third image took place in a small rural church midway between Bulls Gap and Rogersville, Tennessee. In this small church a women’s circle has been supporting Hanil University, and its predecessor, Hanil Women’s Seminary, for a total of 55 years! Today the church has fewer than 20 members, and the women’s circle numbers only three. As we visited this church, the center of attention was a delightful 3-month-old baby. Here we saw faithfulness and hope brought together in a most beautiful way.

This photograph of two children appeared on almost all the materials prepared for Mission Challenge '07.

The month of October found us traveling full-time in four presbyteries as part of Mission Challenge ’07. We were part of a group of 48 missionaries who spoke in 144 presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). We were in Northern Alabama, Sheppards and Lapsley (the Birmingham area), Cherokee (northwest Georgia), and Northeast Georgia—a week in each presbytery. We were in large churches and small churches, big city churches and rural churches, and we spoke to groups with as few as four and as many 400. Many churches had not had a missionary visit for a number of years. We were encouraged by the largely positive response, and we were treated to wonderful hospitality. A special joy was participating in the ordination of a Korean (in Athens, Georgia) who is now serving a church for Chinese immigrant workers located near Seoul. We were gratified by the faithfulness of the churches in their past support of Presbyterian World Mission, and we were encouraged by the hope of increased support and new support in the future.

The fourth image took place in Louisville, as over 40 missionaries serving in some 16 countries gathered for a time of reflection and sharing following the October Mission Challenge ’07. The mood of the group was characterized by a sense of the national and global connectedness of our church and of the World Mission enterprise. Although exhausted from a month of intensive travel, everyone felt that this special effort was both a worthwhile and significant event in the life of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The fifth image took place in Duluth, Georgia, as members of the Chou family gathered for a “blessing of the house” when our nephew Ben Chou moved into his newly constructed home. We joyfully celebrated this milestone in the life of the family as our journey across America came to a close.

The last image, a kind of postscript, took place in Taipei, Taiwan, on November 18 during a six-day stopover on the return trip to Korea. We were preaching in the Neihu Presbyterian Church. The pastor, the Rev. Allen Chi, was our student at Taiwan Theological College during our years of service in Taiwan. He was our student again at the Asia Pacific Graduate School of Theological Studies at Hanil University in Korea. Last year he and his wife returned to Korea for a visit and stayed in the guest room at Hanil. As we boarded our flight in Taipei for the final leg of our journey, which brought us back to Korea and Hanil University, we gave thanks to God for divine grace and blessing throughout the five months of travel.

We would ask that you keep these six images in mind as you pray for us and support our work at Hanil University and Presbyterian Theological Seminary. May you all have a most merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Faithfully in mission,

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 247