NOVEMBER 2022 KCGM NEWSLETTER

My Dear Wonderful Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving! As I normally do around this time of year, I’ve been going around asking the children what they are most thankful for this year, and the resounding consensus is that they were most thankful about getting to ride on a plane for the first time in their lives. I kind of already knew that was what they were going to say. After all, the experience is what is freshest in their memory, since it happened just this last month!?

You see, before Covid, we used to take all the orphanage kids on a family trip every summer. We would usually charter a bus to a nearby campground or to the beach, but Covid forced us to cancel our plans for the last three years. So, this year, with the leftover budget from the Covid years, we decided to go big! Since summer vacation was long past, we had all the kids skip school for three days to take them on the trip of a lifetime! We didn’t have enough funds to take them all to Hawaii or anything like that, so instead, we took them to the next best thing... to a place we fondly call the Korean Hawaii!

It’s a small island off our southern coast called Jejudo. It may not be an exotic tropical island, but it is still a beautiful place! It has the best beaches in Korea, the best seafood in Korea, and even some of the best mountain views. I was sad that I actually could not join them due to some administrative responsibilities I had back at home, but on all accounts, they had the most wonderful time! I was especially thankful that even for our most reclusive older teenagers, the trip really got them to open up a little bit, goof off, and enjoy some time of relaxation and healing, that they desperately needed to fight off some of that pesky post-Covid syndrome.

So when they got back home, I made a point to get them talking all about it. I had received updates throughout the trip, so I already knew what they all had done. They had gone swimming, rode on boats, fed alpacas, and picked tangerines. Some of them even got to go on a submarine. I asked them, “What was your favorite part?” I couldn’t help but laugh at the answers I got, as it seemed that for most of them, the biggest highlight of the trip was the barely 30-minute plane ride there and back! They had experienced all these amazing things at Korea’s best vacation spot. In the past, they were probably jealous of and felt less than all their friends at school who go on family trips there every summer, and now they were finally able to boast themselves that they have been there too…but for some reason, the most impactful and lasting memory from it all was getting there rather than being there.

This is something that has kind of stuck with me the past few weeks, and I spent some time reflecting on why that was. I think the most obvious insight about it is that going on a plane for someone who has never been on one is quite an extraordinary experience. You and hundreds of other people climb into a giant metal tube that weighs tens of thousands of pounds by itself already. Somehow, this ridiculously heavy metal tube is able to lift off 30,000+ feet into the sky and get you to another location thousands of miles away at incredible speeds. Our children got somewhere farther than the farthest point away from home that they had ever been, and all in under an hour. For a kid, this is nothing less than a miracle! From what they understand of the basic laws of physics, this is an incomprehensible phenomenon! It is an act of God!

For us though, it is something we take for granted. For me personally, air-travel is just a necessary evil to get from one place to another. A good flight is one in which I sleep through most of it. The only thing I ever feel strongly riding in a plane is frustration. After hearing what the kids had to say, I immediately asked myself, “Where is my wonder and amazement? Where has my awe of God gone?” In fact, I got to thinking about not just this, but all the other things I take for granted in my life... all the miracles and acts of God that I fail to acknowledge or even recognize anymore, because I have gotten so used to blessings... I have grown so spoiled in my walk with God. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I confessed all this to God in prayer and I can only say it just felt so good for me to be able to do that. Although I didn’t go on the trip with our kids, I got so much healing out of it in this way.

Another thought also occurred to me as I was dwelling on this matter. A phrase popped up in my head... actually a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote I had learned a long time ago, far back from a time I don’t quite remember and from someone I can’t recall. It goes, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” You probably have heard it at some point in your life. I know it sounds a little cliché, but it couldn’t be more profound for me in this season of the year and in this season of my life. I am so proud of our orphanage children for fully being present and cherishing every moment of the?journey to Jejudo as much as the destination, because I find myself doing so less and less.

In my last newsletter, I had expressed to you some doubts I had been having about continuing in this ministry. I received a lot of feedback, and I know that some of you appreciate my vulnerability, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you don’t. After all, I don’t know if I would want to support a wishy-washy weak-minded missionary myself. I know that my dad never took this type of journalistic approach to these letters as I do, and I know the risk I take is that you may not like it.

Regardless, I just want to express how grateful I am for all the encouragement I received as a response to my doubts, or maybe even despite my doubts. Here are some gems I have written down and engraved into my heart. “…when we feel a ministry may not proceed without us, we have overestimated what we bring to the table, or we have underestimated the power of God.” Someone else wrote to me something like, “If you stay where you are, miraculous things may happen. If you move, miraculous things may happen. Either way, keep looking to God as the best is yet to come!”

Needless to say, both thoughts meant so much to me. How important it is for us to be able to put things in perspective! How critical it is for us to realize that our lives here on earth are too short to waste time waiting to get somewhere! I want to cherish every blessing along the way like the precious kids of our orphanage do! I want to declare in my heart once and for all, that God has got my life firmly in His hands, so that all I have to do at all times and in all places, is simply just stand in awe of Him! This is my prayer for both you and me. God bless you.? ?

Yours because of Calvary,??

John Woosik Chae?