New places, new faces -- same Christian family

This morning I was privileged to go visit a Korean Church, complete with a meal afterward. I loved it. The people were so very friendly. They were warm and inviting, and made it easy to feel welcome to their service.

I went with Chaehun (he's a Korean student at GBS presently), Andrea Balti, and Megan Walsworth.
I think it's safe to safe that we all enjoyed it very much.

We were each(not Chaehun...like he needed it!) provided with a device that allowed us to listen to the translator through headphones. I thought this was cool (even though it reminded me of the device Ms. Beulah uses at Kenwood to boost her hearing aid), because it allowed us to understand, yet not disrupt their normal service.

This particular church had a great praise team, and a choir that sounded absolutely beautiful. I really enjoyed the worship service, and was a bit surprised by it honestly. I guess I have unknowingly stereotyped most Asian cultures as being more sober and reserved in their worship style, but I thoroughly enjoyed being wrong. They were very expressive about their love for God, and there was quite a bit of clapping, etc.

After the service they have a time of fellowship and food together, which was great. I was excited to get to try the food, even though Chaehun told us it was good, but still not "real" in his book. I figure none of us knew the difference anyway, and to me it was way better than anything that came out of a food court! I won't even try to tell you the name of anything we ate, because I've no idea, but I can kind of describe it. The main course was a bowl of rice, bean sprouts, some beef, soy sauce, and green onion. Then there were plates set out between every four people or so that you shared, and on them there was some cabbage stuff. One lady described it as a spicy, pickled cabbage. Whatever it was, it was good. I liked all of it. One point of interest to me was that they don't drink anything with the meal, but instead waited until they'd cleared the plates and then passed out cups of water. I'm ok with that, but my mother would've choked to death.



During the meal, Megan and I were able to talk to several different people from the church. One man tried to recruit us to teach S.S. to some of their children, this is due to the widening language gap between their different generations. It's hard to express and explain a concept to children if they don't really speak your language obviously, so they're wanting fluent English teachers for the kids.
Another man that we talked with was very nice, and told us his home is always open to us. His wife, Sunni(sp?), is actually talking NT class at GBS this semester. When he told us we could come over anytime, he also said that she'd be happy to cook us some real Korean food, and when I mentioned his volunteering her services to feed us, she said that he was a very good cook. ;-D

All in all, I really enjoyed myself, and would love to interact with these people more, and get to know some of them better. I loved the opportunity to worship with some of my Korean Christian brothers and sisters. God's family is so big and diverse...I just love it!

Here are a couple pics I managed to snap on my phone...



Getting ready to dig in!



This nice lady was trying to show us what to use the spoon on, and what/how to use the chopsticks. (Nothing quite like trying to use chopsticks while surrounded by Koreans...)



This is Sunni...



...and Chaehun.