Community Development

Today was kind of a hard day. Even though Sinae and I spent several hours talking on the phone and had fun while I joked around, the elephant remained in the room, even now. I don't know what to make of all of this. I don't see what the big deal is with wanting to help poor people. Doesn't everybody want to help poor people? What happens when you see someone on the street in need? If you hear of a child growing up in an abusive home do you nearly cry as you pray for God to drop the answer on you or do you passively walk away without giving a single thought to this? What about in Korea where there are reportedly poor people living in the vicinity of the shopping mall where the female employees where gobs of make-up and the men where high-dollar clothing or so it seems. Do you think about the shopping center as a facade of what the neighborhood is really like, perhaps similar to the facade of West Hollywood that hides the hopelessness and despair of East Hollywood?

If I am the only person who wishes he could cry to release the sense of hopelessness that he has in helping someone else get out of a bad situation, please tell me now so that I don't chase everybody away with my wild dream.

How come most people respect those before us who have done so much for the sake of the other? Do we not all admire those martyrs of whatever faith you are who gave their all for what they believed in? How do we forget the blood, sweat and tears that they endured in order to spare someone else's life? How do we live so comfortable without thinking about the unfortunate situations of those around us?

I don't think I'm doing anything as radical as those you might be thinking of this very moment. I may have just made a baby step in that direction by visiting Heanoorim Youth Center in Cheonan, the city where I live. Students who come here apparently come from poor families who can't afford to send their children to academies which are very important in Korean culture. I don't think this is much but I hope it will be a step in the right direction and that I'll step beating myself up for not doing enough and seek ways to help others, even if their deficit is not financial but some other shortcoming. The next thing I want to check into is visiting people in the hospital. There is a licensed minister at the church I attend whom I want to ask about that. He is a medical doctor so I imagine he might be a good lead.

A while from now I will go to bed. I can't meet Sinae because she is going to visit her grandpa. I'm so glad she is going to do this. She hasn't been able to do this for a long time. I don't know if I will ever be able to meet him. He is in his mid or upper 90s and he is in the hospital. He may have been a prisoner who was taken to Japan when they tried to colonize Korea. I don't know if this is exactly right but when he went to another place they beat him at the knees to some degree. He became a Christian because he saw churches helping people they weren't related to. He couldn't believe people would help people they weren't related to. These later years he couldn't do much so he mostly sits, reads the Bible, prays, sleeps and then starts the cycle over again. When Sinae talks to him, she has to practically yell in order for her grandpa to hear her. I would love to meet him and hear his story but he is losing his memory so I may never hear that story. Of all the people in her family I'd like to meet, he is chief among them.

Tomorrow I will finish preparing for classes this week and then I'm going to continue reading "The Two Koreas". If I haven't talked about this book, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about North and South Korea's long tension. I think this also helps me to understand Koreans, including Sinae.

I think right now I'm going to try to translate Colossians 1:1-8, the passage Sinae's pastor preached on last Sunday. Then I'm going to call it a day and try to resume my habit of rising early in the morning. I think I'd like to memorize Colossians 1:1-8 but that might be very difficult since Paul wrote using such long sentences.

When I went to see my very first Korean teacher today who works at an NGO, who helped me get involved with what I am doing with the youth center, she and her colleagues laughed at me when I said some things the way I did in Korean. I was thinking about it and realized I can't say too much because I KNOW that I do the same with foreigners about the way Koreans talk in English. I hope I can figure out what the things were that I said. I suppose it is comparable to listening to a toddler learning to talk, except that I am not a native Korean speaker.