July 18, 2005
How good and pleasant it is when brothers (and sisters)
live together in unity.
Psalm 133:1
Dear Friends around the world,
Psalm 133 was the Scripture for the Presbyterian Church of Korea’s
General Assembly staff devotional time that Art usually attends,
along with the 70 or so staff members who are at church headquarters
on any given day. On July 15 the Society Department’s Executive
Secretary Rev. Lyu Tae Sun was leading, and he mentioned that
verse three, “as if the dew from Hermon were falling on
Mount Zion,” was a reference to unity, north to south. This
is what the Korean people have been praying for. The day before,
the papers had announced that South Korea would provide two million
kilowatts of electricity for free if the nuclear weapons program
were dismantled. The six-nation talks are scheduled to resume
the last week in July.
On July 13 there was an article in the Korea Herald
saying that North Korea’s food shortage this year could
deteriorate into a famine as bad as that of the mid-1990s, when
a million people died of starvation. This reinforces Sue Kinsler’s
impressions during the three trips to the North that she has taken
in 2005. With the change to a market economy, wages are as low
as $3.00 a month, and with a rising inflation this is only a small
percent of what a family needs to live on.
The good news is that Sue’s Lighthouse Foundation, using
funds from supporters in the United States and South Korea, has
been providing soybean milk daily to 9,000 orphans and young children
in Sariwon City and up to 5,000 in the poor Taedong Gang district
outside Pyongyang. Thanks to bakery equipment, flour, and other
ingredients sent by Lighthouse, they have since the beginning
of 2005 been supplementing the milk with wholesome bread in roll-size
loafs. |
