Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It
This summer, I had the honor of spending three weeks in Korea with my sisters and pastor. We helped middle school students with their English, and had lots of fun making a whole bunch of friends along the way, with the students and other teachers. After our mission project was over, our group then headed to a school in the mountains, to check out the possibility of sending missionaries up there in the future. When it was time to leave, we said our goodbyes to the students, which we got surprisingly close to, even though we stayed there for three days. Unlike other mission trips, we didn’t convert anyone to Christ, build churches, or go door-to-door sharing the Bible. I thought about why we even called this a mission trip because it didn’t fit in these categories. But during my time in Korea, I was able to find the definition of what a mission for God, really is.
We taught at Sahmyook Middle School located in Seoul, Korea’s capital. I went with my two sisters, Karis and Kara, and my good friend (and youth pastor) Matthew Ahn, who is now the youth pastor at Bakersfield church. The school holds an English camp every summer, and it’s said to be one of the best English programs throughout Seoul. Why? Well, the school got people from America to teach English, instead of using Korean teachers. Also, the kids were not allowed to speak their native language at all, while they were at the camp. This was a good thing for me because sadly enough I don’t speak Korean, and neither did a lot of the other missionaries as well. Speaking of teachers, I actually grew pretty close and fond of a lot of the other missionaries, along with the staff. TJ, Brooke, and Kim were college students from America who also helped out. I got to work with TJ and Kim. Both of us were able to handle one classroom together and made a pretty solid team.
The camp had around 120 students, but was divided into six classes depending on their English skills. I was paired with team USA. Spending about two weeks with them, yelling, talking, and laughing with them, I grew pretty close to each one. Each of them had a very distinct characteristic and a joyful personality. When it was time to leave, I almost cried because it felt like I was leaving family. TJ, Kim, and Brooke went their own separate ways, and we then headed out to a school in the mountains to see if our church pastor, Pastor Ahn, would like to send missionaries there in the future. Even though we only stayed there for three days, all of us also grew very close to the school students and still keep in touch with them through facebook.
After all this, I wanted to share the two things I learned from my mission trip. One, you should go to at least one mission trip. When I was approached about flying to Korea for three weeks, I was very hesitant. With big plans already make for the summer, why should I lose half of my summer to do this? But as you can tell, it was something I really enjoyed. Often times people will respond with “I don’t know if I want to go” because life is so comfortable. But go out and try it. If you don’t want to do it anymore, that’s fine. At least you made an effort. And you can’t use “No money” as an excuse. If you don’t have the funds, God is able to help you, do His work
Two, being a missionary doesn’t mean being a glorious figure, who has traveled the world converting hundreds of people to Christ and saving millions of people’s lives. I went into this trip with those intentions, and I got disappointed halfway through the English camp. None of the kids were converting to Christ and no one was asking for Bible study. I went to Matthew and told him I felt like I failed as a missionary because I didn’t help God in any way. But what he told me is that doing God’s work just means showing who He is, and that we can do through our own personalities. So being a missionary doesn’t need to focus on converting people, but instead, showing people who Jesus is. That is what doing God’s work has always been about: showing who He is.
Kirk Kang is a sophomore at Saint Joseph High school, Michigan and a member of Living Word Fellowship. He's interested in becoming a teacher in Science and History. He likes to play video games, make videos, record music, fiddle with computer hardware, getting to know new people, and traveling.