November 26, 2007

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2

Dear Friends around the world,

This verse from Isaiah is not only appropriate for Christmas, but it can speak about a part of the work of the Kinslers and the Lighthouse Foundation. After participating in Mission Challenge ’07, we returned to Seoul on November 9, and from November 13 to 29 Sue is on an extended visit to North Korea. She is verifying delivery of equipment for the North’s disabled persons. The shipment includes canes, school supplies, wheelchairs, walkers, and a Braille typewriter computer and embosser for producing literature for the blind. These will be used by disabled persons and the eleven special schools for hearing impaired and vision impaired persons in the North.

Soy milk machinery for the $50,000 project of the third milk plant and bakery is packaged to go by ship to Pyongyang.

Light at times also means warmth. An urgent request for blankets for those losing homes and goods in the flooding in August (reported in our last newsletter) was met with the sending of more than 2,700 double-thickness, double-bed-sized blankets. A highlight of the Lighthouse work in 2007 was the May opening of the Potonggang Welfare Center for the Disabled, and as of the end of this year a third soy-milk plant and bakery has been added within the welfare center sponsored by a 3,000-member church of the Presbyterian Church of Korea. With those being fed in the two other plants in Sariwon and Pyongyang a total of 25,000 souls now receive soy milk and bread.

Art and Sue with friends and worship leaders who contributed to the book describing Francis Kinsler’s life and work. “He evangelized Korea more than anyone else,” Dr. Kyung-Chik Han says in the biography.

The Lighthouse Foundation got the highest rating for financial accounting and effectiveness of its program from the Unification Ministry, among NGOs helping North Korea. Art was glad to receive a plaque for his work in factory evangelism and church planting on the occasion when the church recognized that it was 50 years since the Assembly voted to do a special kind of outreach to industrial workers. Art was part of this effort from 1979 until 1994. On that same November 12, 200 people showed up for the worship marking the publishing of the biography, Missionary Francis Kinsler: He Came With Seeds To Sow. The Rev. Tuk Yul Andrew Kim, a student of Art’s father—and also his dad’s friend and co-worker—dedicated a year to its editing. Available in Korean, the volume includes his mission letters and articles by 40 persons, filling 487 pages useful for those interested in mission history.

We need to report on our participation in Mission Challenge ’07. This was a concerted effort to have PC(USA) missionaries visit as many PC(USA) churches during the month of October in order to raise mission awareness and support for sending missionaries. Forty-eight missionaries and 144 presbyteries participated. Together, we spoke in 900 PC(USA) churches. Sue was thrilled by the response when she gave talks to 30 churches or groups mostly in southern California and Art to 20 churches in Kentucky and Tennessee before joining Sue for a week visiting four churches in the Chicago area. Mission Challenge was a fine effort trying to close a gap caused by fewer visits to congregations; it moves toward a goal to have most of the denomination’s churches related to a missionary by letter, prayer, and support. We give our deepest thanks to those involved in inviting us for these visits.

For personal reasons, we have decided to keep to our original schedule for our home assignment, and therefore we will be asking our related churches if there is a time during the period March through July 2008 when you can invite us to tell the exciting news of what God is doing in Korea North and South. Because those inviting us need to bear the cost of travel from California, we will try to combine visits to several churches into one trip or just have one of us travel as a single mission speaker where that is advisable.

Yours in the light of Bethlehem’s star,

Art and Sue Kinsler

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 249